BREAKING: TRUMP INDICATES WHEN HE’LL ANNOUNCE SCOTUS NOMINEE

BY MATT MARGOLIS

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/09/21/breaking-trump-indicates-when-hell-announce-scotus-nominee-n948033;

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

During an exclusive interview on Fox & Friends Monday morning, President Trump revealed that his list of potential Supreme Court nominees to fill the vacancy left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been narrowed down to five and that he’ll announce his choice Friday or Saturday.

“The bottom line is we won the election, we have an obligation to do what’s right and act as quickly as possible,” Trump said. “I think it will be on Friday or Saturday and we want to pay respect. It looks like we will have services on Thursday or Friday, as I understand it, and I think we should, with all due respect for Justice Ginsburg, wait for services to be over.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday from metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was 87 years old.

Democrats have vowed to do anything in their power to either stop the nomination or retaliate afterward. Nancy Pelosi refused to rule out using impeachment as a tactic to tie up the Senate to keep it from confirming a replacement. Chuck Schumer has also threatened to pack the court next year if Trump proceeds with the nomination.

But Democrats were previously all for election-year nominations to the Supreme Court.

“I made it absolutely clear that I would go forward with the confirmation process, as chairman — even a few months before a presidential election — if the nominee were chosen with the advice, and not merely the consent, of the Senate — just as the Constitution requires,” Biden said back in 2016. “Eight is not a good number for a collegial body that sometimes disagrees.”

Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year.”

Editor’s Note: Want to support PJ Media so we can continue telling the truth about what the Left is up to? Join PJ Media VIP TODAY and use the promo code LOYALTY to get 25% off your VIP membership

Matt Margolis is the author of the new book Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trumpand the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis

McConnell Gets Key Republican Senators to Support Filling SCOTUS Vacancy
Radical Left Threatens Riots, War, and to ‘Burn It Down’ if RBG Replaced
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at Age 87
Trump Calls for Filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Seat ‘Without Delay’
 

SUPREME COURT REPLACEMENT: TRUMP CALLS FOR FILLING RUTH BADER GINSBURG’S SEAT “WITHOUT DELAY”

Pro Abortion Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at Age 87

BY TYLER O'NEIL

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/09/18/breaking-ruth-bader-ginsburg-dies-n944311;

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

And you thought 2020 couldn’t get any more tense. On Friday night, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg finally lost her long battle with pancreatic cancer. The Court’s most outspoken liberal, Ginsburg had survived multiple bouts with cancer but finally passed away at age 87, the Associated Press reported.

While Ginsburg was a notorious liberal, twisting the text of the Constitution to support far-left causes like abortion, she was also an impressive and inspiring individual. A pioneer as a woman in the legal profession, she rose through the ranks while having children and raising a family.

“Our Nation has lost a jurist of historic stature,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a statement on Ginsburg’s passing. “We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn, but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her — a tireless and resolute champion of justice.”

Her passing opens up one of the Court’s nine seats less than two months before the presidential election. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he would rush to confirm any justice nominated by President Donald Trump even shortly before an election.

When Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, McConnell refused to consider President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Democrats have accused McConnell of having a double standard on a potential Trump nominee during an election year, but McConnell has insisted that when the president and the Senate majority represent two separate parties, they should wait to confirm a justice until the election.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted the exact text of McConnell’s statement when Scalia passed away.

Get ready for a tense political battle.

Last week, President Donald Trump released an updated list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

It remains unclear whether or not the president will nominate a justice so close to the election, but since the Democrats did away with the filibuster for judicial nominations, it seems likely the Senate could confirm a replacement for Ginsburg before the election. If the Senate did so, the Democrats would likely renew their calls to pack the Supreme Court after a Joe Biden victory.

Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.

Trump’s 2020 Supreme Court List Will Drive the Left Crazy
Hey Supreme Court, Government Can’t Decide ‘Which Beliefs Are Acceptable’
Blame the Left for Making the Supreme Court Too Political
WINNING: Trump Is Restoring the American Judiciary

____________________________________________________________________________

BY TYLER O'NEIL

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/09/19/breaking-trump-calls-for-filling-ruth-bader-ginsburgs-seat-without-delay-n944816;

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

On Saturday, President Donald Trump rallied the Republican Party to confirm a Supreme Court nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He called filling the vacancy an “obligation” to be fulfilled “without delay.”

“We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices,” the president tweeted. “We have this obligation, without delay!”

Ginsburg, an impressive justice and a liberal lion of the Court, passed away on Friday at the age of 87.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the Senate will consider Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden has called for the Senate to wait until after the election, rather than rushing to confirm a potential Trump nominee.

Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.

Trump’s 2020 Supreme Court List Will Drive the Left Crazy
Blame the Left for Making the Supreme Court Too Political
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at Age 87

____________________________________________________________________________

SEE ALSO:

https://christiannews.net/2020/09/21/rep-offers-condolences-to-30-million-innocent-babies-who-died-from-ginsburgs-defense-of-abortion/

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/09/18/ted-cruz-explains-perfectly-why-rbgs-seat-must-be-filled-before-the-election-n944445

https://www.ammoland.com/2020/09/ruth-bader-ginsburg-dies-just-as-president-trump-releases-his-list-of-scotus-judges/

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/09/20/how-ginsburgs-death-gives-an-advantage-to-republicans-in-the-supreme-court-n946234

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/09/19/ruth-bader-ginsburg-made-the-case-for-filling-her-vacancy-before-the-election-back-in-2016-n944778

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2020/09/19/hillary-clintons-response-to-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburgs-death-is-quite-deplorable-n943718

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/09/19/here-are-the-four-gop-senators-who-might-derail-trumps-scotus-pick-n944785

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/09/19/liberals-will-look-to-expand-the-supreme-court-if-biden-wins-n945636

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/09/19/radical-left-threatens-riots-war-and-to-burn-it-down-if-rbg-replaced-n944513

https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2020/09/20/the-no-limit-casino-of-doom-n944274

https://christiannews.net/2020/09/21/jen-hatmaker-amy-grant-praise-justice-ginsburg-well-done-good-and-faithful-servant-thank-you-ruth/

 

 

 

 

DAVID CLOUD’S “WAY OF LIFE” RECENT ARTICLES

SEE: https://www.wayoflife.org/friday_church_news/21-35.php;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
CALIFORNIA WAGING WAR ON CHURCHES 
CALIFORNIA WAGING WAR ON CHURCHES (Friday Church News Notes, August 28, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@
wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - If you want to know the future of America if Democrats are ever in full control, just 
take a look at California, where the Democrats control the governorship, both houses of the legislature, every 
statewide office, and the leadership of major cities. (When one party controls the office of governor, the state House, 
and the state Senate, that is called a trifecta. Currently, there are 21 Republican trifectas and 15 Democrat trifectas.)
For example, their mindless commitment to Green Energy has resulted in third-world type brownouts across the 
state this summer. Their homosexual rights agenda has silenced free speech. Their clueless homeless policies have 
trashed formerly beautiful cities. Their public schools are removing the names of the nation’s Founding Fathers and 
brainwashing children in Marxist doctrine. That’s a very short list. Oh yes, and they are using the coronavirus 
situation to attack churches. I believe they will back off eventually and leave the churches alone for now, but only 
because (humanly speaking) they don’t have full power. The following is excerpted from “California’s All-Out War 
on Church Worship Intensifies,” PJ Media, Aug. 24, 2020: “California Governor Gavin Newsom and county leaders 
are escalating the state’s war on church worship services, dragging pastors into court and demanding thousands 
of dollars in fines for illegally singing and holding indoor worship services. ... The state is armed with Newsom’s 
no-worship order and subpoenas. ... Liberty Counsel’s Founder Mat Staver says Newsom’s worship ban is clearly 
unconstitutional. ‘The same governor who encourages mass protests, bans all worship and is now fining churches 
for their right to assemble and worship. The same governor who says the church can meet for secular services, 
bans the church from having religious worship. This unconstitutional hostility against religious worship must end.’ 
Newsom has issued a rule against singing and chanting--even in worship in private homes. Then, he outlawed 
church worship. ... The pastor of Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Ventura County, Rob McCoy, was in court on Friday 
and fined $3,000 for holding three socially distanced worship services each Sunday on August 9th and 16th. ... 
McCoy was ready to go to jail on Sunday if need be. Senator Ted Cruz sent a supportive tweet, letting California l
eaders know he’s watching. ‘Thx for standing up for the flock and We the People! The bullies won’t win. We are 
with you, Pastor.’ In Santa Clara, county officers sent in agents to spy on North Valley Baptist Church, according to 
documents the county gave to the court. That church has been fined $10,000 for illegally singing in two worship 
services. Singing. ... In Los Angeles County on Monday, megachurch Pastor John McArthur of Grace Community 
Church went to court for a fourth time to fight the governor’s ban on worship. [The county is seeking $20,000 in 
damages. On August 25, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff refused the county’s request to grant 
a temporary restraining order against the church’s services.] McArthur issued a declaration on Monday, saying it’s 
clear that the County thinks it’s OK to let ‘congregants to gather to worship the Lord in parking lots, in parks, or 
perhaps beaches--but never in any church. From Grace Community Church’s perspective, this is nonsensical, and 
we view it as a direct ban on engaging in the worship which our faith requires.’” The previous report did not 
mention Harvest Church of Pasadena, Calif. “Last week, Pasadena’s chief assistant city prosecutor sent Harvest 
Church Pastor Che Ahn a letter, threatening fines and up to one year in jail for anyone who attends a future service
. [The letter, dated Aug. 13, reads:] ‘This letter is to remind you that violations of these orders are criminal in 
nature. Each day in violation is a separate violation and carries with it a potential punishment of up to one year in 
jail and a fine for each violation. ... Any violations in the future will subject your church, owners, administrators, 
operators, staff, and parishioners to the above-mentioned criminal penalties as well as the potential closure of your
Church.’ ... Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver says, ‘These actions of the City of Pasadena and 
Gov. Gavin Newsom are akin to repressive foreign regimes, not America where the First Amendment guarantees 
freedom of religion’” (“Pasadena Threatens Church,” Christian Headlines, Aug. 20, 2020).

FACEBOOK CRACKS DOWN ON ANTIFA AND QANON
FACEBOOK CRACKS DOWN ON ANTIFA AND QANON (Friday Church News Notes, August 28, 2020, www.wayoflife.
org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Facebook has taken down Antifa and affiliated anarchist groups. 
“Facebook explicitly sought to disrupt Antifa’s operations and said it restricted 1,400 hashtags related to the 
militant leftists and tore down 520 pages and 160 ads. Facebook’s crackdown on Antifa is a harbinger of things to 
come, as the company said it has begun changing its policies to more aggressively go after militia groups 
supporting violent protests. ... Facebook’s policy shift takes aim at the radical organizations’ funding, their ability 
to attract new followers, and the visibility of their content. ... By publicizing its actions against Antifa, Facebook 
has called attention to its more aggressive content moderation approach as affecting all political ideologies” 
(“Facebook cracks down,” The Washington Times, Aug. 20, 2020). At the same time, Facebook has “removed 790 
QANON groups and imposed restrictions on an additional 1,950 QAnon groups on its platform and 10,000 accounts
on Instagram.” QAnon is a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories based on enigmatic reports published by an 
anonymous person known as “Q” who allegedly has access to ultra top-secret information. There is no evidence 
that “Q” is anyone other than some goofball with too much time on his hands having a lark, but QAnon believers 
see Q’s publications as “breadcrumbs” of evidence for their enlightenment. There are fragments of truth, of course,
as in all such things, but largely it is a will-o’-the-wisp world of inscrutable poetry, numerology, secret signals, etc. 
An example of a Q message is this: “Think SC vote to confirm (coming). No Name action. Every dog has its day. 
Enjoy the show.” It is as murky and meaningless as a Nostradamus prophecy. QAnon is an Alice Wonderland in 
which nothing is solid, nothing is sure, nothing means what it seems to mean. The main theme is that presidents 
before Trump were part of a cabal of “deep-state” international evil operators who control America and the world 
(the media, politicians, Hollywood), operating death squads and pedophile rings and a great many other secret 
things. Trump was chosen by military generals to run for president to destroy this cabal, which he will supposedly 
do in a purge called “The Storm” (in which tens of thousands of deep state operatives, including Hilly Clinton, will 
be arrested and subjected to military tribunals, etc.). Trump supposedly flashes secret signals to QAnon insiders. 
One of the theories is that John. R. Kennedy, Jr., and his wife faked their own plane crash deaths and went 
undercover to work with Trump. QAnon is associated with a hodgepodge of conspiracies pertaining to Covid-19, 
9-11, UFOs, 5G technology and mind control, etc. It is as nutty as a fruitcake. While a lot of people are attracted 
to such things and are true believers, a lot of the followers are doubtless just entertaining themselves like “Q” is. 
To any Q followers in Bible-believing churches, we would say, you don’t need Q; you have the infallible Word of 
God! Stop wasting your time chasing will-o’-the-wisp in a rabbit hole and become a serious Bible student and 
disciple of Jesus Christ. And to Facebook and other social media companies, we would say, by all means ban 
violent speech and pornography and pedophilia and such things, but you should not be censors of speech that is 
legal under law. Allegedly nutty or not, it should be none of your business. Liberals and leftists, et al, have plenty 
of their own fake news and conspiratorial nuttiness. Do you want someone censoring your free speech?

THE U.S. BILL OF RIGHTS DO NOT GRANT FREEDOM FOR SUBVERSIVE SPEECH 
AND ACTION
THE U.S. BILL OF RIGHTS DO NOT GRANT FREEDOM FOR SUBVERSIVE SPEECH AND ACTION (Friday Church News 
Notes, August 28, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In 1950, the U.S. Supreme 
Court, in Dennis v. United States, ruled that Eugene Dennis, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA, did 
not have a First Amendment right to free speech if his goal was to overthrow the Constitution. President Dwight 
Eisenhower agreed: “The Bill of Rights contains no grant of privilege for a group of people to destroy the Bill of 
Rights. A group--like the Communist conspiracy--dedicated to the ultimate destruction of all civil liberties, cannot 
be allowed to claim civil liberties as its privileged sanctuary from which to carry on subversion of the Government” 
(“Eisenhower on Communism,” Time magazine, Oct. 13, 1952).

TRUMP THE “MOST PRO-GAY PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY”
TRUMP THE “MOST PRO-GAY PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY” (Friday Church News Notes, August 28, 2020, 
www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Grenell: ‘Trump Is Most 
Pro-Gay President,” CNSNews.com, Aug. 21, 2020: “In a video distributed by the Log Cabin Republicans, former 
Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell states that Trump is the ‘most pro-gay president in 
American history.’ In a Twitter response to the video, Trump declared, ‘My great honor!!!’ Grenell, who is gay, 
served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany (2018-20) and as Acting Director of National Intelligence (2/20/20 - 
5/26/20) under President Trump. Log Cabin Republicans ‘is the nation’s largest Republican organization dedicated 
to representing LGBT conservatives and allies,’ according to its website. In the video, Grenell, among other things, 
states, ‘I know firsthand that President Trump is the strongest ally that gay Americans have ever had in the White 
House. Donald Trump is the first president in American history to be pro-gay marriage from his first day in office.’”

BLACK LIVES MATTER CHURCH BURNED DOWN BY BLACK LIVES MATTER RIOTERS
BLACK LIVES MATTER CHURCH BURNED DOWN BY BLACK LIVES MATTER RIOTERS(Friday Church News Notes, 
August 28, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Black 
Lives Matter Church,” Reformation Charlotte, Aug. 24, 2020: “A church that celebrated the Black Lives Matter 
movement has been burnt to the ground by, well, Black Lives Matter rioters. After the shooting of another black 
man in Wisconsin last night--an incident that, unsurprisingly, we have very little details on at this point--rioters 
took to the streets of Kenosha to receive their ‘reparations’ by looting stores, burning down buildings, and creating,
once again, complete and total chaos in the streets. And in order for them to receive justice, they have to destroy 
anything and everything in their path--and that included one church that celebrated Black Lives Matter. The 
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, ‘A little after 3 a.m., the fire had spread to the Bradford Community Church, 
the marquee of which had read Black Lives Matter before being incinerated.’”

DAVID CLOUD’S “WAY OF LIFE” RECENT ARTICLES

SEE: https://www.wayoflife.org/friday_church_news/21-29.php;
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
SUPREME COURT RULES THAT RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS NOT GOVERNED BY ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAWS 
(Friday Church News Notes, July 17, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - 
The following is excerpted from “Supreme Court Hands Major Victory to Christian Schools,” Christian Headlines, 
July 8, 2020: “The U.S. Supreme Court handed private religious schools a major victory Wednesday, broadening 
the so-called ministerial exception and ruling they can hire and fire employees without being governed by anti-
discrimination laws. At issue were teachers at two separate Catholic schools who sued after their contracts were 
not renewed for reasons the schools said were related to performance. One teacher, though, alleged age 
discrimination, and the other alleged she was released because she asked for time off for a medical procedure. 
Both sued. The ministerial exception is a legal doctrine that allows religious institutions to hire and fire employees 
without being governed by anti-discrimination laws. The U.S. Ninth Court of Appeals sided with the teachers, 
ruling they were covered by anti-discrimination because they weren’t ministers and had no ministerial background. 
But the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, said the schools were not bound by non-discrimination laws. Justice 
Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion. The ruling could impact future cases related to sexual orientation and 
gender identity, allowing Christian schools to dismiss--for example--a teacher who comes out as LGBT. The 
ministerial exception, Alito ruled, is broad. An employer doesn’t have to wear the title ‘minister’ to be exempted 
from non-discrimination laws, Alito wrote. ‘What matters, at bottom, is what an employee does,’ he wrote. ... 
Joining Alito in the majority were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, 
Neil Gorsuch, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. ... 
‘Today is a huge win for religious schools of all faith traditions,’ said Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel 
at [the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty]. ‘The last thing government officials should do is decide who is authorized 
to teach Catholicism to Catholics or Judaism to Jews. We are glad the Court has resoundingly reaffirmed that 
churches and synagogues, not government, control who teaches kids about God.’”

HEAD OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS FOUNDATION SAYS THERE IS MORE SYSTEMIC RACISM IN THE DEMOCRATIC 
PARTY THAN IN AMERICA’S POLICE FORCES (Friday Church News Notes, July 17, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, 
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Frederick Douglass Foundation Chairman,” 
Just the News, July 7, 2020: “During an interview on the ‘John Solomon Reports’ podcast, Kevin McGary, the 
chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of California, questioned the claim that systemic racism prevails 
among police when so many minorities populate law enforcement’s ranks. Instead, he said that the description of 
systemic racism could be applied to the Democratic Party, which he said ‘started slavery and segregation and to 
this very day they actually encourage the black genocide of black babies.’ He also said that ‘all of their upper 
echelon, meaning in the House and the Senate, are white, and has been for decades, many decades, probably 
forever.’ ... Discussing the late founder of Planned Parenthood, McGary said that Margaret Sanger’s ‘racial hatred 
towards blacks is unparalleled’ and he said that ‘her organization specifically targets to this very day black babies’
 through its abortion programs. ... Regarding the key question that will characterize this year’s election, he remarked,
 ‘The question is: Do you want the ideal of America, the free, the righteous, the just-type America or do you want a 
new sort of reimagined America that embraces something that is anathema to our Constitution, that would be 
Marxism.’”

DEMOCRATIC POLITICIAN CALLS FOR CHANGING NAME OF THE PARTY BECAUSE OF ITS RACIST HISTORY 
(Friday Church News Notes, July 17, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following 
is excerpted from “Dem. Ga. State Rep: Disband and Change Name of Democratic Party,” CNSNews, July 6, 2020: 
“‘If racist relics of the past must come down, shouldn’t we start with the Democrat Party?’ Democrat Georgia State 
Rep. Vernon Jones asks, introducing his video recalling his party’s dubious past regarding issues of racial equality. 
‘If the Democrats are looking to eradicate everything with a racist history, when will my party confront and apologize 
for its own?’ Rep. Jones wrote Friday in a Twitter post of his video, in which he denounces the hypocrisy of 
Democrats supporting the unlawful destruction of statues and monuments while refusing to erase their own ties to 
slavery, segregation and Democrat Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. ‘What I see happening from the 
Democrats and the Left: banding together, going throughout this country unlawfully tearing down statues and 
removing monuments and changing the name of streets and buildings because they feel it’s associated with racism 
and bigotry and the Confederacy. But, here’s what they’re not touching and not banning at all or changing the name: 
the Democratic Party.’ ... ‘Join me and others. Let’s challenge the Democrat Party, to have at their national 
convention, the number one platform issue that they will disband and change the Democratic Party.’”

BLACK LIVES MATTER LEADERS PRAY TO ALLAH FOR STRENGTH NOT TO KILL WHITE PEOPLE AND PRESENT A FIVE-
YEAR PLAN FOR COMPLETE ABOLITION OF POLICE AND ELIMINATION OF MILITARY BASES ABROAD (Friday Church 
News Notes, July 17, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted 
from “Black Lives Matter Leader Toronto,” Gateway Pundit, July 6, 2020: “Old social media posts written by Black 
Lives Matter co-founder Toronto Yusra Khogali are making the rounds this week. Yusra Khogali in 2016 wrote ‘white 
people are a genetic defect of blackness’ in a since-deleted Facebook post. ‘Whiteness is not humxness,’ Khogali 
wrote in a Facebook post. ‘in fact, white skin is sub-humxn.’ ... Khogali also claimed, ‘melanin directly communicates 
with cosmic energy.’ In a separate Twitter post, Khogali tweeted, ‘Plz Allah give me the strength to not cuss/kill 
these men and white folks out here today.’” The following is excerpted from “Black Lives Matter Philadelphia,” Fox 
News, July 8, 2020: “The Philadelphia arm of the Black Lives Matter movement has called for the ‘complete abolition’ 
of the police department in five years as well as the scrapping of military bases abroad. ... And according to BLM 
Philadelphia organizer and activist YahNé Ndgo, the chapter has developed a five-year plan to do just that. ‘One of 
the things that we are demanding over five years is the complete abolition. We don’t want to see any police in our 
community,’ Ndgo told Fox News in an interview Tuesday. ... She pointed out that ‘there are over 800 U.S. military 
bases around the world,’ in addition to the Pentagon's AFRICOM program, ‘which puts military bases in almost every 
country on the African continent.’  (According to Pentagon maps published by The Intercept in February, there appear
 to be U.S. bases on 29 of the 54 countries that make up Africa.) Those bases, she said, should be defunded. 
‘(Defunding) these particular programs would provide massive amounts of resources for the communities in the 
United States, and that would mitigate most of the problems that create the so-called problem of crime,’ Ngdo said.”

BLACK LIVES MATTER MARXIST PROPAGANDA IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS (Friday Church News Notes, July 17, 2020, 
www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Black Lives Matter,” The 
Federalist, July 8, 2020: “New York City is one of many school systems in the United States set to roll out Black 
Lives Matter (BLM)-themed lesson plans this fall. According to the NYC Department of Education, teachers will delve 
into ‘systemic racism,’ police brutality, and white privilege in their classrooms. North Carolina’s largest school system 
in Wake County launched a website this summer that provides BLM lessons for teachers to use in classrooms and for 
parents to use at home. ... Encouraging people to identify and condemn racism is an undeniably laudable undertaking
 by these school administrators. That’s not what’s really happening, however. By bringing BLM into the classroom, 
activist educators are allowing the most radically divisive movement in modern American history to warp children’s 
worldviews. Wake County’s BLM teaching resource is dressed up as a legitimate civics education resource, complete 
with tips for fostering civil discourse and a section on teaching historical facts about America’s civil rights movement. 
But closer inspection reveals it to be a deliberate Trojan Horse conceived to incubate, amplify, and channel the 
movement’s attitudes for political ends. ... Splashed across the homepage of the Wake County School System’s 
website is BLM founder Patrisse Cullors. It is puzzling that a self-proclaimed ‘trained Marxist,’ such as Cullors, would 
be a role model for the school system’s anti-hatred, anti-oppression curriculum. Do these school administrators 
realize that Karl Marx’s road to utopia led to millions of deaths at the hands of tyrants? ... Cullors is a vocal anti-
Israel activist and close ally of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.”

SUPREME COURT RULES TRUMP MUST TURN OVER TAX RECORDS

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/columns/robert-spencer/2020/07/09/criminal-investigation-of-trump-coming-supreme-court-rules-he-must-turn-over-tax-records-n625187;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
The U.S. Supreme Court voted Thursday to uphold a subpoena from a grand jury in New York for President Trump’s tax returns and related records. The president’s attorneys had argued that presidents are immune from criminal investigation while in office, but seven justices, including the Trump-appointed Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, voted to deny this. And so now it is certain: whatever is found in Trump’s tax records, no matter how benign, no matter how innocuous, the president will be subjected to a criminal investigation. This is as certain as death, taxes, and Democrat rage.

The Court’s ruling may be entirely sound on legal grounds. But it assumes an America that is not rent by civil conflict, an America in which judges are still more interested in dispensing impartial justice rather than in using their position to advance their political agenda, an America in which the full weight of the political and media establishment is not bearing down on the president, determined to discredit and destroy him, and remove him from office.

That America no longer exists. The America we live in now is the America in which Michael Flynn was ferociously persecuted for years, bullied into pleading guilty to spurious charges, and on the brink of serving a long prison sentence, all as part of an elaborate effort to frame President Trump on equally spurious charges that would serve as grounds for his impeachment and removal. The America we live in now is the America in which Roger Stone is about to go to prison for the crime of supporting the president and being caught up in the same effort to frame him. The America we have is one in which numerous people, notably Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and a host of others are getting off scot-free for far more serious offenses than anything Flynn or Stone were even accused of doing, because they have the good fortune to be among the privileged classes, the reigning political elites.

In this atmosphere, only the most naïve and blinkered, or only those who are so much a part of the old system that they cannot or will not see how seriously it is breaking down, could possibly think that prosecutors in New York are going to treat Trump’s tax records fairly and impartially. Anyone who has been paying attention to the political scene ever since Lois Lerner, Obama’s director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service, used the IRS to harass and discriminate against conservative organizations, knows that the New York prosecutors are not out to administer justice, they are out to get Trump. And they know that with tax laws being as complicated as they are, and with Trump’s financial records being of necessity as voluminous as they must be, it will not be hard to establish the appearance of impropriety, even if they don’t find any instance of the president actually breaking the law.

The forthcoming Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster evaluates the presidents of the United States, from Washington to Trump, on the only basis upon which they ever should be evaluated: were they good for America and Americans? It discusses how Trump, unlike any other president in American history, faces an entrenched, anti-American, globalist, socialist cabal that is bent on destroying him for the crime of putting America first, and of extricating the United States from numerous aspects of the old international order established after World War II that have proven to be detrimental to American sovereignty and to the well-being of the American people.

That’s what this is all about. It isn’t about possible tax irregularities. It certainly isn’t some high-minded effort to show that no one is above the law; if no one were above the law, there are numerous Obama administration officials who would be sitting in prison cells right now. All this is about is yet another attempt by the political elites to destroy the biggest threat to their hegemony that they have faced since the international order from which they benefit so much personally and professionally was established.

Trump, as Rating America’s Presidents shows, is – as he himself has often avowed – an American president, not the president of the world, not the leader of the foremost cog in the globalist machine, with its decline being carefully managed for the benefit of international socialism. That is why the elites hate Trump with such incandescent hatred. That is why New York prosecutors want his taxes. That is why they are 100% certain to find irregularities in them that, they will insist, require prosecution.

That is also why Trump must ultimately prevail against this new challenge as he has prevailed against all the others. For America, and Americans, it will make the difference between continuing as a free people, or continuing to degenerate into globalist socialist drones.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

 

SUPREME COURT BALKANIZES AMERICA AS HALF OF OKLAHOMA GIVEN TO A SOVEREIGN INDIAN NATION!!!

★★★ A NEW CONSERVATIVE AGE IS RISING ★★★

Supreme Court BALKANIZES America by giving half of Oklahoma over to a sovereign Native American nation! In this video, we’re going to look at the latest insane ruling coming from our de fact tyrants in black robes, how it represents nothing less than the balkanization of our nation, and we’re going to explore the larger dynamics that account for why this is happening in the first place; you’re not going to want to miss this!

SUPREME COURT SETS STAGE FOR FULL REVIEW OF OBAMACARE

BY BOB ADELMANN

SEE: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/36309-supreme-court-sets-stage-for-full-on-review-of-obamacare;

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

Two rulings by the Supreme Court on Wednesday not only affirm the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, they also hearten pro-life constitutional conservatives who hope the rulings set the stage for a full review of the constitutionality of ObamaCare (aka the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) by the high court in the fall.

The first ruling, in a 7-2 decision, concerned the Little Sisters of the Poor, and finally puts to rest the question whether the Trump administration, through an Executive Order to the Department of Health and Human Services, could expand the exemption under which faith-based ministries such as the  Little Sisters could avoid having to provide contraceptive health services to their employees.

When ObamaCare was first foisted upon the American citizenry in 2010, it specifically exempted churches from providing contraceptive healthcare coverage but said nothing about faith-based ministries. So, under ObamaCare, the HHS ruled that religious non-profits such as the Little Sisters of the Poor had to comply, or suffer the consequences of huge fines.

During President Trump’s first year in office, he ordered the HHS to issue a new rule expanding the exemption. Several states sued, claiming that Trump had overreached. The opinion of the high court was penned by Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote, “Consistent with their Catholic faith, the Little Sisters hold the religious conviction ‘that deliberately avoiding reproduction through medical means is immoral.’”

He explained why the court reversed a lower court’s ruling, stating that the Trump administration had not exceeded its authority by issuing the new rule that expanded the exemption:

For over 150 years, the Little Sisters have engaged in faithful service and sacrifice, motivated by a religious calling to surrender all for the sake of their brother. “[T]hey commit to constantly living out a witness that proclaims the unique, inviolable dignity of every person, particularly those whom others regard as weak or worthless.”

But for the past seven years, they — like many other religious objectors who have participated in the litigation and rulemakings leading up to today’s decision — have had to fight for the ability to continue in their noble work without violating their sincerely held religious beliefs.

After two decisions from this Court and multiple failed regulatory attempts, the Federal Government has arrived at a solution that exempts the Little Sisters from the source of their complicity-based concerns — the administratively imposed contraceptive mandate.

We hold today that the Departments had the statutory authority to craft that exemption, as well as the contemporaneously issued moral exemption.

We further hold that the rules promulgating these exemptions are free from procedural defects. Therefore, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

The second case, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morissey-Berru, although less known, is just as important as Little Sisters. The Supreme Court also ruled 7-2 in favor of the two religious schools who argued that they should not have to face discrimination lawsuits brought by former teachers.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion:

The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission.

Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those responsibilities would undermine the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate.

Applause for the ruling came from Adrian Alarcon, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles: “Religious schools play an integral role in passing the faith to the next generation of believers. We are grateful that the Supreme Court recognized [that] faith groups must be free to make their own decisions about who should be entrusted with these essential duties.”

The lead counsel for Becket, Eric Rassbach, who argued the case for the schools, called the decision a “huge win”:

Today is a huge win for religious schools of all faith traditions. The last thing government officials should do is decide who is authorized to teach Catholicism to Catholics or Judaism to Jews. We are glad the court has resoundingly reaffirmed that churches and synagogues, not government, control who teaches kids about God.

In the fall, the high court will take on a lawsuit brought by 20 states, led by Texas, calling for the elimination of ObamaCare. It will be combined with another lawsuit brought by 17 other states, led by California, seeking to preserve the law.

The Trump administration has weighed in on the side of the 20 states, filing a brief that asks the high court to consider “whether, as a result of the elimination of the monetary penalty for noncompliance with the ACA’s minimum-essential-coverage requirement … that requirement is no longer a valid exercise of Congress’ legislative authority.” And if so, “the remainder of the ACA’s provisions are inseverable from it.”

Therefore, according to the government’s brief, “the judgment of the court of appeals should be affirmed insofar as it held that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, and this Court should further hold that the insurance provisions injuring the individual plaintiffs are inseverable from the mandate and the remainder of the Act.”

Naturally, totalitarians fear the worst. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement: “President Trump and the Republicans’ campaign to rip away the protections and benefits of the Affordable Care Act in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is an act of unfathomable cruelty.” Former Vice President Joe Biden spoke, denouncing Trump’s position: “It’s cruel, it’s heartless, and it’s callous.”

Constitutionalists are hoping that the high court finds ObamaCare unconstitutional. 

 

U.S. SUPREME COURT LETS LAWS CREATING BUFFER ZONES AROUND CHICAGO, HARRISBURG ABORTION FACILITIES STAND

BY HEATHER CLARK

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2020/07/03/us-supreme-court-lets-laws-creating-buffer-zones-around-chicago-harrisburg-abortion-facilities-stand/;

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

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Thursday to take up challenges to rulings upholding laws in Chicago, Illinois and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that create buffer zones around abortion facilities. The laws require those who wish to reach abortion-minded mothers to stand back at a certain distance away from the entrance to the facility, making it harder to communicate with those intent on having their unborn child murdered.

While the denial for certiorari was without explanation, the court did note that Justice Clarence Thomas was in favor of hearing the cases.

The appeals for consideration were Price v. City of Chicago and Reilly v. City of Harrisburg. Read the appeal briefs here and here.

The 2009 Chicago ordinance classifies a person who “knowingly approaches another person within eight feet of such person, unless such other person consents, for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling with such other person in the public way within a radius of 50 feet from any entrance door to a hospital, medical clinic or healthcare facility” guilty of disorderly conduct.

The 2012 Harrisburg statute states that “[n]o person or persons shall knowingly congregate, patrol, picket or demonstrate in a zone extending 20 feet from any portion of an entrance to, exit from, or driveway of a health care facility.”

Sidewalk counselors outside of facilities in these cites, who engage in leafleting and one-on-one conversation with abortion-minded women, considered the rules a violation of their First Amendment rights to speak, assemble and exercise their religion. They note that the laws make it difficult for them to effectively communicate since they must stand so far away.

The Chicago and Harrisburg ordinances were challenged in 2016, but the courts upheld both statutes. Their attorneys, the Thomas More Society and Liberty Counsel, respectively, were hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court would take the cases as provide clarity to the issue in light of past legal precedent.

“With its ‘bubble zone’ law, the City of Chicago is doing women a great disservice by denying them access to information at a critical time in their lives,” Senior Counsel Thomas Olp with the Thomas More Society said in an interview posted to the organization’s website.

“Additionally, this law is vague and over-broad and does not serve any legitimate interest of the city. Chicago has never had an issue with obstruction of access to abortion facilities,” he stated. “The abortion lobby wants people to believe that pro-life advocates who witness outside abortion clinics are aggressive and threatening. That’s just not true.”

As previously reported, the Supreme Court did rule on another abortion case this week, as Justice John Roberts sided with his liberal colleagues on Monday to strike down a Louisiana law requiring abortionists to obtain admitting privileges at a local hospital in the event that a mother is injured in the process of having her unborn baby killed.

Roberts, nominated to the court by then-President George W. Bush, opined that the rule “imposes an undue burden on access to abortion.”

Please visit Christian News Network’s Outlaw Abortion page to help us work to abolish the worldwide holocaust.

 

U.S. SUPREME COURT: STATES CAN’T EXCLUDE RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS FROM PRIVATE EDUCATION SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMS

BY HEATHER CLARK

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2020/06/30/us-supreme-court-states-cant-exclude-religious-schools-from-private-education-scholarship-programs/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Photo Credit: Joe Ravi

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts siding with his conservative colleagues this time, that the State of Montana can’t exclude religious schools from a program that allows scholarships to be awarded to families for the attendance of private schools.

“A state need not subsidize private education. But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious,” wrote Roberts on behalf of the majority.

Article X, Section VI of the Montana Constitution states, “The legislature, counties, cities, towns, school districts, and public corporations shall not make any direct or indirect appropriation or payment from any public fund or monies, or any grant of lands or other property for any sectarian purpose or to aid any church, school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination.”

Therefore, when the state legislature created a donor-funded, taxpayer credit initiative program in 2015 to provide tuition assistance to families whose children attend private schools, and some families used the funds to send their children to a Christian school, the Montana Department of Revenue instituted Rule 1 to prohibit the money from being utilized for religious schooling in light of the constitutional “no-aid provision.”

The state attorney general objected to the rule as he believed the exclusion violated the federal constitution.

Three mothers whose children attend Stillwater Christian School soon sued, and the case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, went all the way to the nation’s highest court after a trial court blocked the rule but the state Supreme Court reinstated it.

On Tuesday, the court found that the “no-aid” provision “burdens not only religious schools but also the families whose children attend or hope to attend them.”

“Drawing on ‘enduring American tradition,’ we have long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children. Many parents exercise that right by sending their children to religious schools, a choice protected by the Constitution,” Roberts noted.

“But the no-aid provision penalizes that decision by cutting families off from otherwise available benefits if they choose a religious private school rather than a secular one, and for no other reason.”

“Given the conflict between the Free Exercise Clause and the application of the no-aid provision here, the Montana Supreme Court should have ‘disregard[ed]’ the no-aid provision and decided this case ‘conformably to the [C]onstitution’ of the United States,” the majority concluded.

“That ‘supreme law of the land’ condemns discrimination against religious schools and the families whose children attend them. They are ‘member[s] of the community too,’ and their exclusion from the scholarship program here is ‘odious to our Constitution’ and ‘cannot stand.'”

In addition to Roberts, the majority opinion was comprised of Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.

“I wanted my kids to have a really strong sense of right and wrong from a biblical perspective,” lead plaintiff Kendra Espinoza remarked, according to NPR. “I want them to understand that our sense of ethics and our morals come from God’s word, not just man’s ideas.”

Read the ruling in full here. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) blasted the opinion as “the latest in a disturbing line of Supreme Court cases attacking the very foundations of the separation of church and state.” But the religious liberties organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) remarked that the court was “right to rule that states can’t oust parents and children from neutral benefit programs simply because they choose a religious private school.”

As previously reported, former Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren tweeted earlier this year that she opposed funding for private school attendance — especially educational institutions that disagree with homosexual behavior.

“States should focus on funding public schools, not private ones — especially not ones that maintain anti-LGBTQ+ policies,” she wrote. “We must ensure every kid — especially LGBTQ+ kids — can get a high-quality public education.”

 

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ROBERTS JOINS LIBERALS IN 5-4 RULING~SAYS REQUIRING ABORTIONISTS TO OBTAIN HOSPITAL ADMISSION RIGHTS IS “BURDEN ON ACCESS TO ABORTION”

BY HEATHER CLARK

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2020/06/29/roberts-joins-liberals-in-5-4-ruling-says-requiring-abortionists-to-obtain-hospital-admission-is-burden-on-access-to-abortion/;

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

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice John Roberts sided with his liberal colleagues on Monday to strike down a Louisiana law requiring abortionists to obtain admitting privileges at a local hospital in the event that a mother is injured in the process of having her unborn baby killed. Roberts, nominated to the court by then-President George W. Bush, opined that the rule “imposes an undue burden on access to abortion.” Many Christians believe that they must vote Republican in order to put “conservative” justices on the bench.

Roberts joined Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to be the deciding factor in the 5-4 decision. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.

“The law would reduce the number of clinics from three to ‘one, or at most two,’ and the number of physicians providing abortions from five to ‘one, or at most two,’ and ‘therefore cripple women’s ability to have an abortion in Louisiana,'” Roberts wrote in a separate opinion.

“The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons,” he said, referring to the 2016 ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. “Therefore, Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.”

Roberts had dissented in the 2016 ruling, but noted in Monday’s opinion, “I joined the dissent in Whole Woman’s Health and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided. The question today, however, is not whether Whole Woman’s Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case.”

Louisiana Act Number 620 required abortionists to “have active admitting privileges at a hospital that is located not further than thirty miles from the location at which the abortion is performed or induced and that provides obstetrical or gynecological health care services.”

Admitting privileges are defined as being “a member in good standing of the medical staff of a hospital that is currently licensed by the
Department [of Health and Hospitals], with the ability to admit a patient and to provide diagnostic and surgical services to such patient.”

Read the bill in full here.

Justice Breyer wrote the main opinion for the court, similarly stating, “Some hospitals expressly bar anyone with privileges from performing abortions. Others are unwilling to extend privileges to abortion providers as a matter of discretion. … Still other hospitals have requirements that abortion providers cannot satisfy because of the hostility they face in Louisiana.”

And with fewer abortion facilities due to the inability to meet the admission privileges requirement, “it would still leave thousands of Louisiana women with no practical means of obtaining a safe, legal abortion, and it would not meaningfully address the health risks associated with crowding and delay for those able to secure an appointment with one of the state’s two remaining providers.”

Breyer and the majority consequently agreed with a lower court ruling that “Louisiana’s law poses a ‘substantial obstacle’ to women seeking an abortion; its determination that the law offers no significant health-related benefits; and its determination that the law consequently imposes an ‘undue burden’ on a woman’s constitutional right to choose to have an abortion.”

Read the ruling, along with the concurrences and dissents, in full here. 

As previously reported, Roberts also joined the liberal justices of the court to uphold Obamacare in 2012, disappointing a number of conservatives who thought he would save the country from the requirements in the Affordable Care Act. He recently sided with his liberal colleagues to reject a challenge to California’s limits on church attendance during the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2005, during a discussion about the separation of church and state with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Roberts, a Roman Catholic, explained, “[M]y faith and my religious beliefs do not play a role in judging. When it comes to judging, I look to the law books and always have. I don’t look to the Bible or any other religious source.”

2 Chronicles 19:6 reads, “Take heed what ye do, for ye judge not for man but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment.”

Psalm 2:10-12 exhorts, “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings. Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.”

Please visit Christian News Network’s Outlaw Abortion page to help us work to abolish the worldwide holocaust.

 

SCOTUS INACTION FRUSTRATES SECOND AMENDMENT SUPPORTERS; EMBOLDENS ANTI-GUNNERS

BY JIM GRANT 

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2020/06/scotus-inaction-frustrates-2a-supporters-emboldens-anti-gunners/#axzz6QC2U3Gjn;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- Gun owners are by now used to being disappointed with the U.S. Supreme 
Court’s refusal to uphold their rights or even to defend its own Second Amendment precedents. But 
the court’s neglect reached a new low last Monday, with its sweeping decision to deny review of the 
many Second Amendment cases pending on its docket.

At issue were 10 petitions that offered the court opportunities to clarify the most important and contentious issues in the modern Second Amendment landscape, controversies that in some cases have led to radically different approaches by public officials and the lower courts.

The high court, however, passed on all of them. The Supreme Court’s most recent “punt” prompted outrage not only from pro-gun activists but by members of the court itself who remain committed to upholding Second Amendment rights.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who has long criticized his colleagues’ neglect of the Second Amendment, chose the NRA-backed case of Rogers v. Grewal to renew his objections to what he characterized as “the Court simply look[ing] the other way” on infringements of the right to keep and bear arms.

The Rogers petition asked the Supreme Court to review a decision from the Third Circuit that upheld New Jersey’s “may-issue” concealed carry regime, effectively allowing New Jersey officials to deny ordinary citizens the right to bear arms in public for self-defense.

In a 19-page dissent from the court’s refusal to hear the case, Thomas argued that the court should have granted review, that the Second Amendment protects a right to bear arms in public for self-defense, and that New Jersey’s “may-issue” regime violates that right. Trump appointee Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined Thomas in dissent.

Thomas wrote that “many courts have resisted our decisions in Heller and McDonald” by ignoring its analytical approach and substituting a “made up” test with no basis in the Second Amendment or the Supreme Court’s precedents on that provision. Moreover, he stated, the lower courts’ application of that test “has yielded analyses that are entirely inconsistent with Heller,” which “cautioned that ‘[a] constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all’”.

“[W]e explicitly rejected the invitation to evaluate Second Amendment challenges under an ‘interest-balancing inquiry, with the interests protected by the Second Amendment on one side and the governmental public-safety concerns on the other,’” Thomas reminded the court. “But the application of the test adopted by the courts of appeals has devolved into just that,” he said.

While bystanders can only speculate on the reason the court continues to “look the other way” on the Second Amendment, at least two clear implications for gun owners emerge from this latest development.

One, they must continue to support President Trump’s unprecedented efforts to seat fearless and unapologetic constitutionalists to all levels of the federal courts.

Second, they must redouble their activism in the political sphere to ensure that if the courts too often won’t respect their rights, their elected officials will.

As always, your NRA will be at the forefront of these and other efforts to protect the right to keep and bear arms.


National Rifle Association Institute For Legislative Action (NRA-ILA)

About NRA-ILA:

Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org

 

SUPREME COURT JUSTICES ALITO & THOMAS WARN “PREPOSTEROUS” RULING BARRING EMPLOYERS FROM FIRING MEN IN DRESSES IS A “THREAT” TO RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

BY HEATHER CLARK

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2020/06/19/justices-alito-thomas-warn-preposterous-ruling-barring-employers-from-firing-men-in-dresses-threat-to-religious-liberty/;

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

WASHINGTON — In their dissent from this week’s Supreme Court ruling reading sexual orientation and gender identity into the meaning of “sex” in federal civil rights law, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas called the decision a “brazen abuse of authority” and opined that it is “preposterous” for the court to claim that it only interpreted the statute rather than bypassed the legislature.

The two also expressed concern about what the ruling might mean for religious liberty from a variety of aspects — from the employment practices of churches, to the moral standards for workers at Christian schools, to the rights of doctors who decline to perform sex-change-related operations.

“Usurping the constitutional authority of the other branches, the court has essentially taken H. R. 5’s provision on employment discrimination and issued it under the guise of statutory interpretation,” Alito wrote, being joined by Thomas in his dissent. “A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall.”

“The court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous,” he continued. “Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of ‘sex’ is different from discrimination because of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity.’ And in any event, our duty is to interpret statutory terms to ‘mean what they conveyed to reasonable people at the time they were written.'”

“Before issuing today’s radical decision, the court should have given some thought to where its decision would lead,” Alito said, worrying what might become of the issue of the use of locker rooms and restrooms by those who identify as the opposite sex, as well as the future of women’s sports and housing for college students, who might have to share sleeping quarters with someone who is really the same sex.

“The court may wish to avoid this subject, but it is a matter of concern to many people who are reticent about disrobing or using toilet facilities in the presence of individuals whom they regard as members of the opposite sex,” he noted, adding that the definition of “transgender” could even “apply to individuals who are ‘gender fluid,’ that is, individuals whose gender identity is mixed or changes over time.”

“The Court’s decision may lead to Title IX cases against any college that resists assigning students of the opposite biological sex as roommates,” Alito also worried. “A provision of Title IX allows schools to maintain ‘separate living facilities for the different sexes,’ but it may be argued that a student’s ‘sex’ is the gender with which the student identifies.”

He and Thomas likewise expressed concern over the ramifications for religious liberty, writing, “As the briefing in these cases has warned, the position that the court now adopts will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety. No one should think that the court’s decision represents an unalloyed victory for individual liberty.”

Alito said that various religious groups, including Christians, had filed briefs in the consolidated cases, fearing that an adverse ruling “will trigger open conflict with faith-based employment practices of numerous churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious institutions.”

“They argue that ‘[r]eligious organizations need employees who actually live the faith,'” Alito outlined, “and that compelling a religious organization to employ individuals whose conduct flouts the tenets of the organization’s faith forces the group to communicate an objectionable message.”

Alito noted that Christian schools similarly have moral standards for employees, but under the ruling, those standards may be meaningless if able to be flouted, and workers may be able to sue if they are let go for violating the lifestyle covenant.

“A school’s standards for its faculty ‘communicate a particular way of life to its students,’ and a ‘violation by the faculty of those precepts’ may undermine the school’s ‘moral teaching.’ Thus, if a religious school teaches that sex outside marriage and sex reassignment procedures are immoral, the message may be lost if the school employs a teacher who is in a same-sex relationship or has undergone or is undergoing sex reassignment,” he explained.

“Yet today’s decision may lead to Title VII claims by such teachers and applicants for employment,” Alito lamented.

He also pointed out that transgenders have filed suit for being denied sex change operations, and “[s]uch claims present difficult religious liberty issues because some employers and healthcare providers have strong religious objections to sex reassignment procedures, and therefore requiring them to pay for or to perform these procedures will have a severe impact on their ability to honor their deeply held religious beliefs.”

Alito further expressed concern that employers and co-workers may be required to address those who identify as transgender by their preferred pronoun, and “[t]he court’s decision may also pressure employers to suppress any statements by employees expressing disapproval of same-sex relationships and sex reassignment procedures.”

“Employers are already imposing such restrictions voluntarily, and after today’s decisions employers will fear that allowing employees to express their religious views on these subjects may give rise to Title VII harassment claims,” he worried.

“Although the Court does not want to think about the consequences of its decision, we will not be able to avoid those issues for long. The entire Federal Judiciary will be mired for years in disputes about the reach of the court’s reasoning,” Alito said.

Read the dissent on page 38 of the ruling here.

BACKGROUND

As previously reported, the Supreme Court issued its 6-3 ruling on Monday morning, concluding that a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, known as Title VII, which bars job discrimination on the basis of sex, among other traits, may be read to include homosexual and “transgender” employees.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

He and “conservative” Justice John Roberts joined the liberal justices on the bench to form the majority 6-3 ruling.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh dissented, as well as Alito and Thomas, but applauded the result as an “important victory” that homosexuals can “take pride in.”

One of the three cases before the court surrounding the issue involved R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, an explicitly Christian home that was sued after firing a male employee who wanted to begin wearing a skirt uniform for work as he was diagnosed with “gender dysphoria.”

“R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes recognize that its highest priority is to honor God in all that we do as a company and as individuals,” the company’s website states. It also features a quote from Matthew 6:33, in which Jesus taught that men should “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

Because owner Thomas Rost Rost did not feel comfortable with providing a skirt suit due to his Christian convictions, Stephens was let go.

Stephens consequently took the matter to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which sued Rost with the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in alleging gender discrimination.

“R.G. employees understand that the dress code requires funeral directors to wear company-provided suits,” attorneys for Rost outlined in a legal brief. “Rost sincerely believes that he would be violating God’s commands if he were to pay for or otherwise permit one of RG’s funeral directors to wear the uniform for members of the opposite sex while at work.”

A federal court ruled against Rost, but the Sixth Circuit overturned the decision. The matter was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Stephens died last month following a lengthy battle with kidney disease.

 

SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS DECIDES OBAMA IS STILL PRESIDENT~COURT PROTECTS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE CONSTITUTION

The judicial branch has just dumped buckets of sand into what should be a straight-forward process of this administration being able to undo what was an unlawful executive action in the first place. Unfortunately, and I hate to say it, but Chief Justice John Roberts strikes yet again. By the time this gets through the courts again, it will be a new presidential term, and if Biden were to win, DACA rescission is gone and lawless people would have been able to weaponize the courts and able to thwart the President they don't like. This is not the way the rule of law and our system of liberty is supposed to work. I was on Fox News early this morning talking about the Supreme Court's DACA ruling.

BY DANIEL GREENFIELD

SEE: https://cms.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/06/justice-roberts-decides-obama-still-president-daniel-greenfield;

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

Illegal isn't even the word for this absurdity.

Obama decided to unilaterally implement an amnesty for some illegal aliens, or as the media falsely calls them "young immigrants". While officially Obama was using discretion, in practice he rolled out an entire system for allowing DACA aliens to function as if they were legally here. This was completely outside the powers of the executive. And Justice Roberts was fine with that.

When President Trump tossed the amnesty aside, which only executed through Obama's orders, the Left announced that Trump had no right to undo Obama's unilateral act. Now Justice Roberts and the usual Dem justices have agreed that Obama is still POTUS.

Roberts claims that his decision is about process. This is the same scam that he pulled with what is probably the most fatal loss of the Trump era, when it came to putting citizenship on the census. It's not about process. It's about political correctness.

Justice Roberts is helping Democrats police what he considers violations of assorted progressive causes, and this is the second time he wrongly used process to protect illegal aliens. Both were utterly outrageous decisions that nullified the separation of powers and executive authority. As bad as previous courts were, Roberts has taken the SCOTUS in the direction of suppressing executive authority when it's used to carry out policies that political elites disapproved of. This is, in many ways, more troubling than previous SCOTUS abuses.

The Roberts court is essentially going along with at least some of the judicial sabotage engaged in by Obama and Clinton judges whose only purpose is to wrongly override the authority of an executive whom they oppose.

Franco may still be dead, but according to Justice Roberts, Obama is still in the Oval Office.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Supreme Court Protects Illegal Immigrants at the Expense of the Constitution

Chief Justice Roberts moves further to the Left

BY JOSEPH KLEIN

SEE: https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/supreme-court-protects-illegal-immigrants-expense-joseph-klein;

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

The Supreme Court rejected by a 5-4 vote the Trump administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program initiated by President Obama in 2012 unilaterally via an executive order. In an opinion written largely by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court held that the Trump administration’s action reversing Obama’s executive order was “arbitrary and capricious.” The administration needed to go back to square one and come up with a better rationale for its decision, the Court ruled. Roberts and the liberal foursome, with whom he is increasingly aligning himself, were the ones who reached an “arbitrary and capricious” decision. They threw judicial restraint to the wind.

Just as Chief Justice Roberts had done in upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare on dubious legal grounds, he joined his four liberal colleagues in twisting the law to reach a desired policy outcome on behalf of the illegal immigrant “Dreamers.” Roberts is morphing into another in the line of Republican appointees to the Supreme Court who represented themselves as conservative jurists but have sided more and more frequently with the liberal bloc once they secured their lifetime seats on the Court.

In this case, Roberts used a pseudo-technical interpretation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to conclude that the Trump administration’s decision to rescind Obama’s DACA executive order did not meet the APA’s standards requiring “a reasoned explanation for its action.”  To the contrary, President Trump had a compelling reason to reverse, by his own executive order, the executive order of his predecessor with which he had sharp disagreement on legal as well as policy grounds. President Trump believed that Obama had exceeded his legal authority in issuing his DACA order in the first place and did not want to expend federal resources in defending the DACA order against anticipated legal challenges. Such allocation of executive resources and balancing the risks of litigation against the executive department are entirely within his discretion as the nation’s chief executive officer.

Obama’s DACA program had granted young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children the right to work and stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation. DACA recipients also became eligible for other benefits. The so-called “Dreamers,“ many of whom are now adults, were in the country illegally when Obama unilaterally decided to “legislate” their temporary legal status and conferral of benefits through executive action. DACA altered how the immigration laws applied to this large class of illegal aliens.

Never mind that the Trump administration was on solid ground in concluding that Obama had exceeded his constitutional authority in issuing his DACA executive order in the first place. The Chief Justice sidestepped this fundamental legal issue. He placed more importance on the DACA recipients’ reliance on Obama’s order that even Obama himself had previously doubted he had the constitutional authority to issue on his own. Roberts for all intents and purposes stepped out of his judicial role and stepped into the shoes of an advocate for illegal immigrants. Never mind, as Justice Clarence Thomas put it in his dissenting opinion, that “the Trump administration rescinded DACA the same way that the Obama administration created it: unilaterally, and through a mere memorandum.” According to Roberts’ “reasoning,” the Trump administration must do a better job explaining the rationale of its rescission of Obama’s DACA executive order than the Obama administration had done originally in justifying the DACA order itself.

“Chief Justice Roberts does it again, convoluting the law to appease the D.C. establishment,” Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, said in reaction to the Supreme Court’s DACA decision. “By ruling that President Trump cannot terminate DACA in the same manner that President Obama used to start it, the Court’s decision creates two standards of executive power: one for President Obama and another for President Trump.”

One president’s executive order is not the equivalent of legislation duly passed by Congress and signed by the president that is legally binding on the next president. It is not even a regulation that has gone through an extensive public comment process and complied with other rigorous procedural requirements. The next president is free to exercise his own executive authority to either accept his predecessor’s executive order, rescind it, or replace it with another order of his own. President Trump’s executive order did nothing more than restore conditions for the “Dreamers” to the way they were before Obama issued his DACA executive fiat without Congressional authorization or even the rigorous procedural processes required for lawful regulations.

In reversing Obama’s executive order with his own executive order, President Trump first gave Congress the opportunity to take up the “Dreamers” issue in new legislation where making such significant changes in immigration law policy belongs. Congress has failed so far to pass such remedial legislation that would be acceptable to the Trump administration. The judiciary has no business injecting itself into a political dispute over immigration policy between the legislative and executive branches. But that is precisely what Chief Justice Roberts has now done in joining once again with the liberal wing of the Court that likes to legislate their policy preferences from the bench.

As Chief Justice Roberts admitted in his opinion, “DACA was rescinded because of the Attorney General’s illegality determination.” That should have been the end of the case. But Roberts and his liberal colleagues ignored the core issue of DACA’s illegality. They decided to legitimize Obama’s illegitimate executive order for politically expedient reasons.

The administration should have assessed “the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients,” Roberts wrote in remanding the matter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “so that it may consider the problem anew.”  It is not up to the Supreme Court to prescribe policy options that the executive branch must consider in order to save a legally defective executive order from a prior administration.

Justice Clarence Thomas saw right through Chief Justice Roberts’ sophistry. Justice Thomas undertook the careful analysis of federal immigration law and the limits of its delegation of authority to the executive branch that Chief Justice Roberts neglected to do. The Obama administration lacked the “authority from Congress to either reclassify removable DACA recipients as lawfully present, or to exempt the entire class of aliens covered by DACA from statutory removal procedures,” Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent. “No party disputes that the immigration statutes lack an express delegation to accomplish either result. And, an examination of the highly reticulated immigration regime makes clear that DHS has no implicit discretion to create new classes of lawful presence or to grant relief from removal out of whole cloth.  Accordingly, DACA is substantively unlawful.”

Justice Thomas also warned of dangerous consequences that may flow from the Roberts majority opinion. “Under the auspices of today’s decision, administrations can bind their successors by unlawfully adopting significant legal changes through Executive Branch agency memoranda,” Justice Thomas wrote. “Even if the agency lacked authority to effectuate the changes, the changes cannot be undone by the same agency in a successor administration unless the successor provides sufficient policy justifications to the satisfaction of this Court. In other words, the majority erroneously holds that the agency is not only permitted, but required, to continue administering unlawful programs that it inherited from a previous administration.”

Chief Justice Roberts has claimed to have great concern for ensuring public acceptance of the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. "In our branch, our job is to interpret the law and ensure compliance with the Constitution," Roberts said last September. "We will decide cases according to the Constitution and our laws, without fear or favor.” The Chief Justice flunked this standard with his DACA opinion and placed the legitimacy of the Supreme Court's rulings on hot button issues in further jeopardy.

 

 
 

SUPREME COURT: CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS LEADS SCOTUS AGAINST GUN RIGHTS

Why does the SECOND AMENDMENT get NO LOVE from our current Supreme Court? This week, the Supreme Court had the chance to take up a defense of our fundamental right to keep and bear arms. Yet the court denied ten requests to protect our beloved Second Amendment. These are our fellow citizens who are asking the Court to protect their right to defend themselves, their families, and other vulnerable members of their communities. It has been ten years since the Supreme Court has protected our Second Amendment. They have crafted avoidance of this issue into a high art.

SCOTUS undercuts the very definition of the word “right”, since rights are unassailable by the state – that’s the point. https://www.mrctv.org/blog/roberts-an...

Roberts and The Left Lead Supreme Court Against Gun Rights

BY P. GARDNER GOLDSMITH

SEE: https://www.mrctv.org/blog/roberts-and-left-lead-supreme-court-against-gun-rights;

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

Since 2008, and the now infamous “District of Columbia v. Heller” majority opinion penned by Antonin Scalia, many Americans who understand the nature of rights and the Second Amendment have lamented Scalia’s wording, because at the close of the opinion in which he said the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right (easy to figure out), he added that… er, rights can be attenuated.

Which undercuts the very definition of the word “right”, since rights are unassailable by the state – that’s the point.

It turns out that Scalia’s error has caused all kinds of problems, now compounded by Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberal majority on the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS)as they just rebuffed numerous cases brought by folks defending their gun rights, and made more frustrating by how some report on the story.

So, for example, we have Richard Wolf, of USA Today, whose first line speaks volumes:

The Supreme Court wasted little time Monday making clear its reluctance to wade back into the national battle over gun rights.

The very fact that he can express a sentence saying there’s a “national battle over gun rights” is problematic. If people have an inherent, individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense – which they DO – then how can there be a “national battle” over them? Wouldn’t it be a given that others can’t infringe on one’s right to self-defense, that doing so -- whether it be alone or with a gang called “government” -- is improper and aggressive? One doesn’t need the wording of the Second Amendment to know this as manifestly true. It’s simply based on logic.

But Wolf goes on:

After refusing to rule on a challenge to New York City gun restrictions because they were rescinded while the case was pending, the court turned away all potential replacements that would have given its conservative justices a chance to strengthen the Second Amendment.

Why should the Second Amendment need “strengthening?” After all, it’s a simple statement prohibiting ALL forms of government from infringing on the right to keep and bear arms.

Perhaps 19th Century philosopher Lysander Spooner was right when, in his treatise, “No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority”, he pointed out that the Constitution has not stopped politicians from expanding the purview of the state and increasing their attacks on individual rights…?

Sure seems to be the case, because Wolf added:

The justices had a long list of challenges to choose from, including several testing the threshold issue of whether guns can be carried in public nationwide, as they currently are in some 40 states. Other issues included bans on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and handgun sales.

There were ten gun-rights cases, total, that the SCOTUS could have heard, many of which object to similar infringements in different states, but it’s productive to highlight a few major points…

First, the earlier case in which the Court refused to hear a challenge brought by New York City residents against a city statute making it virtually impossible for them to take firearms outside the Big Apple (where most of the gun training facilities are located) saw Roberts and the lefties turn a blind eye because the city authoritarians argued that they had changed the statute (they changed it after the challenge was brought to lower court), to allow for easier movement. But the fact remains that the city government has the gall to create such a statute, and they can revise it again. The point is that the suit was brought before the revision, and the injustice was DONE, harming people and attacking their rights.

Roberts and his pals, Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, Kavanaugh, and Ginsberg, all voted to allow the injustice to stand, thus allowing the precedent and practice of the city “controls” to stand. And their majority opinion in refusing the case was merely two pages, while the dissent, written by Sam Alito, was 31. In it, he included this, as noted in an excellent piece on the topic by Ammoland:

By incorrectly dismissing this case as moot, the Court permits our docket to be manipulated in a way that should not be countenanced.

And he added:

Since then (“Heller” and the McDonald V Chicago case of 2010), the lower courts have decided numerous cases involving Second Amendment challenges to a variety of federal, state, and local laws. Most have failed. We have been asked to review many of these decisions, but until this case, we denied all such requests. On January 22, 2019, we granted review to consider the constitutionality of a New York City ordinance that burdened the right recognized in Heller.

And his final point is extremely important:

In sum, the City’s travel restriction burdened the very right recognized in Heller. History provides no support for a restriction of this type. The City’s public safety arguments were weak on their face, were not substantiated in any way, and were accepted below with no serious probing. And once we granted review in this case, the City’s public safety concerns evaporated. We are told that the mode of review in this case is representative of the way Heller has been treated in the lower courts. If that is true, there is cause for concern. This case is not moot. The City violated petitioners’ Second Amendment right, and we should so hold.

And that’s just the earlier case.

If one looks at other the other ten cases, one sees a slasher-film’s worth of injustices, including, as Wolf notes, state attacks on magazine capacity and rapidity of fire, and one of the most important aspects of the supposed constitutional US system, the ability of people to open-carry nationwide.

And this doesn’t involve solely the right to keep and bear arms. It ties-in the important clause of the Constitution called “The Full Faith and Credit Clause”, found in Article Four, Section One, of the so-called rule book, and it’s important because the clause clearly mandates that any legal license in one state must be recognized with “full faith and credit” in all states. This means that marriages will be recognized from state to state, driver’s licenses will be recognized as valid from state to state, and, if the states are going to insult us and attack our rights by engaging in unconstitutional “gun licensing”, any gun license issued in one state must be recognized in all.

But, of course, the leftists aren’t interested in that, and neither is John Roberts. As Adam Winkler writes for The Atlantic:

So what explains the Court’s refusal to hear another Second Amendment case? Only the justices can be certain, but one thing we do know is that the Court’s decision to take a case requires the agreement of only four justices. And we also know that four justices (Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh) are all on record saying that the Court should take a Second Amendment case and address the very unanswered questions posed by the cases it turned away today. Those justices could have forced the Court to take one of them, but they didn’t—and one suspects that’s because of John Roberts.

Given the number of times Chief Justice Roberts has turned his back on fundamental rights and the wording of the very Constitution that created his seat, that seems to be the case.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

No Gun Cases Lawsuits Supreme Court

Chief Justice Roberts Afraid of Restoring the Second Amendment

BY DAVE WORKMAN

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2020/06/chief-justice-roberts-afraid-of-restoring-the-second-amendment/#axzz6PidqONzV

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

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- From the moment Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of 
the Second Amendment Foundation, said in a prepared statement following the Supreme Court’s 
rejection of ten pending gun rights cases, that responsibility for this high court two-step “falls 
squarely at the feet of Chief Justice John Roberts,” the question that must be answered is this:

“Is the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court afraid of restoring the Second Amendment to apply equally to all citizens?” It is beginning to appear that way.

The National Rifle Association issued a statement: “The Bill of Rights specifically includes the right to keep and bear arms because self-defense is fundamental to the liberty of a free society. Today’s inaction continues to allow so-called gun safety politicians to trample on the freedom and security of law-abiding citizens. This fight is not over for the NRA.”

The Roberts Court, November 30, 2018. Seated, from left to right: Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Samuel A. Alito. Standing, from left to right: Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Brett M. Kavanaugh. Photograph by Fred Schilling, Supreme Court Curator's Office.

Gottlieb was equally blunt, observing, “Given the fact that the Supreme Court had a cafeteria-style menu of cases from which to choose, there is no excuse why the court at this time chose to ignore the need to rule on any of these cases, and send a message to lower courts that they can no longer thumb their noses at the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court decisions affirming the individual right to keep and bear arms.”

Roberts’ appointment made the 5-4 Heller (2008) and McDonald (2010) Second Amendment opinions possible. His addition to the court enabled Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito to author opinions anyone can understand; the Second Amendment protects an individual fundamental right to keep and bear arms outside of any service in a militia.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas

But in the years since, lower courts have wrestled, incredulously as it might seem, with the question whether this right extends beyond the confines of one’s home. It is a question that needs to be answered sooner than later, especially considering a passage in Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in the court’s rejection of Rogers v. Grewal, one of the ten cases. This was a challenge to the New Jersey “justifiable need” requirement to obtain a carry permit in the Garden State.

“One of this Court’s primary functions is to resolve ‘important matter[s]’ on which the courts of appeals are ‘in conflict.”…The question whether a State can effectively ban most citizens from exercising their fundamental right to bear arms surely qualifies as such a matter. We should settle the conflict among the lower courts so that the fundamental protections set forth in our Constitution are applied equally to all citizens.”

The court’s reluctance to consider such a case that directly addresses the right “to bear arms” falls in Chief Justice Roberts’ lap, according to several observers, including SAF’s Gottlieb. At least one observer suggested to AmmoLand that Roberts does not care to take the Second Amendment beyond Heller. If that assessment is accurate, it’s an absurd position.

Could it be he doesn’t want to hear such a case because there can be but only one logical, and constitutionally correct, outcome; that such laws as now exist in New Jersey, New York and a handful of other states, would be nullified? It would throw those states’ regulatory schemes into chaos, which would delight gun rights activists living under those burdensome restrictions. But what other outcomes could there be, since the exercise of a fundamental, individual right requires no explanation or justification. A right is there to be exercised responsibly, regardless the misgivings of some bureaucrat or special interest group that thinks otherwise.

But by leaving intact, at least for the time being, such restrictions on an enumerated right, Roberts is relegating that right to the level of a regulated privilege.

If Roberts is satisfied with the status quo, and some observers believe he is, millions of law-abiding gun owners are not. They want to enjoy the same rights as citizens living in Indiana or Florida, Texas or Idaho, or any of the dozens of other states where one doesn’t need to provide a reason for exercising a constitutionally delineated right.

Justice Thomas is no stranger to this dilemma. In his 19-page dissent he wrote, “as I have noted before, many courts have resisted our decisions in Heller and McDonald… Instead of following the guidance provided in Heller, these courts minimized that decision’s framework…(concluding that our decisions “did not provide much clarity as to how Second Amendment claims should be analyzed in future cases”). They then “filled” the self-created “analytical vacuum” with a “two-step inquiry” that incorporates tiers of scrutiny on a sliding scale…) (compiling Circuit opinions adopting some form of the sliding-scale framework).

“Under this test,” Thomas continued, “courts first ask ‘whether the challenged law burdens conduct protected by the Second Amendment.'…If so, courts proceed to the second step—determining the appropriate level of scrutiny…To do so, courts generally consider “how close the law comes to the core of the Second Amendment right” and “the severity of the law’s burden on the right.”

“Depending on their analysis of those two factors, courts then apply what purports to be either intermediate or strict scrutiny— at least recognizing that Heller barred the application of rational basis review…

“This approach raises numerous concerns,” Thomas observed. “For one, the courts of appeals’ test appears to be entirely made up. The Second Amendment provides no hierarchy of “core” and peripheral rights. And “[t]he Constitution does not prescribe tiers of scrutiny.”

But the description of what has occurred correlates with Justice Thomas’ 2018 dissent in the high court’s refusal to hear the appeal in another Second Amendment case, Silvester v. Becerra. In that 14-page dissent, Justice Thomas observed, “If a lower court treated another right so cavalierly, I have little doubt that this Court would intervene. But as evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this Court.”

This brings Second Amendment activists back around to the appearance, the perception, that Chief Justice Roberts is fearful of advancing a rights case to the point that a high court ruling will be issued.

The question then becomes “Why?”

The nation’s gun owners, an estimated 100 million-plus citizens, are waiting for an answer.


About Dave WorkmanDave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.

 

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

SCOTUS Rejection of 2A Cases Moves Up

Likelihood of a Forced Choice for Gun Owners

BY DAVID CODREA

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2020/06/scotus-rejection-of-2a-cases-moves-up-likelihood-of-a-forced-choice-for-gun-owners/#axzz6PopB4585;

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

By ignoring their oaths and usurping legislative powers, the Roberts court, with a few notable exceptions like Clarence Thomas, is guaranteeing gun owners will be forced to choose between obeying disarmament edicts or resisting them, with all that implies. (Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Opponents of gun safety laws have again failed in their efforts to get the Supreme Court to adopt their extreme and dangerous approach,” Eric Tirschwell, managing director for Everytown Law crowed Monday, following the high court's refusal to consider any of the 10 gun owner rights appeals petitioning to be heard. “In each of the cases, the lower courts correctly determined the Second Amendment is not a barrier to the reasonable, life-saving gun safety policies being challenged. The Supreme Court recognized there is no need to revisit these thorough rulings.”

They were pretty moderate cases, really, some challenging “special needs justifications” used to turn “may issue” into “don’t hold your breath,” bans on “commonly owned” standard capacity magazines and firearms, a challenge to interstate prohibitions on handguns sales, a challenge to a ban on handguns that do not employ microstamping and a challenge to the denial of rights to non-residents.

It’s not like anybody was asking them to admit the Founder’s mandate that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Or recognize the core purpose of the Second Amendment, and how state infringements undermine “the security of a free State” and of the Republic as a whole to the benefit of “enemies foreign and domestic.”

And that makes it fair for gun owners to ask what the hell is going on with the Supreme Court, and particularly with its top turncoat.

“The Supreme Court’s refusal to take a Second Amendment Foundation case falls squarely at the feet of Chief Justice John Roberts,” Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation asserted in a press release condemning the high court’s deliberate indifference. “He owes every gun owner in the United States an explanation about why the high court declined to hear a number of important Second Amendment cases.”

For those of us who have been watching Roberts for some time, his dereliction from fidelity to the Constitution comes as no surprise, particularly after his Obamacare betrayal. Speculation about who’s got what on the guy seems more than warranted.  Some of us questioned why gun owners were overwhelmingly supportive of him before he was confirmed, noting there was plenty of Republican establishment rah-rah, but no real basis from which to make an informed judgment.

That holds true for other nominations, where the name of the game is partisan rubberstamping instead of finding out what really makes the justices tick. A report by Congressional Research Service explains:

“In recent decades a recurring Senate issue has been what kinds of questions are appropriate for Senators to pose to a Supreme Court nominee appearing at hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Particularly at issue has been whether, or to what extent, questions by committee members should seek out a nominee’s personal views on current legal or constitutional issues or on past Supreme Court decisions that have involved those issues. Usually, when Senators at confirmation hearings have asked Supreme Court nominees to comment on topical legal and constitutional issues, the nominees have firmly declined to do so. In those situations, the nominees typically have taken the position that answers to questions that convey their personal views would conflict with their obligation to avoid appearing to make commitments or provide signals, as to how they would vote as a Justice on future cases.”

Think of one job you’ve ever applied for where you’d have gotten it if you decided to play coy with the hiring managers.  While it may be “inappropriate” for a judge to weigh in on a specific case before confirmation — for legitimate reasons, including not having studied and evaluated all the particulars, evidence and precedents against the “supreme Law of the Land,” — there’s no reason why general principles of understanding should be off-limits. Such hearings are supposed to be, among other things, high-level employment interviews, not pre-coronation ceremonies.

As such, here are questions gun owner rights advocates should expect the representatives they enable and support to ask that any qualified candidate shouldn't have any trouble answering:

  • What did the Founders mean by “A well regulated militia”?
  • What did the Founder mean by “being necessary to the security of a free State”?
  • What did the Founders mean by “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”?
  • What did the Founders mean by “shall not be infringed”?
  • How can past Supreme Court opinion specifying protected arms as those being “in common use at the time” not apply to the types of firearms needed for militia service?

Hell, correctly answering these should be required to graduate high school. But it won’t happen even with Republicans nominally in control of things, let alone if there’s a blue wave in November. So what “legal” recourse is available?

You can’t hoist them on their own petard. Judicial immunity means you can’t take them to court for the subversion of Founding intent. And good luck getting the current crop of interested/compromised/beholden Deep State Swamp denizens to even suggest impeachment, although allow a Democrat supermajority and don’t be surprised to see Clarence Thomas targeted anew.

There is one other legal alternative. Per the Hoover Institute:

“Congress should exercise its power to limit the jurisdiction of the courts. The Constitution provides that Congress is authorized to establish those federal courts subordinate to the Supreme Court and set forth their jurisdiction. Congress also has the power to limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and regulate its activities. Accordingly, Congress should exercise this authority to restrain an activist judiciary.”

Again, don’t hold your breath. Too many string-pulling special interests like things the way they are and are counting on legislation coming from the bench when they know they don’t have the votes to advance their agendas the Constitutional way – yet.

That too is changing. And with Thursday's 5 – 4 ruling, with John Roberts once more siding with the “liberals” writing the majority opinion on DACA “undocumented immigrants,” expect Democrats to renew their push to transform the “pathway to citizenship” to an open borders superhighway. If they take all in November, get ready for the electoral, legislative, and judicial evisceration of the Second Amendment, especially after another high-profile exploitation of “gun-free zones,” their very existence guaranteeing more coming.

Do you think “legal” semiautos won’t be next on the ban list, and that in-your-face legal abominations like ruling they are the same as machineguns won’t be upheld? (And to think there are still some ignoramus gun owners out there bloviating the “bump stock” ban was about stupid toys, and who ridicule those warning of new dangers that will arise from the “precedent.”)

So – if “legal” doors are slammed in our faces, what choices will gun owners have, except to surrender or defy confiscation orders?

“[T]he liberties of the American people were dependent upon the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box; that without these no class of people could live and flourish in this country,” civil and human rights pioneer and giant Frederick Douglass maintained in his classic Life and Times autobiography.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” Democrat President John F. Kennedy, an NRA  Member ostensibly shot to death by an ACLU member, observed.

And lest one think he did not understand the issue:

“By calling attention to ‘a well regulated militia,' the ‘security' of the nation, and the right of each citizen ‘to keep and bear arms,' our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.”

At this point, there are plenty of reasons for gun owners to be concerned, not the least being Donald Trump’s unique ability to alienate the core constituency that got him elected (and a new report of a potential ATF reversal on arm braces isn’t helping). What we know for certain is that if Joe Biden and the Democrats win “bigly,” the means of peaceful redress supposedly guaranteed by the First Amendment will be as closed off to us as “Second Amendment protections.”

None of us has a crystal ball to know what is coming next, but it does look like November could be our “last best hope” for such redress using the remarkable system bequeathed us by our Founders. After that, who knows what terrible choices each of us will be confronted with, and when?

The one thing we will come to know to our credit or our shame is how serious we each are when we declare “WE WILL NOT DISARM” and the only choices left by those who would claim our rights as theirs are surrender or resist.


About David Codrea:David Codrea

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.

 

 

SUPREME COURT REDEFINES SEX; THREATENS FREEDOM OF RELIGION

When words don’t mean anything, rights don’t mean anything.

BY DANIEL GREENFIELD

SEE: https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/supreme-court-redefines-sex-threatens-freedom-daniel-greenfield;

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

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

When peaceful protests injure hundreds and destroy entire neighborhoods, and the coronavirus infects protesters depending on the cause they’re protesting for, words don’t mean very much.

And reality itself is under siege in the minds of the men and women who run the country.

A Southern Democrat segregationist inserted “sex” into the Civil Rights Act as a poison pill.

Rep. Howard Smith had introduced what eventually became Title VII, with a letter which asked, that since there were more women than men,  "why the Creator would set up such an imbalance of spinsters, shutting off the 'right' of every female to have a husband of her own, is, of course, known only to nature... but I am sure you will agree that this is a grave injustice to womankind and something the Congress and President Johnson should take immediate steps to correct... especially in this election year."

To add to the already hilarious joke, six Supreme Court justices just decided that what the Southern racist really meant by “sex” was gay and transgender because in Washington D.C. no joke is too funny that it can’t be taken seriously as a basis for judicial activism and lawsuits.

It’s still a joke, but we’re not allowed to laugh anymore.

"Few in 1964 would have expected Title VII to apply to discrimination against homosexual and transgender persons. But legislative history has no bearing here," Gorsuch writes.

If the actual purpose and meaning of the law doesn’t matter, then what does?

What Gorsuch, Roberts and his leftist colleagues believe matters. Nothing else. Rights are as imaginary as gender and legislative history gets in the way of legislating from the bench.

The Gorsuch decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia finding that “sex” in Title VII covers any group having anything to do with sex in a trendy way has been described as “textual”. It’s only textual if you think the text of legislation should be read through a contemporary definition rather than the definition of the time. When President Taft’s wife was discussing their “gay season”, it didn’t mean gay any more than “sex” does. Except maybe according to Gorsuch.

But words can mean anything and nobody cares about facts anyway.

Gerald Bostock, who is at the center of this Supreme Court precedent, claims that he was fired for being gay while Clayton County claimed that the child welfare services coordinator had spent money meant for Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) at Cowtippers and F.R.O.G.S.: a cantina in Atlanta. Cowtippers does not appear in Gorsuch’s decision though it seems more germane to the question than the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water, which does.

The Gorsuch judicial activist revision of Smith’s legislation is bad news for those organizations protected by that piece of paper known as the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

"Compelling a religious organization to employ individuals whose conduct flouts the tenets of the organization’s faith forces the group to communicate an objectionable message," Justice Alito notes, paraphrasing these groups.

But these days there’s a new faith in town and people are being fired left and right for flouting it. If you run afoul of social justice mobs, your job will be gone because the company that employs you will blame you for “communicating an objectionable message”. Like the worth of all lives.

There’s a new heresy in town and the social justice inquisition is always waiting. The essential premise of that faith is that everyone must be made to kneel to it or lose their heads.

“These questions are going to create a tsunami of new litigation and create a huge amount of uncertainty going forward," Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, cautioned.

"Can a Catholic school deny employment to a teacher whose sexual lifestyle blatantly flouts millennia of Catholic moral teaching? Can an Orthodox Jewish day school refuse to hire a male teacher who self-identifies as a woman, contravening traditional teaching rooted in Genesis?" Josh Hammer, Of Counsel at the First Liberty Institute, asked.

The answer is obvious and the lawsuits are inevitable. And thus Smith’s old joke translates into the effective criminalization of traditional religious morality at the institutional level. That’s the problem with writing jokes into legislation, they end up packing a hell of a punchline.

The Gorsuch decision has put the Bible on the same level as the code of the Klu Klax Klan and that great legislator’s response to the First Amendment question is that it will be settled in future cases. There’s little doubt that it will, and on the terms of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia.

Our constitutional legacy, like our religious foundations, is based on the belief that words matter. Judicial activism is based on the opposite belief that words can and do mean anything.

"Legislators actually won’t know what they are voting to pass—because words might change cultural meaning dramatically between the time of passage and some future court case," Russell Moore, of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, warns.

When words mean nothing, rights mean nothing. Rights derive not from foundational documents grounded in eternal truths, but from social trends and the whims of political appointees.

Bill Clinton had famously debated the meaning of “is” and of sex. Gorsuch and his five accomplices claim that they’ve settled the question of “sex”. Now comes the battle over defining “religion” and the “free exercise” of it. Are teachers in religious schools exempted? What about bookkeepers? Civil rights has long since become a zero sum game with winners and losers.

The winners advance to the next stage of suing people and the losers retreat to defending them.

Religious organizations will be forced to defend the religious role of teachers. And, once that battle is lost, the religious role of rabbis and ministers. Then they’ll be told to ‘bake the cake’.

The larger question, the one that Gorsuch so casually loses sight of in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, is where do rights come from. The Declaration of Independence had a compelling answer to that question that enabled Americans to defy the will of a king.

“All men are created equal,” wrote a long-dead Virginian whose statues are being toppled, “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Equality was not in contradiction with religion, but derived from it. Our common origin as children of G-d made us equal. The whim of a court or any human ruler could not make or unmake our equality.

Contemporary judicial activism has pitted religion against equality and we are less equal for it.

Judicial activism began by taking away the equality of Natural Law and replacing it with the inequality of judicial whim which inevitably nullifies whatever good it sets out to create.

Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia reinvents the meaning of sex, based on the deeply serious work of a Dixiecrat trying to make a joke of the Civil Rights Act, while treating the First Amendment, that is the work of our Founding Fathers, as an awkward footnote. Title VII requires treating Rep. Howard Smith’s joke more seriously than the work of James Madison, and then dismissing Smith as irrelevant to the question of what sex was meant to mean.

What then is this whole thing based on beyond the prejudices of 6 contemporary justices?

As the crank said to William James, “it’s turtles all the way down.”

“Some of those who supported adding language to Title VII to ban sex discrimination may have hoped it would derail the entire Civil Rights Act. Yet, contrary to those intentions, the bill became law. Since then, Title VII’s effects have unfolded with far-reaching consequences, some likely beyond what many in Congress or elsewhere expected,” Gorsuch's opinion concedes.

Take Title VII, which was blown up out of a segregationist’s joke into the ultimate expression of protecting women as a “sex” against discrimination, which now eliminates womanhood.

As Justice Alito notes, “The effect of the Court’s reasoning may be to force young women to compete against students who have a very significant biological advantage, including students who have the size and strength of a male.”

That’s far-reaching alright compared to Smith giggling about an entitlement to husbands. Some half a century later we live in a strange new world in which the dominant elite consensus is that women don’t exist except as a set of outfits, injectable hormones and a state of mind. The most popular children’s author in the world is under attack for asserting that women really do exist.

Our elites used to mock Galileo's interrogators only to deny the existence of something far more real and obvious than the motions of planetary bodies. And the Supreme Court is on board.

Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia continues the process of ushering in a world in which rights are as fluid as the definitions of words and the shifting nature of ideas in a society going mad.

Title VII helped make womens’ sports, now it will help unmake them. If words don’t mean anything, neither do rights. And rights then unmake themselves. Jokes have nasty punchlines.

Smith’s joke continues to resound long after his death by not merely wiping out the Civil Rights Act, but the entire Bill of Rights. That old segregationist’s joke is now set to destroy, as Alito pointed out, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech and women’s rights.

The joke hath given. Now it taketh everything away.

Civil rights have come so far that women and religion both have to defend their right to exist.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Analysis: The US Supreme Court ruling on Bostock v Clayton County: What you need to know about it – and what we must do now.

SEE: https://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen4/20b/Analysis-Supreme-Court-ruling/index.html;

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

Bizarre ruling changes legal meaning of "sex" in Civil Rights law to include LGBT behaviors. Far-reaching effects beyond just employment.

Yes: We need to start actually resisting. This ruling is not law.

June 17, 2020
ALT TEXT
These men came to the Massachusetts State House in 2009 to lobby for a bill that would have forced all businesses to allow active "transgender" employees. Now the US Supreme Court says they can become "waitresses" at your local restaurant or kindergarten teachers at your children's school. [MassResistance photos]

“To restate what was once self-evident to everyone, including most homosexuals themselves: men using one another as women constitutes a perversion. To my unreconstructed mind, this is as true as ever; and so far as I am concerned, it would still be true even if gay sex no longer entailed the danger of infection and even if everything about it were legalized by all 50 states and ratified by all nine Justices of the Supreme Court.”
- Norman Podhoretz, Commentary Magazine, November 1996

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sex, among other things. Yesterday, in Bostock v Clayton County the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that “sex” also includes homosexuality (“sexual orientation”) and transgenderism (“gender identity”). Thus, all companies must now allow openly homosexual or transgender employees – and can be sued for “discrimination” if the employees don’t receive the treatment they claim is their right. There are no “religious exemptions.”

What does this mean to citizens?

This ruling will create a storm of employment lawsuits. But make no mistake: It will soon go far beyond employment. The absurd legal redefinition of the word “sex” to include LGBT behaviors by the US Supreme Court will soon be used to legally force that horrific agenda into every realm of society (including, of course, transgender athletics, and restrooms).

Ruling took everyone by surprise

This ruling took virtually everyone by surprise. The case seemed like an easy decision about what “sex” means. No one seriously thought the US Supreme Court would go this far. It was similar to the 2003 “gay marriage” ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court – which even the “gays” didn’t expect.

Moreover, on three occasions since 2007, Congress has considered adding “sexual orientation” to federal non-discrimination laws. But no bill has passed both houses. So instead, the Supreme Court, in true activist fashion, has decided to ignore the separation of powers and act on its own.

How did our legal system get to this point?

If we honestly look at this ruling from its logical beginning, it shouldn’t be too surprising that we’ve reached this point. This is only the latest phase in the left-leaning government officials’ re-shaping the Constitution for their own social-justice ends.

Let’s start with the 1964 Civil Rights Actwhich is the focus of this ruling. Though well intentioned, it was clearly unconstitutional, as various prominent members of Congress explained at the time. For example, Senator Barry Goldwater was sympathetic to the aim of the bill. He was a founding member of the Arizona NAACP and helped integrate the Phoenix public schools and the Arizona National Guard. But he voted against it.

Goldwater (and others) insisted that according to the Tenth Amendment, the federal government has no legal right to interfere with whom people hired or fired or to whom they sold their products. That “power” lay with the states, and with the people. From a constitutional standpoint he was correct. But the emotional momentum of the time was in the other direction.

ALT TEXT 
Senator Barry Goldwater (right) appeared with William F. Buckley on Buckley's show "Firing Line" to explain why he voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Originally, the word “sex” was not even in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It was added to the bill near the end of debate as a “poison pill” by Southern Dixie Democrats. They hoped that including “discrimination based on sex” would make the bill offensive to most legislators and get it killed. But that didn’t work and it passed anyway. And the Civil Rights Act has opened the door to Congress passing into law whatever other nationwide social agendas it wants, generally ignoring any constitutional restraints in the process.

(Later, Phyllis Schlafly rightly fought against the “Equal Rights Amendment” because she understood how the word “sex” could be twisted in the future. We now see how prescient she was.)

Moreover, in 1964, homosexuality and transgenderism were deemed mental illnesses by every medical organization in the world (as they had been since at least the founding of our Republic). Those standards were not changed through any scientific inquiry, but through brutal campaigns of threats and intimidation starting in 1973 against medical authorities. 

Furthermore, the world’s major religions consider homosexuality and transgenderism as out of moral bounds (as the Bible says, “abominations”). All of America's founders were religious and understood that a Republic could only last if its citizens were God-fearing. (Unfortunately, on the US Supreme Court, only Justices Alito and Thomas appear to be now.)

The Supreme Court's judicial activism

This week’s bizarre US Supreme Court ruling didn’t happen in a vacuum.

The Court was never meant to be a powerful unelected body that creates and shapes laws for the country through its rulings. It was meant to be the least powerful branch that adjudicated between disputing parties. But over the years Americans have allowed it to usurp enormous power (without fighting back) – and we are living with the consequences. The Justices are now ruling without restraints.

Recent prominent examples of this judicial overreach are:

  • Roe v Wade (1973) ruled that there was a constitutional right to abortion.
  • Lawrence v Texas (2003) declared that sodomy laws across America were unconstitutional.
  • Obergefell v Hodges (2015) declared that state marriage laws and even state constitutional amendments that defined marriage as one man and one woman were violations of the US Constitution.

All of these rulings arrogantly pushed a leftist social agenda by distorting the Constitution to a point where it became unrecognizable.

The milquetoast conservative movement

For decades, the mainstream conservative movement has meekly allowed the political and legal establishment to frame “culture war” issues in their own distorted ways. In fact, the conservatives usually participate in it and become part of the problem.

For example, we all recognize that there are males and females, blacks and whites. But in truth, there is no such thing as “gay Americans” or “transgender Americans.” There are Americans with homosexual problems, and Americans with gender-identity psychological dysfunctions. But those “orientations” or “identities” are political inventions of the LGBT movement. However, our side rarely challenges these radical concepts, but instead goes along with the charade. So the legal and political system has an easier time going forward with it.

And it appears that none of the “conservative” lawyers in this case brought up the obvious glaring Constitutional problems with Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and similar legislation. Why not? Conceding that gave up a huge part of the case.

Trump’s so-called “conservative” judges

Was the 2016 election the beginning of the era of a sane US Supreme Court? We all hoped it would be.

But President Trump’s “conservative” Supreme Court judges have been a big disappointment, to say the least.  They were, of course, recommended to him by prominent conservative groups such as the Federalist Society, which is as mushy as mud on pro-family culture-war issues.

Justice Neil Gorsuch not only voted for this ruling; he wrote the majority opinion. Recall that Gorsuch was touted as a conservative Constitutional “originalist” – one who pays close attention to the original intent. Well, not so much. If you read his majority opinion in this ruling, you will see pages and pages of utter nonsense as he vainly tries to weave a convincing legal argument out of illogical mush. It’s not even worthy of a serious analysis.

Of course, Gorsuch actually comes by his prevaricating ways honestly. As many of us observed when he was nominated, he was a member of a far-left pro-LGBT Episcopal church whose female pastor officiated “gay” marriages, according to press reports. (We wonder how Gorsuch will handle it if his daughters have disturbing encounters with "transgender" boys in their locker rooms.)

We were also betrayed by Chief Justice Roberts who voted for the ruling.

And then there’s Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Even though Kavanaugh voted the right way on this, he wrote his own dissent that concluded with this frightening tripe:

Notwithstanding my concern about the Court's transgression of the Constitution's separation of powers, it is appropriate to acknowledge the important victory achieved today by gay and lesbian Americans. Millions of gay and lesbian Americans have worked hard for many decades to achieve equal treatment in fact and in law. They have exhibited extraordinary vision, tenacity, and grit-battling often steep odds in the legislative and judicial arenas, not to mention in their daily lives. They have advanced powerful policy arguments and can take pride in today's result. Under the Constitution's separation of powers, however, I believe that it was Congress's role, not this Court's, to amend Title VII. I therefore must respectfully dissent from the [ruling].

In other words, Kavanaugh fully believes that the false concept of “gay” and “transgender” identities should ultimately be part of our laws. We can see what’s coming down the road in future rulings. And he’s one of the “conservatives.”

The other two voting against the ruling were Alito and Thomas.

Where do we go from here?

As columnist Daniel Horowitz observed today, “The ‘conservative’ legal movement, which has promoted the idea of ‘appointing better judges’ rather than fighting the entire concept of judicial supremacism, has failed miserably. This was its Waterloo.”

It’s time to adopt a completely different response to this crisis. The long string of abuses perpetrated by the Supreme Court – on prayer in the schools, abortion, sodomy laws, “gay marriage,” and now this – must be defied by citizens, their local governments, and by the states.

We must stop agreeing with far too many so-called “conservatives” who insist that Supreme Court rulings constitute “the law of the land.” There is nothing in the Constitution that remotely indicates that. The courts give opinions and rule in specific cases between disputing parties. Only Congress creates the law of the land.

We must constantly confront all judges at all levels who ignore the laws and Constitution, and simply concoct rulings to please their personal “social justice” yearnings. Impeachment, a constitutional remedy, should become part of the solution.

We must confront, in whatever matter we can, unconstitutional laws. The US Constitution was meant to work through every person – each legislator, judge, and citizen – following the laws and Constitution on his own. It was not meant that legislators would pass whatever they wanted, and then leave it up to the courts to decide what was actually constitutional.

Should bad laws and US Supreme Court “rulings” that are clearly and unambiguously unconstitutional be blindly followed? Maybe not.

Here’s the sort of defiance that there must be more of:

We’ve often said that Judge Roy Moore is the greatest pro-family figure since Phyllis Schlafly. After the ridiculous Obergefell ruling, Judge Moore (as Alabama’s Chief Justice) ordered the state’s probate judges to obey the state Constitution and refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses. He had earlier placed a Ten Commandments monument in his court building, despite phony “separation of church and state” orders by another court.

ALT TEXT Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore stands next to the granite Ten Commandments monument which he had installed in the lobby of the Judicial Building.

Because of that, Judge Moore was hated by the Republican establishment, who stood by and watched as he was hideously vilified by the Left when he recently ran for US Senate in Alabama. He would have been their worst nightmare as a US Senator, boldly standing up for the truth in that political cesspool.

Don’t despair. Don’t give up. Begin fighting back.

In our daily lives, as much as possible, we all need to say NO and do what is right – and confront our officials and judges to do what is right. That is the direction MassResistance is taking – especially regarding this latest ruling. We will be discussing more of this in upcoming articles. If enough people get involved, amazing things can happen!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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

The Supreme Court re-defined the word "sex." What does this mean for women?

This is an important read.

In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court Justices decided this week to expand the definition of discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, by adding "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the meaning of the word "sex" in Title VII.

The case involved Harris Funeral Homes, a family business that operated for more than a hundred years, and is known for a high level of professionalism and excellence. Harris Funeral Homes was challenged by a male employee who said that he would no longer follow the company's sex-specific dress code for work.

In America, Congress makes the law. That's what our Constitution says. But in this case, 6 Justices bypassed Congress, making a mockery of our representative form of government.

There's a reason why activists were not able to convince Congress to add "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the Civil Rights Act before. It's because of the threats to
women and girls,
freedom of speech,
 and
religious liberty.

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) stated it this way: "Civil rights laws that use the word ‘sex’ were put in place to protect equal opportunities for women. Allowing a court or government bureaucrats to redefine a term with such a clear and important meaning undermines those very opportunities—the ones the law was designed to protect.”
ADF also warned: "Redefining ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identity’ will create chaos and enormous unfairness for women and girls in athletics, women’s shelters, and many other contexts."

Despite this, the court bypassed Congress and redefined "sex" anyway.

Tony Perkins explains, "We've already witnessed in recent years how courts have used the redefinition of words as a battering ram to crush faith-based businesses and organizations. This opinion is no different, and it poses a dangerous threat to religious liberty."

This case is a perfect example of why we must stand together in defense of freedom, truth, and the rule of law.
The power to make laws does not belong to un-elected bureaucrats, government agencies, or the courts. That's important to remember, because in Delaware, the lawmaking power is often given to regulatory agencies. Remember this?

We need to stand against this misuse of power when it happens. That's where you come in. Your tax deductible gift allows us to be on guard!

Justice Gorsuch left open the question of whether exceptions can be made for religious liberty concerns. Keep watching for updates. The Supreme Court is now discussing whether religious liberty exemptions apply to this new interpretation of sex discrimination. 

Supreme Court decisions that endanger our rights expose the need for stronger legislative protections.

That's why we need your support. Your tax deductible gift will help us to inform you when these issues come up in Delaware.

Please pray for DFPC, Alliance Defending Freedom, and our colleagues across the country as we determine how to move forward.

Also pray for the Rost family, whose funeral home may face significant financial loss because of this decision.

DelawareFamilies.org
Our mailing address is:

Delaware Family Policy Council

P.O. Box 925

Seaford, DE 19973

 ____________________________________________________________________________
SEE ALSO:
https://christiannews.net/2020/06/19/justices-alito-thomas-warn-preposterous-ruling-barring
-employers-from-firing-men-in-dresses-threat-to-religious-liberty/

TRUMP’S CONSERVATIVE FAVORITE JUSTICE KAVANAUGH SAYS “GAYS” CAN “TAKE PRIDE IN” RULING REDEFINING “SEX”: “IMPORTANT VICTORY ACHIEVED TODAY”

BY HEATHER CLARK

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2020/06/15/conservative-favorite-justice-kavanaugh-applauds-gays-saying-they-can-take-pride-in-ruling-redefining-sex-important-victory-achieved-today/;

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

WASHINGTON — Despite expressing objection that the matter was decided by the judicial branch instead of the legislature, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the conservative darling who was a hotly-contested Supreme Court nominee amid sexual abuse allegations, wrote in his dissent on Monday that he finds the high court ruling reading sexual orientation and gender identity into the meaning of “sex” in federal civil rights law to be an “important victory” for “gay and lesbian Americans” and they can “take pride in” it.

“Notwithstanding my concern about the court’s transgression of the Constitution’s separation of powers, it is appropriate to acknowledge the important victory achieved today by gay and lesbian Americans,” he wrote.

“Millions of gay and lesbian Americans have worked hard for many decades to achieve equal treatment in fact and in law. They have exhibited extraordinary vision, tenacity, and grit — battling often steep odds in the legislative and judicial arenas, not to mention in their daily lives. They have advanced powerful policy arguments and can take pride in today’s result,” Kavanaugh stated.

He said that he agreed with the outcome of the ruling but not the manner in which it was achieved.

“Instead of a hard-earned victory won through the democratic process,” Kavanaugh explained, “today’s victory is brought about by judicial dictate — judges latching on to a novel form of living literalism to rewrite ordinary meaning and remake American law. Under the Constitution and laws of the United States, this court is the wrong body to change American law in that way.”

Read Kavanaugh’s dissent here, beginning on page 145. His supportive remarks are on page 171.

As previously reported, Kavanaugh was one of three judges on the nine-justice panel who dissented from the opinion, but he wrote his own dissent to express his partial objection and partial congratulations. Fellow “conservative” justice John Roberts sided with the majority, along with Trump-nominated Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the favorable decision.

ALITO AND THOMAS’ DISSENT

Alito

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined together for the other dissenting opinion, in which Alito similarly stated that the judicial branch wrongfully usurped the role of the legislature, finding it “deceptive” to say that the Supreme Court merely interpreted federal law.

Alito also expressed concern that the decision will have “far-reaching consequences” as more than 100 federal statues prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. He worried what might become of the issue of the use of locker rooms and restrooms by those who identify as the opposite sex, as well as the future of women’s sports and the rights of those in the healthcare sector, as well those of religious organizations — such as faith-based schools.

“Before issuing today’s radical decision, the court should have given some thought to where its decision would lead,” Alito chastised. “As the briefing in these cases has warned, the position that the court now adopts will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety. No one should think that the court’s decision represents an unalloyed victory for individual liberty.”

“A school’s standards for its faculty ‘communicate a particular way of life to its students,’ and a ‘violation by the faculty of those precepts’ may undermine the school’s ‘moral teaching.’ Thus, if a religious school teaches that sex outside marriage and sex reassignment procedures are immoral, the message may be lost if the school employs a teacher who is in a same-sex relationship or has undergone or is undergoing sex reassignment,” he noted.

“Yet today’s decision may lead to Title VII claims by such teachers and applicants for employment,” Alito lamented.

He also pointed out that transgenders have filed suit for being denied sex change operations, and “[s]uch claims present difficult religious liberty issues because some employers and healthcare providers have strong religious objections to sex reassignment procedures, and therefore requiring them to pay for or to perform these procedures will have a severe impact on their ability to honor their deeply held religious beliefs.”

As previously reported, the Supreme Court issued its 6-3 ruling on Monday morning, concluding that a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, known as Title VII, which bars job discrimination on the basis of sex, among other traits, may be read to include homosexual and “transgender” employees.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

BACKGROUND

One of the three cases before the court surrounding the issue involved R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, an explicitly Christian home that was sued after firing a male employee who wanted to begin wearing a skirt uniform for work as he was diagnosed with “gender dysphoria.”

“R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes recognize that its highest priority is to honor God in all that we do as a company and as individuals,” the company’s website states. It also features a quote from Matthew 6:33, in which Jesus taught that men should “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

Because owner Thomas Rost Rost did not feel comfortable with providing a skirt suit due to his Christian convictions, Stephens was let go.

Stephens consequently took the matter to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which sued Rost with the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in alleging gender discrimination.

“R.G. employees understand that the dress code requires funeral directors to wear company-provided suits,” attorneys for Rost outlined in a legal brief. “Rost sincerely believes that he would be violating God’s commands if he were to pay for or otherwise permit one of RG’s funeral directors to wear the uniform for members of the opposite sex while at work.”

A federal court ruled against Rost, but the Sixth Circuit overturned the decision. The matter was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Stephens died last month following a lengthy battle with kidney disease.

CONSERVATIVE BUT NOT CHRISTIAN

Isaiah 5:20 states, “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

Many Christians and conservatives had argued that the reason for electing a Republican was that he would appoint conservative justices to the bench who would rule differently from their liberal counterparts.

As previously reported, President Trump has stated on numerous occasions that he supports those who identify as homosexual, urging other countries in a tweet last year to join his administration’s efforts to decriminalize homosexuality around the world.

“As we celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made to our great nation, let us also stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation,” he wrote.

“My administration has launched a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality and invite all nations to join us in this effort!” Trump urged.

 

SUPREME COURT RULES “TRANSGENDERS”, SUCH AS MEN WHO WANT TO WEAR SKIRTS, CANNOT BE FIRED IN 6 TO 3 DECISION

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2020/06/15/supreme-court-rules-transgenders-such-as-men-who-want-to-wear-skirts-to-work-cannot-be-fired-in-6-3-decision/;

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

WASHINGTON — In a landmark 6-3 Supreme Court decision today, which was written by Trump-nominated, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, the high court ruled that a civil rights law protects both homosexual and “transgender” people from what it considers “job discrimination” in employment. One of the cases involved surrounded a funeral home that fired a man who wanted to wear a skirt uniform at work.

The court decided that a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, known as Title VII, which bars job discrimination on the basis of sex, among other traits, may be read to include homosexual and “transgender” employees.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

He noted that the decision did not delve into what rights religious employers may or may not have, citing that R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, which was represented by the religious liberties group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), “declined to seek review of [an] adverse [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] decision, and no other religious liberty claim is now before us.”

“So while other employers in other cases may raise free exercise arguments that merit careful consideration,” Gorsuch wrote, “none of the employers before us today represent in this court that compliance with Title VII will infringe their own religious liberties in any way.”

Christian News Network has inquired why the religious liberties aspect was not pursued before the high court. This article will be updated if and when a response is received.

The Supreme Court, however, did express that it is “deeply concerned with preserving the promise of the free exercise of religion enshrined in our Constitution” and pointed to a congressional exception in the law for “religious organizations.”

It is not clear if those organizations include for-profit businesses or if the protections only extend to churches and non-profit charitable and educational groups.

The three justices who dissented from the majority opinion were Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch sided with their liberal colleagues.

Alito

Alito wrote a sharp dissent lamenting that the court had seemingly usurped the role of the legislature.

“There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation,” he stated. “The document that the court releases is in the form of a judicial opinion interpreting a statute, but that is deceptive.”

Alito also expressed concern that the decision will have “far-reaching consequences” as more than 100 federal statues prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. He worried what might become of the issue of the use of locker rooms and restrooms by those who identify as the opposite sex.

“[B]y intervening and proclaiming categorically that employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is simply a form of discrimination because of sex, the Court has greatly impeded — and perhaps effectively ended — any chance of a bargained legislative resolution,” he wrote.

“Before issuing today’s radical decision, the court should have given some thought to where its decision would lead,” Alito chastised. “As the briefing in these cases has warned, the position that the court now adopts will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety. No one should think that the court’s decision represents an unalloyed victory for individual liberty.”

ADF issued similar remarks, outlining in a statement, “Redefining ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identity’ will create chaos and enormous unfairness for women and girls in athletics, women’s shelters, and many other contexts.”

“Civil rights laws that use the word ‘sex’ were put in place to protect equal opportunities for women,” it explained. “Allowing a court or government bureaucrats to redefine a term with such a clear and important meaning undermines those very opportunities — the ones the law was designed to protect.”

Read the ruling in full here. 

BACKGROUND

As previously reported, the U.S. Supreme Court heard three appeals cases surrounding the matter of homosexual and transgender discrimination in employment practices, including the Harris Funeral Homes lawsuit, which involves an explicitly Christian-based funeral home.

“R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes recognize that its highest priority is to honor God in all that we do as a company and as individuals,” the company’s website states. It also features a quote from Matthew 6:33, in which Jesus taught that men should “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

In 2007, Anthony Stephens was hired as the funeral director and embalmer for the funeral home and presented himself as a man at that time. Six years later, Stephens informed his employer that he had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and would therefore desire to wear a woman’s suit for work.

However, owner Thomas Rost, a Christian who serves on the board of directors for Salvation Army of Metro Detroit, has a company dress code in place, which states that males must wear dark suits and white shirts.

Because Stephens sought to wear female clothing, which is a violation of the dress code, and because Rost did not feel comfortable with providing a skirt suit due to his Christian convictions, Stephens was let go.

He consequently took the matter to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which sued Rost with the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in alleging gender discrimination.

“R.G. employees understand that the dress code requires funeral directors to wear company-provided suits,” attorneys for Rost outlined in a legal brief. “Rost sincerely believes that he would be violating God’s commands if he were to pay for or otherwise permit one of RG’s funeral directors to wear the uniform for members of the opposite sex while at work.”

CONFLICTING DECISIONS

Photo Credit: George Hodan

In August 2016, U.S. District Judge Sean Cox sided with the funeral home and dismissed the EEOC’s legal challenge.

“The court finds that the funeral home has met its initial burden of showing that enforcement of Title VII, and the body of sex-stereotyping case law that has developed under it, would impose a substantial burden on its ability to conduct business in accordance with its sincerely-held religious beliefs,” he wrote.

However, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with Cox’s ruling and overturned the decision the following year.

“Discrimination against employees, either because of their failure to conform to sex stereotypes or their transgender and transitioning status, is illegal under Title VII. The unrefuted facts show that the funeral home fired Stephens because [he] refused to abide by [his] employer’s stereotypical conception of [his] sex, and therefore the EEOC is entitled to summary judgment as to its unlawful-termination claim,” wrote Judge Karen Nelson Moore on behalf of the unanimous panel.

The case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Stephens died last month following a lengthy battle with kidney disease.

One of the other cases before the court, Zarda v. Altitude Express, centered on skydiving instructor Donald Zarda, who was fired by his employer following a complaint from the boyfriend of a female diver.

“Zarda often informed female clients of his sexual orientation — especially when they were accompanied by a husband or boyfriend — to mitigate any awkwardness that might arise from the fact that he was strapped so tightly to the woman,” legal documents surrounding the matter outline.

Altitude Express told Zarda that he was fired because he “failed to provide an enjoyable experience for the customer” as David Kengle, the boyfriend of Rosanna Orellana, complained to the company about Zarda’s remarks.

Zarda sued his employer in 2010 for discrimination, but died in a skydiving accident before the matter went to trial.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed an amicus brief last August, writing, “Congress has specifically prohibited gender identity discrimination in multiple other statutes that the Department of Justice will continue to enforce vigorously. But Congress has not taken that step in Title VII. Unless and until it does so, the proper role of the executive, and of this court, is faithfully to enforce the law as written.”

200 corporations asked the court to read homosexuality and gender identity into the law, including Amazon, American Express, AT&T, Ben & Jerry’s, Best Buy, Coca-Cola, CVS Health, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, General Motors, Google, IKEA, KIND Healthy Snacks, Levi Strauss & Co., Lyft, Macy’s, Marriott International, Microsoft, Nike, PayPal, Pinterest, Procter & Gamble, Starbucks Corporation, State Farm Mutual Auto Insurance, T-Mobile, Vimeo, The Walt Disney Company, Wells Fargo and Zillow.

2 Chronicles 5:6-7 states surrounding judges, “Take heed what ye do, for ye judge not for man but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment. Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you, take heed and do it, for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God …”



BARBARA LOE FISHER: HOW FEAR OF A VIRUS CHANGED OUR WORLD

BARBARA LOE FISHER: HOW FEAR OF A VIRUS CHANGED OUR WORLD

SEE: https://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/June-2020/How-Fear-of-a-Virus-Changed-Our-World.aspx;

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

To activate and view hyperlinked references, please click here once and then click any superscripted number below to access a hyperlinked reference, or scroll down to the bottom of the article to view all hyperlinked references.

By Barbara Loe Fisher

Fear is a primal biological response to a perceived threat to our survival. Fear triggers momentary paralysis and then a fight or flight reaction before the brain can rationally analyze and calibrate our response to a perceived threat. 1

Fearful Woman

Right now, people around the world are living in fear of being infected or infecting someone else with a new coronavirus that can kill those most vulnerable without warning. Along with confusion and uncertainty, which prolongs fear, many of us are traumatized by the authoritarian measures governments have taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that began in China in late 2019.

The “new normal” is disorienting, like we have taken a hit to the gut and then to the head that we didn’t see coming. Maybe that is why so many Americans, who value freedom of speech, religion, assembly, privacy and the right to work, have given those constitutional rights up, without stopping to think through the ramifications of the larger precedent being set.

We are slowly coming out of shock five months after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control declared a public health emergency on January 31, 2 which escalated six weeks later into a social distancing lockdown when the World Health Organization declared a COVID-19 pandemic on March 11. 3

Questions About the Lockdown Response to COVID-19 Pandemic

Closed Business

There are lots of questions being asked now about whether the lockdown response to the new coronavirus has matched the threat, questions like:

  • Why did the U.S. fail to immediately screen people at sea ports and airports for illness as soon as the outbreak was identified in China and got worse in February so they could be quarantined and tested? 4 5 6 7 8
  • At the beginning of the pandemic, why were Americans told masks were useless and to stop buying and wearing them, when now we are told we must wear masks? 9 10 11 12
  • Why were U.S. emergency supply warehouses, which were supposed to be stocked with pandemic preparedness equipment for health care workers, completely empty? 13
  • Why were residents of nursing homes and other crowded medical facilities not effectively screened and tested to make sure the sick were not being housed with the healthy? 14 15 16 17
  • Why did U.S. public health officials persuade lawmakers to almost immediately lockdown and home quarantine most of our population,18 instead of using traditional disease control measures that identify, quarantine and treat the sick? 19 20 21 22

Opening Up Conversation About Science, Health and Liberty in the U.S.

As we let go of fear and return to rational thinking, it is opening up a public conversation about science, health and liberty that is going viral, despite attempts by Big Pharma and Big Tech working with governments and mainstream media to censor it. 23 24 25 26 27

In the United States of America, we live in a constitutional republic where democratically elected representatives make laws, and state governments are a check and balance on the authority of the federal government. 28

Fists Clashing

American values and beliefs, which have influenced the adoption of human rights in international law, 29 30 31 32 are embedded in the 1776 Declaration of Independence 33 and codified in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. 34

Americans value autonomy and individuality. We believe each person is a unique and independent  individual with an inalienable right to life and liberty. 35

We value the human right to freedom of thought, expression and belief; freedom of conscience and association; and respect for privacy – all civil liberties that limit the power of government. 36

We value equal opportunity for all and mobility within society based on individual initiative and hard work, not on hierarchy, inherited privilege or government permission. 37

We are a pragmatic and adaptable people who value the use of common sense and practical solutions to problem solve, achieve and succeed. 38

We are a generous people and believe that voluntarily helping others by donating our money and time is a personal choice motivated by charity, not by communal expectation or a legal requirement. 39

Above all, we are a self-reliant, optimistic people with an indomitable spirit and faith in our ability to overcome adversity individually and as a nation. 40 41 42

Some of the core values, which have shaped our history and defined who we are as a nation, have been put on trial in 2020 because we are paralyzed by fear of a virus that doctors say could be hiding in the breath of every person who comes near us and contaminate everything we touch. 43 44 Often described in military and apocalyptic terms as a war for human survival against an “invisible enemy,” 45 46 47 48 the authoritarian lockdown approach by governments to the coronavirus pandemic has been framed as a choice between safety and liberty.

In horror, we watched the coronavirus pandemic unfold in February 2020 with Chinese officials either chasing citizens suspected of being infected with the virus into the streets and dragging them away to quarantine camps, or using hammers, nails and blocks of wood to barricade families into their apartments. 49 50 51 52 Then, after scientists and U.S. public health officials used mathematical models to warn lawmakers to lock down the U.S. or prepare for between 1.7 and 2.2 million Americans to die of COVID-19, 53 54 55 we were filled with an uncommon fear and uncertainty that continues to haunt our lives.

The Fear of Entering Public Spaces and Getting Too Close to Each Other

As most states emerge from months of quarantining people in their homes and shuttering businesses,56 many Americans are still afraid to enter a public space because we are warned over and over again that the invisible enemy will kill us if we don’t stay six feet away from each other at all times, even outdoors. 57 Parents have been urged not to hug their children if a member in their family has been exposed to the virus. 58 In one city, government officials told residents to take photos and report fellow citizens who violate social distancing rules by getting too close to each other outside. 59

Worried Parents

We see fellow Americans be arrested for not wearing masks, 60 61 or walking on deserted beaches, 62 63 or for taking their children to empty playgrounds. 64 65 Small business owners, who are struggling to feed their families, are being sent to jail for re-opening without government permission. 66 Food banks are running out of food because families, who have never stood in a food bank line in their lives, have no other choice. 67

It doesn’t feel right, but most of us comply with the new rules, afraid to be the one who gets a dirty look or is yelled at or arrested – or worse – if we don’t comply.

COVID-19 Mortality Estimates Far Exceed Reality

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 and CDC officials predicted it could kill 1.7 million Americans, by May 22, there had been 335,000 COVID-19 reported deaths among the world’s seven billion people with about 96,000 of those deaths reported in the U.S. [68] How the death toll would have been affected if global lockdowns had not taken place to try to slow the infection rate and delay population based herd immunity will be debated for years to come. [69]

Although the vast majority of COVID-19 infections are thought to be asymptomatic, data shows the estimated symptomatic infection-mortality rate in America is currently at most 1.3 percent. 70 71 72 73 About 90 percent of people who die are over 65 years old, with the majority of those people suffering with one or more chronic poor health conditions like heart or lung disease, obesity, diabetes and hypertension. 74 More than 80 percent of children who die from COVID-19 also suffer with chronic illness and disabilities like immune suppression, obesity, diabetes, seizures, developmental delays and genetic disorders. 75 76

We all hope to live long and productive lives but nobody escapes death and, for some, it comes sooner than expected. The sudden unexpected death of a person for any reason is a tragedy, especially for that person’s family and friends. The deaths of tens of thousands during this pandemic or any pandemic is a tragedy. The feelings of loss and helplessness are magnified when individuals hospitalized with COVID-19 die alone, separated from their families, denied the comfort of taking their last breath in the company of people they love and who love them. 77

Are We Really All in This Together?

Whether the new coronavirus jumped out of an animal in a Chinese live food market 78 or escaped from a biohazard lab, 79 80 whether the virus kills an estimated one to two percent of those symptomatically infected or far less, 81 this year billions of people around the world have followed the advice of the World Health Organization, government health agencies and doctors, who tell us that this “invisible common enemy” must be vanquished using any means possible because, collectively, “we are all in this together.” 82

Group Praying

Public health officials have persuaded lawmakers to divide the American people into two classes: those who are considered “essential” and allowed to continue working and those who are considered “non-essential” and barred from earning a living. 83 84 85 86 Small businesses and services judged to be “non-essential” have been forced to close their doors, including daycares, schools, churches, restaurants, theaters, barber shops and salons, gyms, parks and beaches while, paradoxically, everyone is free to roam through grocery stores, drug stores and big box stores like Walmart, Target and Home Depot owned by big corporations.

The Mass Suffering Generated by Widespread “Sheltering in Place”

Tens of millions of healthy Americans have obeyed orders to “shelter in place” and self-quarantine at home for months, sacrificing their jobs and losing their savings, 87 88 89 destroying one third of the small businesses middle class citizens have worked a lifetime to build, 90 91 while parts of the travel, 92 93 94 95 96 restaurant, 97 retail 98 99 and personal care industries 100 go bankrupt. By the end of May, there were more than 38 million Americans unemployed, representing almost 24 percent of the labor force, and most of them are low hourly wage earners who don’t have savings to pay the rent or buy food while they are out of work. 101 102 103

So the homeless rate in the U.S. is projected to increase by 45 percent this year, with almost one million people homeless by the summer. 104 At the same time, Congress is driving up the national debt in an attempt to delay the complete collapse of our economy by using taxpayer money to pay people to stay away from each other. 105

Police State

Fear of a virus has prevented people sick with heart disease, cancer and other health problems from being treated in hospitals that have been told to only treat patients infected with COVID-19. 106 107 Neglected children and battered women have been trapped for months in homes with their abusers, while calls to mental health hotlines from depressed, anxiety-ridden and suicidal children and adults have increased by nearly 900 percent 108 109 110 111 and, in some cities, prison inmates – even those charged with violent crimes – are being released from jail with the justification they should not be exposed to COVID-19. 112 113

With our children locked out of classrooms and the faithful blocked from worshipping in churches, synagogues and mosques, fear has stopped most of us from publicly questioning the premise that the price of safety is liberty. 114 115 116 117 118 119

Few have challenged the mantra repeated over and over again by doctors and politicians in positions of power that this dystopian reality we are now living in will be the “new normal” 120 until we are all tested and everyone is vaccinated when a COVID-19 vaccine is available because then, and only then, will it be “safe” for government to give back at least some of the liberty that has been taken from us. 121 122 123 124 125

What we have allowed to be done in the name of public health has no parallel in American history or human history.

No Lockdowns for Past Epidemics and Pandemics

The world did not lock down during centuries of epidemics of smallpox, which was a highly contagious virus and had a case fatality rate of 30 percent. 126 Americans did not stop working to prevent epidemics of diphtheria when that contagious disease swept through communities in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with a mortality rate of between 5 and 10 percent that was even higher for children. 127 Societies have not closed businesses and schools to prevent tuberculosis, a contagious disease that spreads the same way as coronavirus and has a case fatality rate still between 20 and 70 percent. 128 129

In 1918, state Governors did not order healthy people to shelter in place and put tens of millions of Americans out of work during the Spanish Flu Pandemic, when that highly contagious H1N1 influenza virus had a case fatality rate of more than 2.5 percent. 130

So why are the majority of people in educated societies like the U.S. cowering in fear before a virus that does not cause any symptoms or complications in the majority of children and adults under the age of 65, and has a mortality rate of about one percent, which is even lower if all the asymptomatic infections are counted? 131

In America, why are we allowing fear to erode cultural values and beliefs that have sustained and defined who we are as a nation for 245 years?

1982: The Challenge to Vaccine Science, Policy, Law and Ethics

The profound ramifications of what is happening this year in the name of public health and the slippery slope that has been created is expanding the conversation about science, health and liberty that has been going on for several centuries in academic, philosophical and political circles, 132 133 134 135 136 137 but didn’t go public in post-World War II America until 1982, when parents of vaccine injured children challenged the science, policy, law and ethics of mandatory vaccination, the most revered of all medical interventions in the history of public health programs. 138

Mothers and fathers, whose children died or were brain injured in the 1970s and 80s by the crude whole cell pertussis vaccine in DPT, had simple goals: we wanted safer vaccines, more and better quality scientific research to identify those children at high risk for being harmed by vaccination, and the inclusion of informed consent protections in public health policies and laws. 139 140 141 142 At first, defensive vaccine manufacturers, public health officials and pediatricians met our request for safer vaccines and better science with anger and dismissal. 143 Before Congress passed the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act giving vaccine makers a partial liability shield but also acknowledging that vaccine safety should be a national priority, 144 145 we were patronized.  Then, when we refused to go away, we were demonized. 146 147 148 149 150

Shaming and Blaming

Today, any person who talks about their or their child’s vaccine reaction or criticizes one-size-fits-all vaccine policies is called ignorant. 151 152 Any person who points out how low vaccine licensing standards are or how big the long standing gaps in vaccine safety research are, is accused of being a science denier and slapped with the “anti-vaxxer” label.153 154

If you question the orders of doctors, who believe it is moral to enforce “no exceptions” vaccine laws that sacrifice vaccine vulnerable children in the name of the greater good, you are called “selfish” for defending the ethical principle of informed consent and refusing to offer up your child’s health for herd immunity. 155 If you protest against vaccine policies that deny people an education, medical care and employment based on their vaccination status, you are called a danger to society. 156 If you criticize information disseminated by the CDC and World Health Organization, you are branded a threat to global health and can be censored on the Internet or far worse. 157 158 159 160 161

Strategies Creating a “New Normal” During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Does this sound familiar? It should, because it is the same rhetoric and political tactics being used during this COVID-19 pandemic to keep the people fearful and compliant.

It is the same strategy that will be used to label you a selfish threat to the public health if you don’t agree to be electronically tagged, tested and tracked by health officials when thousands of COVID-19 “contact tracers” fan out across America to test for COVID-19 infections. 162 163 164 It is the same strategy that will be used when you are told you must get an antibody test and obtain an “immunity passport” 165  before you are given back your freedom to participate in society – that is until a fast tracked coronavirus vaccine is licensed and your passport to life and liberty becomes proof you have received a COVID-19 vaccine – perhaps simultaneously delivered and tracked via a microneedle quantum dot tattoo on your skin. 166

Covid-19 Passport

Will a positive antibody test be accurate 167 or does it even matter? Every day, we hear scientists and public health officials arguing about whether or not naturally acquired coronavirus immunity means anything at all, 168 169 170 171 while promoting the idea that a COVID-19 vaccine is the only thing that will give us immunity and save us all. 172 173

Tomorrow, the “new normal” in America may well include the order to “Show me your vaccine papers” [174] [175] before you can enter a store or restaurant, go to school, attend a football game, get on a plane, train or subway, obtain a driver’s license, be admitted to a hospital or nursing home, get a room at a hotel or walk on a public beach, if health policy and lawmakers do not use common sense to adopt a more balanced approach to dealing with a virus that, so far, has changed everything.  [176] [177] [178] [179]

There is no oversight [180] on the decisions we allow scientists and doctors with big titles and even bigger salaries to make for us, [181] [182] [183] decisions that can affect the biological integrity of each one of us and profoundly impact the way we live our lives.

Yet, science is not perfect, doctors are not infallible, and the risks of having a complication to an infectious disease or a vaccine can be higher or lower depending upon the genes and epigenetic history we inherit, the environments we live in, and the life choices we make. [184] [185] [186] [187]

Health of a Society Defined by Absence of Chronic Disease and Disability

The health of a society is not solely measured by the absence of infectious disease but, more importantly, by the absence of chronic disease that destroys quality of life and lowers a nation’s life expectancy because it often leads to premature death.

Bodily Inflammation

In America every year, heart disease kills 647,000 people; lung disease kills 160,000; uncontrolled hypertension and stroke kills 146,000, and diabetes kills 83,000 people, [188] while millions more suffer cancer [189] and other types of immune and brain disorders. [190] America has the worst life expectancy, [191] the worst infant mortality [192] and maternal mortality [193] rates and the highest prevalence of chronic illness and disability [194] of all developed nations in the world, even though we have one of the most highly vaccinated populations in the world, [195] with over 94 percent of school children having received dozens of doses of vaccines for the past three decades. [196] [197]

Today, only four adults in 10 are considered healthy, while over 50 percent have one chronic disease and 30 percent suffer with two or more. [198]  An astonishing 25 percent of all children have a chronic poor health condition [199] like asthma, epilepsy, food allergies, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease and other autoimmune disorders, developmental delays, autism, anxiety and depression, and diabetes. [200]

In fact, chronic disease marked by unresolved inflammation in the body 201 202 is the Number One cause of death and disability in America and is responsible for most of the annual $3.5 trillion dollars spent on health care. 203 It is an epidemic that is crippling and killing far more people than COVID-19 or any other pandemic in our history.

U.S. public health officials have no explanation for why the majority of Americans are sick, except to blame the people for making themselves sick by smoking and drinking too much, eating junk food and not getting enough exercise or sleep. 204

COVID-19 Mortality in U.S. Impacted by Multiple Failures

Whether or not you buy that explanation, the fact that over 160 million people in our population are afflicted with chronic poor health may be at least one reason why there have been more COVID-19 related deaths reported in the U.S. than any other country. That, along with the fact that on March 24, the CDC told doctors and coroners to list COVID-19 as the official cause of death for a person, even if that person had one or more chronic health conditions or had never been tested for COVID-19. 205

Mortality from COVID-19 in the U.S. has also been impacted by the systematic neglect of well-funded federal health agencies like the CDC and BARDA. 206 207 The government was caught totally unprepared for an influenza-like pandemic, despite Congress and three Administrations appropriating billions of dollars to federal health agencies since 2006 to prepare for a pandemic just like this one. 208 Instead, warehouses were left empty without emergency supplies of masks, gowns and gloves for health care workers 209 and without diagnostic tests, equipment and therapeutic agents to help patients survive complications associated with an epidemic of a viral respiratory disease like coronavirus. 210

That is because federal health agencies, which have forged public-private business partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry, 211 have given most of the money Congress handed them for pandemic planning to drug companies to build new vaccine manufacturing plants and produce more vaccines for the national stockpile. 212 213 As the World Health Organization, the CDC, businessman Bill Gates and NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci keep telling us, using lots of vaccines is the best way to stay healthy and fast tracking a COVID-19 vaccine to market is the only way the world will ever be a safe place to live again 214 215 216

Corporations, Governments Cut Corners in Race to Develop COVID-19 Vaccines

So global pharmaceutical and biotech companies are now developing over 100 experimental COVID-19 vaccines, with a handful leading the race after being given billions of dollars in funding from the U.S. government, the Gates Foundation and other organizations. 217 218 Some of these coronavirus vaccines being created by scientists will use as yet unlicensed DNA, messenger RNA and nanoparticle technology, oil based adjuvants and electricity, to genetically manipulate and hyperstimulate strong inflammatory immune responses in the body. 219 220

Monied Syringe in Globe

Some companies are skipping animal trials, 221 which are an important part of the vaccine licensing process to answer questions about whether COVID-19 vaccines could cause neurological reactions or more severe coronavirus infections in vaccinated animals or fail to work at all. These are only a few of the short and long term problems that could have devastating consequences for humans being vaccinated.

Some companies are cutting corners by conducting Phase 1, 2 and 3 trials simultaneously, but will they investigate whether half of US adults and a quarter of children suffering with chronic illness are at increased risk for adverse responses to the new COVID-19 vaccines before they are licensed and mandated?

Other vaccine manufacturers want the green light to deliberately infect human clinical trial subjects with COVID-19 to see how well an experimental vaccine works. 222 Enthusiastic “bioethicists” are jumping on board to help advance this type of “new normal” in vaccine research, but parents of vaccine injured children are logically asking why it is ethical to intentionally infect humans with a new virus in a clinical trial when for decades public health officials have insisted that it is absolutely unethical to conduct a prospective clinical trial comparing health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children to determine whether vaccines are harming far more than “one in a million.” 223 224

So, while we are being ordered to obey new rules that require us to give up our constitutional and human rights, drug companies and government health officials are violating old rules that govern ethics and the scientific method for proving that vaccines are safe and effective. 225

Jacobson v. MassachusettsA Utilitarian Ruling by SCOTUS with Tragic Consequences

Science is not perfect, doctors are not infallible, and vaccines carry risks that can be greater for some than others, which is why voluntary vaccination should have been unanimously upheld in the 1905 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Jacobson v. Massachusetts226 Instead, the majority sitting on that high court more than a century ago viewed the notoriously reactive smallpox vaccine as a sacred cow and medical doctors as infallible so they could affirm the constitutional authority of state legislatures to mandate smallpox vaccinations during outbreaks. The Court said:

“The matured opinions of medical men everywhere, and the experience of mankind, as all must know, negative the suggestion that it is not possible in any case to determine whether vaccination is safe.”

SCOTUS 1905 Jacobson

Using bad logic and bad science while leaning heavily on the pseudo-ethic of utilitarianism, state governments were given the green light to legally require vaccination based on a “common belief” that vaccination is safe and effective, rather than proven fact. Piously waving the greater good flag to justify throwing civil liberties out the door, the Court majority ruled that citizens do not have a legal right to be free at all times because there are “manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subjected for the common good.”

The Court said that state legislatures can exercise police power to restrict or eliminate civil liberties, including freedom of religion, during public health emergencies in order to “secure the general comfort, health and prosperity of the state.” 

But the justices also warned that mandatory vaccination laws should not be forced on a person whose physical condition would make vaccination “cruel and inhuman to the last degree.” They said:

“We are not to be understood as holding that the statute was intended to be applied in such a case or, if it was so intended, that the judiciary would not be competent to interfere and protect the health and life of the individual concerned. ‘All laws,’ this Court has said, “should receive a sensible construction.”

One academic activist attorney has said that the 1905 Jacobson ruling “is often regarded as the most important judicial decision in public health.” [227] That is not an overstatement because, in 1927, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes used it to issue a eugenics ruling in Buck v. Bell that affirmed the constitutional authority of Virginia to forcibly sterilize a young woman mistakenly judged by state officials to be mentally retarded.228

Justice Holmes declared, “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes,” leading the way for mass sterilization of tens of thousands of Americans that doctors and government officials judged to be genetically defective, or morally unfit or otherwise a threat to the public health during the 1920s and 30s. [229]

This is the tragic legacy of Jacobson v. Masschusetts, 230 an immoral utilitarian ruling that public health officials cling to in order to justify legally requiring people to use vaccines that carry a risk of injury or death and applying societal punishments for refusing to do it. 231 232

State Legislators Primarily Make Most Public Health Laws

During this time of fear and confusion, the Jacobson ruling also reminds us that it is democratically elected representatives in state legislatures who make public health laws governing people living in different states. That is because what is not defined in the US Constitution as a federal activity is reserved for the states, which is an important check on federal government power. Elected lawmakers in your state can choose to mandate a few or many vaccines with or without exemptions, while the federal government has the authority to mandate vaccinations for people entering the U.S. or crossing state borders. 233

It was this understanding that prompted NVIC in 2010 to launch our free online Advocacy Portal at NVICAdvocacy.org that monitors proposed vaccine-related legislation and helps Americans educate lawmakers so flexible medical, religious and conscience vaccine exemptions can be secured and protected in public health laws. Despite aggressive lobbying efforts by vaccine manufacturers, public health officials and medical trade groups, until 2020, vaccine exemptions and informed consent rights have been successfully defended in multiple states over past decade, even though California, New York and several other states have taken those rights away. 234

Now, it looks like voluntary vaccination will be on the line in every state as the Vaccine Culture War, 235 which is the tip of the spear in a much larger culture war about values and beliefs going on in this and many other countries in the 21st century, is brought home to every person and every community in America.

Contact Your Legislators Now and Vote in November

You have an opportunity, right now, to contact your elected representatives and let them know how you feel about protecting civil liberties and vaccine informed consent rights in your state. Sign up to use NVIC’s Advocacy Portal to defend voluntary vaccine choices.

And when you go to the polls on November 4, 2020, think hard about who you are voting for and why. If you don’t like the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that your Governor or other elected representatives have made, your vote in this and every election beyond this one could affect whether America will continue to value liberty or throw it away.

Act Now

Because if the state can tag, track down and force individuals to be injected with biologicals of known and unknown toxicity today, then there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the state can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow.

Be the one who never has to say you did not do today what you could have done to change tomorrow.

It’s your health, your family, your choice, and our mission continues:

No forced vaccination. Not in America.

Note: This commentary provides referenced information and perspective on a topic related to vaccine science, policy, law or ethics being discussed in public forums and by U.S. lawmakers.  The websites of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) provide information and perspective of federal agencies responsible for vaccine research, development, regulation and policymaking.

Click the plus sign at the bottom of this page to view and/or post comments on our commentary.
Click to View and Access References

 



CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS SIDES WITH LIBERAL JUSTICES, AS SUPREME COURT RULES AGAINST CHALLENGE TO STATE LIMITS ON CHURCH ATTENDANCE

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS SIDES WITH LIBERAL JUSTICES, AS SUPREME COURT RULES AGAINST CHALLENGE TO STATE LIMITS ON CHURCH ATTENDANCE

BY KATHERINE FUNG

SEE: https://www.newsweek.com/chief-justice-roberts-sides-liberal-justices-supreme-court-rules-against-challenge-state-limits-1507571;

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

n a 5-4 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, a request from a California church that challenged the state restrictions on attendance at religious services during the coronavirus pandemic was rejected.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberals, turning away the appeal brought by the South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista, California.

The church argued the California Governor Gavin Newsom’s state limits on the number of people who could attend church service violated their constitutional right to religious freedom.

On May 25, Newsom issued an order that houses of worship “limit attendance to 25 percent of building capacity or a maximum of 100 attendees, whichever is lower.” The church said they were expecting 200 to 300 people to gather for their Sunday service.

Chief Justice John Roberts
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts departing the Senate chamber on February 5, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Roberts joined the court’s four-member liberal wing on Friday in rejecting an appeal from a church in California objecting the state’s coronavirus restrictions.MARIO TAMA/GETTY

The court’s ruling was its first attempt at balancing religious freedom during the public health crisis. The Supreme Court has ruled in a number of cases challenging state responses to the coronavirus, including the primary elections in Wisconsin and relocation of prisoners in Texas and Ohio.

“Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the free exercise clause of the First Amendment,” Roberts wrote in a concurring opinion.

He said the limits in place were similar and less severe in comparison to “secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said that the restrictions violated the First Amendment by discriminating places of worship.

“The church and its congregants simply want to be treated equally to comparable secular businesses,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Quoting from an appeals court decision in a different case, Kavanaugh wrote: “The state cannot ‘assume the worst when people go to worship but assume the best when people go to work or go about the rest of their daily lives in permitted social settings.’

Lower courts in California had also previously turned down the church’s request.

The brief, filed May 23, asked the Supreme Court to block a ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco. In an unsigned opinion, the majority of the three-judge panel wrote: “We’re dealing here with a highly contagious and often fatal disease for which there presently is no known cure.”

The Supreme Court also rejected an second case from two churches in Chicago that argued Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s limit of 10 worshipers at religious services discriminated houses of worshipers.

Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Supreme Court for comment but did not hear back before publication.


			
		

DAVID CLOUD’S “WAY OF LIFE” RECENT ARTICLES

DAVID CLOUD’S “WAY OF LIFE” 
RECENT ARTICLES
SEE: https://www.wayoflife.org/friday_church_news/21-21.php;
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research
purposes:
DARLENE ZSCHECH SOLD HER SEASIDE MANSION FOR $4 MILLION 
(Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
Darlene Zschech, former worship leader of Hillsong Sydney, has sold her seaside mansion for a reported $4-$4.4 million. The cliffside property, with a nearly 360 degree view of the ocean, is 1,258sqm with three levels, multiple entertainment areas, private movie theater, pool, and several cliff facing balconies (“Former Hillsong Church Leader,” Warwick Daily News, May 13, 2020). Zschech was “worship pastor” at Hills Christian Life Centre, Sydney, for 25 years, and published many of the most popular contemporary worship songs, including “Shout to the Lord,” “This Is Our God,” and “Mighty to Save.” In 2010, Darlene and her husband became the senior pastors of Hope Unlimited Church, but she continues to be involved in music projects with Hillsong. The New York Times reported that Hillsong is “without a doubt the most influential producers of worship music in Christendom” (“Megachurch with a Beat Lures Young Flock,” Sept. 9, 2014). Hillsong pushes one-world church ecumenism. Zschech says, “There is a new sound and a new song being proclaimed across the earth. It’s the sound of a unified church, coming together, in one voice to magnify our magnificent Lord” (“You Shine” album cover). Zschech and Hillsong performed for the Roman Catholic World Youth Day in Sydney on July 18, 2008. Pope Benedict XVI was present and conducted a papal mass. In July 2015, Darlene Zschech and Hillsong joined hands with the pope at the Convocation of the Renewal of the Holy Spirit at the Vatican. On her Facebook page, Zschech said: “Honoured to be singing this week, with Andrea Bocelli, Don Moen, Noa [Israeli singer], with Pope Francis and thousands of worshippers gathering in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. This is a celebration of unity and peace in the Renewal of the Holy Spirit. Amazing days for the Body of Christ.” Sadly, she doesn’t know the “body of Christ” from a pineapple, has zero spiritual discernment, yet she has vast influence among all denominations, including independent Baptist. In January 2019 and 2020, Hillsong Phoenix hosted the annual Alpha Conference which featured a Catholic mass. Fundamental Baptists and Bible-believing churches that use charismatic contemporary praise music are playing with fire. They will learn, probably too late, that this music brings with it a philosophy that will change the character of any fundamentalist church. It builds bridges to the “broader church,” which is progressing toward the formation of a “one-world church.”

WHEN HEBREW WAS PROPOSED AS THE LANGUAGE OF AMERICA 
(Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The following is excerpted from “How Hebrew Almost Became the Language of America,” Israel Today, May 5, 2020: “William Gifford, an English poet and essayist, received a report that ‘In the rebellion of the Colonies, a member of that state seriously proposed to Congress the putting down of the English language by law, and decreeing the universal adoption of Hebrew in its stead.’ Some believe this was intended as a mockery of the mutinous colonists, but there is sufficient evidence to show that this was a very real and serious consideration. New England Puritans held a profound connection with Israel, the Hebrew language and the Jewish people. In their conviction that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, they held the original Hebrew in great reverence and of particular importance in interpreting and understanding Scripture. ... William Bradford (1590-1657) was a Puritan separatist who immigrated to the Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620. Bradford, who went on to serve as governor of the new colony for 25 years, taught himself Hebrew because he wanted to read the Scriptures in their original language. On his gravestone he had inscribed in Hebrew, ‘The LORD is the help of my life’ ... Their love of Hebrew led these early New England Christian ministers to develop relationships with Jewish rabbis. Rev. Ezra Stiles, who was driven out by the British in 1776 and immigrated to New England, struck up a close friendship with Rabbi Haim Isaac Carigal. ... With his knowledge of Hebrew, Stiles translated large portions of the Hebrew Old Testament into English. As did many Christian ministers at the time, he understood that knowledge of the original Hebrew was crucial to the proper interpretation of Scripture and even the basis upon which one could properly understand the New Testament as well. Credit is sometimes given to Stiles for proposing that Hebrew replace English as the official language of the newly forming United States. When Stiles was elected president of Yale University, he initiated a course in Hebrew as a freshman requirement. The Hebrew words Urim and Thummim worn on the breastplate of the High Priest, perhaps signifying ‘Light and Perfection,’ became part of Yale’s official seal along with the Latin Lux et Veritas (light and truth).”
DUTCH SUPREME COURT RULES THAT DOCTORS CAN EUTHANIZE ELDERLY WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT 
(Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The following is excerpted from “Dutch Supreme Court Rules,” Reformation Charlotte, May 6, 2020: “If abortion against the unwilling infants still inside the mother’s womb isn’t bad enough, why not legalize abortion against elderly patients with dementia against their will? In a landmark ruling last month, the Dutch Supreme Court said that a doctor who committed euthanasia on an elderly patient with dementia while her family physically restrained her is not legally responsible for any wrongdoing. The Guardian reports: ‘Doctors in the Netherlands are able to carry out euthanasia on patients with severe dementia without fear of prosecution even if the patient no longer expresses an explicit wish to die, the country’s highest court has ruled. The supreme court’s decision followed a landmark case last year in which a doctor was acquitted of wrongdoing for euthanizing a woman in 2016 with severe Alzheimer’s who had requested the procedure before her condition deteriorated.’”
NINTH CIRCUIT COURT REVIVES CHURCH’S LAWSUIT AGAINST CALIFORNIA ABORTION INSURANCE MANDATE 
(Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The following is excerpted from “Ninth Circuit,” Christian Post, May 15, 2020: “A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has revived a California church’s lawsuit against a state law mandating insurance coverage for abortion. Skyline Wesleyan Church of La Mesa sued the California Department of Managed Health Care over letters from 2014 stating that insurance companies could not limit abortion coverage. ... The [Ninth Circuit] panel vacated the earlier district court ruling in a unanimous decision released Wednesday, sending the case back to the lower court for further proceedings. Circuit Judge Michelle Friedland authored the panel’s opinion, concluding that ‘Skyline has suffered an injury in fact. Before the Letters were sent, Skyline had insurance that excluded abortion coverage in a way that was consistent with its religious beliefs,’ Friedland wrote. ‘After the Letters were sent, Skyline did not have that coverage, and it has presented evidence that its new coverage violated its religious beliefs. There is nothing hypothetical about the situation.’ The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law firm that represented the church before the Ninth Circuit, celebrated the panel’s decision. ‘The agency has unconstitutionally targeted religious organizations, repeatedly collaborated with pro-abortion advocates, and failed to follow the appropriate administrative procedures to implement its abortion-coverage requirement,’ said ADF Senior Counsel Jeremiah Galus.”
LOOKING FOR CHRIST’S RETURN THE MARK OF A TRUE CHRISTIAN 
(Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
“I believe it is a mark, that every true believer should be continually at,--to live so as to be ready to meet Christ. ... It is vain to tell me that a man may be a very good man, and yet not be ready for the kingdom of Christ. I deny it altogether. I say that every justified and converted man is ready, and that if you are not ready you are not a justified man. I say that the standard I put before you is nothing more than the New Testament standard, and the Apostles would have doubted your religion, if you were not looking and longing for the coming of the Lord. ... Yet a little while and the last sermon shall be preached,--the last congregation shall break up. Yet a little while and carelessness and infidelity shall cease and pass away. The believers among us shall meet with Christ, and the unbelievers shall be in hell. The night is far spent, and the day is at hand” (J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties, 1879). “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).
1 6 7 8