Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is refusing to fight to prevent the Senate “Gang of Eight” from allowing illegal aliens convicted of drunk driving from being granted legalized status, or amnesty.

When Judicial Watch asked a MADD spokesperson if they would stand up against provisions in the bill that allow illegal aliens convicted of drunk driving to get amnesty, and therefore keep driving on America’s roads, that spokesperson simply responded that MADD “doesn’t get involved in immigration matters.”

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Breitbart News that MADD’s refusal to fight against convicted drunk drivers here is ludicrous. “We know already that Obama is releasing criminal illegal aliens onto the streets,” Fitton said in an email. “This new amnesty will further harm the public safety. In many states, a misdemeanor results in a citizen losing the right to vote. Yet under this amnesty bill, a ‘misdemeanor’ won’t stop an illegal alien from getting legal status and citizenship.”

As Watchdogwire’s Marinka Peschmann detailed in an early June article, there are provisions in the Gang of Eight bill that allow drunk driver illegal aliens to get amnesty.

“On page 608 drunk drivers are welcome too if they have only been busted three times before the Gang of Eight’s bill is enacted,” Peschmann wrote, before citing the specific section of the bill text.

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Most of what you have heard in the media about the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona is incomplete to the point of misleading.

It is true that the Court held that Arizona’s Proposition 200 (passed in 2004) requiring documentary proof of citizenship was invalid as contrary to the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requirement that states “accept and use” the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) voter registration form which merely requires that a registrant affirm citizenship.

But, this ruling essentially was procedural.

The Court held if Arizona wanted to require additional documentary proof of citizenship it needed to follow the administrative procedures under the NVRA to obtain approval to alter the instructions to the federal form.  In fact, in 2005 Arizona had requested such approval, the EAC split 2-2, but Arizona failed to appeal.  The Court held that nothing prevented Arizona from requesting approval again, and appealing if denied.  The Court practically invited Arizona to try again.

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After Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as “ObamaCare,” many wondered if there could be a yet-unknown reason why the Republican-nominated justice made the unexpected decision.

On the Glenn Beck radio program Tuesday, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) explained why he believes Roberts was intimidated into changing his vote late in the process, as laid out in his new book Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare.

Lee’s argument is not based on the NSA or its monitoring of the nation’s communication.  Rather, Lee said, there are indications that Roberts originally intended to vote against the act, but that a public “campaign of intimidation” made him change his mind.

First, the senator claimed “the opinion was written in a way to suggest he switched his vote,” and that the dissenting opinion reads like it was originally written as the majority.  He added that several news outlets reported that Roberts did change his vote, based on insider information.

Not only that, he said, but the court performed an unusual feat of “legal gymnastics” in upholding the legislation, particularly with regard to whether the fines incurred are or are not taxes.  They had to re-write sections of the the bill not once, but twice.

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said late Tuesday that he supports securing the United States border with Mexico with a double-tiered fence but voted against an amendment to the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill that would have required exactly that.

Rubio and his fellow Gang of Eight Republicans helped the Democrats kill an amendment from Sen. John Thune (R-SD) that would have required the double-tiered fence be built, as current law requires, before amnesty was granted to America’s at least 11 million illegal immigrants. The only other Republican to vote against the amendment was Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

“I support Senator Thune’s efforts to require completion of double layered border fencing,” Rubio said in a statement after voting against the amendment. “Properly deployed, these fences have proven highly effective in limiting illegal crossings. That is why the current bill requires $1.5 billion be spent specifically on a border fence plan.”

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President Obama’s nonstop fundraising for congressional Democrats is building a huge campaign war chest for next fall, but there is little hope that his party will win back control of the House and make Rep. Nancy Pelosi speaker again, according to an exhaustive new analysis.

But the report from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics also shows that Obama may suffer the fewest losses of House seats for a second-term president since Ronald Reagan in 1986, itself a big victory.

“While it would be foolish to rule out any outcome, there is no indication at this point that the Republican House majority is in jeopardy,” said Kyle Kondik, the House analyst on Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball team.

His report suggest that the Republicans will boost their numbers by five seats in 2014. The average loss by the president’s party in the sixth year of an administration since 1946 is 21 seats. Dwight D. Eisenhower lost a high of 48 in 1958, Reagan lost five in 1986, and Bill Clinton picked up 5 in 1998.

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The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls, a participant said.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”

If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA’s formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

James Owens, a spokesman for Nadler, provided a statement on Sunday morning, a day after this article was published, saying: “I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, as I have always believed, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans’ phone calls without a specific warrant.” Owens said he couldn’t comment on what assurances from the Obama administration Nadler was referring to, and said Nadler was unavailable for an interview. (CNET had contacted Nadler for comment on Friday.)

Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, being able to listen to phone calls would mean the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.

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RUSH:  Hold it just a second.  I’m serious.  I don’t understand.  There’s gotta be something I’m missing.  The question is real:  Why do all of these Republicans — you know the names — why are they supporting something that’s gonna eliminate their party?  Why are they supporting something that’s going to render them an ineffective minority for as far as the eye can see?  If they want to be Democrats, quit the Republican Party and join the Democrat Party.  Why do they want — it’s almost as though — well, I can’t answer it.  It doesn’t make any sense to me.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So why are the Republicans so eager to render themselves a permanent minority status by agreeing to amnesty, immigration reform, which is gonna result in millions more instant new Democrats, against which the Republicans will be hopelessly uncompetitive.  Why would they do it?  You want to take a stab?  Snerdley says they see that they’re gonna be permanently defeated anyway by a rising Hispanic population if they don’t do this.  It’s what they fear.  Maybe.

There’s a theory, there’s an answer to the question that you know and I know, and it revolves around their hatred — too strong a word — the Republican Party is embarrassed of its base.  How many times have I sat here and reminded you of this?  The Republican Party, I’ve told you stories.  I’ll repeat one.  Hamptons, 1992, 1993.  My first ever trip to the Hamptons, a dinner party at the home of a famous American, Republican.  After dinner, out on the deck, a guy comes up to me — a name you’d know.  Not gonna tell you who — punches me with his finger in the chest, “What are you gonna do about the Christians?”

Remember, now, this my first trip there.  I’m with these people for the first time in my life, and I’m really sizing it all up and wondering why I’m really there. I mean, these are very wealthy, powerful Republicans.  This guy’s pounding me in the chest, “What are you gonna do about the Christians?”  I said, “What are you talking about?”  “Abortion!  They’re killing us!  Pro-lifers are killing us, and they listen to you.”  Some of the same people have done the same thing to me on gun control.  “You have got to tell these people to back off on guns.  You’ve got to tell these pro-lifers to just quiet down.”

I’ve heard them say they get embarrassed going to Republican conventions with the pro-life crowd that’s also there.  My first experience of that was in Houston in 1992.  The pro-life contingent there was huge, and I remember the way I was treated by that group, making other Republicans nervous.  The bottom line is that the Republican Party is embarrassed by its own base.  The Republican Party is ashamed of its base.  They accept the Democrat caricature of the Republican base.  Southern, hayseed hicks, pro-lifers, pickup-truck-driving, gun-rack-in-the-back-window people, chewing tobacco and going to church and talking about God all the time.

But they really see ‘em as a bunch of zealots when it comes to abortion.  And all these guys I’m talking about have wives who nag ‘em about it, don’t want any part of the pro-life crowd, embarrassed to be with them at the conventions.  So the theory goes that this is a way to get rid of the Republican base.  Supporting amnesty and having the Democrats win big-time elections after this is a way for the party to finally get rid of its base.  Now, you say, “Well, replace it with what?”

Don’t ask me, but I’m guessing, I assume that some Republicans think that there’s a new group of people that would become their base. If they just got rid of these pro-lifers, if they just got rid of this religious crowd, if they just got rid of the Christians, if they just got rid of these gun nuts, the bitter clingers, as Obama calls ‘em.  If the Republicans just got rid of those people, a lot more people would like Republicans, and maybe some of the people voting Democrat would then vote Republican, ’cause some of the people voting Democrat would love to vote Republican since they also don’t like the hicks and they also don’t like the hayseeds and the religious people.

There you have a possible theory.  But even when you drill that down, when you drill deep down into that one, you still ask how in the world — the Republican base is 24 million votes.  The Republicans aren’t gonna win anything without them.  That was demonstrated in 2008.  It was demonstrated in 2012.  It was demonstrated in 1992, and it was demonstrated in 1996.  You don’t win without them.  So if they drive their current base away, what is the current base gonna do?  Just sit there and not participate anymore?

How is voting for amnesty going to cause the base to leave the party?  Isn’t it gonna maybe inspire the base to want to finally take it over?  There will be some third-party advocates, but if that happens the Republicans are dead, double dead politically, if a third party forms.  But it is believable and understandable that the Republican establishment and their consultants and all that really don’t like a lot of the base.  They don’t like conservatives, be they Christians, be they pro-lifers, be they so-called gun nuts.  They didn’t like Reagan, as you know.

RUSH:  I suspect, ladies and gentlemen, the answer to my question, aside from the brilliant expose I just provided, the answer to my question is all about money.  And so the answer to why would these people sit by and allow this party to become a permanent minority status and be insignificant and ineffective, to answer that question, find out how in that arrangement a bunch of people get rich, and you will get the answer to your question. And if you want, we’ll explore that next week.  I’ll be more than happy to take a tour down that theory, see where it takes us.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is bullish about the chances of an immigration reform bill passing the Senate — and he says Republicans need to pass it to avoid falling further into a “demographic death spiral” that could hurt their chances in the next two big election cycles.

“If we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016,” Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.

“We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party, and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who we run, in my view.”

With the Supreme Court only days away from major rulings on same-sex marriage, President Obama faces the prospect of having to make his own difficult decisions about the definition of wedlock.

Gay rights advocates are already pressing Obama to immediately broaden the federal government’s recognition of legally married same-sex couples if the court strikes down a ban on providing federal benefits to them.

The question for Obama turns on whether the federal government should extend full benefits to gay couples living in states that don’t recognize their marriages.

Obama would face rare, concrete decisions on the politically combustible question of same-sex marriage — an area he has largely left to the purview of courts and state legislatures.

Advocates have pressed the issue of benefits with White House aides in recent months, according to people familiar with the discussions. The advocates have pushed for a uniform standard that would make the most benefits available to legally married couples across the board. Officials have not signaled what Obama would do.

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Pakistan — a global leader in intolerance towards homosexuals — leads the world in Google searches for gay pornography, according to an analysis of search terms published by Mother Jones.

The study found the Islamic republic is the world leader by volume of searches form the terms “shemale sex,” “teen anal sex,” and “man f***ing man,” while it ranks second in searches for the term “gay sex pics.”

The term “shemale sex” was most-searched for in the city of Peshwar, a conservative Islamic stronghold that has become a frontline in the war on terror.

In a survey of 39 countries worldwide, the Pew Research Center asked the question, “Should society accept homosexuality?”

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Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) opponents warned it would happen, but now there’s mounting proof that full-time employees are being replaced with part-timers, at least in the retail industry where Walmart is focused on keeping the majority of workers to part-time hours only.

A new hiring policy uncovered by Reuters shows that nearly half of its stores are only hiring part-time employees, thus avoiding the mandate to provide health care or pay a fine.

A Reuters survey of 52 stores run by the largest U.S. private employer in the past month, including one in every U.S. state, showed that 27 were hiring only temps, 20 were hiring a combination of regular full, part-time and temp jobs, and five were not hiring at all.

It’s company directive, according to sources interviewed by Reuters who asked to remain anonymous.

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Seventy House Republicans are planning a politically risky showdown with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to try to force additional debate on an immigration bill they say will mean amnesty for illegal immigrants and have dire consequences for the country.

The 70 members are petitioning for a special Republican conference meeting on the bill, a “highly unusual” move to go head-to-head with the speaker, according to Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Steve King (Iowa) and Louie Gohmert (Texas), who are serving as spokespersons for the group.

Bachmann, King and Gohmert told TheBlaze the group is invoking the Hastert Rule: requiring support from a majority of the majority to bring a bill forward.

The petition is expected to go to the House leadership on Friday, but it’s possible some signatories might remove their names due to political risk, or that Boehner could head off the challenge by striking a deal. Going against leadership in such a way could have harsh political consequences for the signatories, including retaliation such as permanently getting passed over for chairmanship positions.

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The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won’t snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are.

That’s right, the government’s sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized.

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.

Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.

We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the panel’s formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques there.

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a co-author and key proponent of the Senate immigration bill, said he will revoke his support if an amendment is added that allows gay Americans to petition for same-sex spouses living abroad to secure a green card.

“If this bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill. I’m done,” Rubio said Thursday during an interview on the Andrea Tantaros Show. “I’m off it, and I’ve said that repeatedly. I don’t think that’s going to happen and it shouldn’t happen. This is already a difficult enough issue as it is.”

The amendment, introduced by Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, would grant green cards to foreign partners of gay Americans. Leahy originally introduced the measure during the Senate Judiciary Committee markup of the bill, but he withdrew it under pressure from Republican lawmakers who said it would reduce the chance of the bill passing.

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Though there won’t be loaded rifle-toting protesters traipsing around the National Mall on the Fourth of July anymore, it does looks like there will be a different group of Bill of Rights upholders protesting on Independence Day.

In response to Edward Snowden’s massive intelligence leak, supporters of Fourth Amendment rights are banding together to organize massive rallies across the country.

The rally, dubbed ‘Restore the Fourth,’ will be held in major cities across the country on July 4th, including Washington, D.C. Though a time and location for the D.C. rally hasn’t been confirmed yet, the event is being planned through Reddit. More information will come soon.

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We aren’t communist?

When the obvious is obvious, why is it that there are those who can’t seem to see the obvious? Strange metaphor is it not? That we in this nation have those who can’t see this obvious scenario that this nation is as communist as any that has ever been, or will ever be!

Perhaps it’s our identification of what we use as the yard stick to measure what is a communist government?

When we look at the definition of communism, it is obvious that it had never existed, will not ever exist, and cannot exist as it is defined. Communism is a revolutionary socialist movement to create a classless, moneyless and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production as well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at establishing this order.

Is it not interesting that the failure of communism is defined in the very first identification of this ideology? Why is the word ‘revolutionary’ so prominent?

The answer is simple really—for in fact communism is based on the oldest of human actions—theft. This is the why it must be a revolution of taking that from a society that has productive capacity—as communism is not the ideology of the beginning…for it produces nothing…as the literate history of mankind has proven.

There is no more one need to know of communism. The basis of this dementia and the results are all based in this simple reality.

One thing about communism is that reality is never part of the evaluation. Take a moment to think of this; movement to create a classless, moneyless and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production as well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at establishing this order.

We read this presentation using the word classless. What does that mean? Or is it to make some social distinction to create the very ‘revolutionary’ ‘theft’ from those who have produced? What is the difference between the simple philosophical identification of our ‘Declaration of Independence’ where we state ‘All men are created equal!’ Does this not make all men in the same class—are we not all created by our creator with the same foundations of physical structure? Do we not all have a brain, some intellect, and the capacity to observe and make independent decisions? Is not this the whole concept of Christianity—that we have free will—and as such have by our choice the desire to do what we wish?

You see, the philosophy of Christianity, that all men are created equal, and that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights—makes simple fact; it identifies man’s very existence.

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A Midwestern lawmaker is calling on his colleagues in Congress to offer cover to an Army soldier under fire for his conservative political views and religious faith, and accusing the Obama administration of “creating a tyrannical culture of political correctness in the military.”

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan.,  is introducing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would prevent the Army from conducting a court martial of Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers until the military first files a report for Congress to review.

“The Secretary of the Army shall provide to Congress a report on activities with respect to Master Sergeant Nathan Sommers at least 90 days prior to taking any further disciplinary or administrative action against that individual,” states Huelskamp’s amendment.

The amendment would also allow service members to sue in the event their First Amendment rights are violated. Huelskamp said the legislation will “unblock the courthouse door so that service members whose First Amendment rights have been violated by the federal government can seek redress like any other American.”

“Sgt. Sommers is the poster child for an increasingly pervasive pattern of persecution,” Huelskamp told Fox News.

Sommers, a decorated member of the U.S. Army Band, came under intense scrutiny after he was found with pro-Republican, anti-Obama bumper stickers on his personal car. An Army officer informed the solider – in writing – that the stickers were creating “workplace tension.” The 25-year military veteran was also told to stop reading books written by conservative authors while in uniform. A superior officer told him that reading books by Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and David Limbaugh was offensive to other soldiers.

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A complementary commercial winner-and-loser pair has emerged from the disclosure of the NSA’s domestic data dragnet, one that would surely bring a thin-lipped smile to the face of Eric Arthur Blair, the English Democratic Socialist who wrote as George Orwell: While Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), the defense contractor that employed leaker Edward Snowden, has seen its stock plummet since the revelation of its connection to the scandal, Amazon’s (AMZN) sales of “1984,” Orwell’s classic dystopian novel of surveillance and control, have skyrocketed.

The LA Times reports that sales of the book, which concerns a discontented propagandist working for the Ministry of Truth in a time of endless war, are up 5,771 percent as of Tuesday morning. From a sales rank of 12,507 in the days before The Guardian published top-secret government documents provided by Snowden, “1984″ has risen to crack Amazon’s top 200.

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In advance of his successful reelection, President Obama took executive action to defer, for two years, deportation for illegal immigrants who entered the country as children. The result was a flood of requests to the immigration service for the temporary amnesty. As a result of this demand, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, the Department of Homeland Security cut back on the legally-required criminal background checks of these immigrants. The revelation raises questions of how the agency could handle a blanket amnesty of all illegal immigrants.

In October 2012, Judicial Watch, acting on a tip from a whistleblower, filed a FOIA request with DHS for “all communications, memoranda, emails, policy guidance, directives, initiatives, and any other correspondence respecting the scope and extent of background checks to be performed (or not) on aliens applying to the Obama administration’s DACA program.” [DACA is the acronym for Obama's temporary amnesty directive.]

Memos and emails obtained through the FOIA reveal that the agency suspended conducting full criminal background checks on illegals applying for the program and, instead, instituted a “lean and lite” process, which allowed the applicant to continue moving through the system.

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When women start doing what men have traditionally done, yours is a civilization of the setting sun.  This is brought to mind when pondering a recent Pew Research Center study showing that women are now the primary or sole breadwinners in 40 percent of American households.  You may have heard the story — it created quite a stir on Fox News, with Greta Van Susteren and Megyn Kelly (who became quite hysterical) taking exception to male colleagues’ warnings about the development’s sociological implications.  But if these two ladies, and the other critics, had reacted rationally and not emotionally, they would realize what is obvious.

The rise in female breadwinners is a sign of a civilization in decline.

Let’s start by first examining the study.  While the term “breadwinner” conjures up images of pleasingly plump paychecks, the real story here is the rise of poor single mothers.

Among the 40 percent of women in the breadwinner group, 63 percent are single mothers.  This isn’t surprising, since the rate of single motherhood has risen from about 4 percent in the 1940s to 41 percent today (72 percent in the black community).  So what kind of “bread” are we talking about?  Writes Amy Langfield of CNBC, “The median income for a single mother who has never been married was $17,400 as of 2011.”  And, obviously, having large numbers of single mothers, with essentially fatherless children, struggling to make ends meet isn’t good for the women, the children, or the society as a whole.

The picture looks better for the married 37 percent of the breadwinner group, but only by comparison.  Twenty-nine percent of these women’s husbands are unemployed.  Moreover, Pew describes these women as older, college-educated, and white.  Translation: they’re the one-child wonders.  These are often women who postpone childbirth in deference to careerism and then, perhaps after dropping a tidy sum at a fertility clinic, have their sole son or daughter.  Why does this warrant mention?  Because as the documentary Demographic Winter points out, this phenomenon is a significant contributing factor to the plummeting birth rates among Western peoples.  Outside New Zealand, there isn’t one major European-descent group with a replacement-level birth rate.  And for all you secular-feminist chauvinists so proud of your cultural hegemony, what do you think happens to values that cause people to erase themselves?

So why can’t the Megyn Kellys of the world perceive the rise in female breadwinners as the warning sign it is?  Because their feminist dogma teaches that any female “gain” relative to men is positive, and any criticism of it is blind male chauvinism.  These are the people who cheer girls’ “better” performance in schools even though this is largely attributable to boys’ worsening performance (and improved female test scores aren’t relevant, because the exams, like the boys, have been dumbed down).  It’s a mindset that would consider it a good thing if women won every future marathon because men either lost their legs or stopped running.

And that is the point.  If a warring nation must move a few divisions from the southern front to shore up the northern, it isn’t a victory for those divisions; it means the war effort is waning.  And if the divisions’ generals view it as a personal victory because they’ll have the opportunity to distinguish themselves, they’re self-centered and ignorant.

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It’s not just the number of requests, it’s the scope of them. They’re not demanding records related to particular investigations anymore, they’re demanding huge troves of records on random Americans for data-mining purposes, the same thing Patriot Act co-author Jim Sensenbrenner complained about a few days ago but somehow didn’t foresee in 2001.

Like I said, you might want to re-poll Bush’s numbers.

“That they were using this (provision) to do mass collection of data is definitely the biggest surprise,” said Robert Chesney, a top national security lawyer at the University of Texas Law School. “Most people who followed this closely were not aware they were doing this. We’ve gone from producing records for a particular investigation to the production of all records for a massive pre-collection database. It’s incredibly sweeping.”…

[I]n the years since [2003], the FBI’s use of Section 215 quietly exploded, with virtually no public notice or debate. In 2009, as part of an annual report to Congress, the Justice Department reported there had been 21 applications for business records to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) under Section 215 – all of which were granted, though nine were modified by the court. (The reports do not explain how or why the orders were modified.)

In 2010, the number of requests jumped to 205 (all again granted, with 176 modified.) In the latest report filed on April 30, the department reported there had been 212 such requests in 2012 – all approved by the court, but 200 of them modified.

These sharp increase in the use of Section 215 has drawn little attention until now because the number of national security letters (NSLs) issued by the bureau has been so much greater — 15,229 in 2012. But FBI Director Mueller, in little-noticed written responses to Congress two years ago, explained that the bureau was encountering resistance from telecommunications companies in turning over “electronic communication transaction” records in response to national security letters.

Google, Facebook, and the gang started to resist NSLs on grounds that they were dubious legally, so Mueller shifted to Section 215 and got back to squeezing them for more and more and more data

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He’s defiant, but not as defiant as you might think from that headline. He has no regrets about making the movie and says he’ll finish it once he’s out of the pen, but if you’re expecting any indignation over the White House’s repulsive attempt to make him a scapegoat for Islamist degeneracy, think again. He’s entirely deferential to The One — and maybe you would be too if you were stuck in a federal jail cell reading newspapers with daily reports about government gone rogue.

“It is not [a] religion movie,” he said. “I have a lot of Muslim friends and not all the Muslims believe in the terrorism culture. Some of them believe in this culture. That’s why we need to fight [against] the culture, not the Muslims. My enemy is the terrorism culture; this is my enemy…

“Of course I’m proud of [the movie]. If I could go back, I would do it again,” said Nakoula, 55, a Coptic Christian born in Egypt who came to the United States in 1984. “Everybody gets hurt in this culture. We need the world free of this culture. We have to fight it.”…

“I would like to thank the United States government from the top to the bottom for protecting me,” he said. “They treat me very, very good since this happened until now.”

When asked about Rice’s promotion last week to National Security Adviser after she became the face of the White House effort to substitute him for Al Qaeda as the cause of the Benghazi attack, Nakoula was again unwilling to be critical of the Obama administration.

“Who am I to criticize the United States’ commander in chief? This is his decision,” he said. “It’s not my responsibility. It’s not my job.”

When asked if he thought the administration had used him and his movie as scapegoats, he said simply “No comment.” That’s how you answer when you’re afraid to answer otherwise. I wonder if he knows that the frontrunner for the next Democratic nomination told more than one relative of Americans killed in Benghazi that they should blame him for the bloodletting. No comment.

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In a Gallup tracking poll released Tuesday, former-President George W. Bush currently stands with a favorability rating of 49%, compared to 46% who see the 43rd president unfavorably. Meanwhile, another Gallup poll shows President Obama with only a 47% approval rating, with 44% disapproving.

If you think about it, this makes perfect sense.

After all, Obama fooled everyone when he ran as the anti-Bush in 2008.

Everyone thought Obama meant he would be less hawkish than his predecessor. But as we have seen, Obama apparently has no problem killing American citizens via remote control with drones or greatly expanding upon Bush’s surveillance state. This, even though Obama told us he had pretty much won the War on Terror.

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Former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klayman amended an existing lawsuit against Verizon and a slew of Obama administration officials Monday to make it the first class-action lawsuit in response to the publication of a secret court order instructing Verizon to hand over all phone records of millions of American customers on an “ongoing, daily basis.”

Klayman told U.S. News he will file a second class-action lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia targeting government officials and each of the nine companies listed in a leaked National Security Agency slideshow as participants in the government’s PRISM program.

According to the slideshow, the PRISM program allows government agents direct, real-time access to the servers of nine major tech companies, including AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo! and YouTube.

U.S. News did not seek comment from the companies, all of which have denied any knowledge of or participation in the PRISM program.

Klayman said he hopes the two lawsuits will be considered jointly as companion cases.

The class-action lawsuit against Verizon says the defendants violated customers’ “reasonable expectation of privacy, free speech and association, right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures and due process rights.”

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Pope Francis has confirmed there is a “gay lobby” inside the Vatican, a Catholic website reported.

Reports of such a group in the Curia have circulated for months and may have been a consideration in Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s retirement, CNN reported.

The Curia is the Vatican’s bureaucracy.

A Chilean website, Reflection and Liberation, which discusses liberation theology, first reported Francis’ comments, though CNN said a Vatican spokesman refused to comment on the report.

“In the Curia,” Francis said, “there are holy people. But there is also a stream of corruption,” adding, “The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there. We need to see what we can do.”

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A bill that stigmatizes gay people and bans giving children any information about homosexuality won overwhelming approval Tuesday in Russia’s lower house of parliament.

Hours before the State Duma passed the Kremlin-backed law in a 436-0 vote with one abstention, more than two dozen protesters were attacked by hundreds of anti-gay activists and then detained by police.

The bill banning the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” still needs to be passed by the appointed upper house and signed into law by President Vladimir Putin, but neither step is in doubt.

The measure is part of an effort to promote traditional Russian values instead of Western liberalism, which the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church see as corrupting Russian youth and contributing to the protests against Putin’s rule.

The only parliament member to abstain Tuesday was Ilya Ponomaryov, who has supported anti-Putin protesters despite belonging to a pro-Kremlin party.

A widespread hostility to homosexuality is shared by much of Russia’s political and religious elite. Lawmakers have accused gays of decreasing Russia’s already low birth rates and said they should be barred from government jobs, undergo forced medical treatment or be exiled.

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Breaking his silence from inside a facility under the authority of the federal Bureau of Prisons in southern California, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula told FoxNews.com in a series of phone interviews that his film “Innocence of Muslims” has been widely misunderstood, and not just in being singled out as causing the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that left U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead….

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I’m a Christian. But Muslims are misunderstood. Intentionally misunderstood. We should all be more like them. They make sense, especially with their children. There is no other group like the Black Muslims, who put so much effort into teaching children the right things, they don’t smoke, they don’t drink or overindulge in alcohol, they protect their women, they command respect. And what do these other people do?

They complain about them, they criticize them. We’d be a better world if we emulated them. We don’t have to become black Muslims, but we can embrace the things that work.

In a throwback to its darkest past, the German government recently decided to back an initiative which singles out Jewish-owned businesses and targets them for detrimental treatment. Joining 13 other European Union members, Berlin has reportedly agreed to support efforts aimed at applying special labels of origin to products manufactured by Jewish owned factories in Judea and Samaria.

The goal is to harm the livelihood of Jewish businessmen and entrepreneurs as a way of undermining the settlement enterprise. Needless to say, goods made by Palestinian-run plants in the territories will not similarly be branded.

This is an absolute outrage, one that is both morally obscene and historically indefensible, and the government of Angela Merkel should be ashamed of itself for going along with such a discriminatory practice. Whatever one may think of the peace process and the two-state solution, it should be obvious that treating merchandise differently simply because the person who owns the factory where it was made is a follower of Moses rather than Muhammad is an act of pure bigotry.

In light of its own sordid record during the 20th century, Germany and its leaders have a special responsibility to be exceptionally sensitive to such issues, particularly when they relate to Jews. After all, it was 80 years ago, in April 1933, that the Nazis launched a nationwide assault on Jewish owned businesses throughout Germany, painting yellow-and-black Stars of David on storefronts and discouraging people from patronizing them.

This was carried out under the slogan, “Kauft nicht bei Juden!” (Don’t buy from Jews!). Hence, for any German government to stand up and declare: “Don’t buy from Jews,” even if the proposal is limited to the Jews of Judea and Samaria, is downright chilling and should send a shiver down everyone’s spine.

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Not everyone is an entrepreneur. Still, everyone should try—if only once—to start a business. After all, it is small and medium enterprises that are the key to job creation. There is also something uniquely educational about sitting at the desk where the buck stops, in a dreary office you’ve just rented, working day and night with a handful of employees just to break even.

As an academic, I’m just an amateur capitalist. Still, over the past 15 years I’ve started small ventures in both the U.S. and the U.K. In the process I’ve learned something surprising: It’s much easier to do in the U.K. There seemed to be much more regulation in the U.S., not least the headache of sorting out health insurance for my few employees. And there were certainly more billable hours from lawyers.

This set me thinking. We are assured by vociferous economists that economic growth would be higher in the U.S. and unemployment lower if only the government would run even bigger deficits and/or the Fed would print even more money. But what if the difficulty lies elsewhere, in problems that no amount of fiscal or monetary stimulus can overcome?

Nearly all development economists agree that good institutions—legislatures, courts, administrative agencies—are crucial. When poor countries improve their institutions, economic growth soon accelerates. But what about rich countries? If poor countries can get rich by improving their institutions, is it not possible that rich countries can get poor by allowing their institutions to degenerate? I want to suggest that it is.

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The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations – the NSA.

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Within twenty-four hours of the Boy Scouts’ big announcement that they will open the membership to openly gay Scouts, fathers and concerned citizens are stepping up with plans to organize new ways to gather young males around the campfire for marshmallows and song.  I thought it would happen—but I’m amazed, frankly, that it’s happening so soon.

I was going to tell you about two of the existing boys’ groups, which have a well-defined mission statement and a history of successful retreats and camp-outs and sporting events.  Today I learned about two new groups bursting onto the horizon:  groups which are rooted in faith and freedom, character and compassion.

So here’s my list of four boys clubs which encourage leadership and personal holiness, and which are still a whole bunch of fun.  I’m sure the list is by no means exhaustive; in communities across America, men are planning, working, developing new ideas.

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Will same-sex marriage cause harm to opposite-sex marriage? It’s one of the most enduring questions surrounding state and national legal decisions about marriage.

But the question itself is empirically unanswerable any time soon. We are arguably years away from gathering quality longitudinal, nationally representative data on the matter. And even then, assessing—let alone agreeing upon—causation will remain difficult. Same-sex marriage may, after all, be a later-stage symptom of the general deinstitutionalization of marriage rather than, as many assert, a cause of it. So the question remains less an empirical one than a theoretical one at present.

And yet we can build plausible hypotheses about the broader influence of same-sex marriage by looking around the neighborhood—that is, at what we already know about gay and straight relationships, about what’s happening to marriage, the mating market, and how institutions change.

In the simplest sense, of course, same-sex marriage won’t alter the institution for everyone, because nothing ever happens to “everyone” in reality, or in social science data. Associations, probabilities, and educated guesses are the best we can establish.

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But it was one of those days. I’m sure you have them. They may happen every day, but if I had been watching a TV show I would have hit the pause button every minute to deal with something. It would have taken me two hours yesterday to watch a 40 minute program. So in the midst of all of this, I hear about Prism. Not the NSA sweep of telephone records. In fact, let me start before I heard about Prism. Even before I heard about Prism, I am hearing from the intelligentsia in Washington that there’s nothing to be really concerned about here with what we had learned, the NSA demanding and getting every phone record from Verizon. And, by the way, we now know T-Mobile and AT&T have been added to it.

But the intelligent people were saying, “Nothing to see here. The reaction is way overblown.” Those of us who think there’s something worrisome here are overreacting and we’re too oriented in politics. And the mature thinkers that weighed in and sound reason and levelheadedness assured us that there was nothing to fear here because this was just metadata, and in fact this is something we should all be thankful that the government is able to do.

I have to tell you when I’m listening to all the smart people tell me this, my mind is about to explode, and I’m saying, “Do these people not realize what we just learned in the last three weeks?” We got the IRS starting in 2010 taking action to suppress the political involvement and ultimately votes of Tea Party people and conservative Republicans. This regime, this government, on the orders of the highest level. In fact, that investigation is ongoing. We have Fast and Furious. We have Obamacare. The evidence of the totalitarian nature or the authoritarian nature of this administration is on display undeniably every day and yet in the midst of this, “Well, don’t go off half cocked on this, Rush. Be very levelheaded. Nothing really to see,” as though there’s no context here.

It made me once again understand, folks, what you and I are up against here. There are just way too many people — and I’m talking about on our side — who do not want to admit what we face, who do not want to engage or admit or whatever what we really face here. It matters. This kind of stuff matters because of who the people doing it happen to be. It’s one thing if Colonel Sanders would be collecting all this data, but it’s not Colonel Sanders. It’s Barack Obama and everybody that works for him, and we know who they are and we know what their goals are. We know what their intentions are.

Folks, here’s the thing, I guess, that gets me. I mentioned Herbert Meyer. We interviewed him for the Limbaugh Letter a few short months ago. Herbert Meyer was in the national security apparatus during the Reagan administration. He was a good friend of Ronald Reagan, and was instrumental in establishing Reagan administration policies that brought down the Soviet Union. The big news to him that’s really noteworthy, we talked about it, is that he thinks that the world’s coming out of poverty. And it is a big story, The Economist in London had a big story on it recently. We mentioned it to you, and it’s a great testament to capitalism.

It’s not socialism, it’s not welfare, it’s not compassion and it’s not the redistribution of wealth. It’s not high taxes that are bringing people out of poverty. It’s capitalism, and none other than a leftist publication in London had to admit it. Well, Herb Meyer was the first to sound this notice some months ago. I also mentioned he wrote a piece that currently is in the American Thinker earlier this week, and it had the potential to be controversial because he used Adolf Hitler and Nazism in it, and it was his way of explaining, he made a point in the piece that nowhere, you know, people looking for a smoking gun to nail Obama on all these scandals, Herb says, “Ain’t gonna be one.”

He said whether you believe it or not, there is not one document linking Adolf Hitler to the holocaust. Adolf Hitler never put it on paper what he intended to do. There is no smoking gun. And yet what happened? We know that the Nazis engaged in the Holocaust. Herb Meyer’s point was that the people Hitler hired didn’t have to be told. They didn’t have to be given instructions. All they had to do was listen to what Hitler was saying. All they had to do was listen to what his objectives were. And he said the same thing’s happening here with this administration. He went to great pains to say: I’m not calling this administration a bunch of Nazis. I’m just using this as an illustration. I know people will get my point if I use something this notorious, the Nazi regime.

It’s a point that I’ve made here about the IRS. They say, “Well, you can’t link it in to Obama.” You don’t need to link Obama to it. He hired these people. Lois Lerner and everybody at the IRS who’s doing this is doing everything they can to please Obama. There’s not gonna be a smoking gun, but you don’t need a smoking gun to know where this administration’s doing what it’s doing.

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A Texas high school silenced its Valedictorian’s microphone during his speech when he diverted from his pre-approved remarks and instead spoke about the Constitution.

Joshua High School graduate Remington Reimer, who was accepted into the Naval Academy, had his microphone silenced during his speech right after he told fellow graduates that school officials apparently threatened him with the move the day before, MyFoxDFW.com reported.

Colin Radford, a fellow graduate told MyFoxDFW.com that Reimer was “talking about getting constitutional rights taken away from him, and then he said “just yesterday they threatened to turn my microphone off,” and then his microphone went off.”

Before this week, the Guardian newspaper’s gradual move into the U.S. — hiring dozens of employees in the last two years — hadn’t produced much of a splash in terms of scoops.

In the last three days that has changed.

The newspaper, which started publishing in the English city of Manchester in 1821 and is now based in London, has established a significant presence in Washington by uncovering the vast scope of secret surveillance operations carried out by U.S. officials at the National Security Agency.

The revelations have put President Barack Obama and his national security team on the defensive with reports of government snooping on a comprehensive scale. Its coverage expanded Friday to Britain with an exclusive report that the U.K.’s electronic surveillance agency also has had access to the information trove collected by the U.S. government.

While there had been hints of government accessing domestic U.S. phone records in the past, including reporting of domestic surveillance by the NSA that earned a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times in 2006, Glenn Greenwald — a lawyer turned journalist, blogger and commentator for the Guardian — broke the news Wednesday that the NSA had collected the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of the telecom giant Verizon under a recent secret court order.

A day later, the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman weighed in on the existence of another secret NSA program — codenamed PRISM — that reportedly gave the U.S. government direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants,

Greenwald’s piece on that same program appeared only about 20 minutes after the Post’s story broke online. Gellman, himself a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter, was quoted by the Huffington Post that he “started to hear some footsteps, so I had to move.”

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A veteran member of the U.S. Army Band said he is facing retribution and punishment from the military for having anti-Obama bumper stickers on his car, reading books written by conservative authors like Mark Levin and David Limbaugh, and serving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at his promotion party.

Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers, a 25-year Army veteran and conservative Christian based at Fort Myer in Washington, believes his outspoken opposition to gay marriage prompted higher-ups to take a closer look at his beliefs. The recipient of an Army Commendation Medal and a soloist at the funeral of former First Lady Betty Ford, Sommers said his core beliefs are enough to mark a soldier for persecution in today’s military.

“It seems like with the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – that the Christians have been the ones who’ve had to go underground and in the closet – for fear of retaliation and reprisals,” Sommers told Fox News. “Christians feel like they can’t be forthright with their faith. They have to hide.”

Ret. Navy Commander John Bennett Wells is representing the master sergeant. He said there is no doubt in his mind that the U.S. military is discriminating against Christians – and specifically his client.

“There’s no question about it,“ Wells told Fox News. “Because he is religious, because he feels that homosexual conduct is wrong for religious reasons, he is basically being persecuted.”

Lt. Col. Justin Platt, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon released a statement to Fox News noting that the military branch cannot comment on ongoing investigations or administrative actions.

“With respect to the political activities, soldiers are expected to carry out their obligations as citizens in accordance with applicable regulations,” Platt said.

Army documents obtained by Fox News indicate Sommers was told that his actions bordered on being disrespectful to President Obama and the “slightest inference of disrespect towards superiors can have a demoralizing effect on the unit.”

“You should strive to express your opinion while being aware of the overall ramifications of your statements,” the Army noted.

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On Thursday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” conservative talk show host Mark Levin reacted to recent revelations that the National Security Agency had been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers. He said that the NSA news in addition to other openings for intrusion by the federal government are the makings of a “police state.”

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The New York Times editorial board, which twice endorsed President Obama and has championed many planks of his agenda, on Thursday turned on the president over the government’s mass collection of phone data — saying the administration has “lost all credibility.”

The grey lady’s editorial section lately has shown frustration with the administration’s civil liberties record. It has criticized the escalation of the lethal drone program, and it lashed out after the Justice Department acknowledged seizing reporters’ phone records last month.

The report that the National Security Agency has been collecting phone records from millions of Verizon subscribers appeared to be the last straw.

An editorial published late Thursday said the administration was using the “same platitude” it uses in every case of overreach — that “terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us.”

The editorial continued: “Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility.”

The last few weeks have been among the worst of Barack Obama’s time in office, recalling earlier periods of turmoil for the president in 2010 and 2011, when his ratings also plummeted. In 2013, the situation is significantly worse for the White House, with the Obama administration engulfed in a series of major scandals (IRS persecution of conservative groups, the Benghazi debacle, and the Justice Department seizure of journalists’ phone records) that are not only eroding trust in government but also in the office of the president itself. This is undoubtedly a period of steep decline for the Obama presidency, whose imperial-style big government approach is being increasingly questioned not only by American voters, but also by formerly subservient sections of the liberal-dominated mainstream media. In contrast to his first term, Barack Obama is finding himself less and less shielded by the press, and far more vulnerable to public criticism.

With good reason, Americans don’t feel optimistic about their country’s future with President Obama at the helm. According to the RealClear Politics polling average, less than one in three Americans believe the United States is heading in the right direction. A new Economist/YouGov poll has the president’s job approval rating at just 46 percent, with 49 percent of Americans disapproving. Strikingly, 35 percent of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the president’s job performance, 15 points higher than the number who “strongly approve.” A mere 31 percent of Americans surveyed by YouGov believe the United States is “generally headed in the right direction.”

In addition to damaging scandals, which have raised major questions over the integrity and judgment of the Obama administration, there remain deep-seated concerns over the US economy and the enormous national debt, widespread opposition to the president’s health care reforms, and significant fears over national security. Barack Obama’s second term could not have started more badly for the “hope and change” president, who, with three and a half years in office remaining, looks more and more like a lame duck. Here are ten key reasons why the Obama presidency is in trouble, with the outlook exceedingly grim for the White House.

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A gay couple is pursuing a discrimination complaint against a Colorado bakery, saying the business refused them a wedding cake to honor their Massachusetts ceremony, and alleging that the owners have a history of turning away same-sex couples.

As more states move to legalize same-sex marriage and civil unions, the case highlights a growing tension between gay rights advocates and supporters of religious freedom.

“Religious freedom is a fundamental right in America and it’s something that we champion at the ACLU,” said Mark Silverstein, the legal director of the group in Colorado, which filed the complaint on behalf of the couple. “We are all entitled to our religious beliefs and we fight for that. But someone’s personal religious beliefs don’t justify breaking the law by discriminating against others in the public sphere.”

The attorney for Jack Phillips, one of the owners of Masterpiece Cakeshop, sees it differently.

“We don’t believe that this is a case about commerce. At its heart, this is a case about conscience,” said Nicolle Martin. She said the matter is important because it will serve as an example for future cases across the country as more gay couples gain legal recognitions for their relationships.

“It brings it to the forefront. I just don’t think that we should heighten one person’s beliefs over and above another person’s beliefs,” she said.

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by  Kyle Butt, M.A.

Stephanie Pappas, writing for LiveScience.com, recently penned an article titled, “Why Gay Parents May Be the Best Parents” (2012). In that article she attempted to make the case that same-sex couples provide an environment that is better for raising children than the environment provided by heterosexual couples. To bolster her case, she cited various studies, quoted numerous “experts,” and fleshed out the details with copious statistics. Her thinly veiled attempt to appear unbiased about the issue is extremely transparent, and her clear agenda to advance tolerance for homosexuality, in spite of its real impact on society, was evident.

Consider this. God created humans in His likeness. When He did, He made them “male and female” and designed the first home (Genesis 2:22-24). This divinely ordained, man-woman relationship has been the pillar of every productive society in the history of mankind. Furthermore, since God created humans, and knows precisely what is best for their well-being, only He would be in a position to know which type of parenting situation, same-sex or heterosexual, would be best for rearing children. Not only did He establish the family to be headed by heterosexual parents, but He consistently condemned the homosexual lifestyle as sinful, admonishing homosexuals to repent (Butt, 2003). Therefore, since same-sex parents are openly rebelling against God, and providing this rebellious attitude as an example to their adopted children, their child-rearing environment can never be healthy or wholesome.

It is telling to see one of the reasons that Pappas gives as to why homosexual parenting is “good.” Under the subheading of “Nurturing Tolerance,” Pappas wrote that according to research done by Abbie Goldberg, “the only consistent places you find differences between how kids of gay parents and kids of straight parents turn out are in issues of tolerance and open-mindedness” (2012, emp. added). And in what areas of life, would you guess, the kids of gay parents are more tolerant? Goldberg writes: “These individuals feel like their perspectives on family, on gender, on sexuality have largely been enhanced by growing up with gay parents” (2012, emp. added). And there it is, the primary reason why a person would advocate the sinful situation of homosexual parenting—so that the children will grow up and be more tolerant and open-minded about homosexuality. Families that are led by same-sex parents have jettisoned God’s design for the home, and have turned their situation into a system to perpetuate the acceptance of homosexuality by the next generation of other people’s children that they are raising (since it is biologically impossible for two homosexuals to have children together).

It is true that many heterosexual parents have failed to follow God’s command to bring their children up in the nuture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). But their failure in no way implies that God’s design for the home, based on the monogamous union between one man and one woman for life, is flawed. Homosexual parents, due to their sinful rebellion against God, can never teach their children by their example to love the truth and obey their Creator. What same-sex parents successfully do teach their adopted children, according to Pappas and the research she presented, is to perpetuate a spirit of tolerance for the sin of homosexuality. Pappas’ article provides yet another example of a person calling something good that is evil and putting forth darkness as if it were light (Isaiah 5:20). It should further be noted that the ones who practice homosexuality will not be the only ones called to account for their sinful deeds. Those who “approve of those who practice them” will also be guilty before God (Romans 1:32). Oh, that our sinful nation would forsake its sin and turn back to God, so that God could heal our land (2 Chronicles 7:14).

REFERENCES

Butt, Kyle (2003), “Homosexuality—Sin or Cultural Bad Habit?” http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=7&article=1239.

Pappas, Stephanie (2012), “Why Gay Parents May Be the Best Parents,” http://news.yahoo.com/why-gay-parents-may-best-parents-131902676.html.

This Article Originally appeared at http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=7&article=4199&topic=24

In what is being acknowledged even by liberal Catholics as a courageous move, Springfield, IL Bishop Thomas Paprocki debated dissident nun Sr. Jeannine Gramick on the topic of gay “marriage” before a decidedly gay-friendly crowd on Friday. In a shocking revelation in his opening remarks, the bishop told the crowd that his former secretary was brutally murdered by a gay activist simply for suggesting that he change his lifestyle.

Heckling and insults from the crowd and were expected and received as the bishop laid out the argument in favor of traditional marriage, after which he concluded, “some of you may be sneering, and I might be lucky if you said you were willing to hear me again on this topic some other time… In the end, I hope that at least a few of you will agree with my remarks.”

Moderated by journalist Robert Blair Kaiser, the event was held at Shadow Rock United Church of Christ Church.

The Jesuit alumni of Arizona, which organized the event, called it “Two Catholic Views on Marriage,” but in his remarks Bishop Paprocki was quick to point out that was a misnomer. “I corrected that, since there is only one authentic Catholic view,” said the bishop. “There are two views being presented here tonight by two people who are baptized Catholics, but only one of those views, the one I will present, is consistent with Catholic teaching, while the other view clearly dissents from Catholic teaching.”

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The National Security Agency has long justified its spying powers by arguing that its charter allows surveillance on those outside of the United States, while avoiding intrusions into the private communications of American citizens. But the latest revelation of the extent of the NSA’s surveillance shows that it has focused specifically on Americans, to the degree that its data collection has in at least one major spying incident explicitly excluded those outside the United States.

In a top secret order obtained by the Guardian newspaper and published Wednesday evening, the FBI on the NSA’s behalf demanded that Verizon turn over all metadata for phone records originating in the United States for the three months beginning in late April and ending on the 19th of July. That metadata includes all so-called “non-content” data for millions of American customers’ phone calls, such as the subscriber data, recipients, locations, times and durations of every call made during that period.

Aside from the sheer scope of that surveillance order, reminiscent of the warrantless wiretapping scandal under the Bush administration, the other shocking aspect of the order its target: The order specifically states that only data regarding calls originating in America are to be handed over, not those between foreigners.

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