Life, Liberty and Family

Supreme Court Shocks Life Into Obamacare Challenge

2012-10-22T11:13:00.002-04:00

The U.S. Supreme Court revived hope – long thought dead – that Obamacare, the president’s signature achievement, might yet be ruled unconstitutional. The High Court shocked the legal community by opening its new term with an order giving the Obama Justice Department just 30 days to respond to Liberty Counsel’s petition for rehearing. Liberty Counsel filed the petition on behalf of Liberty University and two private individuals.
An appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled that the Anti-Injunction Act, or AIA, barred the court from addressing the merits in Liberty Univ., Inc. v. Geithner, which challenged the individual mandate (Section 1501) and the employer insurance mandate (Section 1513) of Obamacare.

In addition to the constitutional arguments that Congress lacked authority to pass the law, the suit also raised the Free Exercise of religion claim because of the forced taxpayer funding of abortion.

You may recall that the first day of oral argument was dedicated to the AIA, the issue that Liberty University’s case placed before the High Court. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the AIA does not apply to Obamacare. Therefore, Liberty Counsel asked the Court to grant the petition (because Liberty University prevailed on the AIA claim), vacate the Court of Appeals ruling and remand (send back) the case to the Court of Appeals to consider the Free Exercise claim and the employer mandate, neither of which were decided by the High Court.

Long story short: If the Supreme Court ultimately hears the case on appeal – which is highly possible as the claims are unique – and rules that the employer mandate and Free Exercise claims are legit, Obamacare dies on the vine. It’s effectively overturned. It’s like a shiny new Dodge Volt without the exploding battery. It goes nowhere fast and is towed to the junkyard of really, really stupid ideas.
This means, among other things, that people who value human life won’t be made complicit in abortion homicide on the taxpayer dime.

“Obamacare is the biggest funding of abortion in American history,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law. “Under the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, Obamacare will, for the first time, require employers and individuals to directly fund abortion.

“This abortion mandate collides with religious freedom and the rights of conscience. I am very pleased with the Court’s decision today,” concluded Staver.

Whether by legislative repeal, or through Liberty Counsel’s ongoing case, freedom-loving America should be confident. This freakish Frankenstein monster will, God willing, be soon laid to rest beneath the cold, clammy earth from which liberals dug it up.

We Still Stand With Israel

2012-09-20T11:44:00.001-04:00

As radical Muslims wage escalating assaults and increasingly violent demonstrations and the entire Middle East experiences chaos and instability, numerous news outlets are reporting that Israel’s military has mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers for their largest “readiness drill” in many years.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Iran could be only six to seven months away from being able to build nuclear weapons – and he will not wait on Washington to approve his efforts to defend Israel.

We must stand with Israel at this critical time! Liberty Counsel will stand with Israel and I hope you will as well!

In a no-holds-barred interview with the Jewish Journal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out a disturbing assessment...

“But it is important to remember this: You can protect from missiles in one way or another, but there is one thing there is no protection from: the atom bomb. The only thing that can protect us is preventing it from becoming a reality in the hands of the enemy.

And, of course, we have to clarify to anyone who ever considers attacking Israel with weapons of mass destruction that he does so at his own peril.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu has openly stated that the United States has failed to draw a “red line” to get tough with Iran. The Prime Minister has asserted his nation’s right to do what is necessary to protect his people, even if that means launching a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The dominant fear in the international community is that an Israeli attack on Iran could spark a catastrophic regional war, Armageddon-like in scope.

As I have written to you before, Iran has declared that no enemy nation is exempt from their missile strike capabilities, including United States bases in the region, and even the United States itself. Of course, Israel’s borders are easily within striking distance of Iran’s extensive missile arsenal.

Plus, Israel is susceptible to rocket assaults from Tehran’s Islamist allies: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Our contacts in Israel emphasize that the slightest spark right now could ignite a Middle East conflict of epic proportions – one which Iran would use as “political cover” to attack Israel. There is no doubt in the minds of the Israeli leadership that Iran will deploy nuclear weapons at the earliest moment they are fully developed.

But whatever the situation, Liberty Counsel has repeatedly vowed to stand with Israel! That will certainly not change if open warfare erupts in the region.

The bottom line: The Middle East is facing a meltdown of epic proportions – and Israel remains at the epicenter of the conflict.

++We MUST stand with Israel!

We have written an open letter which will be delivered to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, and seven key American congressional leaders. We believe the letter will be widely distributed among the senior Israeli leadership, as well.

Click here to read and add your name to the open letter:

Even if you have signed our pro-Israel petitions and letters before, please take a moment right now and add your name to this time-critical, focused letter. We know from our many contacts with senior members of the Israeli government that specific, timely messages of support from American friends have a tremendously positive impact!

Click here to read and add your name to the open letter:

http://www.libertyaction.org/367/petition.asp

++A biblical teaching that has never been more timely…

As a Liberty Counsel team member, I want to make you aware of a very special book/DVD set by Dr. Ed Hindson entitled “Middle East Meltdown!” This concise, insightful teaching set reveals what the Bible says about the changes rocking the Middle East at this very hour.

Dr. Hindson explains…

“Military dictatorships seem to be taking over these countries. Behind the scenes, the Muslim Brotherhood is actively at work to destabilize those governments and bring them into an Islamic Caliphate that is destined ultimately to lead them in a march against Jerusalem.”

I assure you that this powerful teaching centered on God’s Word will change the way you look at current events unfolding in the Middle East!

Click here to sign the letter, to read more about the Middle East Meltdown book/DVD set, and to place your order for one or more copies:

http://www.libertyaction.org/367/petition.asp

Liberty Counsel supports Israel for biblical and national security reasons. Israel is a Middle East bastion of democracy and individual freedom and is the birthplace of the Judeo-Christian concept of the rule of law – which, in turn, became the foundation of America and Western Civilization.

As I have discussed with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the United States and Israel are the pillars of Western Civilization and our nations’ fates are inextricably linked. We MUST stand with Israel!

Please take a moment right now and join Liberty Counsel in encouraging key leaders in Israel that the citizens of the United States of America stand with Israel, regardless of what misguided policies the Obama Administration may adopt!

Abortion Holocaust? If The Shoe Fits...

2012-07-10T12:31:00.000-04:00

I recently finished reading “Bonhoeffer” by Eric Metaxas. The book, a nearly 600-page biography of German pastor and influential theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was simply life-changing. Throughout his page-turning treatise, Metaxas brilliantly illustrates how Bonhoeffer lived and died by Christ’s admonition, “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20).

Although Bonhoeffer penned a number of widely read books on theology and Christian apologetics, he is chiefly remembered for his key role in one of several German conspiracies to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime. For this he was captured and hanged just weeks before the end of World War II.

It seems natural at this point to trek into “must read” book review territory; however, I will resist that temptation. Although “Bonhoeffer” kicked open the door to any number of theological, philosophical and political themes, it struck another cord with me entirely.

As I read of Bonhoeffer’s efforts to thwart the genocidal slaughter of millions of Jews, disabled people and other “enemies of the State,” I could not help but recognize the parallels between the vast holocaust carried out in Nazi Germany just decades ago and the modern-day holocaust ongoing within our own shores.

Whereas the Nazis were responsible for the wholesale murder of more than 6 million Jews, those today who support the practice of abortion homicide are no less complicit in the systematic slaughter of 55-million-and-counting equally precious human beings post Roe v. Wade. The parallels are undeniable and the science unequivocal. Murder is murder whatever stage of development the human victim.

The stark similarities between the two holocausts were lost on neither Dietrich Bonhoeffer nor Eric Metaxas. “Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life,” wrote Bonhoeffer in “Ethics,” his very last book.
“To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder,” he concluded.

Indeed, Psalm 139:13 says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

So it occurs to me that those who call themselves “pro-life” and put faith to action in defense of innocent persons – as did Dietrich Bonhoeffer – honor both the memory of this Christian martyr and the God he served. They have picked up his mantle. They are continuing his noble work.

By contrast, if pro-lifers are modern-day Dietrich Bonhoeffers, then what does that make abortion supporters? In the years leading up to and during World War II, many Germans – who were otherwise generally good people – succumbed to Nazi propaganda and acquiesced to the horrific Jewish persecution that escalated from a slow boil to a red-hot torrent around them. In effect, they bought into exactly the same kind of dehumanizing, euphemistic semantical garbage embraced by those who today call themselves “pro-choice.”

Mind-boggling is the human capacity to rationalize genocide.

On Feb. 2, 2012, Eric Metaxas gave the keynote address at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. He was clearly inspired and influenced by the subject of his latest biography.
Sharing the stage and sitting merely feet away was Barack Obama, the most radically pro-abortion president in U.S. history. In a spectacular show of resolve and moxie, Metaxas walked over to the president and handed him a copy of “Bonhoeffer.” He then launched into one of the most powerful and stirring speeches I’ve ever heard.

While President Obama squirmed nervously in his seat, Metaxas addressed both his book and the abortion holocaust with incisive clarity, saying, in part, “We are capable of the same horrible things.
… Apart from God we cannot see that they (the unborn) are persons as well. So those of us who know the unborn to be human beings are commanded by God to love those who do not yet see that. We need to know that apart from God we would be on the other side of that divide, fighting for what we believe is right. We cannot demonize our enemies. Today, if you believe abortion is wrong, you must treat those on the other side with the love of Jesus.”

Indeed, we are admonished in Scripture to pray for our enemies – to love those who do evil.
Nonetheless, we are also commanded to speak truth. We are told to hate that which is evil and to fight – indeed to die if necessary – for that which is good.

I will, no doubt, be accused of demonizing abortion supporters by equating abortion genocide to the Nazi Holocaust. I will be charged with violating “Godwin’s law” which holds that: “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

That’s fine.

Still, my comparison is not intended to be an ad hominem attack. In fact, it’s not an attack at all. It simply is what it is. To identify the undeniable juxtaposition between the Nazi and abortion holocausts respectively is to make use of the best analogy available. I can think of no more fitting a comparison. If the shoe fits and all that.

Indeed, ours is a holocaust no less real – no less evil than that perpetrated by the Nazi regime. We’ve simply moved from the gas chambers to the abortion clinic – from Auschwitz to Planned Parenthood.

I love America. She’s the greatest nation on earth. Nonetheless, as long as we continue to allow this enduring slaughter of the most innocent among us, we are no better than was Nazi Germany. Abortion on demand will be viewed by our progeny as the single greatest blight on our American heritage.

To live under Roe v. Wade is to live in shame. To live under pro-abortion leadership is to live under the Fourth Reich.

Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice Director of Cultural Affairs for Liberty Counsel. (Title and affiliation provided for identification purposes only.)

2012-06-08T16:32:00.002-04:00

Here is how the media is reporting the latest news on Liberty Counsel’s case defending the Giles County, VA, school system against the ACLU…

“Virginia School Board Votes to Remove Ten Commandments from School”

Sadly, that is the media’s spin based on, at best, a partial truth. Please read my important update on this pivotal case and get “the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey used to say...

Late Thursday afternoon, the Giles County School Board voted 3-2 to have an existing display of the Ten Commandments removed from the Narrows High School’s “Foundations of American Law and Government” display – the cause of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the school system.

But, the Board (our client) also voted unanimously to accept a Ten Commandments display modification put forth by the private creator of the original display!

You will no doubt remember that one of the suggestions by the federal judge in this case was that the parties consider eliminating the first Four commandments from the display – presumably because they more directly refer to “the Lord your God” – and use just the remaining six Commandments in the display.

The new document replaces the original Ten Commandments display with a page from a Prentice-Hall textbook on American history, a book which is approved for use in Virginia’s public schools.

The page depicts the “Roots of Democracy” and begins with the Ten Commandments’ stone tablets.

The textbook page states, “The values found in the Bible including the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus inspired American ideas about government and morality.”

From this origin, the page from the approved textbook traces the roots of democracy through the Magna Carta to the Enlightenment and up to the present time.

Here’s a little background information: The Virginia Standards of Learning requires students to know about the foundational principles of civilizations and the origins of ancient and modern concepts of law and government.

Secular textbooks published by Prentice-Hall and McGraw-Hill trace the roots of democracy and law and specifically refer to the Ten Commandments, as evidenced by the new document on display in Giles County.

As I’m sure you’ll agree, the Board’s decision to post a page from an approved Virginia textbook is a much better solution than merely editing four Commandments out of the Decalogue!

++The “mainstream media” is badly misreporting this case.

Amber, I’m sure you would agree that a display on the foundations of American law and government would be incomplete and inaccurate without including the Ten Commandments. Any student of history knows this basic truth.

Here is the bottom line, with no spin: The Ten Commandments will still be on display in Narrows High School – but in a Virginia Standards of Learning approved format.

And that’s the rest of the story!

++Sadly, ACLU bullies will continue looking for victims.

The ACLU is committed to marginalizing America’s religious heritage by attempting to remove any expression of religion from the public square. They routinely attempt to bully public school administrations into “rolling over” for their radical agenda.

Liberty Counsel must be ready to stand against the assaults of the ACLU on our fundamental freedoms, including our religious liberties!

Amber, we need your help to counter these increasingly intense and more frequent ACLU lawsuits.

Will you prayerfully consider making a tax-deductible gift right now so our team can continue to fight against the attacks of the ACLU and the activities of other radical legal groups, many of which are affiliated or highly cooperative with the ACLU?

Your financial support will keep our legal team engaged in stopping the ACLU from criminalizing Christianity and in good shape to advance other key legal positions and public policy initiatives in which we are engaged.

PLEASE consider a special gift to Liberty Counsel of any amount to meet this critical need. Click here to give your special gift:

http://www.libertyaction.org/7082/offer.asp

++The ACLU is a daunting, deep-pocketed adversary.

As I’ve said many times before, the ACLU has an enormous war chest – and a formidable army of seasoned litigators. They can (and usually do) put a lot of “boots on the ground” when they want to bully a local school system into submission.

But as daunting an adversary as they may be, Liberty Counsel WILL NOT BACK DOWN from the ACLU in doing what God has called us to do! That is especially true when it comes to confronting the overt intimidation campaigns they attempt to perpetrate on America’s public school systems.

That’s why I am asking you to consider a special financial gift to Liberty Counsel right now.

Please, click here to make your best possible gift:

http://www.libertyaction.org/7082/offer.asp

The “progressive” socialists know that the way to permanently alter the course of our nation is to infiltrate the minds of the rising generation. In just two generations, God has been systematically “removed” from our public schools. Now the battle is focused on historic revisionism – an all-out attempt to rewrite our nation’s history and to recast our founding as a purely secular event!

We WILL stand against revisionists! Please help Liberty Counsel in our quest to Take Back America in 2012 – including standing against the outrageous agenda of the ACLU!

http://www.libertyaction.org/7082/offer.asp

Thank you and God bless you!

Israel increasingly threatened on all sides

2012-06-01T15:03:00.000-04:00

An Iranian Parliamentary Speaker recently warned that a United Nations military intervention in Syria would have dramatic repercussions on Israel! The Middle East is facing a meltdown of epic proportions – and just as prophesied in the Bible, Israel remains in the center of the conflict.

We MUST stand with Israel! Today, a Tehran Times headline concerning Western intervention in Syria’s civil uprising reads… “Ash rising from the flames would envelop the Zionist regime.” Syria is in a full-blown civil disaster as government troops assault rebels against that nation’s dictatorship, and anti-Israel forces are taking advantage of the increasing turmoil.

The United Nations’ proposed conflict resolution has not materialized, which could lead to the unpopular option of an American or multi-national military intervention – an option which to this point, at least, has been rejected. An Iranian Parliament leader, Ali Larijani, is warning that any outside military intervention in Syria would likely spread to Palestine – and then into Israel, engulfing that nation. Of course, that would likely spark a Middle East conflict of epic proportions – one in which Iran would love nothing more than to attack Israel while their sworn enemy is already under siege.

“Land for peace” deals must not be on the table. Meanwhile, in Denmark yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fervently called for a renewal of peace talks between Palestine and Israel. But the question begs to be asked, “Even if both sides agree to peace talks, what new proposal could possibly be offered?”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu long ago made his position clear that the Palestinians must acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a nation and that he refuses to divide Jerusalem. For their part, the Palestinians have repeatedly disallowed both basic conditions for the talks to begin. Thus, we have witnessed an extended impasse on the peace talks.

“Land for Peace” concessions have consistently failed in Middle East conflict resolutions. The fact is, former “land for peace” agreements, such as the infamous Gaza withdrawal, only increased close-range terrorist attacks which killed many innocent men, women, and children. Since 1967’s Seven Day War, most Americans (with the apparent exception of Secretary Clinton’s State Department) have recognized that a divided Jerusalem was indefensible for Israel.

You may recall former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s famous message to then-President Jimmy Carter, “Israel will give 1/3 of its land to the Arabs, when America gives 1/3 of its land back to the Indians.”

Thoughtful Americans MUST stand with Israel! Amber, please take a moment to join the Liberty Ambassador Counsel – through which you can show your support of Israel along with tens of thousands of like-minded Americans!

http://www.libertyaction.org/2341/offer.asp

For now, LAC offers and amazing opportunity to demonstrate unity with Israel and God’s chosen people – and to engage in a more direct way with the future of relations between our two nations. You will also be standing in the Lord’s affirmation and plan for the Church in these latter days!

The Obama administration’s actions speak louder than words! The United States’ misguided Middle East policies can only lead to increased violence in that region. And now, through the President’s reinstatement of Palestinian aid, we are once again fueling an escalating crisis. This is unfolding while threats from Iran are also on the rise! Tensions are extremely high in Israel following an Iranian General’s boast last weekend that all of Israel’s bases are within easy reach of Iranian missiles!

A Middle East meltdown seems inevitable at this point. Dr. Ed Hindson, a Bible scholar, master teacher, and friend of Liberty Counsel, recently declared that, “The Middle East meltdown is leading to Muslim madness and the ultimate possibility of the march to Armageddon itself.” It is vitally important that American citizens let our long-time allies in Israel know that we are still committed to our friendship in these perilous times! That concept is what gave birth to the Liberty Ambassador Counsel. Now, there will be an ongoing stream of new opportunities to support, pray with, and bless the nation of Israel for those participating in LAC.

++We need YOU to join us!

When you join Liberty Ambassador Counsel, you will receive an official membership card bearing your name, receive periodic news updates along with unique educational products, and even special travel opportunities. LAC members also participate in special prayer initiatives and will have exceptional insight into the nation of Israel’s prayer needs.

Please click here to join the Liberty Ambassador Counsel program:

http://www.libertyaction.org/2341/offer.asp

Now more than ever, I firmly believe that God’s favor rests on those who choose to stand with Israel. I hope you will join the Liberty Ambassador Counsel…you will be part of a rapidly growing group of people who not only proclaim support for Israel, but also directly help enhance U.S.-Israel relations.

“This flag is presented by a grateful nation...”

2012-05-29T15:19:00.000-04:00

“This flag is presented by a grateful nation...” Those are among the words spoken to the next of kin at the funeral of a fallen service man or woman as the United States flag is presented to them. This happens after the flag is ceremoniously removed from the coffin and folded as Taps is played. It is as an extremely moving experience for anyone – but how much more so for the family and friends of the fallen hero. I will never forget my first military funeral – and I’m sure that others will follow. We lose scores of veterans every day, especially since those who remain of our brave World War II veterans are now in their 80’s and 90’s. Since the birth of our nation nearly 236 years ago, men and women have sacrificed their lives for our country and to preserve the God-given liberties that are embedded in our Constitution. Liberty Counsel honors those who have served our nation. Memorial Day gives all of us an opportunity to honor America's heroes, to recall their sacrifice and courage, and to respect the incredible selflessness of their ultimate sacrifice. We owe them this respect and debt of gratitude. I urge you to take time today to honor a veteran or current serviceperson – whether fallen or living – and to pray for our active military personnel who are engaged in conflicts around the world or performing their assigned duties here at home. Thank you. God bless you, God bless America, and God bless our service men and women and their families.

Justice served to Obama

2012-04-09T09:29:00.004-04:00

By Matt Barber

Eric Holder is a busy man. When President Obama’s chief law enforcement officer isn’t tied up selling guns to Mexican drug cartels, refusing to prosecute self-serving cases of voter intimidation or ignoring “wanted dead or alive” bounties placed by black militants on the heads of private citizens, he’s busy conspiring with pro-abortion extremists to bring the full weight of the federal government down upon innocent pro-life advocates.

So much tyranny, so little time.

Eric Holder is much more than just incompetent. He’s an extremist pro-abortion activist who shares his boss’s goal of “fundamentally transforming America” to reflect both men’s secular-socialist self-image.

The most recent and obvious example of this administration’s serial abuse of power in furtherance of a radical pro-abortion agenda came when the Department of Health and Human Services mandated, in contravention of the First Amendment, that all religious organizations provide contraception, sterilization and various forms of abortion to employees. This may be the single greatest violation of our constitutionally safeguarded religious liberties in our lifetimes. The mandate remains in place to this day.

But individual citizens haven’t escaped a forced fiduciary tie to abortion homicide. A few weeks later HHS arbitrarily attached a “final rule” to Obamacare requiring that every American, pro-life or otherwise, pay one dollar per month earmarked expressly for an abortion services pool. This validates pro-life forewarnings that the president was simply lying when he issued a toothless executive order supposedly banning federal dollars for abortion. (What do we call someone who chronically lies?)
Still, every once in a while the good guys win one.

For several months now the Obama administration has been abusing our judicial system through a concerted political intimidation campaign via the federal courts. Obama has instructed the Justice Department to sue a number of pro-life counselors and volunteers for allegedly violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrance (FACE) Act.

You won’t hear it from the mainstream media, but the Justice Department has just faced an embarrassing smack down on the highest profile of these cases. It has dropped an appeal in Holder v. Pine against pro-life sidewalk counselor Mary "Susan" Pine, who is represented by the civil rights firm Liberty Counsel. The DOJ has agreed to pay $120,000 for this frivolous lawsuit which, as the evidence indicated, was intended to intimidate Ms. Pine and send a shot over the bow of pro-lifers around the country.

Mr. Holder unsuccessfully sought thousands of dollars in fines against Ms. Pine, as well as a permanent injunction banning her from counseling women on the public sidewalk outside the Presidential Women’s Center (PWC) abortion mill (or any other "reproductive services" clinic).

After 18 months of litigation, the DOJ’s case was thrown out of federal court, and the department was chastised in a scathing ruling by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Ryskamp for filing a case with no evidence.

Judge Ryskamp wrote that Holder’s complete failure to present any evidence of wrongdoing, coupled with the DOJ’s cozy relationship with PWC and their apparent joint decision to destroy video surveillance footage of the alleged "obstruction," caused the court to suspect a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Obama administration. "The Court is at a loss as to why the Government chose to prosecute this particular case in the first place," wrote Judge Ryskamp. "The Court can only wonder whether this action was the product of a concerted effort between the Government and PWC, which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities rather than to vindicate the rights of those allegedly aggrieved by Ms. Pine’s conduct."

After the ruling the DOJ appealed on the last day possible and gave indication that President Obama had personally ordered the appeal. A little over a week later, the president apparently decided to cut his losses and reversed course.

Harry Mihet, senior counsel for Liberty Counsel, said of the judge’s ruling: "It’s not every day that a federal judge accuses the Justice Department of a full-blown conspiracy."

Ironically, this past December, in the midst of the case, Ms. Pine actually counseled a woman outside of PWC and convinced her not to have an abortion, thus saving the life of the child and possibly the mother as well. Her email to Liberty Counsel read simply: "We saved a life today."

Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, pulled no punches:
It is irresponsible for the U.S. Department of Justice to place politics above principle when deciding to prosecute, and thus attempt to silence, a pro-life sidewalk counselor without any evidence of wrongdoing.

When the nation’s highest law enforcement officer files suit against any citizen, the suit must be based on the law coupled with compelling evidence. Anything less is an abuse of the high office. Susan Pine will not be silenced or detoured from her mission to save the lives of innocent children.

Indeed, “politics above principle,” intimidation of private citizens and jaw-dropping abuses of power are but a few hallmarks of this Obama administration.
History will be no more kind to this president than he has been to the citizens he was sworn to honorably serve.

Matt Barber (@jmattbarber) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action and Director of Cultural Affairs for Liberty Counsel (Title and affiliation provided for identification purposes only.)

Published @ http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/06/justice-served-to-obama/#ixzz1rIAsYjtr

Limbaugh and the, um, Lady

2012-03-09T16:15:00.002-05:00

By: Matt Barber

Saul Alinsky is alive and well in the political maneuverings of the secular left. The problem is; we all have the play book now.

As most know, Rush Limbaugh has been under fire of late for comments he made about 30 year-old “reproductive justice” radical Sandra Fluke. Ms. Fluke recently gained national attention while testifying before Congress. There, she demanded that Georgetown Law, a Jesuit University, underwrite her stated fornication practices by paying for her and other students’ birth control and, ostensibly, abortions. Fornication and abortion, of course, are considered “mortal sins” in Christianity. Catholic doctrine further bars the church from providing contraception.

Rush said of Fluke: “[T]hey’re talking about, like this left-wing sl-t, what’s her name? Sandra Fluke?”

Not really. Actually that bile came from the revolving pie-hole of MSNBC’s Ed Schultz in reference to conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham. Ms. Fluke recently went on Schultz’s program to criticize Limbaugh for indirectly suggesting that, in light of her admitted sexually immoral lifestyle, she was a “sl-t” (an offensive and inappropriate slang for which he has apologized).

During the interview Ms. Fluke somehow failed to mention Schultz’s identical insult of Ingraham. (An inadvertent oversight, I’m sure.)

And speaking of double standards: the media has made much fanfare about a staged phone call from President Obama to Ms. Fluke to “ask how she was holding up.” (No call yet to the similarly aggrieved Laura Ingraham.)

Additionally, Obama has refused to return – or even answer questions about – a one million-dollar donation from serial misogynist Bill Maher who, among other things, has called Sarah Palin a “tw-t” and a “c-nt.”

Mainstream media-types have no interest in this double standard because they share it. They’re duty-bound to ignore the palpable hypocrisy. To do otherwise would undermine the absurd “GOP-has-declared-war-on-women” narrative. (By ‘women,’ of course, they mean liberal women – outnumbered by Rush-supporting conservative gals two-to-one).

Indeed, Rush Limbaugh has become the left’s flashpoint in this twofold election year ploy to both sour women against the GOP and distract from Obama's impending debt bomb, skyrocketing gasoline prices and the threat of a nuclear Iran.

David Burge (@iowahawkblog) of the Iowa Hawk blog summed it up nicely in a tweet: “How can you monsters talk about a $15 trillion debt at a time like this, when a brave coed has hurt lady-feelings?”

Yes, how can we focus on trillions in Obama debt, $6.00 gasoline and Islamo-fascists with nukes while a Georgetown “coed” is being denied free medication from Christians for her “Saturday night fever”?

Well, I have it on good authority that today Rush is chewing a big fat Padron Toro and laughing himself silly. Every time McCarthyite liberals take a swing at El Rushbo, they get their hemp-clad heinies handed to them. It’s like watching Andre the Giant toss midgets.

On Wednesday, Rush announced on his show that the “progressive” machine’s latest effort to bring him down via a sponsorship boycott was failing fantastically. Following the DNC-manufactured Fluke dust-up, Rush revealed that he has suffered zero revenue loss (even making gains); that he has a wait list of new advertisers lining up, and that some of his former sponsors – who hastily bowed to leftist pressure and dropped him – are now “practically begging to come back.”

This comes as little surprise. One such sponsor, Carbonite, saw its stock plummet by twelve percent overnight after announcing it was pulling its spots. This is what happens when a company puts partisan politics over profit.

Limbaugh – rated number one in talk radio – has tens-of-millions of loyal, activist listeners who love to spend tons of cash on the products Rush plugs. (Wonder how long before Carbonite CEO and MoveOn.org supporter David Friend “steps down” to “spend more time with his family”?)

Still, liberal attempts to sidetrack aside, the cultural issues embedded within this Fluke flap are worthy of discussion. Only a dying culture lionizes a woman who publicly impugns – with pride – her own honor and virtue. Yet, to the left, she’s a hero.

It’s genuinely sad that, as a society, we are no longer appalled that a young, single woman – though very nice, I’m sure – would go on national television nonetheless, to proudly and publicly boast that, to her, while sex is cheap and casual, dealing with the potential consequences is so expensive that those of us who disagree must subsidize her bad behavior.

Can someone please explain to me how and why a woman's “right” to be promiscuous is my financial responsibility? If you refuse to buy your own “preventative medicine,” why not hit up the fellas? Last I heard it takes two to do the fornication Fandango.
This is by design. Secular-“progressives” have been working to deconstruct traditional sexual morality for generations. The goal is to impose – under penalty of law – their own moral relativist, sexual anarchist worldview. (Hence, the unconstitutional ObamaCare mandate requiring that Christian groups cast aside millennia-old church doctrine, and get with the postmodern program.)

But, beyond this assault on religious freedom and the moral implications surrounding the debate, Ms. Fluke has additionally set the true women's movement back decades. Her public groveling for free contraception and abortifacients reinforces the sexist stereotype that single women can’t survive without welfare. Women’s empowerment? More like patriarchal government dependency.

Still, like so much in its propagandist bag of tricks, the left’s entire “denied access to contraception” premise is built upon a lie. Liberals would have you believe that, for decades, women seeking birth control – already cheap and often free – have been systemically tackled in front of Walgreens by a bevy of white, Republican Catholic Priests.

Name one woman who has been “denied access” to birth control – ever. Show me one Republican politico who wants to “ban contraception.”

There are none.

Birth control at Walgreens? A few dollars. Taking personal responsibility for your own lifestyle choices and consequences? Priceless.

That’s all Rush was saying.

Penguins 'pray away the gay': Liberals admit that changing orientation is possible

2011-12-27T10:37:00.007-05:00

By: Matt Barber

Those bent on justifying the homosexual lifestyle often claim that there are umpteen million – or somewhere thereabouts – species of "gay" animals in the world. This begs a few questions:

• What?

• Then how do they procreate? If these animals forgo natural mating behavior to, instead, spend nights hooking up in Yellowstone's public men's rooms, march in critter "gay pride" parades and decorate their nest in fabulous Art Deco pastels, then wouldn't their species cease to exist after just one generation? So much for Darwinian evolution.

• Even if such nonsense were true, so what? There are plenty of species in the world that eat their young, too. Animals are animals. Does this mean we should act like them? (Besides, show me one species of animal that engages in the same kind of depraved homosexual conduct that can come only from the mind of man, and I'll be impressed.)

Still, whenever some animal displays atypical nesting behavior or exhibits quirks that can be remotely called "gay" (We've all seen that dog), moral relativists – who desperately seek to justify objectively immoral behavior – will cry: "Look! Animals are gay, too. It must be natural!"

So, it's not surprising that liberals have their feathers in a ruffle – that they're egg-cited over recent news that another pair of same-sex penguins has flown the "gay" coop. (I wrote about a second pair in 2009).

Famous "gay" penguins Buddy and Pedro from the Toronto Zoo are the latest chirpy birds with happy feet to begin eyeballing chicks. They're now "ex-gay" penguins. (Read about Buddy and Pedro's "reparative therapy.")

I know. For most of us this elicits little more than a chuckle. Yet there are those who actually believe this twaddle.

Unfortunately, this is all part of liberals' desperate attempt to dredge up some natural, biological rationalization – of which science has found none – to validate demonstrably unnatural behavior.

That's why we see such visceral hatred on the left for the ex-gay community. From a political and legal standpoint, it's strategically critical that these same liberals undermine and marginalize the very real-life experiences of untold thousands of former homosexuals.

This mean-spiritedness represents a profound lack of respect for other people's "right to choose." Their favorite dig is: "You can't pray away the gay." Once you've self-identified as – or been labeled – "gay," you're stuck with it, you see.

Ironically, these same liberals will suggest with a straight face (no pun intended) that something that is innate – a person's biological sex – can change. If you're a man who, today, feels like a woman, why then, snippity-snip and voila! You're a woman.

Many men and women with unwanted same-sex attractions have exercised sexual self-determination and have chosen to leave the homosexual lifestyle. As we make continuing advances in the science of human sexuality, it has become clear that "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" are largely fluid, subjectively determined classifications. As to what may drive a person's "sexual orientation" and/or sexual appetites, the highly liberal American Psychological Association (APA) has concluded: "Many [scientists] think that nature and nurture both play complex roles."

The scientifically reinforced fluidity of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" may help to explain why, as even the liberal APA has admitted, thousands (if not millions) of people have "altered their sexual orientation" with "varying degrees of satisfaction and varying perceptions of success."

It is no longer open for serious debate. Despite tremendous political pressure to find otherwise, even the left-leaning APA has been forced to acknowledge that for people with unwanted same-sex attractions, change is possible. It's not always easy, but change is undeniably and conclusively possible.

Recently, the most comprehensive study ever done on the ex-gay phenomenon was released in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. In the study, researchers concluded that, for many who desire to leave the homosexual lifestyle, "change does indeed occur, although not for everyone."

Some of the study's conclusions:

• Success: Conversion: 23 percent of the sample reported substantial reductions in homosexual attraction and subsequent conversion to heterosexual attractions and functioning.

• Success: Chastity: 30 percent reported that homosexual attraction was still present, but only incidentally or in a way that did not seem to bring distress, allowing them to live contentedly without overt sexual activity.

• Continuing: 16 percent reported modest decreases in homosexual attraction, but were not satisfied with their degree of change and remained committed to the change process.

• Non-response: 7 percent reported no significant sexual orientation change; they had not given up on the change process, but some were confused or conflicted about which direction to turn next.

• Failure: Confused: 5 percent reported no significant sexual orientation change, and had given up on the change process, but without yet embracing a gay identity.

• Failure: Gay identity: 20 percent had given up on the change process and embraced a gay identity.

Most importantly, the study determined that, for those who struggle with same-sex attraction and wish to change, "some people can indeed move from homosexuality to heterosexuality, and that harm is unlikely to result from such efforts."

But that's people. Penguins? They're probably just "bisexual" to begin with.

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Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as vice president of Liberty Counsel Action. (This information is provided for identification purposes only.)

Liberal Violence Rising: The prediction of increasing mayhem by secular-socialism followers

2011-11-22T12:52:00.002-05:00

By: J. Matt Barber

While necessity is the mother of invention, sloth and envy beget mediocrity and upheaval – the twin siblings of secular-socialism.

It is in this vein that a rebellious and increasingly violent spirit of incoherent anarchy continues to fester in urban centers across the nation. This is most evident in the form of the envy-driven "Occupy wherever" nonsense embraced by the "progressive" establishment.

Still, this Obama-supported effort to supplant, through lawless imposition, our free-market constitutional republic with some misguided conception of an outcome-based equalitocracy is rooted in much more than just good old-fashioned class warfare.

Part and parcel of secular-socialism is secularism. It's fascinating in its predictability. Wherever you find an entitlement-minded Marxist, you're likely to find a "progressive," counter-biblical moral relativist.

Case in point: The "Occupy D.C." protesters, who have squatted – in more ways than one – at Washington's McPherson Square, have posted a list of rules by which "occupants" are expected to abide. Rule No. 10 requires that folks not "assume anyone's gender," but, instead, "go with gender-neutral pronouns" like "comrade." (Who knew that a so-called "99 percent" of Americans were gender-bending commies?)

Indeed, the opposite of order is disorder. While rebelling against the natural order – whether related to economic liberty or issues surrounding transcendent moral values – many of the less stable elements on the left are exhibiting an increased willingness to move beyond mere disorder to outright violence.

Examples of such violence continue to mount. But beyond the fiery "Occupy" riots in Oakland, and the shootings, murders, rapes and thousands of arrests occurring throughout the dozens of disease-riddled "Occupy" chaos camps around the country, a less publicized example of left-wing violence took place last month in Illinois.

The "Gay Liberation Network" – a militant homosexual activist group of self-described "Trotskyites" – announced that it would be protesting an award ceremony held at the Christian Liberty Academy, an Arlington Heights, Ill., church and school. In the past, when GLN has protested this particular event, Christian attendees have been spat upon and even physically threatened by protesters.

This time, things got worse. The night before the event someone threw two paver bricks through the church's plate glass doors with a dire warning: "This is just a sample of what we will do if you don't shut down Scott Lively and AFTAH. … [F---] Scott Lively. Quit the homophobic [s---]!"

The Christian organization, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), was giving an award to Pastor Scott Lively, a pro-family advocate who, in recent years, has been falsely maligned by leftist groups and media-types like Rachel Maddow, for supposedly supporting the death penalty for homosexual behavior – a patently false charge.

The assailants later posted an al-Qaida-like statement on the "progressive" website IndyMedia.org, taking credit for the attack and calling it a "consequence for hatred and homophobia in our community." They further threatened the church, warning that "if this event is not shut down … the Christian Liberty Academy will continue to be under constant attack." Unbelievably, the threat remains posted to this day.

Fortunately, no one has yet been hurt; however, according to the FBI, by definition this attack meets all the elements of domestic terrorism.

But none of this is surprising. The flames of violence against Lively, AFTAH and Christian Liberty Academy were ignited long ago. On the other end of the fuse is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a hard-left outfit known in past years for monitoring true hate groups like the KKK and neo-Nazis.

After partnering with the admittedly communist GLN, the SPLC had declared, with much media fanfare, both AFTAH and Lively's organization, Abiding Truth Ministries, along with several other highly respected Christian organizations, official "hate groups."
This propagandist smear tactic has been increasingly used by the SPLC in an effort to marginalize Christian and conservative organizations with which the group disagrees. Unfortunately, however, we now see that this strategy to dehumanize, can also have unintended (presumably) consequences.

As in Illinois, the SPLC's dangerous and irresponsible disinformation campaign can embolden and give license to like-minded, though less stable, left-wing extremists, creating a climate of true hate. Such a climate is ripe for violence. After all, these "hate groups" are just like the KKK, right?

Despite all this, even today the SPLC has somehow managed to maintain some level of mainstream credibility. But as it quickly moves further from its left-of-center moorings toward the far fringes of left-wing extremism, its own deceptive activities threaten to undo much of the good for which the organization was once recognized.

After the anti-Christian attack, Bob Schwartz, cofounder of GLN, refused to condemn the violence noting precisely that the victims were "SPLC-designated hate groups." This comes as little surprise in that Schwartz once threatened to push AFTAH founder Peter LaBarbera into oncoming traffic.

Still, what is a bit surprising is that, like its GLN ally, the SPLC – a self-styled domestic terrorist watchdog organization – has additionally refused to condemn this overt act of domestic terrorism.

Instead, the SPLC released a statement, dripping with sarcasm, that piled on the victims. Rather than denouncing the attack, the organization simply lamented that the violence "only strengthened the absurd argument, promulgated by many [Christians]" that left-wing extremists "want to take over America and persecute Christians."

Yes, it's official. The SPLC has abandoned all pretense of objectivity.

And so, as left-wing violence continues to spike in coming months, not only should we expect to hear little about it from a sympathetic mainstream media; we should also expect little help from the once-respected Southern Poverty Law Center.
Indeed, it's hard to do much about the problem when you're a driving force behind it.

________________________________________
Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as vice president of Liberty Counsel Action. (This information is provided for identification purposes only.)

Conservative -- the new cool

2011-05-19T17:03:00.001-04:00

By: Matt Barber

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. – C.S. Lewis

Comedian Jim Wiegand -- aka "Jim Wiggins, the last hippie in America" -- is a throwback to a bygone era. The hilarious 70-year-old wisecracker is known for, among other things, a quite liberal worldview. He's also known for raising Joe Wiegand, his rebellious, good-for-nothing son. Apart from sharing both a sharp sense of humor and mutual love and admiration, father and son see eye to eye on little else.

Joe, a good friend of mine, isn't a rebellious good-for-nothing in the conventional sense. He's a 40-something Illinois-based GOP strategist, a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator without equal and a buttoned-up evangelical Christian.

The elder Mr. Wiegand can't figure out where he went wrong. He jokes that when Joe was a youngster, he once discovered magazines hidden under the boy's mattress. He was shocked to find his son looking at such smut: National Review.

Hippies once were the counterculture. Liberals were the nonconformist rebels, boldly wearing unwashed anarchy on tattered sleeve. They loudly and proudly raged against the establishment machine.

Today, they are the establishment machine.

All of our ruling-class institutions -- academia, courts, government, media and entertainment industries -- are teeming with closed-minded, hard-left ideologues who seek to "fundamentally transform America."

Consider that, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, self-identified liberals outweigh their conservative counterparts in the mainstream media by a 5-1 margin.

Likewise, a 1999 North American Academic Study Survey (NAASS) of students, faculty and administrators in colleges and universities throughout the United States determined that five times as many college faculty members vote Democratic as Republican. In fact, 72 percent described themselves as "to the left of center," while a mere 15 percent identified themselves as "right of center."

One can only imagine that in the ensuing decade, the ideological disparity has increased. Ask any kid in the halls of academia, and he'll tell you, with few exceptions, that professor so-and-so is a liberal so-and-so.

Still, liberals -- or "progressives," as they prefer to be called -- persist in laboring under an embarrassing misconception: They honestly believe they remain the nonconformists. It's precious.

In fact, today's liberals are nothing of the sort. They compliantly conform -- like little windup, patchouli-daubed lemmings -- to a carnival-prize caricature of what they imagine nonconformity to look like. You know, the usual stuff: neo-Marxism, environmentalist activism, sexual relativism, big-government nanny statism, an actions-without-consequences rendering of reproductive rights, and other such populist nonsense. Simply put, today's progressive nonconformist conforms.

Indeed, the "Stepford Wives" have become the "Stepford Lesbians." The prudish, judgmental church lady has swapped spots with the easy -- yet somehow self-righteous -- birth-bashing feminist.

So what is a young person -- brimming over with that instinctive, defiant impulse to rebel against "the man" -- to do?

Well, in this up-is-down, spend-money-to-save-money world, conservatives have become the contemporary nonconformists. Today's rebellious youth are telling the progressive establishment to put its moral-relativist, redistributionist party-line pig swill in its well-used chamber pipe and smoke it.

Kids: Really want to get under your obnoxiously "tolerant," Volvo-driving, MSNBC-watching folks' skin? Try this: Go to church, abstain from premarital sex, join the Young America's Foundation, attend a Tea Party rally, enroll at Liberty University, listen to Rush Limbaugh and vote Republican.

You'll have them writhing in their Birkenstocks.

I've often said that President Obama could either be the best thing to happen to America or the worst. The best insofar as this man's policies are so radical, so extreme that, in keeping with Newton's third law of motion, the "opposite reaction" might well trigger Republican rule in perpetuity.

First, the bad news: So far, Mr. Obama is the worst. Now, the good news: I believe he has awakened a sleeping giant in the millennial generation (ages 18 to 29). Today's counterculture is rejecting the tired progressive policies pushed by this president and his secular-socialist sycophants.

For instance, a 2010 Marist Institute for Public Opinion poll determined that nearly 60 percent of millennials believe abortion is "morally wrong," a nearly 10-point increase over the more progressive baby-boomer generation. The tide is turning.

Similarly, a recent survey from Harvard University's Institute of Politics found that millennials are worried sick about their futures. Yet President Hopey Changey and Democrats in Congress continue to play back-alley dice with their lives via incomprehensible deficit spending and a national debt that swells annually by the trillions.

Do you think these kids won't rebel as the clouds quickly darken?

Winston Churchill once observed, "If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at 40, you have no brain." Liberalism is emotion-based and rooted in soaring, knee-jerk notions of "social justice." Conservatism is logic-based and rooted in reality.

Today's rebellious youth have the heart part down. I'm glad to see they're developing some brains.

Matt Barber (jmattbarber@comcast.net) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law, and author of the book "The Right Hook – From the Ring to the Culture War." He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action.

Pulling the plug on ObamaCare

2011-05-09T16:07:00.003-04:00

By: Matt Barber

ObamaCare is like turnip greens: bitter and hard to swallow, but Mommy made you choke them down anyway. The difference is that turnip greens are constitutional (though perhaps they shouldn't be). They're also likely to extend your life rather than cut it short.

As demonstrated by the 2010 Election Day massacre, the government takeover of healthcare -- the euphemistically tagged "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" -- infuriated voters as Democrats cooked it up and force-fed it to America for Christmas Eve dinner.

Despite being assured by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, that we needed to "pass the bill so [we] can find out what's in it," a recent Rasmussen poll reveals that a majority of Americans -- having since found out what's in it -- continue to favor its repeal.

Indeed, by granting more than 1,000 ObamaCare waivers (read: payoffs) to a host of unions and corporations, the Obama administration has tacitly admitted this socialized medical monstrosity is neither "affordable," nor does it "protect patients."

Still, while Republican rooks maneuver to checkmate King Obama via legislative repeal, others have gone the judicial route. On Tuesday, in fact, Mathew D. Staver, founder of the Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law, will be the first to challenge the constitutionality of ObamaCare at the federal court of appeals level. He will argue the case of Liberty University v. Geithner before the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia.

The Liberty Counsel officially represents both Liberty University and two private individuals in the lawsuit. Unofficially, it represents the majority of Americans.

Later that day, the Court of Appeals will also hear the case of Commonwealth of Virginia v. Sebelius, filed by Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II. The cases will be argued seriatim (in succession) by each counsel, respectively.

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate ambitiously maintains -- against considerable evidence to the contrary -- that Democrats' particular brand of healthcare reform is so important, so unique that the U.S. government is justified -- for the first time in history -- in forcing every American citizen to purchase his own untenable, unsustainable and demonstratively defective product under penalty of law. ObamaCare categorically lays the groundwork for universal healthcare. They didn't just sell us a lemon, they squeezed it in our eyes and said, "pay up or else."

This is a case of first impression. That is to say, no Supreme Court case has ever allowed the federal government to force people into the stream of commerce. Neither has the high court ever permitted the federal government to compel its citizens to buy a government-defined product. If government has the authority to force unwilling citizens to purchase health insurance, then there is simply no limit to the power this mushrooming centralized mammoth can wield.

On Tuesday, Virginia will challenge the individual mandate, while the Liberty Counsel will go after both the individual and employer mandates. As with Virginia's case, the Liberty Counsel argues that Congress lacks authority under the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Taxing and Spending Clause to implement this unparalleled power-grab.

The Liberty Counsel also raises other constitutional objections, including issues relative to the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, and the Fifth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

Mr. Staver commented on the case in advance of Tuesday's historic oral arguments: "It is the hope of many Americans that this lawsuit is a fast track to the ultimate demise of this overreaching health insurance law. This law represents an astonishing extension of the federal government into the personal and business decisions of Americans. If ObamaCare should be upheld by the courts, then there are no limits on what Congress can do. I think it is clear that Congress far exceeded its authority under the Constitution."

Indeed, when one's stated goal is to "fundamentally transform America," the U.S. Constitution, as intended by our nation's founding visionaries, becomes a significant encumbrance rather than an instrument of freedom.

It's little wonder that exceeding constitutional authority has become the defining hallmark of this, the most radical presidential administration in American history.

Matt Barber (jmattbarber@comcast.net) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law, and author of the book "The Right Hook – From the Ring to the Culture War." He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action.

ACLU v. Religious Liberty

2011-03-24T08:58:00.000-04:00

By J. Matt Barber

Irony is defined as "the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning." The term doublespeak means "evasive, ambiguous language that is intended to deceive or confuse."

There is perhaps no greater example of ironic doublespeak than inclusion of the phrase "civil liberties" within the inapt designation: "American Civil Liberties Union."

Indeed, few leftist organizations in existence today can compete with the ACLU in terms of demonstrated hostility toward what the Declaration of Independence describes as "certain unalienable rights" with which Americans are "endowed by their Creator."

Consider the doublespeak inherent throughout the "progressive" Goliath's flowery self-representation:

The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.

Now contrast that depiction with ACLU founder Roger Baldwin's candid vision:

I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself... I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.

Ironic, isn't it? So much for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." By combining straightforward segments from each ACLU rendering we arrive with an accurate portrayal. One that cuts through the doublespeak:

The ACLU is...working daily in courts, legislatures and communities. Communism is the goal.

In 1931, just eleven years after the ACLU's inception, the US Congress convened a Special House Committee to Investigate Communist Activities. On the ACLU it reported:

The American Civil Liberties Union is closely affiliated with the communist movement in the United States, and fully 90 percent of its efforts are on behalf of communists who have come into conflict with the law. It claims to stand for free speech, free press and free assembly, but it is quite apparent that the main function of the ACLU is an attempt to protect the communists.

To be sure, the "main function of the ACLU" is entirely counter-constitutional.

A shared objective between both Communism generally, and the ACLU specifically is the suppression of religious liberty; principally, the free exercise of Christianity.

Karl Marx, high priest of the ACLU's beloved cult of Communism, once said: "The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion."

Even the ACLU's own promotional materials overtly advocate religious discrimination: "The message of the Establishment Clause is that religious activities must be treated differently from other activities to ensure against governmental support for religion."

Utter hokum.

The First Amendment's Establishment Clause -- a mere 10 words -- says nothing of the sort. Its message is abundantly clear, requiring severe distortion to stuff within the ACLU's Marxist parameters. It merely states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." That's it.

Now let's break it down. What do you suppose the Framers of the US Constitution -- a document expressly designed to limit the powers of federal government -- intended with the word "Congress"? Did they mean State government? Municipal government? Your local school district? Your third grade teacher?

Of course not. They meant exactly what they said: Congress. As in: The United States Congress! It takes someone with a distinctly disingenuous ulterior motive to derive anything else.

Now what did they mean by "...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion?"

Well, in a letter to Benjamin Rush, a fellow-signer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson -- often touted by the left as the great church-state separationst -- answered that question. The First Amendment's Establishment Clause was singularly intended to restrict Congress from affirmatively "establishing," through federal legislation, a national Christian denomination (similar to the Anglican Church of England).

Or, as Jefferson put it: "[T]he clause of the Constitution" covering "freedom of religion" was intended to necessarily preclude "an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States."

How far removed we are today from the original intent of our Founding Fathers. The ACLU is largely responsible for creating the gulf between the Constitution's original construction and its modern misapplication.

The ACLU remains one of America's most powerful secular-socialist political pressure groups. It relentlessly tramples underfoot the First Amendment, which guarantees sweeping and absolute liberty for all Americans -- including government employees -- to freely exercise their faith both publicly and privately without fear of reprisal: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Examples of its constitutional abuses are manifold, but one of the most recent involves an ACLU assault against a group of Christians in Santa Rosa County, FL. Liberty Counsel represents those Christians.

An ACLU-crafted Consent Decree has been used as a weapon to threaten school district employees with fines and jail time for merely praying over a meal, and for exercising -- even while away from school -- their sincerely held Christian faith. You read that right. The ACLU is literally seeking to criminalize Christianity.

In August of 2009, Liberty Counsel successfully defended staff member Michelle Winkler from contempt charges brought by the ACLU after her husband, who is not even employed by the district, offered a meal prayer at a privately sponsored event in a neighboring county.

Liberty Counsel also successfully defended Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and Athletic Director Robert Freeman against criminal contempt charges, after the ACLU sought to have the men thrown in jail for blessing a lunch meal served to about 20 adult booster club members.

Under the Consent Decree teachers are considered to be acting in their "official capacity" anytime a student is present, even at private functions off campus.

Liberty Counsel describes this unconstitutional decree:

Teachers cannot pray, bow their heads, or fold their hands to show agreement with anyone who does pray. Teachers and staff cannot 'Reply' to an email sent by a parent if the parent's email refers to God or Scripture. Teachers either have to delete such references from the original email or reply by initiating a new email. Teachers and staff are also required to stop students from praying in their own private club meetings.

During witness testimony, Mrs. Winkler sobbed as she described how she and a coworker, who had recently lost a child, literally had to hide in a closet to pray.

Although the case continues, on Monday the ACLU suffered a tremendous setback while freedom took a significant step forward. Federal District Court Judge M. Casey Rodgers granted in part a Preliminary Injunction in favor of Liberty Counsel's twenty-four Christian clients.

Judge Rodgers concluded that even though "a preliminary injunction is an extraordinary and drastic remedy," one aspect of the Consent Decree -- its attempt to prohibit school employees from fully participating in private religious events -- is so flawed that it must be immediately halted.

The Court thus enjoined the School Board "from enforcing any school policy that restrains in any way an employee's participation in, or speech or conduct during, a private religious service, including baccalaureate" pending a trial on the merits.

"Progressives" are nothing if not consistent. As they gain confidence, they invariably rush across that bridge too far. They engage wild-eyed efforts to "fundamentally transform America" to reflect their own secular-socialist self-image.

I'm certain that both the bare-knuckle spirit of the American people and Liberty Counsel's enduring 92 percent win record against the ACLU will maintain a durable safeguard - an "impenetrable wall of separation" if you will - between our constitutionally guaranteed liberties and a subversive "progressive" agenda built upon the distinctly un-American creed: "Communism is the goal."

Matt Barber (jmattbarber@comcast.net) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action.
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(This information is provided for identification purposes only.)

When metaphors attack!

2011-01-24T09:59:00.002-05:00

Guns don’t kill people, metaphors do. It’s true. Words have consequences. I tested it: I used a sports analogy yesterday and a pick-up game of hoops broke out.

This is liberal-think. Silly, isn’t it?

Yes, words can have consequences. Except for when they don’t. As we soon learned — and as officially “not stupid” people already knew — the horrific shootings in Tucson on January 8 had exactly nothing to do with “tone,” “political discourse” or “incendiary rhetoric,” and had everything to do with mental illness, individual responsibility and raw evil.

Not only did Jared Lee Loughner turn out not to be a Sarah Palin-loving, Tea Party-attending, “right-wing” talk radio hound; he ended up being a Bush-hating, “lefty pot-head,” 9/11 “truther” whose favorite books include the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf.

So does this mean that liberals are “accomplices to mass murder” due to their well-documented history of “dangerous political rhetoric”? Well, yes, if you apply liberal-think. No, if you apply reality.

Still, this hasn’t stopped the dinosaur media, left-wing politicos and bloggity-blah-blahs in PJs from using this tragedy to whip together a frothy mix of feigned indignation, slimy politicking and “progressive” puerility.

In a not-so-thinly veiled effort to lay blame at the feet of all things — and all people — conservative, they’ve baked-up a steamy meme of “violent rhetoric” pie. It’s been ugly.

That said, we’re now at the point where the left’s disgraceful political exploitation of this national tragedy has sunk to such low-rent absurdity that it’s worthy of little more than ridicule.

Conservative pundits and mental health experts have broadly and effectively diagnosed, deconstructed and discredited this obtuse “blame-everyone-but-the-bad-guy” pablum to the point where reasonable America — left, right and center — has shared a collective eye-roll. It’s backfired magnificently.

Yet there are people, entire “news networks” in fact, who evidently believe that using metaphorical war imagery in the game of politics — something done since Eve first lobbied Adam to put the seat up — is likely to cause some nutcase to go postal (although I suppose that could be why Cain went off on Abel).

Take CNN, for instance: In a recent broadcast, CNN anchor John King issued an immediate apology after a guest used, on air — and appropriately so — the word “crosshairs” in a political discussion about the Chicago mayoral race.

Said King:
We were just having a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race. Just a moment ago, my friend Andy Shaw… used the term “in the crosshairs,” in talking about the candidates out there. We’re trying — we’re trying to get away from that language. … We won’t always be perfect. So, hold us accountable when we don’t meet your standards.

Alright, Mr. King, I’m holding you accountable. Where’s your apology? After all, when you begged forgiveness for airing the word “crosshairs,” you repeated the word “crosshairs.” Shouldn’t you have said “the CH word” or some other such nonsense?
This is political correctness. Silly, isn’t it?

But apparently Republicans have also caught the PC bug. While publicly addressing the now-passed House version of the officially tagged “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act,” they’ve dropped the words “job killing” and now use “job destroying.”

Seriously, guys?

Here’s an idea: Rather than capitulating to its dictates, perhaps the best way to “destroy” political correctness is to place it in your “crosshairs” (um, metaphorically) and then “pull the trigger” (er, figuratively).

Political correctness is a barrier to truth and honest debate. It’s the soft-sell, beat-around-the-bush catalyst for our escalating American wussification. We’re now lectured by the left as ironically as possible that it’s “insensitive” to use such war imagery and “incendiary rhetoric” in political discourse.

Well, Nancy-boy, life’s insensitive. Truth’s insensitive. Politics are insensitive. This isn’t badminton. We’re at war here. It’s a war for our culture — a war of ideas. It’s a battle for the heart and soul of a still great nation.

Conservatives, now’s not the time to play touchy-feely. It’s the time for a full-on, no-holds-barred, shock-and-awe frontal assault. Because when the good guys self-censor in the name of political correctness, the bad guys win.

I know its cliché, but guns don’t kill people. If they do, then my nine-iron sucks at golf. Neither do metaphors kill people. No, evil people kill people. And if you think words are to blame, then brush your teeth.

Matt Barber is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He is the Director of Cultural Affairs for Liberty Counsel.

Email: jmattbarber@comcast.net.
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This article printed in The Daily Caller

SPLC: Medical science, Christianity = 'hate'

2010-12-20T10:06:00.003-05:00

By: J. Matt Barber

Sometimes the most effective way to deal with a bully is to simply pop him in the chops. While it may not shut him up entirely, it usually gives him pause before he resumes flapping his toxic jaws. It also has the effect of showing the other kids in the schoolyard that they have nothing to fear. Though the bully struts about projecting the tough-guy image, he's typically the most insecure pansy on the block.

Such is the case with the bullies over at the fringe-left Southern Poverty Law Center. Having been recently "popped in the chops," if you will, for a series of hyperbolic and disingenuous "anti-gay hate group" slurs against a dozen-or-so of America's most well respected Christian and conservative organizations – the SPLC now finds itself publicly struggling, outside of an extremist left-wing echo chamber, to salvage a modicum of mainstream credibility.

In response to the SPLC's unprovoked attacks, a unified coalition of more than 150 top conservative and Christian leaders across the country has launched a shock-and-awe "Start Debating, Stop Hating" media blitz to educate America about the SPLC's ad hominem, politically driven smear campaign.

The mainstream pro-family conglomerate already includes presumptive Speaker of the House John Boehner, former presidential contender Mike Huckabee, four current U.S. senators, three governors, 20 current or newly elected members of the House of Representatives and many more.

As the controversy wears on and the facts become public, the moribund SPLC has understandably become increasingly defensive, strongly suggesting that it has come to regret this gross political overreach. Catch the tiger by the tail, you get the teeth.

Still, lazily labeling its ideological adversaries "hate groups" has yet to satisfy the anti-Christian law center. It's taken the slander even further down petty path, launching a succession of amateurish personal attacks against a number of individual Christian advocates (to include yours truly). This is a clear sign that the sexual relativist left recognizes that it's losing the debate on the merits.

Indeed, the SPLC's poorly constructed analysis bears deconstructing, but first I'll make a prediction. The center has yet to pin its official "SPLC designated hate group" badge of honor on either me or Liberty Counsel, the civil rights group with which I'm affiliated.

Somehow we were able only to earn the equally deceptive lower ranking of "anti-gay." I suspect this is because I've been a primary public critic of the center's feeble "hate group" crusade. Even the far-left understands that premature retaliation would betray dishonest political motives.

Still – and you heard it here first – within the next year or two (maybe less) the SPLC will move to even the score by tagging Liberty Counsel an "official hate group." At that point – and beyond the question: "If the SPLC calls you a 'hate group' in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" – any remaining media outlet that may wish to treat the center as an objective arbiter of "hate" will do so at grave risk to its own credibility.

Nonetheless, the SPLC has begun to grease the skids. Quotes cherry picked, taken out of context and misapplied are a powerful tool of the propagandist. Such are the Maoist techniques of the SPLC. Among other things, here's what the group has said about me:

"Barber suggested against all the evidence that there were only a 'miniscule number' of anti-gay hate crimes …"

Let me be clear: I didn't "suggest" there were a "miniscule number of anti-gay hate crimes" in 2007. I proved it. I merely cited the FBI's own statistics which demonstrate the fact beyond any serious debate. Let's look at "all the evidence" to which the SPLC refers. Here's what I actually wrote in the Washington Times:

"Consider that according to the latest FBI statistics, out of 1.4 million violent crimes in 2007; there were a mere 247 cases of aggravated assault (including five deaths) reportedly motivated by the victim's sexual orientation or gender identity. There is zero evidence to suggest that, where appropriate, perpetrators were not prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in every instance."

A bit different than the SPLC portrayal, no? Let's do the math:

Approximately 247 aggravated "hate crime" assaults, taken within the context of 1.4 million violent crimes means that exactly 0.017643 percent of violent crimes in 2007 were "anti-gay hate crimes." A miniscule number? You be the judge.
Continued the SPLC:

"Barber had argued that given 'medical evidence about the dangers of homosexuality,' it should be considered 'criminally reckless for educators to teach children that homosexual conduct is a normal, safe and perfectly acceptable alternative.'"

Note that the SPLC neither identifies nor addresses the "medical evidence about the dangers of homosexuality." It's no wonder. Again, the evidence proves the case beyond any serious debate.

For instance, a recent study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that, as a direct result of the demonstrably high-risk and biologically incongruous act of male-male anal sodomy, one-in-five "gay" and "bisexual" men in American cities have been infected with HIV/AIDS.

If five people got into a car and were told that one of them wasn't going to survive the drive, how quickly do you suppose they'd scatter? Yet we systematically promote celebration of homosexual conduct in our public schools.

Criminally reckless? You be the judge.

Or consider that current U.S. health regulations prohibit men who have sex with men (MSM – aka "gays") from donating blood. Further studies conducted by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration categorically confirm that if MSM were permitted to give blood, the general population would be placed at risk.

According to the FDA: "['Gay' men] have an HIV prevalence 60 times higher than the general population, 800 times higher than first-time blood donors and 8,000 times higher than repeat blood donors."

The FDA further warns: "['Gay' men] also have an increased risk of having other infections that can be transmitted to others by blood transfusion. For example, infection with the Hepatitis B virus is about 5-6 times more common, and Hepatitis C virus infections are about 2 times more common in ['gay' men] than in the general population."

A 2007 CDC study further rocked the homosexual activist community, finding that, although "gay" men comprise only 1-to-2 percent of the population, they account for an epidemic 64 percent of all syphilis cases.

Again I ask: Is it "criminally reckless" to indoctrinate children into this potentially deadly lifestyle?

Again I say: You be the judge.

So, according to its own "hate group" standard, the SPLC is left one of three possible choices: Either it remains consistent, tagging the CDC, the FDA and the FBI with its pejorative "hate group" moniker; it offers a public retraction and apology for its attacks against me and other Christians; or it remains silent while its credibility continues to swirl down the toilet bowl of irrelevancy.

Still, the SPLC has done a significant disservice to its homosexual propagandist and sexual relativist allies. My friend Gary Glenn with the American Family Association of Michigan (a "hate group" target of the SPLC) sums it up nicely:

"The SPLC's demonization of groups that tell the truth about the public health implications of homosexual behavior may be the biggest boon we've seen in years to efforts to publicize those health consequences. We welcome this opportunity. The SPLC has provided a public service by focusing attention and discussion on the severe public health consequences of homosexual behavior."

Indeed, the SPLC and its allies are flailing violently as they swim upstream against a torrent of settled science, thousands of years of history and the unwavering moral precepts of every major world religion.

It's little wonder they've resorted to childish name calling.

Matt Barber is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He is author of "The Right Hook – From the Ring to the Culture War" and serves as director of cultural affairs with Liberty Counsel.

“Gay” Lobby Shamelessly Exploits Teen Suicides

2010-10-07T11:00:00.008-04:00

By: Matt Barber

Anyone with a heart grieves deeply over these needless suicides. Taking one’s own life is never the right choice. There are thousands of teen suicides each year. Some kids just don’t seem to understand the permanence of it, or how it destroys the lives of those they leave behind.

We all agree: harassment and bullying of children should always be dealt with immediately and firmly. And if laws are broken, offenders should be prosecuted – period. This is true whether kids are targeted because they’re perceived to be homosexual, conservative, Christian or for any other reason.

Unfortunately – though not surprisingly – extremist "gay" pressure groups, like the incongruously named "Human Rights Campaign," Ellen DeGeneres and other liberal activists are shamelessly exploiting these tragedies as a means to achieve their own selfish political ends.

In a recent statement, Ms. DeGeneres said: "There are messages everywhere that validate this sort of bullying and taunting and we need to make it stop. We can't let intolerance and ignorance take another kids life."

Indeed, actual bullying and taunting must not be tolerated. But what "messages" is Ms. DeGeneres referring to, and how do "we…make [them] stop?" I’ll translate from liberalese to plain English. What Ellen meant was this: Public defense of God's express, self-evident and unequivocal design for human sexuality must be stopped under force of law. Proponents of the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic are murdering "gay" kids with their words.

Not only is this propagandist line of reasoning disingenuous, offensive and Orwellian, it’s utter nonsense.

Joe Solmonese, president of HRC, took it a step further, directly blaming for these suicides Christians and the Mormon Church. To him, opposition to so-called "same-sex marriage," and defense of biblical sexual morality are the culprits: "Words have consequences," said Solmonese, "particularly when they come from a faith leader. This is exactly the kind of statement that can lead some kids to bully and others to commit suicide."

As Rahm Emanuel famously said: "You never let a serious crisis go to waste. [I]t's an opportunity to do things you could not do before." It makes me physically ill to watch as the HRC and other "gay" militants lick their chops and rub their hands together over the tragic suicides of these troubled, sexually confused young men. Before they were even laid to rest, the radical homosexual lobby pounced leveraging these suicides to demand that government codify each of their extremist, social engineering demands. This is political exploitation at its slimiest and it pours salt on the wounds of loved ones.

God’s message to young people struggling with same sex temptation or to those who feel the shame that naturally accompanies sexual sin is that suicide is never the way out. But there is a way out. It comes first through belief in Jesus Christ, and then through confession of sin; finally, repentance. As Jesus said to the repentant sexual sinner at the well, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more."

The families of these precious young people should know that Christians around the country are praying for them and will continue to pray for them in their time of loss. Scripture says "blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

But Christians are also praying that these wicked and callous political vultures who seek to exploit these suicides become confounded and fail fantastically. Their mission is not one of "tolerance" or "diversity." Quite the opposite: Their goal is to fan flames of anti-Christian bigotry and discrimination, evangelizing on behalf of their own perverted god: moral relativism. We simply won’t let them get away with it.

J. Matt Barber is Director of Cultural Affairs with Liberty Counsel and also serves as Associate Dean with Liberty University School of Law.

Obama’s Real Title: The Hypocrite-in-Chief

2010-07-30T13:37:00.003-04:00

by: Mandi Campbell, Esq.

The President should recognize his role. He was elected to a position of power for the purpose of serving the people, and he was elected on the promise of transparency with the people. Since his move to the White House, he has proven to be a hypocrite, if not a liar and deceiver as well. Lately, he and his employees have gotten into the habit of blocking press access to issues and events of public concern, and there are multiple reports brewing about the Administration’s attempts to bribe congressmen into voting in accordance with the will of the Administration.

News flash: the President and the members of Congress are accountable to the American people! The American people have the right to know what the Administration is attempting to coordinate off camera and behind closed doors.

Not too long ago, the Administration limited media access to the Gulf waters, refusing to allow journalists to get closer than sixty-five feet from the clean-up efforts. Remember when Obama restricted access to Gitmo? Remember when he refused to allow the press to talk to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s brother – the brother who inspired her to delve into socialism? Remember the numerous closed-door sessions Obama had during the course of the healthcare debate? It makes you wonder what, other than the construction of a new age of government-imposed mandates on businesses and individuals, goes on behind the doors of the White House. It has to make you wonder what the man who ran his campaign on promises of transparency is hiding from the American people.

One thing is certain: he never intended to inform the general public about his attempts to bribe members of Congress and candidates for positions in Congress. Americans have good reason to be skeptical about the integrity of Obama and the members of his Administration.

During his time in the White House, Obama and the members of his Administration have held multiple closed-door sessions about important issues. Last year these closed-door sessions led to questions about whether Obama was attempting to entice or threaten, for example through the closure of military bases, members who opposed him. A few months ago, multiple sources stated that Jim Messina, President Obama’s deputy chief of staff, offered Andrew Romanoff a position in the Obama Administration if he dropped his bid for a Colorado Senate seat, which Romanoff declined. Two months ago, Representative Joe Sestak said that an unnamed official in the Obama White House offered him a federal appointment if he would drop his bid against Senator Arlen Specter. Last month, while Jim Matheson was still on the fence as to whether to vote for the healthcare bill, his brother, Scott Matheson Jr., was conveniently nominated for a lifetime appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Based on the recent announcement of Bart Stupak’s retirement, many have speculated that Obama bought Stupak’s healthcare vote with promises of rainbows and butterflies, and maybe some obscure position in his Administration. And now, many reporters are wondering if Senator Specter has traded his vote to confirm Elena Kagan as a Supreme Court Justice (the same Kagan he voted against confirming as Solicitor General) for a position in the Obama Administration (because he lost his Senate seat in the primary).

As President of the United States of America, Obama does not get to suppress political and cultural expression (though he expressed his desire to do so in his State of the Union reference to the Citizens United case), and he does not get to exercise absolute, centralized control over all aspects of the lives of Americans. As Abraham Lincoln said, this is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The United States of America is not a totalitarian regime!

If Obama, the President that ran his campaign based on promises of transparency, continues these corrupt practices of putting road blocks up for the media and usurping the powers and conscience of the legislature by buying and bribing members of Congress, perverting the legislative process, his four-year term will be cut short. The American people will be hungry for the impeachment of Obama, the Hypocrite-in-Chief, and in January of 2011, they just might have the representation in Washington to see an impeachment through.

Ms. Campbell is a graduate of Liberty University School of Law and serves as Legal Director for Liberty Center for Law and Policy.

Kupelian's "How Evil Works" Shines Bright (Book Review)

2010-06-28T13:10:00.002-04:00

By: Matt Barber

I’m a tremendous fan of author and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. Rarely does one find a writer who can elucidate so profoundly, as could he, the stark contrast between secular humanism – “materialism” as Lewis called it – and the Judeo-Christian worldview. Seldom does one come across a wordsmith capable of so effectively, objectively and concisely distinguishing between good and evil.

I’ve found that wordsmith.

My wife Sarah and I were listening to the radio a few months back as Sean Hannity interviewed an author about his latest publication. The book was “How Evil Works,” but we were unable to ascertain, for some time, its author’s identity. We were immediately drawn into the discussion as this mystery guest waxed wise about what he called man’s “millennia-old blind spot” – namely, the existence of evil, how it works and why it destroys us.

I was amazed by the speaker’s insights into this “radioactive topic.” “Wow, this guy really get’s it,” I told Sarah. She nodded in agreement either unwilling or unable to take her attention away from the show long enough to answer. Finally – and for the benefit of us late arrivals – Sean divulged the identity of his guest: It was best-selling author and award-winning journalist David Kupelian.

I was no longer surprised.

David continued. He spoke of how America – once the moral guidepost to the world – had, “over time…abandoned its original principles,” only to now suffer from great “moral confusion.”

He spoke of a president, “wearing a mask,” who is “deceptive from morning ‘till night.” A president who, “taking us where we don’t want to go – has to lie about where he’s taking us.”

“Those in power talk an awful lot like those we used to fight,” he said.

That was it. “We’ve got to get this book,” I insisted. Sarah agreed.

I don’t often do book reviews (this is my first in fact), but after reading “How Evil Works,” I felt compelled to put pen to paper. Whereas Kupelian’s conversation with Hannity stopped me in my tracks, his book took it to the next level. It was simply outstanding.

I guess the best way to describe it is to say that “How Evil Works” has the same effect on your brain that yawning has on your ears at high altitude. Things just suddenly pop with crystal clarity.

Throughout “Evil’s” pages David meticulously unpacks today’s most pressing issues providing unassailable answers to some of our most critical questions. For instance:

• Where have all the statesmen gone and why do politicians lie?

• Why are so many Americans abandoning their Christian roots and embracing atheism and the occult?

• What drives terrorists to kill?

• How are psychological and spiritual problems linked, and why do we medicate ourselves into zombies?

• Why do people who seem to have everything so often self destruct and end up with nothing?

• How can we turn it all around and return this great nation to her God fearing ways?

And many more...

In recent days I was on a flight to Oklahoma City, OK. As I read the last page of “Evil” and placed it in the seat flap in front of me, a 15 year-old girl sitting to my side asked: “So how does evil work?” What an opening! “Well, this book explains it a lot better than I can,” I replied.

For several minutes we discussed worldview and our horribly failing culture. Turns out she was on her way to a missions trip in Jamaica. She mentioned that, like me, C.S. Lewis was one of her favorite authors. I chuckled and asked: “You’re homeschooled, aren’t you?”

Indeed she was, but explained that in the fall she was attending public school for the first time. “I want to get in there and be salt and light,” she said.

“Well then,” I replied, “take this with you. If you love C.S. Lewis, you won’t be able to put it down.” I handed her “How Evil Works.” She smiled ear-to-ear, thanked me and we went our separate ways. I’m quite certain that for it, her salt will be that much saltier and her light just a bit brighter.

J. Matt Barber is Director of Cultural Affairs with Liberty Counsel and also serves as Associate Dean with Liberty University School of Law.

Kagan a lesbian? Why it matters.

2010-06-11T08:36:00.004-04:00

By: J. Matt Barber

I don't see how liberal media-types can write, what with those uncalloused, milky-soft little digits all bundled in bulky kid gloves and all. Oh, when the target of their "reporting" is a conservative politico, or even Tea Party Joe, off come the gloves. But when it's one of their own — when circumstances require that a fellow liberal undergo a modicum of journalistic scrutiny — its simpatico most sublime. Out with the inquiry; in with the Huggies and tushie powder.

Media, here's your question: "Solicitor Kagan, do you identify as a lesbian?" Ms. Kagan, your answer is simpler still: "Yes" or "no."

Pipe down, lefties. Yes, it is relevant. Most liberals would disagree, but despite "progressive" protestations to the contrary, character does, in fact, matter. A majority of Americans still consider sexual morality — or a lack thereof — a pertinent factor in contemplating one's fitness for any public service — chiefly, perhaps, a lifetime appointment to our most supreme earthly court.

Every major world religion, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology have established that homosexual conduct is among other volitional behaviors rightly filed under "sexual immorality." Indeed, the majority of folks around the world — billions, actually — count this a timeless truth.

But the controversial nature of homosexuality is but one point of concern. Another involves potential conflicts of interest, "real or perceived." If we had a judicial nominee — widely believed a compulsive gambler — tapped to preside over gambling cases, would it not matter? If we had a nominee credibly rumored to use medical marijuana who might someday rule on the legality of medical marijuana, wouldn't such information be germane?

And before you liberals throw out that favorite red herring: "By this logic, Clarence Thomas shouldn't rule on cases involving race or sexuality because he's a black heterosexual male" — remember: skin color is a neutral, immutable characteristic. Being black is what someone is.

On the other hand, being "gay" is what someone does. It involves feelings and changeable behaviors. Homosexual conduct is more akin to the aforementioned gambling or pot smoking behaviors than it is to skin color (and for those in the lifestyle, especially men, sodomy most definitely involves rolling the dice). To compare "black" or "heterosexual" to "gay" is to compare apples to oranges. Understandably, many African Americans find this disingenuous comparison tremendously offensive.

Moreover, "heterosexual" is the state of sexual normalcy. It's our God-given design. There remains no credible or replicated scientific evidence to the contrary. Homosexual conduct is but one of many sexually deviant behaviors. Even Darwin's theory of evolution, which imagines "survival of the fittest," would seem to bolster this self-evident truth. You can choose political correctness. I choose moral and biological correctness.

Still, Kagan's "sexual orientation" remains the pink elephant in the room: Can a sitting justice, potentially engaged in the homosexual lifestyle, be trusted to rule on cases that might well grant special preferred government status to some — including that very justice — while, at the same time, eliminating certain free-speech and religious-liberties rights enjoyed by others? (i.e., hate-crimes laws; the Employment Non-Discrimination Act; constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act; constitutionality of "don't ask don't tell," etc.)

In April, CBS News published an online column identifying Kagan — should she be confirmed — as the "first openly gay justice." The White House pounced, demanded CBS remove the article and called the assertion "false charges." CBS dutifully complied, tail twixt legs, whimpered away and curled-up behind the rest of Obama's slobbering media lapdogs.

Whereas every liberal hack on the planet tripped over one another to demand Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard and, most recently, George Rekers divulge the most intimate details of their own bizarre (allegedly) sexual appetites, with Kagan, they've suddenly lost interest.

Although the mainstream media refuse to do their job, some in the homosexual-activist press are stepping-up to fill the vacuum.

Homosexual blogger Andrew Sullivan, for instance, writing in The Atlantic, opined: "In a free society in the 21st century, it is not illegitimate to ask [whether Kagan is gay]. And it's cowardly not to tell."

But Kagan ain't tellin', and the media ain't askin'. Of course, even if they were inclined to ask, they'd have a difficult time doing so. The White House has Kagan wrapped-up tighter than Barney Frank in a bustier.

The question is important for context. The answer, for instance, might explain why Kagan drop-kicked our brave men and women of the armed services in the solar plexus, during a time of war, by banning military recruiters from Harvard while dean of the law school. She did so in protest of the military's "don't ask don't tell" policy, calling it "a profound wrong" and "a moral injustice of the first order."

As it turned out, Kagan's actions were illegal, and the very Supreme Court upon which she hopes to serve slapped her down with its 8-0 decision upholding the Solomon Amendment, which would have allowed the Department of Defense to withhold federal funding to Harvard if it failed to reverse its discriminatory policy.

Ed Whelan, head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said of Kagan's activism: "At a time of war, in the face of the grand civilizational challenge that radical Islam poses, Kagan treated military recruiters worse than she treated the high-powered law firms that were donating their expensive legal services to anti-American terrorists."

Newt Gingrich took his criticism a step further. While addressing the controversy, he bluntly said of Kagan's nomination: "That is an act so unbecoming of an American that she should be disqualified from the very beginning."

I agree.

Indeed, whether or not Elena Kagan self-identifies as a lesbian, she has proven herself a radical anti-military, pro-homosexual ideologue and activist. There's little doubt that she would take this activism with her to the high court.

So, Ms. Solicitor General, if in fact you are "totally not gay," as some of your friends and your president claim, then it's my hope that a few Republican U.S. senators might take the time to introduce you to a nice fellow by the name of Phil A. Buster. Believe me, it's a match made in heaven.

© J. Matt Barber

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2009-05-23T20:21:00.001-04:00

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Protecting Against Sex-Selection and Race-Selection Abortion

2008-10-08T11:14:00.003-04:00

On September 23, 2008, Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ) introduced H.R. 7016, the Susan B. Anthony Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act. If enacted, the bill would prohibit discrimination against the unborn on the basis of sex or race.

"Sex-selection and race-selection abortions trivialize the value of the unborn on the basis of sex or race, reinforcing sex and race discrimination, and coarsening society to the humanity of all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life. Thus, Congress has a compelling interest in acting--indeed it must act--to prohibit sex-selection abortion and race-selection abortion."

The bill states that "Whoever knowingly performs an abortion knowing that such abortion is sought based on the sex, gender, color or race of the child, or the race of a parent of that child; uses force or the threat of force to intentionally injure or intimidate any person for the purpose of coercing a sex-selection or race-selection abortion, or attempts to do so; or solicits or accepts funds for the purpose of financing a sex-selection abortion or a race-selection abortion; shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

Currently, this bill is before the House Judiciary Committee. Please contact members of this Committee and ask them to vote for the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act. A complete list of members can be found at http://judiciary.house.gov/about/members.html.

Proposed Legislation to Repeal Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act

2008-10-07T16:28:00.003-04:00

On September 16, H.R. 6870, the Payment System Protection Act, passed out of the House Financial Services Committee by a vote of 30-19. This bill prevents enforcement of pending regulations for the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act ("UIGEA") and requires any interim regulations of Internet gambling to only block sports betting. A similar attempt to repeal UIGEA was rejected by the Committee earlier this year.

Internet gambling has always been illegal, but prior to UIGEA, state and federal law could not be enforced because the sites offering the gambling services were located outside of the country. UIGEA aids in the control of the socially adverse effects of Internet gambling, and strengthens our national security. Internet gambling sites can be havens for drug traffickers and terrorist financiers, as well as contribute to gambling addictions. UIGEA is a very pro-family piece of legislation that must not be repealed.

The Payment System Protection Act is an attack on family values and encourages illegal gambling. This bill may come before the House next month, so please contact your Representative and ask that he or she vote against this piece of legislation. A complete list of members of the United States House of Representatives is available at www.house.gov.

Protecting Religious Freedom in the Home

2008-10-07T15:48:00.002-04:00

H.R. 6932, the Freedom of Religious Expression in the Home Act of 2008, was introduced by Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) on September 17, 2008 and has received bipartisan support in the House. The bill aims to amend the Fair Housing Act in order to prevent discrimination related to the displaying of religious symbols.

If passed, the bill would make it an unlawful practice “to establish a rule or policy that prevents a person from displaying, on the basis of that person's religious belief, a religious symbol, object, or sign on the door, doorpost, entrance, or otherwise on the exterior of that person's dwelling, or that is visible from the exterior of that dwelling, unless the rule or policy is reasonable and is necessary to prevent significant damage to property, physical harm to persons, a public nuisance, or similar undue hardship.”

This bill is currently before the House Judiciary Committee. A complete list of Committee members can be found at http://judiciary.house.gov/about/members.html. Please contact these members and ask them to protect religious freedom by favorably passing this piece of legislation out of committee.

Proposed Regulations Issued to Protect Right of Conscience of Health Care Professionals

2008-09-11T16:22:00.002-04:00

On August 21, the Department of Health and Human Services issued proposed regulations that would clarify and enforce existing laws that afford protection to members of the health care community who have moral or religious objections to the practice of abortion. The proposed regulations also include accountability measures which would require recipients of federal funding appropriated through the Department of Health and Human Services to certify compliance with laws protecting the right of conscience.

These regulations have not yet taken effect and are open for public comment for a period of thirty days. Following the comment period, the Department of Health and Human Services will consider the comments before issuing the final regulations. The deadline for public comment is September 25, 2008. You can comment on this issue in one of three ways:

1. Official comments may be submitted at www.Regulations.gov. Enter key word ‘provider conscience’ and click on the link ‘Comment or Submission.’ You can submit your entry in the space provided or add an attachment (Attachments should be in Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, or Excel; Microsoft Word is preferred). The subject line must read ‘Provider Conscience Regulation.’

2. Official comments may also be submitted via email at consciencecomment@hhs.gov. The subject line must read ‘Provider Conscience Regulation.’

3. General comments may be submitted to the blog for the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services at http://secretarysblog.hhs.gov.

The core issue underlying these regulations is conscience protections and they must be codified in order to enforce existing federal law and ensure that health care professionals have the right to refuse to perform services due to moral, ethical, or religious objections.

Republican Dedication to American Values

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Both the party platform and legislation introduced by Members of Congress reflect the dedication to American values by the Republican Party.

Freedom of Speech and the Press

The GOP “supports the freedom of speech and freedom of the press and opposes attempts to violate or weaken those rights, such as reinstatement of the so-called Fairness Doctrine.”

One of the measures taken to ensure this constitutional right is the Broadcaster Freedom Act, H.R. 2905. The Act would prevent the Federal Communications Commission from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, which would require all broadcast licensees to present opposing viewpoints on controversial issues. H.R. 2905 was first introduced by Representative Pence (R-IN) on June 28, 2007 and is currently before the House Committee on Energy, Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Congressman Pence filed a discharge petition on October 17, 2007 to bring the Act to the House floor without a Committee report. A discharge petition requires 218 signatures, and as of July 24, 2008, 202 signatures have been collected.

Maintaining the Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life

The GOP “supports a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

The Sanctity of Human Life Act, H.R. 4157, states that “the life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent, irrespective of sex, health, function or disability, defect, stage of biological development, or condition of dependency, at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” The Act was introduced by Representative Broun (R-GA) on November 13, 2007 and has been before the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties since February 25, 2008.

Protecting Our National Symbols

The GOP “condemns decisions by activist judges to deny children the opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance in public school.”

The Pledge Protection Act, H.R. 699, affirms the current text of the Pledge of Allegiance and, by the power vested in Congress by the Constitution, removes jurisdiction to hear a case pertaining to the Pledge from any court created by Congress. The bill also exercises Congress’ Article III, Section 2 power to withhold appellate jurisdiction from the Supreme Court in dealing with this matter. H.R. 699 was introduced by Representative Akin (R-MO) on January 29, 2007 and has been before the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties since March 1, 2007.

A complete list of Members of the United States House of Representatives is available at www.house.gov. Please contact your representative and ask that he or she support our American values by voting for the Broadcaster Freedom Act, the Sanctity of Human Life Act, and the Pledge Protection Act.