A WordPress Blog-THE CHURCH MILITANT Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse. ALL CONTENT FROM HTTPS://RATHEREXPOSETHEM.BLOGSPOT.COM MOVED TO THIS NEW BLOG, MAY 2020
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
House Republicans are currently pursuing a two-step government funding plan as Congress approaches another spending deadline Friday.
The plan was introduced by newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson during a GOP conference call on Saturday. While Johnson embraced the right-wing members of his conference by proposing the two-step approach, he did not fully concede to their demands for deep spending cuts. Instead, the package extends funding at current levels.
“This two-step continuing resolution is a necessary bill to place House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories,” Johnson said in a statement after speaking with GOP lawmakers in an afternoon conference call. “The bill will stop the absurd holiday-season omnibus tradition of massive, loaded-up spending bills introduced right before the Christmas recess,” Johnson said in a statement Saturday.
The first bill, extending funding until January 19th, includes allocations for military construction, Veterans Affairs, transportation, housing, and the Energy Department. The second part extends funding until February 2, covering the rest of the government. Notably, neither bill includes additional aid for Israel or Ukraine.
Although the two-step approach was championed by Republicans, it faced skepticism from many senators who deemed it a complex solution. However, given that funding for agencies remains at current levels, Democrats may find it challenging to reject.
While some Republicans had considered alternative options, including a more straightforward stopgap bill, the GOP remained divided. The Freedom Caucus favored the laddered approach, while appropriators preferred a “clean” stopgap bill. Representative Chip Roy, part of the House Freedom Caucus, opposed Johnson’s plan for lacking the deep spending cuts sought by the right.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre criticized Johnson’s plan, characterizing it as a recipe for more Republican chaos and shutdowns. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also opposed the two-step continuing resolution, viewing it as a right-wing joyride with potential economic consequences.
As the GOP navigates its strategy, questions loom about how Democrats will respond to Johnson’s plan. The approval of the bill in the House hinges on Johnson securing a rule to set debate parameters, with the minority party typically voting against it. If a rule cannot be passed, the bill would require a two-thirds majority under suspension of the rules, necessitating significant Democratic support.
The ultimate level of Democratic support will influence the GOP’s floor strategy. Failure to pass a spending plan by Friday could lead to a government shutdown, affecting various operations unless Congress intervenes.
Shutdowns have broader economic consequences, potentially impacting unemployment rates, GDP growth, and borrowing costs on a national scale.
Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts
Pope Francis waves to the crowd during the weekly general audience on November 8, 2023, at St Peter’s square in The Vatican. (Photo by FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP via Getty Images)
OAN’s Abril Elfi 11:22 PM – Sunday, November 12, 2023
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Pope Francis has removed Bishop Joseph E. Strickland from the pastoral governance of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas.
On Saturday, Pope Francis ordered the removal of Bishop Strickland who is one of his harshest detractors among Roman Catholic conservatives in the United States, after he refused to resign following a Vatican probe.
The decision came amid Strickland, 65, who has emerged as a prominent critic of Francis, accusing him earlier this year in a tweet of “undermining the deposit of faith.”
Strickland recently questioned Francis’ month-long closed-door debate on making the church more welcoming and attentive to the concerns of today’s Catholics. The gathering debated a number of traditionally taboo themes, such as women in leadership posts and accepting LGBTQ+ Catholics, but the final text did not depart from established doctrine.
Strickland called it a “travesty” that such topics were even on the table for debate before the meeting.
The Vatican brought in investigators earlier this year to check into his governance of the diocese, following reports that priests and laypeople in Tyler had complained and that he was making unorthodox assertions.
The Vatican never revealed the conclusions, and Strickland argued in media interviews that he was given a mandate to serve as bishop by the late Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 and couldn’t relinquish that role.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the head of the church in Texas said that the two Vatican investigators sent to investigate Strickland “conducted an exhaustive inquiry into all aspects of the diocese’s governance and leadership.”
“The continuation in office of Bishop Strickland was not feasible,” DiNardo said in a statement Saturday, following their inquiry.
The Vatican urged Strickland to quit on Thursday, but he refused, causing Francis to dismiss him two days later, according to DiNardo’s statement.
Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
You thought it wouldn’t come here? More and worse is coming.
“Anti-Israel protesters swarm Grand Central, splatter fake blood on New York Times building and set Israel flag ablaze,” by Steven Vago and Patrick Reilly, New York Post, November 10, 2023:
Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters calling for the elimination of the Jewish state stormed Grand Central Terminal Friday night, furiously banging and kicking at a locked entrance of the station that was forced to temporarily close over the rowdy demonstration.
The mob was part of a “Flood Manhattan for Gaza” protest that initially converged on Columbus Circle earlier in the evening, where they set fire to an Israeli flag and taunted a small faction of counter-demonstrators before marching through Manhattan and splattering fake blood on the New York Times building.
“We don’t want a Jewish state. We want ‘48!” the anti-Israel protesters chanted at the starting point, referring to Palestine before the establishment of Israel.
“Settlers, settlers go back home! Palestine is ours alone!” the crowd yelled.
“It is right to rebel. Israel, go to Hell!” others chanted.
Across the street stood a small group of Israel supporters. Bergen County resident Gregory Jachts, 56, said he found it “offensive that they’re here chanting for the elimination of Israel.”
“They were chanting from the river to the sea and that calls for the elimination of Israel and the genocide of the Jews,” said Jachts, who is not Jewish but has family in Israel….
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
It’s not much fun being a Jewish student on many campuses today. Pro-Hamas students, who want the only Jewish state to disappear and be replaced by a twenty-third Arab State, may snatch away your Israeli flag and spit on it. They may surround you, preventing you from walking away as they scream “Shame, Shame, Shame” or “apartheid” or “genocide.” They may punch you in the face. They may send you menacing emails threatening to “kill all the Jews.” They may punch you so hard that they break your nose. They may hit you with a stick if you dare to object to their ripping down posters of Israeli hostages. More on this unbelievable state of affairs can be found here: “University of Massachusetts Student Arrested for Allegedly Punching Jewish Student, Spitting on Israeli Flag,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, November 6, 2023:
A University of Massachusetts-Amherst student has been arrested for allegedly punching a Jewish student who was carrying an Israeli flag during a gathering held to call for the release of the over 240 people kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from Israel on Oct. 7 and taken to Gaza.
After the alleged punch, the assailant snatched the Israeli flag held by the Jewish student and spat on it, according to details of the incident reported by the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, the campus newspaper for UMass-Amherst….
“Toward the end of the event [which was sponsored by Hillel], a student approached the gathering and walked through the crowd, aggressively giving people the middle finger,” the statement read. “After the event had concluded and event security had left, the same student returned to the site of the event and punched a Jewish student holding an Israeli flag, then took the flag and spit on it.”
UMass staff witnessed the incident, according to the school’s Hillel, which noted that a police report was filed and that UMass police arrested the individual….
The perpetrator was later released on bail, “with conditions prohibiting them from returning to campus,” according to a statement put out on Monday by university officials, who said the student will be subject to the legal consequences of their actions….
Let us hope that once the university is done with this student, by permanently expelling him, the local DA will step in and charge this now ex-student with battery, which was also clearly a “hate crime,” committed against a Jewish student precisely because he was Jewish.
Last month, for example, an Israeli student at Columbia University was beaten with a stick by another student who had been ripping off flyers with names and photos of Israelis that Hamas had taken as hostages.
What happened to the student who beat the Israeli with a stick? Has Columbia done the right thing and expelled that student, or is it going to submit to the pressure of its antisemitic faculty — one hundred of whom just signed a letter condemning Israel for defending itself — and let the student off with a warning? Whether Columbia does the right thing or not, the Manhattan DA has the ability, and the obligation, to press criminal charges against this student, as in a similar case at UMass/Amherst, for battery.
Two weeks later, a melee ensued at Tulane University in New Orleans in which an anti-Israel activist broke a Jewish student’s nose.
In the Tulane case, the two aggressors were not students but were in a truck that was driven by the pro-Israel demonstrators when they stopped, got out, and started attacking the Jewish students. One of those students was set upon by two pro-Hamas demonstrators, one of whom rained punches on his head and body while the other struck him over the head with a megaphone, breaking his nose.
One hopes, and expects, that both malefactors will be charged by the DA with aggravated battery, given the severity of the injury.
Intimidation and death threats have increased as well. At Harvard University, a mob — some clad in Palestinian keffiyeh scarves — jostled and harassed a Jewish student as he walked across the campus. Among the mob was Ibrahim Bharmal, the editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review — a publication whose past editors include former US President Barack Obama.
You can see here the pro-Hamas students surrounding a Jewish student and screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at him as he tries to break free. Harvard has not yet done anything to discipline those students, much less expel any of them. One expects little from President Gay, who was so belated and Laodicean in her condemnation of the October 7 massacre. And what will local law enforcement do about this angry mob of students who prevented the Jewish student from leaving? Anything? Nothing?
At Cornell University, someone threatened on a social media forum to commit acts of murder, rape, and mass shooting against Jewish students and a kosher dining ball on campus. Patrick Dai, a 21-year-old engineering student at Cornell, was arrested on a federal complaint for allegedly making the threats. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine….
Patrick Dai has now been expelled from Cornell and faces several years in prison. That’s the right result. Those students who are tempted to make murderous threats against Jews on campus will no doubt be reconsidering.
Pro-Israel groups, and pro-Israel donors who lately have been withholding donations to schools they deem insufficient in their lukewarm condemnations of Hamas’ brutality, can keep the pressure on colleges to expel students who engage in antisemitic behavior. And whatever the colleges do or fail to, the local DAs should do their job, and unhesitatingly prosecute antisemitic behavior wherever it appears. Even at Harvard, Columbia, Tulane, Cornell, and now, UMass/Amherst.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
UNRWA’s support for jihad terrorists has been abundantly documented, but no one seems to mind.
“UN Agency Staff Celebrated Oct. 7 Massacre, Part of ‘Terror Strategy’ at Root of Hamas Attack, Watchdog Says,” by Debbie Weiss, Algemeiner, November 6, 2023:
Teachers at Palestinian schools run by the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre against Israel and are part of a “national strategy to commit acts of terror,” the head of a watchdog group told The Algemeiner following the release of the group’s new bombshell report on the matter.
At least 14 teachers at schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) publicly celebrated the Hamas atrocities on their social media accounts, with one calling the morning of Oct. 7 an “unforgettable glorious morning,” a report released on Monday by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found.
The report also identified at least 100 Hamas terrorists who are graduates of UNRWA’s education system. It highlighted Amer Yaser Nazmi Sada, whose diploma was found in the vehicle of one of the terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israeli families. The diploma, granted to Sada in 2018 upon his graduation, was signed by the chief of UNRWA’s vocational program in Gaza, Farid Ajmi’an Abu Adhira.
One UNRWA employee in Gaza, Mahmoud Abu Adhm, uploaded several posts supporting the massacre by Hamas, the report showed. In one, posted three days after the attack, Abu Adhm urged the Palestinian terrorist group to kill Israeli hostages, citing Islamic texts: “Do not walk past a captive who has not been given amnesty without striking off his neck so as to terrorize the enemy.”
IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff told The Algemeiner: “When you teach young people to cut the neck of the enemy, do not be surprised when you see acts like that.”
“When you teach young people that Jews should be exterminated, do not be surprised when that is what they attempt to do,” he added.
In another instance, the official Facebook page of an UNRWA elementary school in the West Bank city of Nablus posted a video of a school rally held on Oct. 26 featuring a young boy, accompanied by what seems to be an UNRWA administrator, calling for victory for Hamas’ “jihad warriors” in Gaza and evoking the defeat of the Jews at Khaybar at the hands of Muhammad’s forces in 628 CE….
During the Obama years, many voices on the right were calling out his apparent disdain for Israel. It was plainly obvious, but many on the left deluded themselves by taking Obama’s public statements in support of the Jewish State at face value while ignoring his actions. One voice on the left that finally seems to have woken up and is finally acknowledging Obama’s “deep hatred” of Israel is famed lawyer and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz. According to Dershowitz, Obama’s criticism of Israel since the October 7 terror attacks, like calling for an end to Israeli occupation, exposed Obama’s true feelings.
"Do you think Obama understands what his words have meant?” asked Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo.
“I think so,” Dershowitz told her. “I think he always had a deep hatred of Israel in his heart. He hid it very well. He called me to the Oval Office, and he said Alan, you know I have Israel’s back. I didn’t know he had a target on it. He has never been supportive of Israel. And finally, his true feelings have come out now that he’s no longer president, doesn’t have to be elected.”
"He's never been supportive of Israel. And finally, his true feelings have come out now that he's no longer president and doesn't have to be elected,” he continued. "He has contributed enormously to the problem because he is respected among young people. And if he says the occupation is unbearable and that anything can be done to stop it, he is encouraging people to engage in their antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American attitudes. He should be ashamed of himself. He should apologize, but he won't."
Dershowitz has reportedly had a good relationship with Obama, but he said that relationship is now “over” because of his statements on the Israel-Hamas war.
I’m glad Dershowitz has seen the light, but it bothers me it took him so long to see Barack Obama for who he really is. In my 2016 book, The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama—yes, I know the title is a bit outdated now, I’ve heard it before—I called him the first anti-Israel president and backed it up with a substantial list of Obama’s anti-Israel policies and actions. It didn’t take a political genius to see who Obama really was or what his true feelings toward Israel were. Why didn’t Alan Dershowitz and other liberals (particularly Jewish liberals) see what was going on at the time?
Thankfully, I think many Democrats are realizing that anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments are a plague in the Democratic Party. Frankly, I believe Obama made such beliefs fashionable in the Democratic Party, even if many weren’t willing to acknowledge it. So, hopefully, more will see what’s happening and come to similar epiphanies.
Hopkinsallchildrens, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Maya Kowalski and her family just won a landmark judgment against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in the amount of $261 million dollars for false imprisonment, battery, and a litany of other injustices. You can read the details of that via the link. But something that came out in the trial outside of the presence of the jury, which wasn't allowed in as evidence, was Maya's testimony that she was sexually assaulted by someone dressed as a doctor while she was being held away from her family in the pediatric intensive care unit. The allegation was not allowed into the trial because it wasn't in the original lawsuit due to Maya disclosing the incident to her attorney after the action was filed. Maya's attorney, Greg Anderson, says they have now filed a criminal complaint against JHACH officially with the police for that assault.Maya told Judge Carroll that she was alone in her room in the PICU when a man with dirty blonde hair wearing glasses and a white coat came into her room and said he needed to "take a peek." He then lowered her pants and underwear and stared at her vagina for a long time which made her feel scared. Maya's parents weren't allowed into the hospital to visit with her except under supervision by a social worker, Cathi Bedy, who also was found by the jury to have intentionally harmed Maya.
Anderson was interviewed about the new complaint here:
"I can tell everyone that today Maya Kowalski went to the Pinellas County Sherriff's department with my partner Nick Whitney and swore out a criminal complaint against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital," he said. "I want to be clear that we have not been able to identify a specific perpetrator there," added Anderson. It could have been a staff member, he said, "but it very well could have been someone who snuck in there."
Anderson said one of the ways JHACH put Maya at risk of such an assault was to treat her like a "non-entity." The other children in the ward had families with them all the time and identifiers on the door with their names and decorations while Maya's room was marked with mysterious color-coded stickers with no nametag. The lack of similarity to the other rooms marked her room as occupied by someone who didn't have familial protection and was a target for a pedophile.
Just when you thought this case could not get worse, it does.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
It's official. Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital has been found liable for the medical kidnapping of Maya Kowalski, medical malpractice, billing fraud, and driving Beata Kowalski to suicide. In a groundbreaking decision, a Florida jury found the hospital liable for every charge brought forward by the plaintiffs and awarded compensatory damages in the amount of just over $211 million. Then they awarded $50 million in punitive damages against the hospital that colluded with DCS to falsely imprison a medically complex child over false allegations that her mother had Munchausen by Proxy.
There's never been a victory like this before in civil court. Most medical malpractice suits never make it to trial, and this one included the novel cause of action, the intentional infliction of emotional distress that caused the death of Beata Kowalski. The question posed to the jurors on that count is one that will certainly be appealed but survived this jury's bar for liability, and it read as follows:
Did Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, through the acts of its employees, engage in extreme and outrageous conduct, intending that conduct to cause, or with reckless disregard of the high probability of causing, severe emotional distress to Beata Kowalski that was sufficient to be a legal cause of Beata Kowalski's death by suicide?
The answer was a resounding yes. The jury found that the conduct by JHACH created in Beata an uncontrollable impulse to die by suicide, and that conduct was a substantial factor in her death. On just that one count the jury awarded around $104 million.
This is the first time this kind of claim has prevailed in a civil case. The rest of the claims included false imprisonment, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraudulent billing, and medical negligence. The jury was unanimous and they dropped the hammer on JHACH. My only regret is there wasn't a count for the religious discrimination the family suffered.
Whether the Kowalskis will see any of the money for years to come is unknown. JHACH is sure to tie them up in appeals courts on the wrongful death claim if not others. However, their actions and the consequences of them have been fully aired in the public and no amount of appeal decisions in their favor will repair JHACH's reputation it has earned as child abusers.
Maya Kowalski suffers from a rare pain disease called complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), which the hospital refused to believe and instead accused her mother of falsifying her illness. Even after separating Beata from Maya, she didn't get better, yet the hospital continued to keep the family apart. The hospital was fighting in dependency court to ship Maya thousands of miles away from her family to be housed in "medical foster care."
This type of situation happens to more people in this country than you would want to believe. Rachel Bruno, Drake Pardo, Justina Pelletiere, and Cynthia Abcug are just a few of the cases I've covered here on PJ Media, some of whom have never seen justice for the horrific family-destroying acts perpetrated on them.
This win for the Kowalskis is a win for every family who has ever been falsely accused by an out-of-control medical staff of being a child abuser. Perhaps this huge judgment will reverberate through hospitals that their priority should be to "do no harm" and treat their patients instead of investigating them. One can hope that the insidious partnership between hospitals and malicious state agencies that claim to protect children will cease after this.
While Maya's nightmare is finally over, a bigger nightmare is beginning for JHACH. A new lawsuit has been filed against them for similar claims. The Kushnir family is suing JHACH and Dr. Sally Smith, the child abuse doctor who kidnapped Maya from her family, with the same lawyers who just won what was called an unwinnable case.
In a 57-page petition, the Kushnirs allege medical malpractice, negligent hiring, and supervision of its doctors, abuse of process, malicious prosecution, intentional interference with the custodial parent-child relationship, and civil conspiracy. Many of the same doctors involved in Maya's kidnapping are named in the suit.
The lawsuit includes shocking allegations including false allegations of sexual abuse.
Based upon the misrepresentations and bad faith allegations of the Defendants, William and Adele were removed from their parents' care and custody for approximately three months, William's condition worsened at the hands of Bayfront Health, JHACH, and their involved physicians and other healthcare providers, and Vadim and Elina were subjected to the Defendants' physical abuse, sexual abuse, and medical neglect misrepresentations and allegations.
JHACH has been hiding some very dark things that thanks to attorneys Greg Anderson and Nick Whitney are all coming out into the light. If you watched Court TV's coverage, though, you'd think Maya Kowalski was a liar. It has been absolutely awful. But anyone with a brain can see that where there is smoke there is fire.
There are a reported 300 families that USA Today has been looking into who may have been similarly abused by Dr. Sally Smith. This verdict was a resounding vindication for parents who have less and less rights to their children, their education, and their medical care. America has had enough of this tyranny and the perpetrators are going to be held accountable now.
What should happen next is a state investigation into Dr. Sally Smith, JHACH, and the Department of Child and Family Services, and if found to have engaged in criminal acts, they should face jail time. The House of Representatives in Florida also needs to remove immunity from hospitals and DCF when they use the power granted by the state to abuse the citizenry like this.
Let's go, people. Now is the time to make this a reality.
