Columnist.
The failed coup attempt against the government of Turkish President Recip Erdogan will have several negative effects and consequences for the people of Turkey. Erdogan appears likely to increase his suppression of civil liberties which began as Prime Minister in 2003 and continued in 2014 when he was elected the 12th President of Turkey. Jailing judges and other officials in the judicial system has been routine for Erdogan. Journalists and media personalities have also been imprisoned in record numbers, and since the failed attempt last week to topple his regime he has arrested and incarcerated over six-thousand military and police who are believed to be complicit in the attempted coup. [Yesterday] we learned through a media report that the Ministry of Education fired 15,200 people and the Board of Higher Education has requested the resignation of 1,577 university deans, akin to dismissing them.
The nation was shaken yet again [Sunday] morning by another act of pure, unadulterated evil. The tranquility of a Sunday morning in Baton Rouge was shattered as three men dressed in black and clad in body armor ambushed city police officers and sheriff's deputies. The news of this tragic event reached me as I was preparing to open the morning worship service at my home church in Baton Rouge. The news was especially unsettling to our congregation because it is the church home to a number of law enforcement officers.
Evil has erupted again, this time in the French Riviera. As the Bastille Day celebrations came to a close in the Mediterranean city of Nice, festivity turned to fear when a terrorist in a truck killed 84 people. Neither young nor old were spared, as men, women, children, and even babies were murdered before police killed the Tunisian-born terrorist. The face of evil in our world takes as its victims real faces of real people.
America's heart is still beating, even in a culture of death. [Wednesday] showed the strength of pro-life movement when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Conscience Protection Act which was sponsored by Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and was drafted by Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) to stop government discrimination against pro-life Americans who object to being forced to participate in abortion. Only one day after the Republican Party's platform committee adopted a plank protecting conscience rights, the House of Representatives stepped in to do the same. This bill was simple in that it would make permanent an annual appropriations rider called the Weldon Amendment which bars federal funds, including funds to states, if the government discriminates against those who object to participating in abortion. It adds a private right of action to allow victims of such discrimination a chance to go to court.
When the gavel fell in Cleveland [Tuesday] evening, delegates at the Republican platform committee had succeeded in crafting one of the most conservative GOP platforms in modern times. Not all were celebrating the clearly enunciated conservative principles that underscored the party's pro-military, pro-life, pro-natural marriage, pro-religious freedom stands. In the concluding moments of the platform gathering, a small group of delegates were engaged in an outright deceptive effort to derail the platform and potentially the convention. After repeated efforts to redefine marriage for the Republican party and interject special LGBT provisions in the platform, an effort was launched to create a Minority Report promoting items for an LGBT agenda, under the guise of creating a preamble for the platform from the 1860 Republican platform.
For those looking for conflict in Cleveland at the 2016 GOP Convention — they may be a bit disappointed. The contested convention that was talked about did not materialize, nor is a battle royal developing over the party's platform. After the first full day of working on the platform, it appears the GOP is set to have another solidly conservative statement of principles that draws sharp lines of contrast with the Democratic Party.
LGBT Pride Month officially ended yesterday, but under this president, it's never-ending. Members of our military know that all too well, as an entire nation woke up this morning to a future force that no one will recognize. Just days before the Fourth of July, very few people are celebrating Obama's revolution, an eight-year crusade to radically sexualize and undermine the military and with it the broader culture. The final piece of that puzzle came [Thursday], as an uncomfortable Secretary Ash Carter announced that the ban on transgenderism had officially ended — and with it, the era of peak military readiness. Despite strong objections from top Pentagon leaders, the president decided to shelve the military's real mission in favor of his radical objectives.
Just two days removed from the second major terror attack in two weeks, the Pentagon has an announcement. No, it isn't about the United States' new plans to fight ISIS in the wake of Orlando and Istanbul. Nor is to reassure the American people that their military is stepping up its mission against its Middle East enemies with the world on high alert. Quite the opposite, in fact.
If laughter is the best medicine, then someone ought to take a copy of UNC's "microaggression" guidelines to every hospital in America! The memo, brainchild of the University of North Carolina's Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, is a new low for a politically correct movement that's already God's gift to late-night comedy. What is microaggression, you ask? It's defined as "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual orientation and religious slights and insults to the target person or group."
For families like Karnamaya Mongar's, [Monday's] Supreme Court decision was nothing to celebrate. While some young women cheered a ruling that lets monsters like Kermit Gosnell exploit them, Mongar's parents know all too well what the five justices' opinion means for daughters like theirs. Karnamaya couldn't tell these misled girls her story, because she was left to die in Gosnell's filthy clinic recliner after an overdose of Demerol — most likely administered by one of his 15-year-old anesthetists. Like them, she probably never believed that ending her baby's life would cost her her own. But that will be an even greater risk now that our highest court has given abortionists the freedom to treat women — not as patients, but profits.
It's a surreal day in America when hundreds of young women stand outside the U.S. Supreme Court and cheer a decision that subjects them to dirty and dangerous abortion chambers like Kermit Gosnell's. Yet that's exactly what happened [Monday] morning when five unelected justices decided to topple a law enacted by the leaders of Texas, which required that abortionists offer such "controversial" things as trained staff, up-to-date sanitation codes, or hallways wide enough to accommodate gurneys.
The war for Britain's independence didn't involve muskets and cannons, but ballots. And [Thursday] night, the U.K. cast plenty of them in favor of leaving the suffocating authority of the European Union (E.U.). In a blockbuster vote that came down to the wire, the British people rocked the world with the decision to stand on its own in an increasingly dangerous world where autonomy could literally save people's lives.
The media has been calling last night's Democratic sit-in a "revolt." And people were revolted all right. A little over a week after the worst U.S. terror attack since 9/11, House Democrats seem intent on helping radical Islam carry out another one. When liberals spend hours derailing House business to force a debate on gun control, they aren't preventing another massacre like Orlando's. They're creating the division — and diversion — radical Islamists need to plot another assault.
It's been called a "reckoning," an "inquisition," even a "quiz," but yesterday's meeting between Donald Trump and hundreds of Christian leaders was a *conversation* -- an important one about America's future. The closed-door gathering with the GOP's presumptive nominee had been the talk of the media for over a month and [Tuesday], after weeks of planning, perhaps the largest assembly of social conservative leaders in a generation convened -- hoping, after eight years of extremely hostile policies, to build a bridge between them and the man who could be the nation's next commander-in-chief. [Tuesday] night on Fox News, Megyn Kelly asked me why it was necessary for Christian leaders to start a dialogue with Donald Trump. I'll tell you what I told her: I believe we have to be both an influence in this process and a witness to a standard of truth that is revealed in Scripture that we adhere to. When we have a candidate whose positions in the past were inconsistent with that standard, we have to have a conversation.
The retirement ceremony of Master Sgt. Chuck Roberson was a memorable one — but not for the reasons this veteran airman and his family had hoped. After dedicating his career to his country, the last thing Roberson wanted was to turn a proud moment into a national storyline about the military's hostility toward faith. Unfortunately for him, that's exactly what happened, thanks to the stunning intolerance of the commanding officers at Travis Air Force Base. Like many service members, Sgt. Roberson wanted to include the traditional flag-folding speech as part of the festivities. And while the Pentagon officially scrubbed God out of the text in 2005, plenty of service members still opt for the original version at their celebrations — usually without controversy.
"And as I often tell young officers at CIA, I have never seen a time when our country faced such a wide variety of threats to our national security."
What exactly is Homeland Security doing when it isn't busy labeling conservatives terror threats or dishing out sex change drugs to illegals? Not its job, according to a stunning new report.
Tuesday's observance of Flag Day has been a somber one, as thousands of stars and stripes now fly at half-mast — a grim reminder of the weekend's tragedy that took the lives of 49 Americans.
It's happened again: American blood spilled on American soil by a radical Islamic gunman in what is the deadliest terrorist attack since 9/11.
California has long been an incubator for liberal ideas and a harbinger of the policy and cultural fights that are on the horizon. Lawmakers on the Left Coast are making clear that the conquest of public education is not enough. As public higher-ed institutions have been systematically stripped of any content, policies, or people who have anything to do with traditional values or religious faith, now it's the *religious* schools which must be subjugated. While President Obama's recent bathroom directive threatens all schools, at all levels of the educational continuum who receive Title IX funding, a new California bill threatens to bully religious universities into, well, not being so religious.
