The man who could have saved America

From the files of Ken LaRive at the Lafayette Examiner

At about two in the morning in the year 2007 I was looking for a YouTube video to validate an essay I was writing for the Examiner. I came across an old interview with a young Dr. Ron Paul. He was warning us of a coming calamity that would become chaos unless addressed, a caution that he saw emphatically manifesting itself in America.

After a half hour, going from one speech to another, I saw his powerful address to Congress, and I knew that his words were viable and true, and could save America. I woke up my wife sleeping in the next room when I gave an involuntary shout, “Oh my God!” I said, “He is telling the truth!”

Fact is, I didn't know about 40 percent of what he was referring to... Government overreach, the escalating and unconstitutional wars, corporatism for war, the National Debt, but I wanted to know more... and over the next several months I studied and learned, listening to every recording I could find, even buying his books on Ebay.

It fundamentally changed the perspective of my world view, my country, and my place in it, and for the very first time in my life, from the streets of New Orleans, the murder capital of the Nation, from Vietnam, to the life I had chosen as an International Mud Engineer... I felt truly afraid.

He was a twelve-term Congressman, and a leading advocate for a Constitutional government, free markets, honest money, personal liberty, and international peace. He had served his country as a Flight Surgeon in the U.S. Air Force and the National Guard during Vietnam.

He was the chairman of the Monetary Policy Subcommittee, founder of the Campaign for Liberty, and had authored eight books. He was a physician who had delivered over 4,000 babies, marrying his high school sweetheart, Carol, with five children.

I saw an endorsement somewhere by Ronald Reagan: “Ron Paul is one of the outstanding fighters for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he puts them first. We need him fighting for our country.”

He talked about issues the American people were talking about, issues other candidates only glossed over, uncomfortable to bring to light. The 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., and how they were costing the U.S. Taxpayer $113 billion annually, and like a good doctor, addressed the cause of all of these problems, not merely the symptoms.

He tiredly endorsed the securely of our borders, and opposed federal entitlements and amnesty, such as birthright citizenship, and vied to remove incentives to illegally immigrate in the first place, seeing it as the root of the problem.

A Congressman from a key border state, Texas, he had a plan to halt the 3 million illegal immigrants entering the U.S. each year, that have now escalated to 10, while he proposed bills for LEGAL immigration for those who work hard and obey U.S. Law.

He said: “ We need to worry about our borders right here at home instead of borders in the Middle East.”

He supported our troops, and promised as President he would bring them home. He wanted to put America's security first; not fighting wars, policing, and “nation-building” all over the world. “Our troops are too valuable to be needlessly put in harm's way to serve other nation's interests.” He said.

He addressed that the U.S. had over 900 military installations in over 150 countries, and yet our national security has been compromised because our troops were spread too thin. They belonged home defending America.

A strict Constitutionalist, he advocated that the Federal Government's primary duty was not only to insure our Civil Liberties, but to defend America, and he got more votes from troops because of those two issues, then all other candidates combined.

War costs each American taxpayer $2,626.00 per year, with 6,300 American lives lost for nothing more than international corporate and banking profit. Not one county has embraced our American Constitution, because it is not presented to them as an option.

We install dictators that these bankers and corporations can buy and control, at the same time our Constitution and Bill of Rights are destroyed here at home.

“War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.” -Ron Paul

“If we want to go to war, the Congress should declare it. You get a declaration of war and you fight it and you win it and get it over with. We don't go to war like we did in Vietnam and Korea, because wars never end.” -Ron Paul

He had a plan called “Restore America,” to return America to a constitutional government that had made us the greatest nation in human history.

As President, he would have rescinded unconstitutional mandates that have this country by the throat, delivering major regulatory relief, spending cuts, a sound monetary policy, a balanced budget, creating jobs, and a booming economy.

On stage he stood alone in his convictions to return to our founding principles as a Republic, instead of what it had become, and still is, an oligarch. He not only predicted our crisis, but had a sound solution.

He wanted to:

• Phase out the IRS.
• Phase out Income Tax Audit and phase out the Federal Reserve
• End Foreign Wars
• Bring our troops home
• Stop all foreign aid
• Secure our borders
• Fix the waist in health care, which is 50 percent of the cost
• Abolish ObamaCare
• Repeal the Patriot Act in its entirety
• Return power to the states, as in the 9th and 10th amendments
• Balance the budget
• Abolish corporate subsidies
• Return spending to 'o6 levels

He wanted to take a yearly salary of $39,336, equal to the average US worker's salary, instead of the Presidential salary of $400,000, and his voting record showed his true nature, voting Constitution every time.

He voted to:

• Lower taxes For a balanced budget
• To lower Congressional Pay
• To allow gun ownership
• Against a National ID
• To keep internet free
• Against the Iraq war
• Against bailouts
• To limit power to the executive branch

Facts about Ron Paul:

He received the majority of his donations from individuals, where other candidates were funded mostly by special interests, banks and corporations. Ron Paul could not be bought.

Predicted the current economic collapse of 2007, in 2003. Endorses free trade, but is opposed to NAFTA. Was called the “Champion of the Constitution” by his peers.

“Believe me, the next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar. The rejection of the dollar is a big, big event and then your personal liberties are going to be severely threatened.” -Ron Paul (Read his book, “END THE FED” on YouTube: “What is Constitutional money” and “Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air.”

To save us, Ron Paul wanted to re-establish Congressional authority over money. Established in 1913. the FED is an unconstitutional and secretive system, controlled by private bankers. The FED creates money out of thin air creating inflation. This leads to rising prices on everyday things like food, gas, clothing, prescription drugs, energy, and more...

Note that in the year 2000, the U.S. Debt was 5.7 trillion, in 2011 it had reached $15 trillion, around 2 trillion per year. Today we are at about 18.3 trillion, and projected to be 23.3 trillion by the end of 2015. He wanted to audit and expose the FED, who is above all law.

“Without the FED, our money could not be inflated at the behest of big government or big banks. Your income and savings would not lose their value.” -Ron Paul

“There are only two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword, the other is by debt.” -John Adams

“I believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than a standing army.” _Thomas Jefferson

Health Care

Dr. Paul would have repealed “ObamaCare,” with reduced health care costs and restored the doctor-patient relationship. He would never have allowed the Federal Government to take over health-care, who forces all Americans to to carry only government-approved health insurance or else answer to the IRS.

He had a plan of action to balance the budget in three years, cutting 1 trillion in spending during his first year, eliminating five unnecessary and self serving government agencies, HUD, Energy, Commerce, Interior and Education. He would have ended taxes on personal savings, allowing families to save for the future, while honoring our Social Security System for our seniors and veterans, and would have given young workers the ability to opt out if they so choose, for a private fund. He would have abolished the Death Tax.

He would have lowered the corporate tax rate to 15%, making America competitive in the global market. This would have created an economic boom and a demand for made-in-America products with a large demand for jobs. Trillions would have been invested and reinvested as they would have been allowed to repatriate capital without additional taxation.

YouTube:

• Ron Paul ABC Iowa debates.
• The Only One We Can Trust
• Ron Paul Iowa Debate
• Ron Paul “Imagine” Speech Remastered AmazinglyAccurate
• Ron Paul The American Upset
• Jerry Day on Ron Paul and the Media Ron Paul in 15 Minutes?
• Ron Paul: A New Hope 2.0
• The Consistent Candidate: Ron Paul 2012
• Ron Paul on Meet The press 2011
• When in the course of human Events
• Candidates @ Google: Ron Paul
• You like Ron Paul, Except Foreign Policy

Author's notes:

The purpose of this essay, gleaned from the many pamphlets we Louisiana Libertarians distributed before the 2008 election... from the Louisiana Caucus, door to door in our neighborhoods, to the final night of the RNC betrayal of the Republican Party, America still continues to be ravaged and lied to by a one party system, a dog and pony show called Washington... We have the best government money can buy... bought and paid for by international corporations and central banks who are unaccountable to our laws, with men like George Soros creating a lucrative insider advantage in the mayhem he orchestrates... To say we are systematically being dismantled is not a stretch in a government bought and paid for by special interest lobbyists. We had a man who could have put a stop to it, but Dr. Paul was not good-looking enough for the American sensibility, with 52 percent of Christian women voting for the Progressive Socialist Marxist Obama, a good looking black man without a past. Or, to be more accurate, a past sealed from view by a court order...

Four months before the election we went from six to ten trillion in debt. And today, since Obama has been in office, we are at 18.3, with the promise of 23.3 before he gets out. And where are the voices of decent? A few thugs wanting to burn communities for a free TV and a case of beer? Face Book arm-chair patriots proposing the killing of “ rag heads?” America, what have we become? Home of the free and land of the brave? You are, we are, collectively pathetic. Yes, I remember when no one would put his sign on their lawn, closing the door on me when I asked. They knew nothing about him at all, and could not find the time to study the very profound questions that are destroying us today. Well, I guess I'm a bit bitter about it, and still afraid too, because I see the curtain falling on this nation... and I am at a loss to find a way to stop it... I could say that we will all get just what we deserve, but God, what a loss it will be to no longer have my America. We had so much, and we let it die. And the final nail will be another cold war for corporate profit, and no one cares enough to oppose it.

I remember the so called hippies at the airport, as they booed us in uniform, but it was a different time then, and I was 57 on the draft... Today, our brave service men and women volunteer, believing the lies that we are bringing Democracy to a land, as we topple duly elected Presidents for a puppet dictator, and guard poppy fields for the taste of European parties... and 95 percent of the people killed, are innocent of any crime. We call them collateral damage... But before the chant of change for the sake of change dies to a whisper, there will be no one left to write a truthful epitaph on the tombstone that was once America. And it won't matter much at all, because few would care to read it...

Slavery can come to a human being in many ways, and the most horrific is not a slavers lash, or the chains that hold you to a wall, not even debt slavery that some say is the most profound... No, the most hideous slavery of all, is subjugation of the spirit, where we voluntarily relinquish our Liberty for the crumbs off a table, or a promise to stay safe... but oh, how beautiful we are, as we pledge allegiance to America, waving the flag and bobbing our heads in unison, and never knowing why...

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Liberals new improved civil rights movement

From the art studios of A.F. (Tony) Branco at Comically Incorrect.com

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Just another race riot

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

When you’ve lived over seven decades in America, the news about another race riot is really not news. It’s just another race riot.

The latest is Baltimore and the theme for this one is police violence against an unarmed black youth. This was the theme of the Ferguson, Missouri riots last year and has been a fairly common theme since the arrival of the new century fifteen years ago. Such events included riots in Cincinnati in 2001, the Oakland riots in 2009, and the two most recent.

A December 2014 article in Real Clear Politics by Jack Kelly put the statistics in perspective. “Young black males are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than are young white males, Pro Publica said. But because more than two-thirds of police officers are white and blacks commit about half of violent crimes, it stands to reason most police shootings would involve a white cop and a black suspect.”

Largely unreported is that “Black cops shot black suspects at essentially the same rate as white cops…”

For those of us outside of the black community and living in safe suburban zones surrounding our cities, the riots might as well be taking place on Mars. Why anyone would, as is often the case, destroy their own neighborhood, loot and burn down businesses (often black-owned) defies an answer.

Because riots offer television news dramatic images of violence and destruction, one can depend on coverage for a long as it lasts. Being photographed looting or engaging in violence against police and others seems to be one of the “perks” of rioting.

Baltimore’s riot dominated the news on every channel Monday evening to the point one might conclude that nothing else of any importance was occurring anywhere in the world. The earthquake devastation in Nepal had to fight for the very few minutes of coverage it received.

It is astonishing to recall that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was able to lead many civil rights marches with so little violence, but it was the years concurrent with and following the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964 and 1965 that saw large riots such as several in 1964 in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. There were three just in New Jersey that year.

Having achieved the goals of the civil rights movement, historic federal laws, one might have concluded that rioting was no longer needed to call attention to the ills of the post-civil rights era.

You would have been wrong. The one that got national attention was in the Watts area of Los Angeles in 1965. The pattern continued with riots in 1966 and 1967. In April and May 1968 after Dr. King was assassinated, there were riots in 125 cities. The 1980s and 1990’s had their share of riots.

Just add Baltimore’s Freddie Gray’s name to the list of those who died either during an arrest or in police custody, sparking a riot. In the past the public generally backed the police, but now they are being depicted as undisciplined killers. The reality is that the police are the thin line of defense between us and the criminals whose job is theirs to arrest and detain. That occurs all the time. Police have more reasons to act in their own defense in a week than most of us will have in a lifetime.

As we learned from Ferguson, the original allegations against the police officer were totally false. Let it also be said that is not the only reason riots have occurred. A lot of them just seem to reflect feelings of alienation, anger, and dissatisfaction that bubble below the surface in black urban enclaves. Nothing is likely to change that.

So, as Baltimore cleans up the mess left behind by the latest riot, be assured that another is right around the corner somewhere. There is a core of law-breakers and angry blacks for whom virtually anything is excuse enough for a riot.

We had to pass through a Civil War to resolve the race-based ills of that era. Americans elected the first black American as President in 2008, but his race has not reduced riots during his time in office.

The lesson that we can draw from this is that, if you put enough people together in close proximity in a city where there is both wealth and poverty, where there are economic disparities between whites and blacks, you need only wait a while for the next riot.

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Black America should blame Black America

From the files of Wayne Root at Root for America.com

Where are the black fathers in Baltimore? They don't exist. I saw black mothers in the streets. I saw black male teens. But no black fathers trying to keep their kids off the streets and away from violence.

Where is Obama? Our nation's first black president has been silent as blacks tear apart a major America city. He's quick to weigh in and assign blame every time one black kid gets shot by a white cop. But not a word when thousands of blacks rampage and terrorize a city? Not a word about black-on-black crime, rioting, looting, burning or murder?

Where is the black Mayor of Baltimore? She clearly ordered police to stand down, make no arrests, stop no crimes while her city was being destroyed, while the businesses she is sworn to protect were being looted and burned. She clearly said days before the riots went ballistic that she wanted to create a "space for those who want to destroy." Then she blamed the media for merely repeating her words verbatim.

Where are the black leaders? Where's Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson?

How about the war on poverty? How's that worked out for black America? The longest and most expensive war in American history has been in place since LBJ and inner cities like Baltimore look exactly the same. Same poverty. Same hopelessness. Same anger and violence. Same rioting and blame and excuses. After $22 trillion has been spent - more (by far) than all the wars in the history of America combined, the results are...nothing.

I hear plenty of excuses from black America. I hear they feel powerless. Really? With a black president, the first black Attorney General, another black Attorney General, a black Mayor of Baltimore and a black city council? All that and you still feel powerless?

How has having the first black president helped black America? With black unemployment double that of whites, who is to blame?

I heard ultra-liberal (and pathetically politically correct) CNN analyst Sally Kohn blame white America today. She wished white America would be half as outraged as outraged over "police violence" as they are over the riots.

Well I have a message for Sally Kohn:

I wish black Americans would be half as outraged over black on black violence, black on black murders, black gangs, black drug dealers, black looting, black burning of black small businesses, black rioting as they are about one white cop killing one black kid.

And one more thought for Sally and liberals like her...

What has 50 years of black rule, liberal welfare and entitlement policies, excuses and blame towards white people done for black Americans in inner cities like Baltimore and Detroit? Where's the progress in those cities under 100% Democrat politicians and policies?

The sighting of a white Republican on the streets of cities like Detroit and Baltimore is just a rumor. There were no Republicans at the podium in Baltimore yesterday with the mayor. 100% black leadership. Yet urban inner cities like Baltimore and Detroit are in ruins.

It's time to take personal responsibility. Slavery was a long, long, long time ago. My Jewish relatives were enslaved by Hitler and the Nazis much more recently than your ancestors were enslaved by the South. It's time to move on.

It's time to fight for jobs, not welfare. It's time to look within yourselves. It's time to stop blaming others. It's time to blame black fathers. It's time to blame black leaders. It's time to blame a black president. It's time to ask what the Democratic Party has ever done for you except insure you're helpless, hopeless and dependent on government to survive. It's time to blame the war on poverty.

It's time for black Americans to blame black America.

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Strawberry field hands forever?

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Immigration restrictionists often claim that there are no "jobs Americans won't do," if only US borders would be secured against economic migrants who are willing to work hard for low pay and few benefits. If the fruit-and-vegetable industry couldn't rely on seasonal farmhands from Mexico and Central America, for example, growers would perforce offer the higher wages necessary to attract American citizens to pick the country's fresh produce. What alternative would they have? Let crops rot in the field?

In reality, agriculture is no more of a zero-sum industry than any other, and there is no fixed number of people it must employ.

That point is strikingly made by recent stories on the development of new technology poised to transform the nation's $2.5 billion strawberry business.

While most grain crops in the United States have long been cut and gathered by giant combine harvesters, growers of strawberries have continued to employ human workers to pick a crop too delicate to be left to mechanized equipment. That was "partly to avoid maladroit machines marring the blemish-free appearance of items that consumers see on store shelves," as The Wall Street Journal noted last Friday. No less important was the "trained discernment" needed to select only the ripe strawberries from plants that also have immature fruit not yet ready for picking.

Traditionally a large pool of farmworkers, mainly foreign-born, was available to supply that "discernment," along with the backbreaking effort involved in gathering crops by hand. But the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States peaked in 2007 and has fallen markedly since. The wave of immigration from Mexico in particular has reversed: For the first time in four decades, the Pew Hispanic Center reported in 2012, more Mexicans were leaving the United States than entering.

From the standpoint of strawberry farmers, it doesn't much matter whether the dwindling of migrant labor is due to tougher border enforcement in the United States, better economic prospects in Mexico, or some other factor. The farmers' overriding concern is that the fruit must be harvested, and they can no longer rely on immigration flows to get the job done.

Nothing to do, then, but boost the pay and perks for strawberry-pickers until they're high enough to induce more US citizens to work in the fields?

Far from it: With human workers harder to find, strawberry growers have become increasingly committed to finding a technological solution. The Journal story describes the Agrobot — a prototype of a 14-arm automated harvester that couples vision sensors and advanced software in a device capable of "pluck[ing] ripe strawberries from below deep-green leaves, while mostly ignoring unripe fruit nearby." When migrant labor was plentiful, the Agrobot's $100,000 price tag would have seemed exorbitant. Now it increasingly looks like a sound capital investment.

The Agrobot is only one entrant in the race to revolutionize the strawberry industry. Another competitor is Harvest CROO Robotics. The Florida-based engineering team is at work on a high-tech harvester able not only to pick ripe fruit at the rate of one per second per mechanized arm, but also to run continuously for an entire day.

Secure-the-border hardliners regularly claim that immigrants "steal" jobs that would otherwise go to US citizens. But if migrant workers reduce employment opportunities for Americans, don't robotic harvesters and every other labor-saving technological improvement? Shouldn't immigration restrictionists, so intent on protecting US workers from the competition of foreign immigration, seek just as intently to protect them from new technology?

Such an argument seems manifestly crazy today, when all around us is evidence of the myriad ways in which technology multiplies wealth and increases employment. Yet there was a time when Luddites smashed machines to prevent them from putting laborers out of work. We understand now that for every job technology makes obsolete, a dozen — a hundred, a thousand — new jobs are created, often in fields that until then never even existed.

Any society that cuts itself off from labor-saving technology needlessly harms itself. The same is true of a society that cuts itself off from an influx of willing and peaceful workers. Free minds and free markets constantly come up with innovative ways of accomplishing old tasks — even a task as old as picking fruit. Our best bet isn't to stifle those minds and markets, but to liberate them.

Strawberries and strawberry fields may be forever. But the strawberry industry, like every industry, changes. If those changes make it more productive, the whole economy stands to gain.

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The big money give-a-way

From the art studios of A.F. (Tony) Branco at Comically Incorrect.com

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Time for Veterans freedom of choice

From the files of Michael Shannon at The Whole Shebang (mostly)

It's ironic that veterans are always characterized as having fought for our freedom, but when it comes to their health care, they have no choice.

Their only options are the totalitarian VA hospital system or buying a copy of the 'Operation' board game at Target for DIY treatment.

EBT benefit cards are good at any store that sells groceries. Those recipients aren't forced to buy at Uncle Sam's Slim Pickin's Food Store.

My solution is to give vets the freedom to choose their medical care.

Read the details in the Shannon column at Newsmax.com.

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A message for Pope Francis

It’s not climate change – but energy restrictions based on climate fears – that threaten the poor from the files of Paul Driessen at CFACT.org

Read the Driessen Files at CFACT.org

Pope Francis plans to deliver an encyclical on climate change this summer. To pave the way and outline the Pope’s positions, the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding a workshop on the topic, April 28 in Rome. The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Heartland Institute will be there.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, director of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and an author of the draft encyclical, says the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has determined that “our planet is getting warmer.” Christians have a duty to help the poor, “irrespective of the causes of climate change,” and address what Pope Francis apparently believes is an imminent climate crisis. The encyclical will likely present global warming as “a critical moral issue” and increase pressure for a new climate treaty.

That raises serious questions, which I have addressed in many articles – and which prompted Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation to write an open letter to Pope Francis. The articles and letter reflect our years of studying climate change assertions and realities, and the ways climate-related restrictions on energy harm poor families far more than climate change will.

At the most fundamental level, too many IPCC reports and the apparent new papal position represent the rejection of Judeo-Christianity’s illustrious tradition of scientific inquiry, which has brought monumental improvements to our understanding of nature and creation – and to humanity’s once “nasty, brutish and short” lives on this planet. As Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman explained, we begin with a guess about a law of nature. Then we compute the consequences that would result if our hypothesis is correct – and compare actual observations, evidence and experimental data to the predicted consequences.

If the hypothesis and predictions are borne out by the observations, we have a new rule. But if the hypothesis “disagrees with the experiment, it is wrong,” Feynman says. That is honest, genuine science.

Alarmist climate science is precisely the opposite. That distorted version of science began with the hypothesis that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels cause global warming. It served as the basis for computer models that assume rising CO2 and GHG levels will cause planetary temperatures and sea levels to soar, and hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts to increase in number and intensity. The models predicted many such “scenarios” over the coming decades.

But Earth stopped warming 18 years ago; no major hurricane hit the USA for a record 9-1/2 years; seas are rising at barely seven inches per century; and even IPCC experts agree that long-term trends in weather disasters are not out of historic norms and are not attributable to human causes. The CO2-driven global warming disaster hypothesis and models do not reflect reality and are obviously wrong.

So alarmists began talking about “climate change,” blaming extreme weather events on human emissions and manipulating temperature data. They say terrible things are happening at unprecedented levels, when they are not. Worst, they say we must slash hydrocarbon energy use that has brought once unimaginable health, prosperity, living standards and life spans to billions of people, after countless millennia of crushing poverty, malnutrition, disease, and death before age 40. Fossil fuels still represent 85% of the world’s energy – and they are essential if the rest of humanity is to catch up and improve their lives.

Denying humanity the use of still bountiful hydrocarbon energy is thus not simply wrong. It is immoral – and lethal. This is the real reason that climate change is a critical moral issue. No one has a right to tell the world’s poor they cannot use fossil fuels to improve their lives, or to tell others they must reduce their living standards, based on speculation and unfounded fears about a manmade climate crisis.

As Dr. Beisner notes, “Alongside good science in our approach to climate policy must be two preferential options: for humanity and, among humanity, for the poor.” This does not mean pitting humanity against nature, any more than to pit the poor against the rich. It means any effort to protect the environment must be centered on scientific truth and human well-being, and in particular the well-being of the poor, because they are more vulnerable, and less able to protect themselves. Climate alarmism does not do that.

Over the past three decades, fossil fuels helped 1.3 billion people get electricity and escape debilitating energy poverty – over 830 million because of coal. China connected 99% of its population to the grid and increased its steel production eight times over, mostly with coal, energy analyst Roger Bezdek points out.

Abundant, reliable, affordable motor fuels and electricity empower people and support mobility, modern agriculture, homes and hospitals, computers and communications, lights and refrigerators, job creation, life and study after sundown, indoor plumbing, safe drinking water, less disease and longer lives. In conjunction with property rights and entrepreneurship, protected by laws enforced by limited, responsive, responsible governments, fossil fuels will continue transforming lives and nations the world over.

They will also enable people to respond and adapt to future climate changes and extreme weather events, floods and droughts, heat waves, new “little ice ages” and other disasters, natural or manmade. More plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would enhance wildlife habitats and food production.

However, 1.3 billion people (the population of the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe combined) still do not have electricity. In India alone, more people than live in the USA still lack electricity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 730 million (equal to Europe) still cook and heat with wood, charcoal and animal dung. Hundreds of millions get horribly sick and four million die every year from lung and intestinal diseases, due to breathing smoke from open fires and not having clean water, refrigeration and safe food.

Imposing fossil fuel restrictions and renewable energy mandates – in the name of stabilizing planetary climate that has never been stable – would perpetuate Third World poverty, disease and death. In developed nations, it would reduce living standards, affect everything we make, grow, ship, eat and do – and cause thousands to die during cold winters, because they cannot afford to heat their homes properly.

It would be a needless tragedy – an unconscionable crime against humanity – if the world implemented policies to protect the world’s still impoverished and energy-deprived masses from hypothetical manmade climate dangers decades from now, by perpetuating poverty and disease, and killing millions tomorrow.

Just eight years ago, Pope Benedict XVI warned that any proposed “solutions” to global warming and climate change must be based on solid evidence, and not on computer models, unsupported assertions and dubious ideology. He suggested that concerns about man-made emissions melting ice caps and causing waves of unprecedented disasters were little more than fear-mongering. He argued that ecological concerns must be balanced against the needs of current and future generations of people.

Pope Francis apparently does not share his predecessor’s view about climate change fears. However, if he is truly committed to advancing science, the poor and creation, he should reject climate chaos claims unless and until alarmists can provide solid evidence to back up their assertions and models.

He should recognize that the issue is not global warming or climate change. It is whether human actions now dominate climate and weather fluctuations that have been common throughout Earth and human history – and whether those actions will cause dangerous or catastrophic changes in the future. Science-based answers to these questions are essential if we are to forecast future climate and weather accurately – and safeguard poor families, modern living standards and environmental quality.

Dr. Beisner has posted his letter to Pope Francis, for others to endorse this commonsense approach.

It is unwise and unjust to adopt policies requiring reduced use of fossil fuels, unless it can be conclusively shown that doing so will stabilize Earth’ fickle climate and prevent future climate disasters, Dr. Beisner concludes. “Such policies would condemn hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings to ongoing poverty.” We therefore respectfully ask Pope Francis to advise the world’s leaders to reject those policies.

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Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death, and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

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Global warming? The Pope is wrong

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know Caruba's Warning Signs

I have devoted the better part of more than two and a half decades speaking out against the charlatans that have created and maintained the greatest hoax ever imposed on modern man.

At the heart of this hoax has been the United Nations environmental program and at the heart of that program is an agenda to initiate a massive redistribution of wealth from industrialized, successful nations to those who have suffered, as often as not, from being ruled by despots of one description or another.

It is with profound sorrow and disappointment that I must now speak out against Pope Francis, the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, whom observers have noted has “a green agenda.” He has become an outspoken advocate on environmental issues, saying that taking action is “essential to faith” and calling the destruction of nature a modern sin.

Before proceeding, let me note that I am not Catholic. My thoughts regarding the Pope are rooted in my knowledge of the long record of lies, false predictions, and claims by various environmentalists over the years.

When the Vatican announced it would hold a conference on April 28 called “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development”, I wondered why the Vatican is not holding a conference to organize the protection of Christians—particularly in the Middle East—against the wholesale genocide that is occurring. The Pope is not alone in this. There appears to be little urgency in addressing a threat comparable to the Holocaust of the last century that consigned six million Jews to death for being Jews.

I frankly do not know what is meant by “the moral dimensions of climate change.” Climate change is something that was occurring long before there was a human population on planet Earth. It is the measurement of the previous global cycles through which the Earth has passed for billions of years. It is profoundly natural. Applying a moral dimension to it makes no sense whatever.

As for “sustainable development”, that is a term that environmentalists use to deny any development that benefits the human population.

Environmentalism is deeply opposed to the use of any energy resource, coal, oil, natural gas, as well as other elements of the Earth we use to enhance and improve our lives with habitat of every description from a hut to a skyscraper. Over the last five thousand years we have gone from being largely dependent on wood to the use of fossil fuel energy that keeps us safe against nature—blizzards, floods, hurricanes, forest fires, et cetera.

At the heart of environmentalism, however, is a deep disdain and antagonism to the human race. From its earliest advocates, one can find allusions to humanity as “a cancer” on the Earth. The Catholic Church has been an advocate for the human race, most notably opposing abortion that kills humans in the womb. Its charitable work is legendary.

To grasp how far the forthcoming conference is from the most basic beliefs of Catholicism, one need only take note of the persons scheduled to speak. They include the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, the leader of the institution in which the hoax of global warming was created and advanced.

Another is Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, another voice for global warming, but neither is going to tell those attending the conference that there is no warming and that the Earth has been a natural cooling cycle for the past eighteen years, tied entirely to a comparable cycle of the Sun.

The Green’s response to the voices of those scientists who courageously spoke out to debunk their lies has been to denounce and try to silence them. There is no science to support the global warming hoax.

The one-day summit will include participants from major world religions. The Pope will issue an encyclical on the environment later this year.

Is there a religious or spiritual aspect to opposing the forthcoming conference and encyclical? One need look no further than Genesis. In a Wall Street Journal commentary, William McGurn drew the lesson that it offers “a reminder that God’s creation is meant to serve man—not man the environment.

Quoting Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” concluding that “the Earth is to be worked and that this work and the fruit it bears are also blessed.” The spiritual truth to be drawn from this is that man is the steward of the Earth. That does not mean its resources should be abandoned because of bogus claims that the Earth is doomed.

McGurn reminds us that “it is the have-nots who pay the highest price for the statist interventions so beloved the Church of St. Green.” There are more than a billion on Earth who do not have any access to electricity which, in addition to hydropower, is generated by coal, oil and natural gas.

Lacking the means to deter the impact of insects and weeds on agriculture, much of the Earth’s annual crops are lost. Lacking access to the beneficial chemicals that protect humans from the diseases transmitted by insects, millions die needlessly.

The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank is leading the effort to alert people to the dangerous message of the Vatican conference because “many people of faith who are familiar with the science and economics of climate change are worried this event will become a platform for alarmism over a controversial scientific issue” noting that “there is no scientific ‘consensus’ on whether there is any need to reduce mankind’s use of fossil fuels.”

The conference agenda is “profoundly anti-poor and anti-life” says the Institute. Plainly said, the Vatican conference incomprehensively would advocate policies whose only result would be the reduction of human life in order to “sustain” the Earth.

“These unnecessary policies would cause the suffering and even death of billions of people. All people of faith should rise up in opposition to such policies.”

The Heartland Institute is sending a team of scientists and climate policy experts to Rome where they will be joined by Marc Morano of the think tank, CFACT.

Says Morano, 'Instead of entering into an invalid marriage with climate fear promoters—a marriage that is destined for an annulment—Pope Francis should administer last rites to the promotion of man-made climate fears and their so-called solutions. This unholy alliance must be prevented.”

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Liberty movement and the human mind

From the files of Ken LaRive at the Lafayette Examiner

Read the Ken LaRive File at the Examiner

Freedom does not exist, it is an illusion. It is a lie. The whole concept of freedom is false, because the mentality of what we are as human beings can not handle it... It always morphs into a tyrannical fascist ideology. This is the Liberty movement, not the freedom movement. It is liberty from tyranny we are after.

Secondly, there is no such thing as a pure Democracy. This too is a lie. It has never existed on the planet. It has always morphed into mob rule, and so into the authoritarianism of tyranny's fascism, because that is the essence of the human mindset. We can deny it, but we can know this truth by what we have done in the past, as recorded in our history.

What we were given, that we have now lost, is a Republic based on law. This quickly disintegrates because of the mindset of what it means to be a human being, where fascism and tyranny displaces it. What we have is an Oligarchy. This is what the mind of men have wrought. Power and control over others is the true nature of men, and yet a few resist.

This sir, is the Liberty movement. Define who you are, and you will have a better chance of uniting, and winning. But know that you are, and always will be, three percent, and though that is plenty enough to cut the cords that bind us all, the rest will not participate. Because slavery, just as liberty, is the reality of the mind of men... a duality in constant odds, and the reason why Liberty, once lost, is so very hard to get back.

Remember also that the goal might only be accomplished by mutual destruction. Because it is the mindset of human beings, who have gained power and control, to rather see it burned to white ashes then to relinquish their ability.

Still, I'd rather die attempting to know who I am as a Libertarian. That is a good reason for being, a worthy goal for a life, a value greater than myself. Give me Liberty, or give me death.

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President Hillary? Follow the blood money

From the art studios of A.F. (Tony) Branco at Comically Incorrect.com

Get Your Daily Dose of Humor and Reality from A.F. (Tony) Branco

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• ConservativeDailyNews.com

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Snarking Hillary: No way to the white house

"A positive economic-growth vision" says Lawrence (Larry) Kudlow from Kudlow and Company

Visit the Kudlow and Company Website

A number of GOP candidates are engaging in Hillary-bashing over allegations that she used her office as secretary of state to help her husband’s business dealings, prop up speech-making fees, and grease the path for foreign governments to donate massive amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation.

But here’s a warning to my friends on the presidential campaign trail: Bashing Hillary is only going to make the Republican party look mean-spirited and snarky. It’s no road to the White House.

I would suggest laying off Hillary and instead showing us what you got in the way of economic-growth policies that will foster 4 to 5 percent growth and maybe another 12 million jobs. The GOP needs a positive growth message, along with a strong national-security message, because the party needs a positive rebranding and a positive vision. But Hillary-bashing will drown that out.

Snarking your way to the presidency is not likely to happen. And if you go that route, slamming Hillary at every turn, you’re going to lose female voters, minority voters, and young voters -- constituencies that the GOP desperately needs to win. It might even help Hillary.

As far as the Clintons’ alleged cash-raising misdeeds -- what the New York Post has dubbed “quid pro dough” -- it looks like the whole rest of the world is jumping on the case. It’s being covered by no less than the New York Times and Washington Post, a bunch of liberal magazines, and of course the conservative Wall Street Journal.

You’ve got Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Jo Becker working the story daily. She’s doing her own research and not relying solely on Peter Schweizer, the author of the forthcoming Clinton Cash book that set this latest Clinton scandal in motion.

I think Schweizer is a very good investigative reporter. We’ll have to see if he has connected all the dots when his book hits shelves on May 5. But when you have the liberal media and its top reporters digging deep, there’s really no need for the GOP presidential candidates to pile on.

If the charges against Hillary and Bill are true, if the evidence is there, and if laws have been broken, why not let the Clintons hang themselves? They won’t need any help.

And the country already knows that Hillary Clinton lacks good judgment. Whether it’s the secret e-mail servers, or the Colombian trade agreement, or the Russian uranium deal, polls say Americans are losing confidence in her ability. Bill and Hillary have long been branded with ethical miscues and moral lapses.

So don’t go there, GOP. Instead, walk the more certain path to the White House in 2016: Offer brass tacks and specifics on reinvigorating economic growth.

Watching the GOP presidential candidates at last week’s New Hampshire Republican Leadership Summit, there was frankly very little discussion of growth. While several candidates have tax-reform plans, both good and bad, there were no specifics in the Granite State.

Ditto for rolling back regulations, replacing Obamacare, or immigration reform. I also don’t recall a discussion of free trade, even though there’s a big trade bill coming up in the House and Senate. And I heard no mention of a stable and sound dollar.

I did hear this idea of not wanting to go back to yesterday, contrasting the past with the future. As Newsmax founder Christopher Ruddy put it, it’s a clever rhetorical device, but it does not present real solutions. In fact, there are quite a few pretty good ideas from the past.

For example, Ronald Reagan slashed marginal tax rates and promoted a sound dollar. Democrat Jimmy Carter, believe it or not, started a deregulation movement that Reagan continued on his first day in office by decontrolling oil prices.

John F. Kennedy cut tax rates in the 1960s and launched a huge economic boom. And if you go way back to 1776, there’s Adam Smith, the man who launched free-market economics with his book The Wealth of Nations. That was a long time ago, but that shouldn’t mean we neglect his principles.

What the Republican party needs is a clear and strong vision for getting the American economy out of the doldrums. If you want to nail Hillary, slam her issues and policies. Looks like she’s going Obama Third Term: redistribution, not growth.

Go positive, GOP. Go for positive economic- and foreign-policy solutions. That’s a winner.

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Bad times for the renewable energy industry

From the files of Marita K. Noon at Energy Makes America Great Inc.

2015 may go down in the books as the year support for renewable energy died—and we are only a few months in. Policy adjustments—whether for electricity generation or transportation fuels—are in the works on both the state and federal levels.

While the public is generally positive about the idea of renewable energy, the reality of years-long policy implementation that offers it special favors has changed public opinions.

An October 2014 report in Oklahoma’s Enid News titled: “Wind worries?: A decade after welcoming wind farms, states reconsider,” offers this insightful summary:

“A decade ago, states offered wind-energy developers an open-armed embrace, envisioning a bright future for an industry that would offer cheap electricity, new jobs and steady income for large landowners, especially in rural areas with few other economic prospects. To ensure the opportunity didn’t slip away, lawmakers promised little or no regulation and generous tax breaks. 

But now that wind turbines stand tall across many parts of the nation’s windy heartland, some leaders in Oklahoma and other states fear their efforts succeeded too well, attracting an industry that gobbles up huge subsidies, draws frequent complaints and uses its powerful lobby to resist any reforms.”

But, it isn’t just wind energy that has fallen from favor. 2015 state and federal legislation reflects the “reconsider” prediction. Likewise “powerful” lobbyists are resisting the proposed reforms.

Oklahoma is just one state in what has become a new trend.

About a decade ago, when more than half of the states enacted strict Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), Oklahoma, and a few other states, agreed to voluntary targets. Now, nearly one-third of those states are reconsidering the legislation that sounded so good in a different energy era. Back then, it was widely believed that there was an energy shortage and “dealing with global warming” was a higher public priority.

“Roughly 30 bills relating to the Oklahoma wind industry have been filed in the state legislature in the 2015 session, including at least one targeting the tax breaks and others attempting to alter regulatory policies,” reports Fox News. On April 16, the Oklahoma House voted, 78-3, to eliminate the wind energy tax credit. The measure now moves to the Senate, which will review a companion bill introduced by Senator Mike Mazzei—it is expected to pass and will likely be headed to Governor Mary Fallin soon.

Oklahoma isn’t the first state to reconsider its renewable energy policies. That distinction goes to Ohio, which in May 2014, passed legislation that paused the state’s RPS for two years. Governor Kasich signed it in June. Meanwhile, according to Eli Miller, the Ohio State Director for Americans for Prosperity: “the economic well-being of our working families and businesses can be factored in before moving forward.” The International Business Times projects that the two years a commission has to study will lead to a “permanent reduction.”

Earlier this year, West Virginia became the first state to repeal its RPS. With unanimous support in the Senate and a 95-4 vote in the House, renewable energy supporters are dismayed. Calling it “pure political theater and probably a flop,” Nick Lawton, Staff Attorney at the Green Energy Institute dismisses the move: “West Virginia’s withdrawal of its weak renewable energy policy is unlikely to significantly change that state’s energy markets.” Nancy Guthrie, one of the four Democrats who voted “No,” did so because she believes “we are running out of coal, it’s that simple”—which is, of course, totally incorrect.

Last month the Texas Senate voted to end its RPS and another program that, according to the Star Telegram, “helped fuel the state’s years-long surge in wind energy production.” The bill now moves to the House State Affairs Committee.

It is expected to pass the House and be signed by Governor Greg Abbott. While Texas is known for its leadership in wind energy, the termination of the RPS will impact the solar industry as well. Charlie Hemmeline, executive director of the Texas Solar Power Association, states: “Increasing uncertainty for our industry raises the cost of doing business in the state.”

Coming up, Kansas, North Carolina, and Michigan have legislation that revisits the states’ favorable renewable energy policies.

New Mexico and Colorado had bills to repeal or revise the RPS that passed in one chamber, but not in the other.

While Louisiana doesn’t have an RPS, it does have generous tax credits for solar panel installations that have exploded the cost to the state’s taxpayers. The credits were originally expected to cost the state $500,000 a year. In 2014 the payouts ballooned to $63.5 million according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. Repealing or revising the policy is a key priority in the current legislative session.

“Taxpayer support for wind energy is also losing momentum in Congress,” says Fox News. It points out: “Capitol Hill lawmakers at the end of last year did not extend the Federal Production Tax Credit (PTC). And in March, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), failed to rally support behind an amendment that would have put a five-year extension on the PTC.”

It is not just wind energy that has lost favor in Congress. The Ethanol mandates—known as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS)—are being re-examined, too.

On January 16, 2015, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) introduced the “Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act of 2015.”

More recently, a “former Obama economic adviser” issued a report that calls for changes to the 10-year-old RFS. Harvard University Professor Jim Stock served on the Council of Economic Advisers in 2013 and 2014. The Hill states: “His report comes at a time of growing angst among lawmakers, regulators and the industry over the future of the RFS, which mandates fuel refiners blend a certain volume of ethanol and biodiesel into their traditional gasoline and diesel supplies.”

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) supports the sentiment calling Stock’s report: “a key voice to a growing chorus of people who say the policy isn’t working.” It continues: “The report adds to a growing body of politicians and experts who are questioning the law’s effectiveness amid regulatory uncertainty and lower prices.”

Hawaii, uniquely, has its own ethanol mandate, but it, too, is coming under attack. KHON states: “Nine years after a major change at the gas pump was forced on Hawaii drivers, many are now calling it a failed experiment and want it gone.”

In both the case of Hawaii and the federal government, lawmakers are looking toward advanced biofuels that don’t raise food costs. However, the Environmental Protection Agency—tasked with implementing the RFS—has repeatedly waived or reduced the cellulosic biofuel requirements because, despite more than $126 billion invested since 2003, the industry has yet to produce commercially viable quantities of fuel.

Addressing dwindling investment in biofuels and growing skepticism, The Economist, on April 18, says: “Campaigners generally find it easier to fulminate against those which damage the environment or food security than to explain exactly how they ought to be grown.”

It concludes: “Whether such bright ideas can be commercialised at scale is a different question. Some companies, indeed, are starting to give up. Several algae-to-fuel ventures in America are switching to the manufacture of high-value chemicals instead. Sunlight is a great source of energy. Biology may not be the best way of storing it.”

And this doesn’t include the public’s failure to embrace higher-priced electric cars—even with tens of thousands of dollars of subsidies and tax credits.

Looking at all the policy reviews, the trend is clear. As Watchdog.org, in a report titled: “Why repealing the renewable energy mandates is good for the economy,” concludes: “The best policy for the states is to leave energy consumption decisions to consumers in the market rather than legislate them.”

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The author of Energy Freedom, Marita Noon serves as the executive director for Energy Makes America Great Inc. and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy. She hosts a weekly radio program: America’s Voice for Energy—which expands on the content of her weekly column.

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Politicians - Profiteers - Public health

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Naloxone isn't magic, but its power to rescue a heroin user from the brink of death can certainly seem miraculous. The anti-overdose drug, also known by the brand name Narcan, is easy to administer and has saved thousands of lives. First responders are often awestruck at how swiftly it can revive a dying addict.

"It's just incredible," the deputy fire chief of Revere, Mass., marveled in a public-radio interview last year. "There's somebody who's on the ground who's literally dead. They have no pulse. Sometimes they're blue, sometimes they're black. And you administer this stuff and sometimes in a minute or two or three, they're actually up and talking to you."

Free markets aren't magic either. Yet their ability to generate a life-saving drug like Naloxone, supplying quantities sufficient to make it widely available even when the need is great, can seem even more miraculous. That miracle is not enhanced when politicians rebuke the entrepreneurs who manufacture or distribute such wonder drugs for charging a price that the market will bear.

Politicians, for instance, like Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. She lists opiate abuse among her most urgent public concerns, yet is going out of her way to pick a fight with vendors who actually help make things better.

In recent years, drug overdoses have surpassed automobile accidents as the leading cause of death from injury in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control, opiate painkillers alone account for 16,000 fatalities annually; deaths involving heroin have increased fivefold since 2001.

Amid this grim crisis of opioid overdoses, Naloxone has been a godsend. While public-health experts debate the causes of the epidemic, officials nationwide have been moving rapidly to expand access to the drug. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that 30 states and the District of Columbia have adopted a variety of measures to facilitate the use of Naloxone.

Among those measures: allowing it to be administered by non-medical personnel, paying for police and firefighters to carry supplies of the drug, and permitting pharmacies to dispense Naloxone without a prescription.

Of course, with demand for the medication skyrocketing, the price has climbed as well. The workings of economics apply to pharmaceuticals just as they apply to housing, bourbon, iPhones, or tickets to NFL playoff games. When demand for a product or service rises, the price of that product or service can't help but rise in response. That is especially true when the growth in demand has come about quickly or in unexpectedly short order.

Heroin overdose rates have increased markedly since 2010, and only in the last year or two has there has been such a strong push by state and local authorities to equip first responders — police officers, sheriffs, firefighters, and even civilian bystanders — with Naloxone kits.

So it stands to reason that in Massachusetts, as in most other states, the price of Naloxone is up sharply. A 2-milliliter dose that used to cost the state $19.56 has more than doubled to $41.43. That's a sizeable increase, and it is putting a strain on public-safety and drug-treatment budgets.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey

The price spike may be unwelcome — no one likes to pay more for vital supplies — but it is hard to see anything unfair or unethical, let alone unlawful, about it.

That hasn't stopped Healey from demanding that companies selling Naloxone in Massachusetts provide detailed explanations for the higher costs of the drug, and account for "any changes in prices over time" since the opioid crisis was declared a public emergency. Healey's spokesman insists the attorney general "isn't suggesting anything nefarious," and is simply conducting "a fact-finding mission." But the innuendo is all too obvious.

Healey has said she is just being "aggressive" and wants to be sure "that nobody is out there unnecessarily profiteering from a public health crisis." Yet who is the real "profiteer" here? The drug maker who responds to an unprecedented surge in demand for a critical medication by raising prices to ensure that inventories of the drugs aren't immediately depleted?

Or the ambitious politician, who sees a chance to score political points by posing as a defender of the public against the very suppliers who are making available what the public needs?

Demand for Naloxone is way up; consequently the price of Naloxone is up. Eventually the price will fall, as new supplies come on line. In the meantime, thanks to the workings of the market, more lives are being saved.

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Supreme Court to rule on same-sex marriage

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know the Warning Signs from Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

In 1973, the Supreme Court looked into the Constitution, found that it approved of abortion and overruled laws banning it. Other laws have since addressed late term abortions and those resulting from rape or incest, but killing human life in the womb has been lawful since then. . According to the Guttmacher Institute from 1973 through 2011, nearly 53 million legal abortions occurred in the U.S.

By dismantling the fundamental traditions and beliefs of a nation piece by piece, you ultimate will destroy it. Claiming this is done in the name of “love” or “equality” ignores the greater societal issues involved in marriage; the creation of families with mothers and fathers, and, indeed, the welfare of children raised in same-sex marriages.

Abortion remains a moral issue in the minds and hearts of many Americans and now they are waiting to see how the Supreme Court will rule on same-sex marriage. As Ryan T. Anderson wrote in The Heritage Foundation’s publication, The Daily Signal, “There simply is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires all 50 states to redefine marriage.”

“The over-arching question before the Supreme Court is not whether a male-female marriage policy is the best, but only whether it is allowed by the Constitution. The question is not whether government-recognized same-sex marriage is good or bad policy, but only whether it is required by the Constitution.”

Anderson points out that “The only way the Court could strike down laws that define marriage as the union of husband and wife is to adopt a view of marriage that sees it an essentially genderless institution…” Marriage is all about gender and the union of opposites that is blessed by the community when a man and woman enter into it. To legalize same-sex marriage is to degrade the essential element of society, the keystone of family.

What we are witnessing is the current high point in a long campaign to remove any obstacle to being homosexual and the right to marry another homosexual represents an important political goal for LGBT community. For them it’s not about the thousands of years in which all societies forbid the marriage between those of the same gender or the 227 years since the Constitution was ratified.

Clearly the Constitution neither requires nor bans same-sex marriage. The thought of such a marriage would never have occurred to the Founding Fathers and the creation of a new nation had far greater priorities and responsibilities than same-sex marriage. Most such issues such as abortion were left to the states to determine. Even so, when the voters of California voted in 2008 to ban same-sex marriage, the courts there overturned it.

We are witnessing a homosexual juggernaut that will settle for nothing less than their own interpretation of the relations between the sexes.

When the Supreme Court hears the same-sex marriage case on Tuesday, April 28, it will be decided by a Court that is sharply divided between liberal and conservative points of view, but in the legal community, there is no argument that, as federal law states, “Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

That’s why the fact that in late September Justice Elena Kagan performed a same-sex “wedding” takes on tremendous importance. As documented by MassResistance.org, Justice Kagan has a long history of advancing homosexual issues and policies. A 16-page report leaves little doubt that she favors acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism as “civil rights.”

There is no way that Justice Kagan should join other Supreme Court judges to rule on this case. That would run counter to federal law and would be an arrogant dismissal of the most fundamental concept of justice before the bench.

What we have learned thus far is that the practice of same-sex marriage has proven more a threat to the rights of those who are opposed to it for sincere religious reasons than for those demanding their services. If there is any justice left in America, a bakery or florist should be able to say no. Demanding that they act against their faith tells you a great deal of the homosexual mindset when it comes to their “rights.”

I am utterly opposed to same-sex “marriage” for all the reasons the Bible and history provide.

If Justice Kagan does not recuse herself from Tuesday’s case and her fellow justices do not demand that she does, the rule of law and justice in America will have suffered another serious blow.

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