Month: December 2021

Justice Neil Gorsuch: Religious Freedom’s New Champion

BY THE EPOCH TIMES

SEE: https://americanfaith.com/justice-neil-gorsuch-religious-freedoms-new-champion/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Eight of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholics or Jews—groups historically victimized by religious discrimination. Yet the court’s emerging leader in defending religious freedom is its only mainline Protestant.

Some see Neil Gorsuch, nominated by former President Donald Trump to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia, as Scalia’s natural successor: Both were or are highly intelligent, very well educated, generally (but not purely) originalist in constitutional interpretation, and eloquent writers. But Gorsuch, the Episcopalian, is showing himself even more dedicated to religious freedom than Scalia, the committed Catholic.

No doubt there were earlier indications of this side of Gorsuch, but they have come to the fore in the current pandemic. It’s a good time for that side to show itself because, in public emergencies, constitutional rights often are shunted aside. Indeed, in this emergency, the federal judiciary’s record of defending constitutional rights has been mixed at best.

But Gorsuch’s record has been anything but mixed. When his fellow justices defend religious liberty only tepidly, Gorsuch’s concurring opinions stake out stronger positions. When his colleagues do not defend religious liberty at all, he dissents.

Gorsuch Opposes Anti-Religious Pandemic Orders

On Nov. 25, 2020, the justices issued their opinion in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (pdf). The Diocese and an Orthodox Jewish congregation had sued to void then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s severe capacity restrictions on houses of worship. The plaintiffs won, but only by a bare 5–4 majority.

Gorsuch penned a concurring opinion pointing out how Cuomo’s order—like those in many other states—both discriminated against communities of faith and privileged secularism. Here is a sample:

At the same time, the Governor has chosen to impose no capacity restrictions on certain businesses he considers “essential.” And it turns out the businesses the Governor considers essential include hardware stores, acupuncturists, and liquor stores. Bicycle repair shops, certain signage companies, accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents are all essential too. So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience? …

Even if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical.

In another part of his opinion, Gorsuch took on the judiciary’s uncritical reliance on Jacobson v. Massachusetts (pdf). Jacobson is the 1905 Supreme Court mandatory vaccination case that many cite improperly to justify dictatorial pandemic powers.

Gorsuch Defends Religions Favoring Traditional Marriage

On June 17, 2021, the Supreme Court issued Fulton v. Philadelphia (pdf). This was not a pandemic case. Rather, religious organizations had sued the City of Philadelphia over a policy of discriminating against religions that reject same-sex marriage. The justices unanimously struck down the policy.

However, the court’s decision in Fulton was a flimsy one, because it allowed the city to continue discriminating merely by changing one of its paper forms. Gorsuch’s concurring opinion (joined by Justices Thomas and Alito) pointed out how flimsy the court’s decision was. Gorsuch also called for overruling Employment Division v. Smith (pdf), a 1990 precedent he believes insufficiently protects religious freedom. Scalia had written the opinion for the court in Smith. Gorsuch’s concurrence was gracious enough to cite one of Scalia’s writings even while asking the court to overrule Scalia.

Gorsuch’s Fulton concurrence, like many of his opinions, featured some witticisms, such as “Trailblazing through the Philadelphia city code turns out to be no walk in the park”… “playing along with this statutory shell game.”

Gorsuch Pushes Back Against A Biased Vax Mandate

In John Does 1-3 v. Mills (pdf), issued on Oct. 29, SCOTUS refused to review a Maine state order that health care workers be vaccinated, irrespective of religious objections. The objections were based on the fact that all three vaccines were developed using material from aborted children. (I suspect the vaccines’ connection to abortion is one reason so many “progressives” want everyone vaccinated—so that everyone’s complicit.)

Gorsuch, again joined by Thomas and Alito, dissented. He contended that Maine’s order flunked even the standard set by Scalia in the Smith case. He finished his dissent this way:

This case presents an important constitutional question, a serious error, and an irreparable injury. Where many other States have adopted religious exemptions, Maine has charted a different course. There, healthcare workers who have served on the front line of a pandemic for the last 18 months are now being fired and their practices shuttered. All for adhering to their constitutionally protected religious beliefs. Their plight is worthy of our attention. I would grant relief.

Gorsuch Calls Out Hochul’s Bigotry

New York’s new governor, Kathy Hochul, has proved even less tolerant than her immediate predecessor. Cuomo had planned to include a religious exemption in his order mandating vaccinations for health care workers, but Hochul deleted it. The final order permitted exemptions for medical reasons but not for religious reasons. Furthermore, Hochul amended New York regulations so that any fired religious dissenter would be denied unemployment benefits as well.

The case of Dr. A v. Hochul (pdf) challenged these actions. But on Dec. 13, SCOTUS declined to intervene.

Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch all dissented, saying they would have taken the case. Gorsuch’s dissent described the bigotry motivating Hochul’s order:

Governor Hochul acknowledged that “we left off [the religious exemption] in our regulations intentionally.” … Asked why, the Governor answered that there is no “sanctioned religious exemption from any organized religion” and that organized religions are “encouraging the opposite.” …  Apparently contemplating Catholics who object to receiving a vaccine, Governor Hochul added that “everybody from the Pope on down is encouraging people to get vaccinated.” …

Speaking to a different audience, the Governor elaborated: “How can you believe that God would give a vaccine that would cause you harm? That is not truth. Those are just lies out there on social media.”

Hochul apparently doesn’t know that fallible man, not infallible God, made the vaccine. Gorsuch continued:

The day before the mandate went into effect, Governor Hochul again expressed her view that religious objections to COVID–19 vaccines are theologically flawed: “All of you, yes, I know you’re vaccinated, you’re the smart ones, but you know there’s people out there who aren’t listening to God and what God wants. You know who they are.”

Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, Hochul’s deliberate targeting of a religious minority should have been grounds for immediately quashing her order. Gorsuch commented on the court’s abdication of responsibility:

The Free Exercise Clause [of the First Amendment] protects not only the right to hold unpopular religious beliefs inwardly and secretly. It protects the right to live out those beliefs publicly in “the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts.” …

Today, we do not just fail the applicants. We fail ourselves. It is among our Nation’s proudest boasts that, “[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in [matters of] religion.” West Virginia State Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 642 (1943). In this country, “religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others in order to merit … protection.” Thomas v. Review Bd. of Ind. Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707, 714 (1981). Nor is the free exercise of religion “limited to beliefs which are shared by all of the members of a religious sect.” … Millions have fled to this country to escape persecution for their unpopular or unorthodox religious beliefs, attracted by America’s promise that “[e]very citizen here is in his own country.” …

As today’s case shows, however, sometimes our promises outrun our actions. Sometimes dissenting religious beliefs can seem strange and bewildering. In times of crisis, this puzzlement can evolve into fear and anger. It seems Governor Hochul’s thinking has followed this trajectory, and I suspect she is far from alone.

After recounting how the Supreme Court failed to protect religious freedom in a 1940 case, only to reverse itself in 1943, Gorsuch added:

Today, our Nation faces not a world war but a pandemic. Like wars, though, pandemics often produce demanding new social rules aimed at protecting collective interests—and with those rules can come fear and anger at individuals unable to conform for religious reasons. If cases like [the 1940 decision] bear any good, it is in their cautionary tale. They remind us that, in the end, it is always the failure to defend the Constitution’s promises that leads to this Court’s greatest regrets. They remind us, too, that in America, freedom to differ is not supposed to be “limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.” … The test of this Court’s substance lies in its willingness to defend more than the shadow of freedom in the trying times, not just the easy ones. …

Still, it seems the old lessons are hard ones. … But how many more reminders do we need that “the Constitution is not to be obeyed or disobeyed as the circumstances of a particular crisis … may suggest”?

Yes, “the old lessons are the hard ones.” Time will vindicate Justice Gorsuch. And his dissent in Dr. A v. Hochul will be recognized as a masterpiece.

Biden Let 600,000 Migrants Illegally Enter Without Testing or Vax Mandate

BY BREITBART

SEE: https://americanfaith.com/biden-let-600000-migrants-illegally-enter-without-testing-or-vax-mandate/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said on Thursday’s edition of the Breitbart News Daily podcast with host Alex Marlow that the Biden administration exempts migrants crossing the southern border from coronavirus testing and vaccine mandates while imposing such decrees on Americans.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly framed acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination as a “patriotic” action, most recently linking vaccines with “patriotism” and getting vaccinated as a “patriotic duty.”

Morgan said, “[Joe Biden] said that it’s unpatriotic for you not to get a vaccine. Meanwhile, it’s this president’s policies that have incentivized two million apprehensions during his first eleven and a half months of office. Another number that’s very important: 600,000 got-aways, That’s 600,000 illegal aliens that have broken into our country and invaded, and why? Because 60, 70 percent of our Border Patrol resources are pulled off the front line, pulled off the national security mission to process two million [migrants].”

Morgan said none of the migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border since Biden’s inauguration have been screened as to their vaccination status or tested for COVID-19.

“Three million [migrants] in 12 months that tried to illegally enter our country,” he stated, “and guess what? Guess how many are being tested, and guess how many are being mandated to be vaccinated. Zero. So of the three million that have attempted — the six hundred thousand that have been successful, the other six, seven hundred thousand that this administration has allowed in to illegally enter — they’re not testing them, nor is there any vaccine mandate for those individuals, and they’re being flown to every town, city, and state in this country. On what planet does that make sense?”

He concluded, “The president gets out and talks about the variant, and how it’s our patriotic duty to get vaccinated, while he knows that he’s allowing in tens of thousands every single week into this country  unvaccinated, and we know that a minimum of 25 percent of the illegal aliens crossing our borders have active COVID.”

The Breitbart News Daily podcast is available for listening and download via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

Neocharismatic Christianity and the Rise of the New Apostolic Reformation

BY DALE M. COULTER

SEE: https://firebrandmag.com/articles/neocharismatic-christianity-and-the-rise-of-the-new-apostolic-reformation;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

When Paula White called angels from Africa and South America to wage spiritual warfare in the aftermath of the presidential election, she was tapping into the notion of territorial spirits associated with the emergence of what Peter Wagner has called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Wagner coined the phrase to describe a novel kind of independent charismatic Christianity led by apostles and organized into relational networks. Many of the prophecies associated with Trump’s rise and re-election came from persons associated with these networks. Some like Kris Vallotton of Bethel Church apologized while others such as Lance Wallnau doubled down. Regardless, much of the public support for Trump came from Christians connected to this new form of charismatic Christianity, even though it has largely remained unexplored by most journalists and historians.  

The movement exists as a series of overlapping ministerial networks either centered in megachurches or ministries. Harvest International Ministries led by Ché Ahn is one of the most prominent examples of the former, while Generals International under Cindy Jacobs exemplifies the latter. It may be better to identify the NAR as Neocharismatic Christianity because it represents a modification of the global Pentecostal-Charismatic (P-C) movement. The NAR is a subset of independent Charismatics, the third wing in Todd Johnson’s typology of the global movement. 

Three overlapping theological emphases represent the NAR’s doctrinal center: the church, spiritual warfare, and the cultural mandate. Guided by modern-day apostles, the church engages in the mission of cultural transformation through strategic spiritual warfare. What holds these emphases together is a vision to restore a more primitive form of Christianity centered on charismatic gifting under apostolic and prophetic leadership. Before dealing with these emphases, I want to sketch the movement’s origins.  

NAR Origins

This movement crystallized in the wake of the 1994 Toronto Revival after John Wimber asked John and Carol Arnott to remove their church from the Vineyard Association. While the Toronto Revival was an important catalyst, NAR’s roots go back to the Latter Rain Movement (LRM) in the late 1940s, which first began to talk about charismatic gifting through the laying on of hands and the restoration of apostles and prophets in Ephesians 4. One of the significant voices for the NAR view of the church is Bill Hamon, who came out of a congregation deeply impacted by LRM. Peter Wagner credits Hamon’s restorationism with helping him see that the offices of apostle and prophet have been restored.

In the 1970s and 1980s there was a push toward understanding prophecy and divine healing in terms of internal revelation through a word of knowledge. One can see this in Word of Faith circles, the circles around Peter Wagner and John Wimber, and the Kansas City Prophets connected to Mike Bickle’s church. Central to Wimber’s concept of power evangelism was receiving immediate illumination by the Spirit for every encounter. Wagner described the Fuller classes in the 1980s as Wimber getting a “word of knowledge” and being led by the Spirit in this way. It’s no mistake that Randy Clark and Bill Johnson both privilege receiving internal revelation as part of praying for the infirm in their Essential Guide to Healing. It is through the emphasis on internal revelation that the Kansas City Prophets intersect with Wimber’s own teaching and his interest in the prophetic in the late 1980s. Centered on the crucial role of internal revelation, these three streams ushered in a particular view of healing and the prophetic.

The final stream is more of an outlier, but no less influential. It’s Reformed Reconstructionism and Kuyperian sphere sovereignty, in which there are spheres of life (family, church, government) that have their own identity and patterns of authority. The embrace of the cultural mandate by engaging the seven mountains of culture ultimately came from the influence of this Reformed perspective. 

The usual story told is that Bill Bright (founder of Campus Crusade/Cru) and Loren Cunningham (founder of Youth With a Mission) both had a similar dream about seven mountains and then implemented the dream in the mid-1970s. What is left out is the role of Francis Schaeffer in transmitting both Rousas John Rushdoony’s theonomy and Kuyper’s vision of cultural transformation. As Julie Ingersoll has documented, Reconstructionism combines presuppositionalism with a postmillennial vision to bring everything under the authority of God’s law. This position was cast by Rushdoony and others as an effort to restore a Christian America. Through a 1987 conference in Dallas led by Reformed Reconstructionists such as Gary North (Rushdoony’s son-in-law), many charismatic Christians were exposed to these ideas in the form of a mandate to transform culture as part of the gospel proclamation. 

By the early 1990s, these five streams came together in the form of three theological emphases that now define those connected to NAR. One can find variations of these theological emphases in most persons associated with the movement, whether it's apostolic and prophetic gifting as part of the church, spiritual warfare through spiritual mapping, or a top-down approach to cultural transformation as primary to the proclamation of the gospel. 

Charismatic Gifting and the Church

John Wimber described his approach as “power evangelism” in part because it concerned the way in which signs and wonders represented the in-breaking of the kingdom through the power of the Spirit. The courses that Wimber and Peter Wagner offered at Fuller in the early 1980s became experimental places where power evangelism was tested and practiced. Wimber would teach and then the class would be opened to times of prayer where Wimber and others would receive words of knowledge. 

As Wimber, Wagner, and others began to defend and explain signs and wonders, they engaged in a two-pronged strategy. The first was to argue against an Enlightenment worldview hostile to the miraculous and which they thought many evangelicals had embraced. Grounded in presuppositionalism, worldview thinking had emerged in the 1970s as the way evangelicals should engage others. Every person operated with a set of basic assumptions about life that constituted their view of the world. Wimber and Wagner turned this idea against evangelicalism itself. Aligned to this strategy was a more historical argument regarding the presence of the miraculous in the history of Christianity and its suppression by Christian thinkers after the Enlightenment. The basic claim was that Enlightenment thought had infiltrated the Christian worldview causing the suppression of the miraculous.

For much of the 1980s and early 1990s, the idea that signs and wonders, and therefore charismatic gifting, had been suppressed existed alongside the restorationist narrative that came out of the LRM. Whether it was an Enlightenment worldview or a church that had fallen into institutionalized Christianity, the remedy and goal were the same: to restore Christianity through the full function of charismatic gifting expressed in signs and wonders. By the end of the 1980s, Wagner had put together worldview, power evangelism, and charismatic gifting as key dimensions of so-called Third Wave Christianity. 

The alliances that Wimber and Wagner forged during this time proved to be unsustainable for a variety of reasons. At its core, however, was the question of how hard a person was going to push toward the “not yet” dimension of the kingdom. This was both a theological and a practical question. How far would one allow the prophetic to go? Did signs and wonders include all kinds of spiritual manifestations like jumping, screaming, barking, etc.? The Toronto Revival proved to be the breaking point, which invariably placed the Vineyard on a different trajectory in its “quest for the radical middle” between evangelicalism and a more intense form of charismatic Christianity that decided it was best to push toward a more fully realized eschatology. 

With this fracture having occurred, restorationism became dominant among many who left the Vineyard and began to form independent networks around Peter Wagner, Ché Ahn, John Arnott, Randy Clark, and Mike Bickle. As Wagner later noted, it was Bill Hamon who gave him the theological framework to see that the offices of apostle and prophet must be restored to the church. This theological turn meant that Ephesians became the canon within the canon. The Pauline vision of the church was interpreted as being a series of networks governed by apostles with the support of prophets. Through the laying on of hands, apostolic ministry and succession unfolded, the gifts were released, and the church could finally begin to wage warfare to establish the kingdom. 

Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare

Wimber’s approach to power evangelism not only implied that signs and wonders must be a regular part of the church’s life but also meant that mission became a confrontation between principalities and powers. Alongside the defense of power evangelism during the 1980s, there was a concerted attempt to begin to reflect upon spiritual warfare in the life of the Christian and as part of the mission of the church. 

The symposium on power evangelism at Fuller in 1988 both summarized this trend and set the agenda for its future. Published as Wrestling With Dark Angels (Regal, 1990), the conference presentations and responses dealt with questions about the demonic, exorcism, and sickness and suffering. In his presentation, Peter Wagner introduced the idea of territorial spirits, which he had taken from Timothy Warner, then a professor of missions at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Wagner suggested that there was a hierarchy of governance among evil spirits with some being over nations while others were over neighborhoods. He explained resistance to the gospel in terms of the presence of demonic strongholds over geographical areas. As evidence, Wagner noted the outbreak of revival in Argentina when ministers like Pastor Omar Cabrera and Carlos Annacondia began to identify spirits that controlled certain areas and to engage in deliverance ministry. 

By 1990 George Otis, Jr. had coined “spiritual mapping” to refer to the activity of identifying demonic spirits and strongholds in a particular region, city, or country. Spiritual warfare took on a strategic dimension. A congregation that wished to evangelize an area could map out the strongholds and then begin to pray specifically against them, or even go on a prayer walk around those areas. This strategy was put into practice by Ted Haggard in the early 1990s in Colorado City as part of his effort to grow New Life Church. After connecting with Wagner, Cindy Jacobs began teaching spiritual mapping, eventually moving her headquarters to Colorado Springs in 1993 where it remained until 2004. Jacobs calls her network Generals International because it exists in part to facilitate social reformation through training generals of intercession. 

Over the next two decades, the focus on spiritual warfare developed into a full-blown angelology. Books began to be written about seeing angels and even activating angels who were also over geographical regions as the counter to demonic forces. Moreover, prayer and worship became weapons to actualize the presence of the kingdom. One cannot understand Sean Feucht’s fusion of worship and political activism apart from this new way of conceiving spiritual warfare.

Wimber’s focus on power encounters through signs and wonders became a confrontation between principalities and powers that led to a new kind of spiritual warfare theology. This approach to warfare required that individuals begin to learn how to perceive and act upon the supernatural and thus listen to the Spirit in words of knowledge. Part of establishing the kingdom was flowing in the supernatural through signs, wonders, and seeing the world as a landscape of spiritual war. It was yet another dimension of the push into the full realization of the kingdom as the “not yet” became less and less. With a renewed church led by apostles and a focus on strategic level spiritual warfare, Christians could fulfill the cultural mandate.

The Seven Mountain Cultural Mandate

Shortly after Peter Wagner began to talk about a “church quake” through the restoration of a church led by modern-day apostles, Lance Wallnau had a conversation with Loren Cunningham over what Wallnau referred to as the seven mountains (religion, education, family, business, government, the arts, and media). Following Kuyper more closely, Cunningham called it the seven spheres of influence. After that conversation, Wallnau introduced the idea to a larger audience through a prophetic roundtable hosted by Mark Chironna on TBN. Closely associated with the use of seven mountains was the idea that the church had focused too exclusively on the salvation of souls to the exclusion of the transformation of culture. Wallnau differentiated between the gospel of forgiveness and the gospel of the kingdom in which the latter concerned cultural change. 

In 2008, three books came out that showed just how much the seven-mountain mandate had become part of NAR theology. Peter Wagner issued Dominion (republished as On Earth As It is in Heaven), in which he explicitly noted the connection to Reformed Reconstructionism. Wagner also indicated that he had embraced a postmillennial eschatology. Organized around apostolic leadership, the church was to use democratic structures to transform nations and thus secure prosperity for all. The message of prosperity from the Word of Faith movement had been wedded to Rushdoony’s notion of the triumph of the kingdom and the prosperity this triumph would introduce. Dominion concerned the church’s using democracy to take control through invading the spheres symbolized by the seven mountains.

While Wagner talked about dominion, Cindy Jacobs published The Reformation Manifesto, in which she called for a complete reformation of soul and society. Jacobs did not go so far as to embrace postmillennialism, but she pushed hard against the negative outlook of premillennial dispensationalism. Society was not going to get worse as a prelude to a rapture. Instead, society would be reformed through a progressive unfolding of the kingdom. The church’s mission was to bring the kingdom to all seven spheres through intercession and intervention, which would unleash economic prosperity.

Dominion through reformation was not radical enough for Johnny Enlow. In The Seven Mountain Prophecy, he placed the seven mountains into a prophetic framework that called for a revolution. Enlow was a deacon in Earl Paulk, Jr.’s church in the late 1980s. He had been exposed to Paulk’s “Kingdom Now” theology and its roots in Reconstructionism. That theology found its new home in the seven mountains. Billing himself as a social reformer, he pushed for an Elijah revolution where a generation would prioritize prayer and the prophetic to take the nations and transform the culture. 

Over the next several years, the seven mountain mandate would be folded into a pledge to reform existing social orders by invading and transforming culture. Ché Ahn’s 2010 Reformer’s Pledge was a “who’s who” of NAR players with Bill Johnson, Lou Engle, Lance Wallnau, John Arnott, Peter Wagner, and James Goll, among others, writing chapters and taking the pledge. It was followed in 2013 by Lance Wallnau and Bill Johnson’s Invading Babylon. Establishing the kingdom meant operating in the supernatural and bringing the manifest presence of God to each mountain. Where Rushdoony had talked about secularism, Wallnau and Johnson used the biblical metaphor of Babylon.

These books set the tone for the 2016 election when Wallnau declared that Donald Trump was God’s chaos candidate, a new Cyrus sent to disrupt the existing order so that the kingdom might be established. Wallnau claimed to have received a word of knowledge that Trump would be a wrecking ball, an idea he expanded into his book God’s Chaos Candidate. In an important sense, for Wallnau, a collision had come between the church and secularism over the seven mountains. Trump was going to be the one who broke the control of a secular cabal. 

Conclusions

What are we to make of this Neocharismatic Christianity? Constraints of space only permit three final observations. First, the NAR represents the largest number of independent charismatics in the United States. Because it exists through a series of autonomous ministry networks, it functions as a kind of family of churches that resource one another. Apostles are patriarchs and matriarchs who lead the family. There is a kind of egalitarianism where women can lead and pastor alongside a view of male headship. Second, with the help of Reformed Reconstructionism, it has placed the social gospel into a charismatic framework to drive a conservative political agenda. Wagner wrote a memo to Cindy Jacobs in which he said that the father of the social gospel, Walter Rauschenbusch, had tried to introduce the cultural mandate alongside the evangelistic one, but he was rejected because of liberal theology. Finally, its restorationism, emphasis on the prophetic, and desire to actualize the kingdom in full means that it is constantly engaged in future casting. Christian tradition means very little in this context except as a set-up for where the church is and what the church has done wrong. Even though NAR adherents claim to restore apostolic Christianity, the movement, in many respects, is Christianity fully conformed to democratic individualism. Apostles guide megachurches and ministries as mediating institutions unleashing an army of individuals who utilize pop culture and democratic mechanisms to facilitate Christian expansion. There is much more to be said about the NAR, both in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. We will surely benefit from a greater and deeper conversation about this complex network of charismatic churches and leaders.

Dr. Dale M. Coulter is Professor of Historical Theology at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. He also serves on the Editorial Board for Firebrand.

‘Sit Down, Karen!’-Maskless Woman Slaps Man in the Face for Not Wearing Mask on Delta airlines Plane

Delta Flight from Tampa to Atlanta Gets Crazy OVER MASKS

BY VICTORIA TAFT

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/12/26/sit-down-karen-maskless-woman-slaps-man-in-the-face-for-not-wearing-mask-on-plane-n1544547;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Poor “Karen.” Her magical incantations of persuasion — “Put your f–king mask on, you piece of sh-t!” — for some incomprehensible reason, failed to have their desired effect on a man on a Delta Airlines flight from Tampa to Atlanta.

Maybe her powers of persuasion failed because he knew something about mask efficacy. Maybe her magic words failed because he knew a bit about airplane filtration systems. Or maybe he was eating.

He wasn’t at that moment wearing his mask to her satisfaction and “Karen” wasn’t having it.

Video of the woman’s attack shows that her own mask was around her neck, apparently to make sure he heard her “Christmas wishes” and mask threats. Put another way, she wore her mask in precisely the same fashion as his and still berated him for his mask failures.

But profanely berating him was only part of her act. After slapping him across the face, our Karen is seen in the videos going for his throat with two hands and, as one person videoing the event said, spitting at him because he wouldn’t do as she commanded.

There were at least two videos taken of the Christmas Eve attack. In a video of the incident posted on Instagram, the man wore a mask under his chin, exactly as the woman wore hers.

The man responded to her epithets and physical attack by saying “sit down, Karen!” He also told her, “you’re going to jail!” and called her a “b—h.” It took three airline attendants to subdue her. One attendant used the food cart to gently push her down the aisle and away from the man.

Some people met their loved ones for Christmas at the end of the flight. “Karen” was met by police vehicles as seen at the end of one of the videos. WSB-TV reports that the FBI met a woman named Patricia Cornwall at the gate and took her into custody. Apparently, they take a dim view of assault and battery.

The COVID pandemic and its latest and weakest variant so far, omicron, have caused massive cancellations of flights across the country. The New York Post reports that nearly one thousand domestic and international flights were canceled on Saturday alone.

And how was your Christmas?

Probably better than Karen’s.

OAN: Hope of Christmas with “Pastor” Paula White

Rumble — Paula White Cain, president of Paula White Ministries, gives us "The Real Story" on her hope and prayer during Christmas. Don't be fooled by this one, like Trump was!

EXCERPT FROM: https://firebrandmag.com/articles/neocharismatic-christianity-and-the-rise-of-the-new-apostolic-reformation:

"When Paula White called angels from Africa and South America to wage spiritual warfare in the aftermath of the presidential election, she was tapping into the notion of territorial spirits associated with the emergence of what Peter Wagner has called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Wagner coined the phrase to describe a novel kind of independent charismatic Christianity led by apostles and organized into relational networks. Many of the prophecies associated with Trump’s rise and re-election came from persons associated with these networks. Some like Kris Vallotton of Bethel Church apologized while others such as Lance Wallnau doubled down. Regardless, much of the public support for Trump came from Christians connected to this new form of charismatic Christianity, even though it has largely remained unexplored by most journalists and historians."  

SEE THE COMMENTS BELOW:

jackieQuilts, 9 hours ago

1 Cor 11 But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. 1 Tim 2 11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. 12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. 15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety. 1 Corinthians 7:17 17 But as God has distributed to each one, as the Lord has called each one, so let him walk. And so, I ordain in all the churches. Ephesians 4 11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, Women can teach, but don't have authority over the Church.... Christ is the Authority over the Church. Christ chose the 12 Apostles, it's God that gives the gifts not men.

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ZeroCarbChick, 23 hours ago

Paula White is NOT a pastor. Can we all just cut the crap. She needs to read her Bible and stop being wicked.

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BlueAero, 1 day ago

Paula White is a demon-filled false prophet. Part of NAR and supporter of antichrist. OAN - sorry- having to unsubscribe with your false promotion of the demonic dominionists.

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chesval, just now

Paula White Cain's apostate history has influenced Trump in a negative way, what with her "Word of Faith" charismatic, dominionist, ecumenical, interfaith, universalist, astral projection heresies. Plus her multiple divorces & re-marriages. Just see these posts for proof:

  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2021/07/04/john-macarthur-a-bad-sign-paula-white-at-donald-trumps-inauguration-and-other-prosperity-gospel-false-teachers-like-joel-osteen/
  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2020/09/26/prosperity-preachers-are-total-liars/
  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2020/03/13/southern-baptist-robert-jeffress-has/
  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2019/11/02/word-of-faith-prosperity-preacher-paula/
  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2019/10/23/chris-rosebrough-of-fighting-for-faith-2/
  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2019/07/12/fighting-for-faith-apostate-paula/
  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2019/05/14/paula-white-transfers-church-leadership/
  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2018/08/06/trumps-dear-friend-spiritual-adviser/
  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2018/05/18/paula-white-taking-care-of-trumps-soul/
  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2018/01/09/first-fruits-twistedapostasy-alert/
  • https://ratherexposethem.org/2015/05/16/paula-white-marries-for-third-time/

Genocidal Persecution: 13 Christians Killed Every Day Because of Their Faith

BY AMY MEK

SEE: https://rairfoundation.com/genocidal-persecution-13-christians-killed-every-day-because-of-their-faith/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

More than 340 million Christians live in places where they experience high levels of persecution just for following Jesus. 

It is crucial this Christmas to take a moment to remember the millions of persecuted Christians around the world. More than 340 million Christians live in places where they experience high levels of persecution just for following Jesus. That’s 1 in 8 believers worldwide.

Each year the human rights organization, Open Doors, releases a report that ranks the top 50 countries where Christians are most persecuted for their faith. In addition to the information, they supply readers with how to pray for each country.

The majority of countries listed in this year’s report are either Muslim majority or have sizable Muslim populations. This year, the top 10 worst persecutors are relatively unchanged. After North Korea is Afghanistan, followed by Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Eritrea, Yemen, Iran, Nigeria, and India.

Nigeria entered the top 10 for the first time after maxing out Open Doors’ metric for violence. With Africa’s largest Christian population, the nation ranks No. 9 overall but is second behind only Pakistan in terms of violence and ranks No. 1 in the number of Christians killed for reasons related to their faith.

Sudan left the top 10 for the first time in six years after abolishing the death penalty for apostasy and guaranteeing freedom of religion in its new Constitution after three decades of Islamic Law. Yet, it remains number 13 on the list. Open Doors researchers noted that Christians from Muslim backgrounds still face attacks, ostracization, and discrimination from their families and communities, while Christian women face sexual violence.

13 Christians Killed Every Day Because Of Their Faith

The genocidal levels of persecution are staggering. According to the report, 13 Christians worldwide are killed every day because of their faith. Each day 12 churches or Christian buildings are attacked, and 12 Christians are unjustly arrested or imprisoned, while another five are abducted.

The report states 309 million Christians live in places with “very high” or “extreme” levels of persecution. That’s up 260 million from those accounted for last year. Sadly, the number of persecuted Christians continues to grow year after year.

Why The Increase of Persecution

Open Doors identified three main trends driving last year’s increase:

  • “COVID-19 acted as a catalyst for religious persecution through relief discrimination, forced conversion, and as justification for increasing surveillance and censorship.”
  • “Extremist attacks opportunistically spread further throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, from Nigeria and Cameroon to Burkina Faso, Mali, and beyond.”
  • Chinese censorship systems continue to propagate and spread to emerging surveillance states.”
Hope

You might think the World Watch List is all about oppression…But the [list] is really all about resilience,” stated David Curry, president, and CEO of Open Doors USA, introducing the report released today.

“The numbers of God’s people who are suffering should mean the Church is dying, that Christians are keeping quiet, losing their faith.” But, he continued with a quote from the prophet Isaiah and said that’s not what’s happening “as they make their way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isa. 43:19, ESV).

“When our sisters and brothers are persecuted for their faith, and they still choose Jesus, the Living Water—this is a miracle in front of our eyes,” declared Curry.

See the complete 2021 World Watch List here. As you read through it, they request that you consider the words of 1 Corinthians 12:26: “If one part [of the Body of Christ] suffers, every part suffers with it.” So pray through this year’s report and let it move your heart. Learn how the Body of Christ is hurting and how they are finding joy in Him even amid the pain. And learn how, in Jesus, we are one Church, one Family.

International Companies Teaming Up to Normalize Digital Health Passports with CCP Affiliated Partners

BY THE NATIONAL PULSE

SEE: https://americanfaith.com/international-companies-teaming-up-to-normalize-digital-health-passports-with-ccp-affiliated-partners/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

A plethora of major national and international companies are teaming up to normalize digital health passports, hinting at a requirement for future travel. At least one coalition is already placing America’s personal health and medical data at risk of use by the Chinese Communist Party, The National Pulse can reveal.

The Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) charter describes itself as a “coalition of public and private organizations committed to empowering individuals with access to verifiable clinical information.”

In reality, the initiative is led by the Mitre Corporation out of Mclean, Virginia, just a minutes drive away from the headquarters of America’s Central Intelligence Agency. Mitre predominantly works for and with government agencies such as the U.S. military, NATO, Federal Aviation Authority, and the Centers for Disease Control.

Part of Mitre’s development of VCI is focused on “trustworthy and verifiable” vaccination records in both digital and paper formats, seeking to make all personal medical and health data compatible with digital wallets or a QR code.

Security Concerns.

The VCI website currently names around 350 signed-up partners including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, the Mayo Clinic, Walgreens, Walmart, a number of colleges, as well as the States of Colorado, California, and New York.

Part of the SMART Health Card development by VCI expressly states that the member’s intentions are to “improve [the] privacy and security of patient information”. Questions will be raised about such intent given those associated with the VCI coalition and their proximity to groups like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The Commons Project, for example, is one of the main VCI member groups that could jeopardize the safety of digital global health and medical data. Three different board members and trustees of The Common’s Project operate businesses in China, leaving them susceptible to the country’s National Intelligence Law which demands:

“All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.”

Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all recently partnered with the CCP on technological endeavors, including tailored censorship, and even entire operating systems created to limit the abilities of Chinese citizens to freely search the web.

While members of Joe Biden’s government already openly support data-sharing with the Chinese Communist Party, the development and support of SMART Health Cards could risk every single medical and personal data point from Americans and other sovereign citizens being turned over to Chinese authorities.

Earlier this year, data held by the Chinese Communist Party leaked, revealing details on almost 700 Americans, some of whom were as young as three years old. The data in this particular leak contained full names, birth dates, and passport numbers.

Groups like VCI, The Commons Project, and the national governments and health agencies working with them to develop SMART Health Cards hold far more detailed data on their users. Individuals can upload all of their personal vital medical information to the cards, all of which can be accessed and used by the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Military, and anything else the leadership of China wants.

China is also accused of using reverse genetics to build lethal bioweapons. Whistleblowers have come forward noting that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely due to a bioweapon program created in Chinese labs through the use of practices like reverse genetics.

Dozens of news articles have been promoting the idea of digital vaccination cards in recent months, with European Union member states already implementing the scheme.

Prior to being resigning from office over a number of sexual assault allegations, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo oversaw the deployment of the ‘Excelsior Pass’ in the state.

Excelsior is based on the same SMART Health platform and is already being used by American Airlines.

“Excelsior Pass has enabled New Yorkers to get back to the people and things they love, helping drive our economic recovery in the process,” Cuomo said in August. By December, New York would become one of the nation’s hotbeds for coronavirus (Omicron) cases.

Merry Christmas!

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/12/merry-christmas-10;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Merry Christmas to all those Christians who are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ today.

One of the fundamental good ideas of Christianity is summed up in the most famous of New Testament passages: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) That is, despite all appearances to the contrary, God really does love the world. This love of God for the world, in the mystery of things, is expressed through the suffering of the cross, which is then followed by the resurrection. The Christians who are suffering persecution for their faith today in Nigeria, and Pakistan, and Iraq, and Egypt, and Iran, and other Muslim countries are walking the way of the cross, confident that God does indeed love the world and so will not leave them to carry the cross without eventually bringing them to the resurrection.

Neither they nor we, however, can afford to be quietist and simply to hope that one day their suffering will all be redeemed. It is up to us to call attention to their suffering and to try to move the conscience of the world to act to relieve their suffering now and prevent it from recurring in the future. This is an uphill battle because even as Islamic jihadists attack Christians with unremitting fury, we see the world, including Christian authorities in the West, yawning and remaining indifferent. Weak and cowardly Christian leaders say we must not talk about all this, for fear of “provoking” Muslims and harming a chimerical and fruitless (at best) Muslim/Christian “dialogue.” Those who dare anyway to speak out about the persecution of Christians that the persecutors justify by invoking the Qur’an and Sunnah are vilified, demonized, and silenced as “bigots” and “Islamophobes.” Even some Christians do this to their fellow Christians who speak unwelcome truths on these matters.

So here is something to remember this Christmas: if you are a free human being, whether or not you are Christian, those Christians who are being persecuted in the Islamic world are standing in your place. The jihadis would just as soon attack you as well, and will eventually if they get the chance. Remember that the Islamic jihadis have you on their list. You may not be a Christian. You may not be a Jew. You may not be a Hindu. You may not be a Buddhist. You may not wish to pay attention to the jihad at all. But jihad is universal and relentless. And you are on its list.

So this Christmas, may all of us whose conversion, subjugation, or death is envisioned by the adherents of Sharia stand together. Let us stand together as Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, secularists, what have you, and stand up against those who would kill us or subject us to institutionalized discrimination and harassment (at best) because they find our beliefs offensive.

For be assured: if we do not stand together, they will prevail. And if they prevail, then all the richest manifestations of the unfettered human spirit, from Hagia Sophia to the temple of mausoleums of Timbuktu, from the works of Socrates and Aristotle to those of Confucius and Moses Maimonides and Dante Alighieri and Winston Churchill and Oriana Fallaci, will be trampled into the mud, destroyed, exploded, ruined, effaced. We will all be the poorer. Our children will be the poorer.

It is time, more than ever, to fight for our freedom, and for our very lives.

Merry Christmas!

___________________________________________________________________

Trump Says 'Everybody Loves Christmas,' Including Muslims, But an Imam Disagrees

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/12/25/trump-says-everybody-loves-christmas-including-muslims-but-an-imam-disagrees-n1544370;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

In an interview with Mike Huckabee last week, Donald Trump spoke about his efforts to get store clerks to say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays,” and remarked: “Whether you’re Muslim, whether you’re Christian, whether you’re Jewish, everyone loves Christmas.” In a Friday sermon on December 17, however, a popular imam in Canada, Younus Kathrada, expressed a decidedly different view of how Muslims should view Christmas. Unfortunately, Kathrada is not an outlier.

Kathrada observed:

Yes, it’s Christmas season, so many people ask: “Why should I not congratulate the people on this occasion?” There is no such thing as an innocent congratulation. No! Would you congratulate a fornicator? Would you congratulate a murderer? Obviously not! Would you congratulate a pedophile? Obviously not! So then how can you congratulate people for insulting Allah? Where is your love for your creator, when you approve of people insulting Allah? It is a major sin, and it is disbelief. O Allah, give strength to Islam and the Muslims, humiliate the infidels and the polytheists, destroy the enemies of religion, annihilate the heretics and the atheists. O Allah, support those who wage jihad for your sake everywhere.

Last Christmas, Ahmad Kulab of the Department for Training of Preachers in Hamas’ Ministry of Religious Endowments, declared: “We are not allowed to congratulate the Christians on their holidays. Christians must [keep] the celebration of their holidays to their homes, their houses of worship, and their churches.”

Echoing Kathrada’s words, he added: “Are we supposed to congratulate the Christians for their denial of Allah?…This culture has entered our Muslim countries and erases Islamic identity and faith. It changes the behavior of our children and contaminates their immaculate faith. In addition, the Holy Quran encourages us to dissent against the dwellers of Hellfire, the Jews and the Christians.”

Even Santa was verboten:

Santa Claus is a witty and jolly personality who hands out sweets and presents in order to influence people. This image of Santa Claus constitutes an invasion of Muslim countries, because they want to ingrain the image of Santa Claus [among Muslim]. The character of Santa Claus glorifies prominent Christians, monks who used to propagate the Holy Trinity and Christianity among Roman youth, giving out presents, sweets, and so on….If [a Christian] says to me: “Happy holidays!,” I can reply with something general, and say: “May you be happy, too.” But I say that we do not even have to say this. Even if they congratulate us, we do not have to answer them. We can remain silent. That is better for us, in order to avoid falling into sin, as the Islamic scholars said.

Zakir Naik, an Islamic preacher, and apologist who is renowned among Muslims worldwide agreed: “When you are wishing Merry Christmas to them, you are agreeing that he is the son of God and that is Shirk [sin]. Because they believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God….Is saying Merry Christmas wrong? I am telling you it is wrong. It is 100% wrong according to me….If you don’t know what Christmas stands for and happen to wish someone, Allah may forgive you. If you drink alcohol, mistaking it for Pepsi, Allah may forgive you. But if you are doing it to build a relationship after knowing what Christmas stands for, you are building your place in Jahannam [Hell].” A Muslim cleric in Germany put it more succinctly: “Christmas is an insult to Allah!”

These teachings spread worldwide. Last Christmas in Indonesia, an Islamic preacher, Imam Syuhada Al Iskandar Binmadhi, circulated a poster attributing various natural disasters to the fact that some Indonesians were celebrating the Christian holy day: “Why are there so many natural disasters after Christmas?” Also last Christmas in France, a young Muslim named Nabil celebrated Christmas with his family and happily posted photos of the celebrations online. Soon after the photos went up, a classmate contacted Nabil and told him he was “shocked” that he had celebrated Christmas. His schoolmate added a threat: “I’ll show you what a real Arab is.”

The two agreed to meet to talk it over, but as Nabil was on his way, he was attacked and beaten by five men. They warned him not to go to the police or they would give him even worse. He went to the police anyway; at a hearing, his classmate explained his behavior in simple terms: “It is not Muslim to celebrate Christmas.”

Trump’s more generous vision of Muslims’ view of Christmas is unfortunately not shared by all too many Muslims worldwide. Christians in many Muslim countries are hoping that Christmas day will pass quietly, without violence from those who believe that the day is a manifestation of sin and thus angers Allah. We can only hope.

_____________________________________________________________

Trump Christmas Is A Complete Joke 

 

 

$100+BILLION IN LOST “COVID RELIEF” TO FRAUD BEING INVESTIGATED BY THE SECRET SERVICE-REAL AMERICA’S Dan Ball W/ Rep. Pat Fallon: Stolen COVID Relief Funds?

OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE Chair Carolyn B. Maloney's Opening Statement: Improving Government Accountability and Transparency; MAY 3, 2021:

WHAT DID SHE DO ALL THIS TIME? ALL WORDS AND NO ACTION, EXCEPT INCREASING THE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN MONETARY "COVID RELIEF":

SEE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSlyao4qkUFiPqghptHtZA

Chairwoman Maloney Floor Remarks on H.R. 266:

MALONEY: "I PROMISE I WILL WATCH (THE EXTRA) $60 BILLION LIKE A HAWK"

Allison Marie Baver RUINED Her Life For $10 MILLION

Utah speedskater Allison Baver indicted, accused of falsely obtaining bailout money

DHS Says COVID Relief Loan Fraud Is Widespread, With Huge Case In Chicago Area

The feds let us in Wednesday on how they are cracking down on those who stole from the government, and also giving us insight on one of the largest COVID fraud schemes in the country – operating in Chicago. CBS 2's Jermont Terry reports.

 

Kamala Harris Claims She Would Get Better Media Coverage If She Were a White Man

Kilmeade Calls Kamala Harris a ‘Complaintaholic Who Just Wants to Be Anointed President’

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/12/kamala-harris-claims-she-would-get-better-media-coverage-if-she-were-a-white-man;

AND: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/12/23/kamala-harris-claims-she-would-get-better-media-coverage-if-she-were-a-white-man-n1544051

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

When even that indefatigable cheerleader for the hard Left, the New York Times, admits that a Leftist politician is in trouble, you can be sure that the trouble is very deep. The Times’ lengthy exploration of “the frustrations of Kamala Harris” was sympathetic, but the article’s subtitle summed up the crisis Harris is experiencing: The vice president’s allies are increasingly concerned that President Biden relied on her to win but does not need her to govern.” Of course, the people who are running things don’t need Old Joe to govern, either, but that’s another story. Harris, in any case, has a ready explanation for why she is failing at one of the easiest jobs in the world: racism, of course. Come on, man! What else could it be?

Harris’ explanation for her failings and the concomitant negative coverage she has received is buried in the thirteenth paragraph of the Times article, and even there it is tossed off casually: “Ms. Harris has privately told her allies that the news coverage of her would be different if she were any of her 48 predecessors, all of whom were white and male.”

This is exactly the explanation that will fly with much of the vice president’s base, who see themselves as perpetually victimized in this inveterately “white supremacist” country. That’s what the Left’s hysterical propaganda about “systemic racism” is all about: anytime a “person of color” such as Harris fails, she or he has a ready means to deflect responsibility onto someone else, that is, onto everyone’s favorite whipping boy, the white man.

And so now if Harris were “any of her 48 predecessors” as vice president, she says she would be receiving more favorable news coverage because if anything is true of the far-Left propaganda organs known as the mainstream media, it is that they are so systemically racist that can always be counted on to be kinder to a white male than to a female person of color.

Thus if Harris were Mike Pence or Dick Cheney, or Dan Quayle, or Spiro Agnew or Richard M. Nixon, she would be getting better press coverage now. If she were tainted by connection to Trump, or linked to the Iraq war or to corrupt dealings or Watergate, or thought of as an imbecile, the media would be giving her a pass right now, if only she were a white male. After all, the media never whispered a negative word about those vice presidents, or other luminaries who held the nation’s second spot, did they? They had the magic key: they were white men.

It’s hard to imagine that Kamala Harris actually believes this. Was she asleep for the first 56 years of her life? Did she not witness the staggeringly negative coverage those men and others got, which demonstrated that white men do not get and never have gotten a pass in the media?

Related: Kamala’s Response to the Question of Whether She Feels Underused Might Not Be What You’d Expect

Harris didn’t limit her bitter comparison to her immediate predecessors, either. Does she think that if John C. Breckinridge, who was vice president from 1857 to 1861 and then became a Confederate general, were suddenly to reappear in these hypersensitive times, that he would get more favorable coverage as a “racist” and “white supremacist” than she is getting now? There is no end to the absurdities that her comment leads to, but the primary example of how ridiculous the vice president is in saying this is close at hand. Has the vice president forgotten about a certain Donald J. Trump, by all accounts a white man, and the recipient of the most viciously negative media coverage in the history of the United States?

Harris almost certainly knows that her comment is achingly stupid. But she also knows that it’s good politics, from her vantage point, to throw red meat to the blue rubes, constantly reinforcing the sense of grievance and entitlement that the Democrat party so carefully cultivates and keeping alive a red flame of bitterness and anger that reliably gets Democrats elected. Without “systemic racism,” where would the Democrat party be today? Without its false claims of deep structural inequalities in the American system, no one would be moved to vote for an anti-American socialist party that wants to plunder Americans for the benefit of a globalist oligarchy.

Donald Trump campaigned on the slogan “Make America Great Again,” and worked to do so while he was president. Kamala Harris, by contrast, has only been elected to the various offices she has won by campaigning on the premise that America is actually a terrible place, full of racism and inequality, such that even when a little brown girl grows up to be vice president of the United States, there is the White Man again, making sure she cannot succeed.

It’s vicious mythology, and if it isn’t checked, it’s going to do nothing less than destroy this nation.

 

 

 

Anti-2nd Amendment Jurisdictions Routinely Ignore the Law of the Land ~ VIDEO

USA Flag Cracked Concrete Constitution Crisis Goverment iStock-Paul Campbell 977454982

BY ROGER KATZ

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2021/12/anti-2nd-amendment-jurisdictions-routinely-ignore-law-of-the-land;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- To both proponents of the Second Amendment and its detractors, Heller is known for its salient holding: that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right unconnected with one’s service in a militia. No one has any doubt about that holding whether one accepts the truth of it or not.

It is the central holding of Heller and it is a broad ruling; no question about it. This is as it was always meant to be, and the Heller majority opinion says this clearly, succinctly, and categorically. And the Court meant for this holding to have universal application—applicable to every jurisdiction in the Country.

Moreover, contrary to what some say or wish to believe, this central holding of Heller is consonant and consistent with the plain meaning of the language of the Second Amendment. The language of the Amendment does nothing more than codify a fundamental, unalienable, illimitable, immutable, natural right that exists intrinsically in every person. The one odd thing about the Heller case is that the High Court would have to point this out at all.

Even so—

All too many Courts blithely ignore Heller’s holding notwithstanding they are all dutybound to be mindful of and rigorously adhere to the import of it when reviewing government actions that target it.

The implication of Heller cuts across and into all government actions directed against the application of the right embodied in the Second Amendment.

These Anti-Second Amendment Courts merely rubberstamp unconstitutional government actions when they should be striking down government actions that, on their face, infringe the core of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

But there are other holdings in Heller that Anti-Second Amendment proponents and other “neutral” Americans miss.

Unlike Heller’s paramount and broad holding pertaining to the universal nature of the right of the people to keep and bear arms as an individual rather than as a mere collective right, there are other seemingly “narrow” holdings in Heller.

These additional holdings address the District of Columbia’s actions concerning handguns and the right of the people to have immediate access to them in one’s own home, for the purpose of self-defense.

The New Jersey gun bill, S. 3757, if enacted, would preclude a gun owner’s immediate access to a firearm for self-defense in the gun owner’s own home. On its face, NJ S.B. 3757 mirrors the major import and purport of the D.C. law that the Heller Court struck down as unconstitutional. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, said this:

“In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.”

But is this seeming narrow holding, directed as it is to the District of Columbia, truly meant to be confined only to the District? Or, is it a broad-based, universal holding, applicable across the board, to every jurisdiction in the Land even as the High Court addressed the language of a law enacted by the District of Columbia that could only apply to the District?

Assume for purpose of argument that this holding is meant to be confined to D.C. This isn’t to suggest that, if the New Jersey’s gun bill were enacted and someone were to challenge its constitutionality on appeal, the High Court would find the New Jersey law to be constitutional when the District’s law wasn’t.

With the conservative wing in the majority, New Jersey’s gun bill, if enacted, would be summarily struck down, as patently illegal. No question about it.

But who knows if the High Court would ever hear the case? Likely it wouldn’t, presumably because the New Jersey gun bill is similar to the D.C. law that was struck down. The New Jersey Legislature knows this. Very few cases make it to the U.S. Supreme Court for review.

The New Jersey bill, as law, would be inconsistent with the D.C. gun bill but would be enforced by New Jersey anyway, unless or until it was struck down.

Consider longstanding unconstitutional gun laws such as New York’s notorious “Safe Act”—which, itself, merely expands on unconstitutional laws going back decades. And the New York Legislature still expands upon the “Safe Act” slowly and inexorably engulfing and dissolving the whole of the Second Amendment.

The “Safe Act” is, as we have expressly said, not the finalization of the work of Anti-Second Amendment zealots, but a work in progress, building upon the notorious, discriminatory Sullivan Act, enacted over one hundred and ten years ago.

And while there have been challenges to New York’s gun laws through the century, following upon enactment of the Sullivan Act of 1911, look how long it took for the U.S. Supreme Court to accept review of a major challenge to New York’s firearms’ licensing scheme. The case is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., vs. Petitioners vs. City Of New York, commonly referred to and known as the New York City Gun Transport case. That case was decided in 2020, and it did not meet expectations.

The liberal wing of the Court, along with the ostensibly conservative wing Chief Justice John Roberts—who, it seems, cajoled the Trump nominee Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh to go along with him, adding a crucial fifth vote—emasculated the Gun Transport case. Justices Thomas and Alito were justifiably outraged.

The High Court majority refused to review the case on the merits, thus allowing the massive, bloated, convoluted, confusing gun licensing edifice to remain intact.

How much more damage can Anti-Second jurisdictions and the Harris-Biden Administration do to the Second Amendment before a decision in Bruen is published? Even today, we can see the stirrings of unrest among the anti-Second Amendment proponents.

Using propaganda to focus the public’s attention anew on guns, the corrupt and senile messenger boy for the Marxists and Globalists is attempting to drum up public support for new assaults on the Second Amendment. Resurrecting the Sandy Hook Elementary School incident, Biden said, as reported by The Hill:

“‘As a nation, we owe all these families more than our prayers. We owe them action,’ Biden said in a video message released by the White House.

He said the Senate needed to quickly pass three House-passed bills, one to extend background checks, another to keep guns out of the hands of abusers and his Build Back Better act that includes a $5 billion investment in community violence prevention and intervention.

‘I know our politics are frustrating and can be frustrating and it’s particularly frustrating now. But we can’t give up hope, we can’t stop,’ Biden said.

The president mentioned the school shootings in Parkland, Fla., in 2018 and in Oxford, Mich., last week, adding that similar shootings occur in Black and brown communities every day.

The White House unveiled a fact sheet on Tuesday on the work the administration has done to combat gun violence, touting executive orders from the president to reduce the proliferation of ghost guns, which are untraceable guns assembled using parts bought online; regulate stabilizing braces used on firearms and help states enact red flag legislation, among other things.

It also noted that local governments have used funding from the American Rescue Plan, which Biden signed into law in March, towards community violence intervention and hiring more law enforcement officers.

When asked if there are any conversations about a filibuster carve-out to pursue gun legislation, a senior White House official didn’t comment directly.

‘I think the president and the direct to camera really speaks to this issue in an impactful way. He shares in the frustration with gun safety advocates regarding the lack of progress made in Congress, and he also talks about the progress made in the past,’ a senior White House official said, referring to the video released on Tuesday.

In the video, the president called Sandy Hook, which occurred during the Obama administration when he was vice president, ‘one of the saddest days we were in office. . . . We have to keep up the pressure.’”

This is more than just a veiled threat.

The Harris-Biden Administration is preparing a major assault on the Second Amendment, in part to deflect attention from Biden’s dismal poll numbers—hoping that most Americans will support a campaign to destroy the right of the people to keep and bear arms. But it is a dangerous gamble that can backfire. The Neo-Marxist and Neoliberal Globalists know this but figure they have no choice given the 2022 Midterm elections that they must prepare for.

The economy is in tatters. Foreign and Domestic policy is in complete disarray. Geopolitically, militarily, economically, socially, politically, the Country is in the throes of chaos. This is just as the Deep State Destructors of the Marxist/Globalist agenda intend, but they must convince the American public that the Nation is on the right path, “to build back better.”

One must wonder who dreamed up that imbecilic slogan. It sounds oddly like the slogan in the old Burger King commercial: “the bigger the burger the better the burger. . . .” And that is what the Destructors of our Nation and their puppets are doing: grinding our Country, its people, and our freedoms into hamburger meat.

About The Arbalest Quarrel:

Arbalest Group created `The Arbalest Quarrel’ website for a special purpose. That purpose is to educate the American public about recent Federal and State firearms control legislation. No other website, to our knowledge, provides as deep an analysis or as thorough an analysis. Arbalest Group offers this information free.

For more information, visit: www.arbalestquarrel.com.

Arbalest Quarrel

‘Tis the Season: US Presidents’ Observations About Christmas

BY NEWSMAX

SEE: https://americanfaith.com/tis-the-season-us-presidents-observations-about-christmas/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

For many of us, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas is special for old and young. As Charles Dickens once observed, “For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”

Several American presidents have made interesting observations about Christmas.

John Calvin Coolidge, our 30th president, was a man of few words. He noted, “Christmas is not a time nor season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.”

During World War II, on Christmas Eve 1943, our 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, gave an address to reassure the nation that we can hope for peace since Christmas marks the birth of the Prince of Peace. Said FDR: “I can say to you that at last, we may look forward into the future with real, substantial confidence that, however great the cost, ‘peace on Earth, goodwill toward men’ can be and will be realized and ensured.”

As I write this, I am looking at my dad’s edition of the pocket New Testament issued by the U.S. Army in 1942 (although dad served in the Navy). This mini-Bible included a forward by the commander-in-chief, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in which he wrote, “Throughout the centuries men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration.”

Somehow, it’s hard to picture today’s military issuing a copy of the Bible to the Armed Forces.

Meanwhile, on Dec. 24, 1945, on the first Christmas Eve since the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman described some of the events of the very first Christmas in Bethlehem.

Our 33rd president stated, “Let us not forget that the coming of the Saviour brought a time of long peace to the Roman World. It is, therefore, fitting for us to remember that the spirit of Christmas is the spirit of peace, of love, of charity to all men. From the manger of Bethlehem came a new appeal to the minds and hearts of men: ‘A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.'”

He went on to say that love is the answer to our world’s needs —and love is found in that baby in the manger: “In love, which is the very essence of the message of the Prince of Peace, the world would find a solution for all its ills. I do not believe there is one problem in this country or in the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

“The poets’ dream, the lesson of priest and patriarch and the prophets’ vision of a new heaven and a new earth, all are summed up in the message delivered in the Judean hills beside the Sea of Galilee. Would that the world would accept that message in this time of its greatest need!”

Just one example of a nugget to be found in that Sermon on the Mount of which Harry Truman speaks is the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Christ’s teaching has universal application and meaning to all mankind.

No wonder our third president, Thomas Jefferson, although not orthodox in his understanding of Christian doctrines, understood that no one taught morality better than Christ.

Jefferson said, “Of all the systems of morality ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.” (Letter to William Canby, September 18, 1813). Surely, the Golden Rule would be an example of that.

Our 34th president, Dwight Eisenhower noted in 1954, “This year, even as two thousand years ago when the Prince of Peace was born into the world, the drums of war are still. …  Mankind’s unquenchable hope for peace burns brighter than for many years.  … As I light the Nation’s Christmas tree, ‘God rest you … Let nothing you dismay.'”

Finally, Ronald Reagan, the 40th president, went further than many of his predecessors, rightly looking beyond Jesus’ moral teachings to the deeper and more essential point of His incarnation.

Reagan pointed out on December 24, 1983, “Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great teacher and philosopher. But to other millions of us, Jesus is much more. He is divine, living assurance that God so loved the world He gave us His only begotten Son so that by believing in Him and learning to love each other we could one day be together in paradise.”

Amen and Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, Biden-Style! DOJ Announces $110 Million Giveaway to Current and Former Prisoners

SEE: https://www.youtube.com/user/OJPOCOM

BY RED STATE

SEE: https://americanfaith.com/merry-christmas-biden-style-doj-announces-110-million-giveaway-to-current-and-former-prisoners/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

#BidenPriorities.

You know ’em when you see ’em. Open borders. Killing oil pipelines. Mad dashes from Afghanistan. Massive, socialist wealth redistribution plans. Lying when his lips are moving. And now, handing out 110 million taxpayer dollars to “currently and formerly incarcerated individuals.” What on earth for, you ask?

Because when you’re Joe Biden, that’s the kind of stuff you do.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) on Wednesday announced “awards” totaling more than $110.7 million to “reduce recidivism and support adults and youth returning to their communities after confinement.”

“We must help them reunite with their families, find a place to live, obtain health care services,” and stuff said OJP.

As reported by Breaking 911, OJP’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), National Institute of Justice (NIJ), and Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) are “awarding grants to jurisdictions, non-profit organizations, research institutions, and other agencies in support of evidence-based approaches to reintegrate formerly incarcerated individuals into communities.”

No word on how much money the Biden Justice Department is “awarding” to individuals and families forever affected by violent crimes committed by any of the “award recipients.”

Here’s Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, as transcribed by Breaking 911:

We are committed to ensuring that formerly incarcerated individuals get the treatment, training, and support they need after returning to their communities.

We must help them reunite with their families, find a place to live, obtain health care services and behavioral health support, get an education and enter the workforce.

These resources are critical to successful reintegration and promote the health and safety of our communities.

You know what else is “critical to promoting the health and safety of our communities,” Ms. Gupta? Ending the ridiculous support for cashless bail, treating prison cell doors like revolving doors, and releasing repeat offenders multiple times until they commit horrific crimes. (See: “Waukesha.”)

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Amy L. Solomon for OJP parroted the words of Gupta:

These resources — and investments being made by agencies across the federal government — will help catalyze and bolster systemic solutions to address the substantial reentry needs felt by hundreds of thousands of people across the nation.

If we truly believe in second chances and the power of redemption, we must provide those who leave our jails, prisons and confinement facilities with the tools and support to assume a positive and productive role in our society.

As announced by the OJP website (link, above) all awards will be made “as soon as possible.”

All FY 2021 grants will be made as soon as possible on a rolling basis and no later than December 31, 2021. Applicants not receiving a FY 2021 award, for which they competitively applied, will be notified as soon as possible, but no later than December 31.

Among the awards:

More than $6.5 million through its FY 2021 Second Chance Act Pay for Success Initiative. This program provides funding for state, local and tribal governments to enhance or implement performance-based and outcomes-based contracts with reentry, permanent supportive housing or recovery housing providers to reduce recidivism, and address the substance use disorders that some formerly incarcerated people experience.

More than $26.3 million through its FY 2021 Second Chance Act: Adult Reentry Education, Employment, Treatment and Recovery Program. This program is designed to improve correctional educational and employment services for incarcerated populations and to improve treatment services for individuals with substance use disorders.

More than $3.5 million through its FY 2021 Swift, Certain, and Fair Supervision Program: Applying the Principles Behind Project HOPE. This program provides funding to state, local and Tribal community supervision agencies to develop and test new or enhanced applications of the swift, certain and fair principles of intervention to reduce recidivism and improve outcomes for people under community supervision.

$3.4 million through the FY 2021 Implementing the PREA Standards, Protecting Inmates, and Safeguarding Communities Program. This program provides funding for projects designed to prevent, detect and respond to sexual abuse and sexual harassment in confinement facilities and to achieve and maintain compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act standards.

Here’s the thing.

I’m not suggesting programs should not be in place to help convicted criminals reintegrate into society. Those with a desire to reintegrate and who demonstrate that desire, in particular.

However, often programs like this for habitual repeat offenders of violent crimes are not dissimilar to hapless Kamala Harris trotting off to the Northern Triangle (once) in search of the “root causes” of illegal immigration while the purposely created Biden Border Crisis™ continues unabated.

Here’s the other thing.

This is yet another quintessential example of disingenuous liberalism. Liberals have never been about solutions. Particularly, solutions to problems they claim to want to fix. Liberalism has always been about symbolism over substance. Liberalism has always been about exploitation, pandering, and bald-faced lying. Liberalism has always been about the ballot box over everything else.

Understand “all of the above” — and you understand the mindset of the American liberal.

A genuine Merry Christmas, RedStaters. Enjoy those you love.

PATRIOT NURSE ON CENSORSHIP~You Deserve to Know: Here’s What YT is doing to Us!

In this video, Patriot Nurse discusses the nature of the next phase of the freedom fight. We are in a battle with machine learning and artificial intelligence, exactly like the ones reading and filtering this description into desirable and undesirable categories. Online Course: http://bit.ly/3qvDJeg Paypal: https://bit.ly/39hs23m Patreon: https://bit.ly/2D9IIfJ Subscribestar: https://bit.ly/2RESD4S Bitcoin: 3FxJWbSL9nFSMRgymSsicniPxTPd26Kuvj Ethereum: 0x5134d6f2700Fa21cEcE6ED1ABDE240b3B320bDDd Litecoin: MC1qkabuDXGCrjNcXwxvz5qgtsFGVpXYKF

New York politicians push bill allowing governor to indefinitely detain the unvaccinated on a whim

Image: New York politicians push bill allowing governor to indefinitely detain the unvaccinated on a whim

BY ETHAN HUFF

SEE: https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-12-23-new-york-bill-governor-indefinite-detention-unvaccinated.html;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

(Natural News) When they reconvene on Jan. 5, 2022, the New York Senate and Assembly could pass a bill that would allow Gov. Kathy Hochul to detain “cases, contacts, carriers, or anyone suspected of presenting a ‘significant threat to public health'” – meaning the “unvaccinated.”

Bill A416 would allow Hochul near-unlimited power to whimsically target whomever she pleases for pretty much any reason at all, and have her targets hauled off to “Camp Covid” for cleansing and reeducation.

According to reports, the legislation is a “serious risk to the basic liberties of all Americans in the state of New York, including their right to choose whether or not to receive medical treatment and vaccinations related to thus far undetermined contagious diseases.”

In other words, it would not be limited just to the Fauci Flu. Any new disease or public health threat, whether real or imagined, could be used as cover to remove and detain individuals or groups of people through a single order.

All Hochul needs is the individual or group’s name along with “reasonably specific descriptions of the individuals or groups.” From there, the department is free to decide where to put the targets, including at a medical facility or some other facility that they “deem appropriate.”

“The language is purposefully vague,” writes Kay Smythe for The National Pulse.

If Bill A416 passes, any person in New York could be forced at gunpoint by the government to get vaccinated or take drugs

While Bill A416 states that no one shall be held for longer than 60 days at a time, there is a caveat in place to override that in the event of a court order.

“After 60 days, the court is allowed an additional 90 days to consider the detention of an individual, a cycle that can last indefinitely per the opinion of the department,” Smythe explains.

The bill goes on to state that any individual who has been “exposed to or infected by a contagious disease … complete an appropriate, prescribed course of treatment, preventive medication or vaccination.”

The government of New York, in essence, would be allowed to detain and forcibly medicate anyone they wish, under the bill’s provisions. Even someone who is merely “potentially” a threat, as Hochul or some other bureaucrat defines the word “threat,” could be detained and force-vaccinated.

Hochul has already indicated that she is not a friend of health freedom. Immediately after being installed as Andrew Cuomo’s replacement, she announced that any state employee who is fired for refusing the jabs will not be eligible for unemployment insurance.

Now, Hochul is apparently salivating over the prospect of being able to wave her scepter and have unvaccinated New Yorkers forcibly detained, strapped down, injected with who even knows what, and held in a concentration camp for however long the system decides is necessary to eradicate a “disease.”

Even worse is the pre-crime elements to Bill A416, which would allow for a preemptive strike against someone believed to have the capacity to “pose a threat in the future, such as those refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccination.”

An unvaccinated person could be completely healthy – healthier, in fact, than a vaccinated person – and yet be deemed a potential future threat by the department. Then that unvaccinated person could be hauled off to Camp Covid and possibly never released.

“There is no explicit reference to what types of contagious diseases qualify a person to be removed from public life, detained in a facility, and forced into medical treatment and vaccination,” Smythe further explained.

“Anyone can technically be held in isolation until they are deemed non-contagious, which would also raise questions over whether those carrying HIV / AIDS could be released back into society.”

More related news can be found at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

TheNationalPulse.com

NaturalNews.com

CNN Doctor Wants Biden to Get More Authoritarian to Fight Covid

TOTALITARIAN WANTS TO BRING CHINESE COMMUNIST MANDATES TO  UNVACCINATED AMERICANS; ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE EXEMPT

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/12/23/cnn-doctor-wants-biden-to-go-further-to-restrict-the-activities-of-the-unvaccinated-n1543948;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Yet more evidence came Wednesday that the COVID hysteria is bringing out the inner totalitarian in every Leftist: Dr. Leana Wen, who enjoys exalted status among the hysterics as a CNN medical analyst (she was previously a Baltimore commissioner of health and president of Planned Parenthood), called upon Old Joe Biden to violate the civil liberties of millions of Americans by placing further restrictions on the unjabbed — for the safety of us all, of course.

“I think what we will see with Omicron is a very large number of infections due to Covid-19,” Wen remarked sagely. This isn’t really news: as Stephen Green has noted, Richard Friedland, the head of the largest health provider in South Africa, where the omicron variant originated, said that the deadly new variant that is going to kill us all every day and twice on Sunday really isn’t that big a deal: “I actually think,” Friedland said, “there is a silver lining here and this may signal the end of COVID-19, with it attenuating itself to such an extent that it’s highly contagious, but doesn’t cause severe disease.”

Wen showed no awareness of the fact that omicron “doesn’t cause severe disease”; she was in full the-sky-is-falling-we’re-all-gonna-die mode. Wen said: “The question, though, is are we going to see a decoupling of infections with hospitalizations and death? That would be ideal, the entire point of vaccination, the main point of vaccination, I should say, is to reduce severe illness. And so, if we’re able to avoid overwhelming our health care systems, that would be the goal.”

Well, up until recently, we assumed that the entire point of vaccination was actually to make us immune from the disease, the way vaccines for other diseases have worked. Only after vaccinated people started getting COVID did we hear that the vaccines actually just make one’s bout with COVID much less severe than it would have been otherwise, which, since it is entirely unproven and unprovable, is more of a religious dogma than a scientific finding.

Wen is itching for more totalitarianism: “I do have a lot of concern about what happens to parts of this country, for example, that have very low vaccination rates. This is another reason why I think President Biden’s message yesterday was the right one in some way — in saying vaccinated people should move on with their lives with precautions. But I wish that he would go further to restrict the activities of the unvaccinated because they are the ones who are still spreading Covid and prolonging the pandemic for all of us.”

Related: Omicron May Be Dud, But It Still Made Things Worse for Biden

No matter how many times we are told that the unvaccinated are “still spreading COVID and prolonging the pandemic for all of us,” it never makes any sense. Never before in history has there been a vaccine whose efficacy was affected by those who did not receive it. If those who are unvaccinated can give COVID to the vaccinated, then what good is the vaccine? But instead of coming to this common-sense conclusion, Wen opted to call for new restrictions on the unvaccinated.

We all know such restrictions are in the offing. As the COVID hysteria continues, Old Joe Biden’s handlers will almost certainly try to give the appearance that he is in command and is taking decisive action by issuing more vaccine mandates. As Biden himself admitted on Wednesday, “Nothing’s been good enough” in fighting the pandemic. The ominous edge of his admission was unmistakable. Nothing’s been good enough, but that doesn’t mean that his handlers are going to step back and reconsider the efficacy of their draconian restrictions. Instead, for Biden’s handlers, the fact that nothing has been good enough just means that they have to shut down America’s social life and economy even further and restrict the activities of Americans even more than they have done up to now. Then, when the virus inevitably runs its course, they can point to their authoritarian measures and claim the credit for defeating the pandemic.

Meanwhile, all manner of negative precedents will have been set regarding the power of the federal government to override the Constitutional freedoms of Americans in order to deal with a public health crisis, but they will be buried in the establishment media under all the Pravdaesque coverage of Old Joe as a true leader, a fearless man of action who faced down the deadliest of viruses. If he can continue to pretend to be president until 2024, it might even earn him a renomination. And then we’ll be really in for it.

WHO Says COVID Vaccine Boosters Will Likely Prolong the Pandemic

BY STACEY LENNOX

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/12/23/who-says-covid-vaccine-boosters-will-likely-prolong-the-pandemic-n1543903;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

What happens when Dr. Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization (WHO) disagree about vaccines? Maybe it’s a sign we can get back to legitimate scientific debate.

During a news briefing, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “Blanket booster programs are likely to prolong the pandemic, rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate.” He appeared to agree with dissident doctors and censored scientists when he said, “No country can boost its way out of the pandemic.”

All of a sudden, the WHO Director-General sounds more like Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, who have been asserting you can’t vaccinate your way out of a pandemic for months. The WHO statements also echo the advice of authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. They believe we should concentrate on giving vaccines to the elderly and at-risk around the globe to reduce severe illness and death before vaccinating and boosting children and healthy younger adults.

Tedros made his comments after both Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins tacitly acknowledged recovered immunity’s protective effects. In recent press appearances, the NIH leaders credited broad exposure to the delta variant in South Africa as one of the factors explaining omicron’s low rates of severe disease. These statements mirror the thoughts of other researchers, like Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard, who talked about layered immunity to SARS-Cov-2. In an interview, Mina explained how it would build through numerous exposures:

I’ve always said that we’re going to age out of this virus. People are going to keep getting exposed. And whether it’s to Delta or to a variant in five months from now, every time you or I or anyone else gets exposed — they’re really building up a decent cushion of immunity with each of those exposures … So it’s only a matter of time before we actually have not only vaccine-derived immunity but natural infection-derived immunity, too.

When you start coupling all that together, you can picture it kind of like a sandwich, just continuing to stack up. Then we can start to say, “okay, now, you know, even if the virus changes a bit, I’ve built up so much protection already. I’ve got all these antibodies that not only recognize the spike proteins from the virus, which is what we see with the vaccines, but I’ve now been exposed three times.”

More than 200 million Americans have already experienced a COVID infection, according to CDC disease burden estimates. Almost 205 million are fully vaccinated. Our public health leaders tell us that vaccines still prevent severe illness and death for most people. There must be a Venn diagram of Americans — those who recovered, who got vaccinated, who recovered then got vaccinated, and who got vaccinated then recovered — that paints an optimistic picture of the coming wave of omicron. It would seem we have accumulated several of the layers Mina predicted.

Related: FDA Authorizes New Pfizer COVID Treatment Pill

Yet, on Wednesday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told CNN, “We want people to be able to gather [over the holidays]. And safe gathering includes, of course, being vaccinated, ideally being boosted, and making sure that all the people who you gather with are also vaccinated and boosted.” The public health agencies are pushing boosters for everyone over the age of 16 regardless of prior exposure to the virus. Governor Gavin Newsom just announced California would require boosters for healthcare workers, who have one of the highest rates of past exposure. Boston, Chicago, and Washington D.C. just announced vaccine mandates without recognizing recovered immunity.

Yesterday, the FDA provided emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s outpatient medication to treat mild to moderate COVID. It should work on any variant because it interferes with viral replication. An increasing number of doctors are using other medicines for the treatment of symptomatic cases for patients outside the hospital. Research also indicates omicron does not invade the lungs, as prior variants did. Now there are emerging reports that the blood tests of omicron patients are not showing the inflammatory markers present in severe disease during initial waves. It seems like an excellent time to hit the pause button on boosters, as Tedros and many other researchers and doctors advise.

America’s Founding As A Nation Is Linked To Christmas, And The Founders’ Faith Shows This

BY CHRISTIANITY DAILY

SEE: https://americanfaith.com/americas-founding-as-a-nation-is-linked-to-christmas-and-the-founders-faith-shows-this/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

When the U.S. was founded in 1776, Christmas was not celebrated the way it is today. In fact, historians found that some settlers who came to America brought the colonial Christmas debate over Christmas with them. Some wanted to remove Roman Catholic traditions that they believed were excessive, such as Christmas, whose roots were in the pagan Roman winter festival of Saturnalia and the Norse festival of Yule.

According to History, however, other settlers who arrived in the early 1600s in Virginia held Christmas with high regard, preserving it as “a sacred occasion and a day of rest.” Jumping forward to June 26, 1870, the American government declared Christmas a federal holiday. By the 1900s, most Christmas traditions had been established. Such traditions can be traced back to America’s Founding Fathers, who each celebrated Christmas in their own way.

According to CBN News, George Washington, the very first President of the United States and Commander of Continental Army during the American Revolution, celebrated Christmas with his family at Mount Vernon, where the entire family spent not one but 12 days to celebrate the holiday. The Mount Vernon website reported that the Washingtons celebrated from Christmas Eve on December 4 up to the Epiphany or Twelfth Night on January 6.

Washington and his wife, Martha were congregants of the Pohick Church, an Episcopalian congregation, in Lorton, Virginia. They would host family and friends to celebrate Christmas during the lengthy 12-day holiday.

Meanwhile, Founding Father of the United States Benjamin Franklin, who was also a polymath, writer, scientist, inventor, and philosopher, was vocal about his faith in God, who he called “Creator of the universe” who “governs it by his Providence.” Because of this, Franklin believed that God “ought to be worshipped.” He remarked in his Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1733, “A good conscience is a continual Christmas.”

The first White House Christmas party can be attributed to the second President of the United States, John Adams, who hosted the event in December 1800. They held the Christmas party for their then-four-year-old granddaughter Susanna Boylston Adams, who lived with them. The event was attended by government officials and their children.

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States and Founding Father, held Christmas close to his heart and described it as a “the day of greatest mirth and jollity.” He also recounted how he celebrated Christmas with his grandchildren. In 1809, he spent Christmas day with his eight-year-old grandson Francis Wayles Eppes, who he said was “running about with his cousins bawling out ‘a Merry Christmas.'”

Upon inheriting the White House from Jefferson, James Madison, the fourth President of the United States continued the Christmas tradition of hosting parties at the White House with First Lady Dolley. They also began the tradition of sending out Christmas cards to their family and friends.

John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States and the son of John Adams, wrote, “Why is it that next to the birthday of the Savior of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day on the Fourth of July?”

“Is it not that in the chain of human events, the birthday of a nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation?” Quincy Adams wrote. “Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?”

It is through reflecting on the thoughts of the Founding Fathers on Christmas and their faith that Americans can understand how deeply rooted the holiday is in America’s identity and culture even today, no matter what those who don’t appreciate it may say.

How Did Evangelicalism Turn into a Circus… Literally?

American Faith: Former Harvard Professor Found Guilty of Hiding Ties to University Lab in Wuhan

BY THE NEW YORK POST

SEE:https://americanfaith.com/former-harvard-prof-found-guilty-of-hiding-ties-to-university-lab-in-wuhan/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

A former Harvard University chemistry professor was found guilty Tuesday of lying about his ties to China and not reporting income paid to him by a Chinese-run recruitment program.

Charles Lieber, 62, the former chairman of the Ivy League school’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department, was convicted in Boston federal court of two counts of making false statements, two counts of filing a false income tax return, and two counts of failing to report income from foreign bank and financial accounts.

Without Harvard’s knowledge, Lieber became a “strategic scientist” for the Wuhan Institute of Technology in central China and participated in Beijing’s Thousand Talents Program from 2012 to 2015.

The program was designed to recruit people with high-level ​knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property to China.

As part of the recruitment program, the Wuhan institute paid Lieber $50,000 a month and living expenses of up to $150,000, as well as giving him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab.

Harvard University professor Charles Lieber (left) leaves federal court with his lawyer Marc Mukasey (right), on December 14, 2021.
Harvard University professor Charles Lieber (left) leaves federal court with his lawyer Marc Mukasey on December 14, 2021.
Charles Lieber's research group at Harvard University also received more than $15 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department.
Charles Lieber’s research group at Harvard University received more than $15 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department.
The program was designed to recruit people with high-level ​knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property to China.
The program was designed to recruit people with high-level ​knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property to China.

Lieber’s research group at Harvard University also received more than $15 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department, but he did not disclose his ties to China during the grant application process.

The professor also lied to the Internal Revenue Service about the money he was paid by Beijing.

“​There is now no question that Charles Lieber lied to federal investigators and to Harvard in an attempt to hide his participation in the Chinese Thousand Talents Program,” ​acting Boston ​US Attorney Nathaniel R. Mendell​ said in a statement.

“He lied to the IRS about the money he was paid, and he concealed his Chinese bank account from the United States. The jury followed the evidence and the law to a just verdict,” Mendell added. ​

Lieber was convicted after a six-day jury trial that was followed by two hours and 45 minutes of deliberations. His lawyer, Marc Mukasey, argued that federal prosecutors lacked proof because investigators failed to keep records of interviews with Lieber before he was arrested.​​​

Mukasey also claimed prosecutors couldn’t prove that Lieber acted “knowingly, intentionally, or willfully, or that he made any materially false statement.” ​

Lieber has been on paid administrative leave from Harvard since being arrested in January 2020. A sentencing date has yet to be determined.

POLICE STATE New Jersey: Anti-2ND AMENDMENT Forces Continue Their Push To Erode The Rights Of The People

Opinion
New Jersey Senate Bill S. 3757 Is One More Slap-In-The-Face For The Second Amendment And Heller.

We The People Second Amendment Constitution Bill of Rights

BY ROGER KATZ

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2021/12/new-jersey-anti-2a-forces-continue-their-push-to-erode-the-rights-of-the-people/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Arbalest Quarrel read with interest the NRA-ILA alert concerning New Jersey Senate Bill S. 3757 “that would force gun owners to store their guns and ammo under lock and key or face felony-level penalties.” We also read with interest and agree with the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs’ Scott Bach’s well-written explication of the bill.

Scott points out, “this ill-conceived bill imposes an absurd, one-size-fits-all totalitarian mandate to keep guns unloaded and locked up inside the home and to keep ammunition separately locked up inside the home, except when ‘in use’ – an utterly undefined term that will surely be interpreted to exclude everything except target practice.”

As Scott notes, the New Jersey gun bill is absurd. And it is idiotic on logical grounds alone.

But there is also a legal matter attendant to the bill. The bill flaunts and raises a disconcerting matter about the law that needs to be addressed.

Just how broadly or narrowly is Heller to be read? This idea is not as simple as it may seem.

Apart from the clear and categorical holding that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right unconnected with one’s service in a militia—ostensibly knocking down once and for all time the erroneous idea often still propounded by some that the Second Amendment refers to a “collective right”—the Court addressed another matter that directly impacts the New Jersey Senate bill.

The Heller Court said——

“In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.”

Does the New Jersey Senate bill square with the Heller holding? And, if it doesn’t, what is the impetus for the New Jersey Legislature drafting the thing at all?

Let’s take a closer look at the bill as written.

A preliminary “Statement” of intent, in the bill, reads in pertinent part as follows:

“This bill, titled the ‘New Jersey Safe Storage of Firearms Act,’ establishes penalties for improper storage of a firearm that results in access of the firearm; requires a warning to be issued to firearms purchasers; and requires the Attorney General to establish a public awareness campaign regarding the risk associated with improper storage of a firearm. The bill also repeals the provisions of current law that establish penalties only for a minor’s access of an improperly stored firearm, and makes an appropriation.

Under current law, there are storage requirements and penalties imposed if a minor accesses a loaded firearm that is not in use. However, there currently are no general requirements for storing firearms when they are not in use.

This bill requires a legal owner of a firearm to: (1) store or secure a firearm that is not in use at a premises under the owner’s control unloaded, in a gun safe or securely locked box or container; and (2) store ammunition, separately, in a securely locked box or container.

Under the bill, if the owner of a firearm fails to store the firearm properly as required under the bill, the owner will, for a first offense, be sentenced to period of community service of not less than 10 hours and not more than 40 hours. For a second or subsequent offense, the owner is guilty of a disorderly persons offense. If an improperly stored firearm is accessed by another person, and the access results in serious bodily injury to or the death of the person who accesses the firearm or another person, the owner is guilty of a crime of the fourth degree. A disorderly persons offense is punishable by up to six months’ imprisonment, a fine of up to $1,000, or both. A crime of the fourth degree is punishable by up to 18 months’ imprisonment, a fine of up to $10,000, or both.”

The language of the bill, proper, says in pertinent part:

A legal owner of a firearm shall:

  • store or secure a firearm that is not in use at a premises under the owner’s control, unloaded, in a gun safe or securely locked box or container; and
  • store ammunition, separately, in a securely locked box or container.

The bill also imposes requirements on the firearms dealer:

The Superintendent of State Police, in conjunction with the Attorney General, shall adopt guidelines in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act, P.L.1968, c.410 (C.52:14B-1 et seq.), to require each licensed retail firearms dealer in the State, or the retail dealer’s employee, to provide to any person who receives, possesses, carries, or uses a firearm, a written warning printed on eight and one-half inches by 11 inches in size paper in not less than 14 point bold point type letters which shall state:

“New Jersey State Law Requires That All Firearms Must Be Stored, Unloaded, In A Securely Locked Gun Safe Or Locked Container, And All Ammunition Must Be Stored In A Separate, Securely Locked Gun Safe Or Locked Container. Failure To Do So Is Punishable By Law And Could Result In Fines And Imprisonment.”

The written warning provided pursuant to subsection a. of this section shall include the requirements and penalties imposed pursuant to P.L. , c. (C. ) (pending before the Legislature as this bill).

The superintendent shall provide each licensed retail firearms dealer with a sign to be displayed prominently at a conspicuous place on the dealer’s business premises at each purchase counter. The sign shall contain the statutory reference to section 3 of P.L., c. (C.). . . .”

Left unsaid in the bill, is how the New Jersey Government is to know whether or how a person stores a firearm in his house?

Is a New Jersey police officer to be given carte blanche authority to check on this? If so, would this not violate an individual’s Fourth Amendment Right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures?

But the more pressing issue is whether NJ S.B. 3757 is, on its face, patently illegal. Is the bill inconsistent with the Heller holding pertaining to one’s right of immediate access to a firearm in the home for the purpose of self-defense? It would seem so. But there is a problem.

Just how broadly, in regard to immediate access to a firearm in one’s home, is Heller to be taken? We look at this in the next segment, and consider the ramifications of Heller, for Bruen.

About The Arbalest Quarrel:

Arbalest Group created `The Arbalest Quarrel’ website for a special purpose. That purpose is to educate the American public about recent Federal and State firearms control legislation. No other website, to our knowledge, provides as deep an analysis or as thorough an analysis. Arbalest Group offers this information free.

For more information, visit: www.arbalestquarrel.com.

Arbalest Quarrel

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SEE ALSO: New Jersey Governor’s Gun Bill Misfires in Assembly

https://www.ammoland.com/2021/12/new-jersey-governors-gun-bill-misfires-in-assembly/

 

 

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