Columnist.
As major league baseball players, David and Jason Benham were used to a level playing field. In Hollywood, they're finding out that for Christians, there's no such thing. The twin brothers, who were set to launch a home-flipping show on HGTV in October, found out this week that their program is being canceled before it even started! The network had jumped at the concept of two siblings helping families buy homes they never thought they could afford. In fact, the project was so far along that the Benhams had already filmed several episodes in preparation for the series. Then, in a story eerily similar to Craig James's and the Robertsons', the twins got the news that they'd been dumped by the network for subscribing to a faith that three-quarters of Americans supposedly share.
Supporting marriage might cost you a job in broadcasting, but in Republican politics, it's the best decision you can make. Indiana voters made that crystal clear in Tuesday night's primary, refusing to "hold their peace" on two GOP House members who helped sink the state's chance at a marriage protection amendment. Kathy Heuer (R) and Rebecca Kubacki (R) probably regret their decision to undercut the state's marriage amendment now, after losing in a landslide rebuke of their liberal social positions. The women, who both lost to pro-marriage challengers, flip-flopped on the issue when the state was debating a November referendum -- betraying the GOP platform and ultimately costing Hoosiers the chance to vote their values.
Functionality may be in short supply with ObamaCare -- but irony sure isn't. Monday, in an announcement that seemed to sum up the last year of this debacle, Massachusetts scrapped the health care system that started it all. What once served as the model for the President's law is now a symbol of its dysfunction, as the Bay State becomes the third state to junk its site and start over. The 2006 system, which served as the basis for ObamaCare, hit its biggest wall when officials tried to merge the program with HealthCare.gov. One hundred eighty one million federal dollars later, the technical mess was so great that the state had to shift 160,000 people to temporary Medicaid coverage -- an expensive back-up plan that costs upward of $10 million a month.
Yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling wasn't just an answer on prayer -- it was an answer *to* prayer! In what experts are calling one of the biggest religious liberty wins in the last half-century, the Court gave its blessing to an American tradition more than 200 years old: legislative prayer. In cities across America, secular activists have come to legal blows with dozens of local governments over the freedom to open meetings with a prayer recognizing the Author of our liberty. And while they may have scared the prayers out of some city councils, the town of Greece, New York refused to be one of them. After a lengthy tug-of-war, the case finally landed at the steps of the Supreme Court, where the justices ruled 5-4 to continue a practice as old as the nation itself. For as long as anyone can remember, Greece had allowed any citizen of any religion (or lack thereof) to kick off the meetings with prayer. And while the policy was wholly inclusive, Christian prayers were the most popular. Despite the town's efforts to recruit other faith groups, only four of the 127 invocations were offered by non-Christians.
You can't put a price tag on women's contributions to America -- but Congress is trying. For almost 20 years, liberals have batted around the idea of building a National Women's History Museum in D.C. as a way to draw attention to the untold stories and accomplishments of America's daughters. Who could be opposed to that? Plenty of people, once they see who's being honored and how much it could cost. Right now, the House is considering a bill (H.R. 863) that many believe is the first step to making that museum a reality. If it passes, Congress would create a special task force (four Republicans and four Democrats) to analyze possible fundraising options and building sites. For now, the museum exists as an online organization whose current roster of "heroes" raises plenty of questions about the kind of women its Board would push to include. If the website is any indication, the half-million dollar venture has the potential to be a permanent monument to radical feminism and abortion.
"I thought it only happened in poor countries," Sister Gladys Leigh told reporters. But, like too many people, the St. Louis nun underestimated the strong grip of sex trafficking. Now a volunteer at St. Louis's shelter for recovering sex slaves, Leigh and others know all too well the dark and horrifying world of forced prostitution. Over and over again, she's heard stories like Christine McDonald's. "I'd been branded like an animal, stabbed, held at gunpoint, chained to a leash in a closet. With a life like that," she said wistfully, "all you can do is pray for death."
It's been 50 years and 20 trillion dollars since President Lyndon Johnson's famous speech declaring war on poverty. What's the report from the frontlines? The number of poor people hasn't shrunk -- and neither has the government. In fact, quite the opposite. Fighting poverty became an excuse to expand bureaucracy, 92 programs worth. And now, five decades later, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) wants to know what Americans have to show for it. Certainly not the poverty rate, which is the highest at 15% in a generation. "Federal programs are not only failing to address the problem," Ryan said in yesterday's House Budget hearing. "They are also in some significant respects making it worse." For too long, he explained, "we have measured compassion by how much we spend instead of how many people get out of poverty." Food stamps, Medicare, Social Security, housing assistance, while well intentioned, aren't solving the problem.
The government may be desperate for homeless shelters -- but not desperate enough to give up their liberal agenda. Instead of partnering with ministries, the Obama administration seems bent on preventing them from helping the hurting. At Cincinnati's City Gospel Mission Roger Howell says the group has more needs than it has beds -- a problem it hoped to solve by moving into a brand new building. Unfortunately for Cincinnati's neediest, there's one thing in the organization's way: the federal government. Under what are called "fair housing restrictions," the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is taking issue with the Mission's male-only housing rule. Fox News's Todd Starnes, who broke the story, said city officials have agreed to waive the requirement because of the Mission's faith motivations. HUD, on the other hand, has not. "We are a faith-based Christian organization," Howell explained. "That is crucial to all of our programs. All of our staff adhere to those beliefs and live it. That's important." They refuse to budge on those beliefs -- even if it means losing the building. "There's no question from our point of view that we will continue to operate our program in a way that is consistent with what we believe the Bible says -- and will live within the law."
Liberals care about fighting sex trafficking -- but not all care enough to partner with Christians who are. To them, the church's involvement is less about helping the hurting and more about a hidden agenda of religious conversion. In an eye-opening piece by Melissa Gira Grant, Salon.com treats the faith-based movement's involvement with deep suspicion, insisting that Christians are using the issue as a pretense for mass proselytizing and political conversion. Grant, who starts out to discredit the church's outreach, ends up showing just how transformational these programs have been for victims and their families. At one point, she even bemoans the faith-based organizations' "real influence on policy and policing." To the Left's dismay, more and more communities are turning to groups like Shared Hope International and its protégés -- largely because its model works. Unlike liberals, whose only answering to trafficking is more contraception and abortion, former U.S. Representative Linda Smith's approach is full restoration and care of girls who were trapped in that lifestyle.
If it's possible to do a worse job on health care than the federal government, Oregon has. The Beaver State made ObamaCare history last week, becoming the first state to quit its own exchange and move to the federal system. After sinking $130 million into Cover Oregon, the state's enrollment program, the system's bugs were so irreparable that Oregon officials ultimately threw up its arms and surrendered. The charade of efficiency is finally over for the state, which didn't manage to enroll a single person in ObamaCare through its website -- and instead spent millions of dollars to sign up 69,000 people on archaic paper applications. As if that embarrassment weren't enough, local reporters broke a story back in February that the project's managers "may have designed fake web pages on the exchange site "to convince the federal government the project was further along than it actually was," according to KATU.com.
Republicans are still months away from kicking off the presidential race -- and that's a good thing for front-runners like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who could use the extra time to hone their messaging. In four years, the Kentucky leader has won over plenty of fans for his solid record on a whole range of issues, including life. But today, it isn't his record that's concerning people -- it's his rhetoric. Wednesday, in a sit-down with former Obama insider David Axelrod, Sen. Paul surprised a lot of conservatives with his nonchalant attitude on abortion and his role in ending it. As president, Axelrod wanted to know, how hard would his White House push to overturn *Roe v. Wade*? The Senator's answer: not much. With the country so evenly divided on the issue, he thinks an incremental approach is best. "I think the debate is about when life begins," said the lead sponsor of the Senate's Life at Conception Act. "Is it okay for an eight-pound baby to be aborted one week before delivery?"
Whoever said "cheaters never prosper" obviously didn't work at the IRS! There, it seems employees do a great job of collecting everyone's taxes but their own. As if Americans needed another reason to seethe over the agency, government officials are pulling the curtain back on even more corruption. The latest bombshell comes courtesy of the Department's Inspector General, who is exposing the IRS for doling out almost $3 million in bonuses to employees with "disciplinary issues" that span everything from fraud and abusing agency credit cards to owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. (Apparently, the agency was too busy targeting conservatives to trouble with their own tax returns.) "Employees' tax problems," the Inspector General writes, "included 'willful understatement of tax liabilities over multiple tax years, late payment of tax liabilities, and underreporting of income."
Whoever declared an end to the marriage debate must not have consulted Republicans. While the media is busy eulogizing one of the hottest issues of the last 15 years, those who vote for GOP candidates are saying, "not so fast!" Turns out, pronouncing marriage dead is convenient -- but not credible. Earlier this spring, FRC and American Values set out to gauge how the Republican base really feels about an issue that, until recently, was non-negotiable in the GOP. With help from Wilson Research Strategies, we asked a couple straightforward questions about the party's core values -- and what pollsters found might surprise you. Public opinion on marriage isn't the runaway train that liberals want you to believe it is. A whopping 82% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe marriage "should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman."
While millions of people were busy hiding eggs for kids, scientists were hunting for eggs. Human ones. While researchers in London are growing noses, ears, and blood vessels with ethical stem cells, some scientists are still stubbornly plowing ahead with their morally dubious methods. Just last week, scientists from the U.S. and Korea broke the news that they had successfully created cloned, then killed the young humans for their embryonic stem cells. While not the first successful human embryo cloning, it is the first time any scientists have used the DNA from adults to create the cloned human embryos. By showing that it's possible to refine the technique and make clones (even embryonic clones) of adults, it brings us even closer to the threat of using this technique to gestate and birth human cloned children.
When the President led his ObamaCare victory parade through the Rose Garden April 1, there was one person conspicuously absent -- HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Days later, it seems that same person, the conductor of the ObamaCare train wreck, will be conspicuously absent from the law's next phase (whatever that may be). After five rocky years at the helm of one of the biggest political catastrophes in U.S. history, Secretary Sebelius is headed for the exit in a move that caught even congressional Democrats by surprise. Flanked by the outgoing Secretary on one side and incoming nominee Sylvia Burwell on the other, the President spoke in triumphal tones of HHS's handling of his health care law. In one of the last -- and most ironic -- moments of the Secretary's tenure, Sebelius presided over one final glitch. As she thumbed through her final remarks, Sebelius discovered at one point that she was missing a page -- leaving us all to wonder of the resignation: what else is this administration leaving out?
While Americans fume about the sidelining of Mozilla's Brendan Eich, another conservative is getting some long-awaited payback. It took eight years, but Dr. Mike Adams, associate professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, finally won the promotion he deserved -- thanks to a federal court's intervention. Almost a month earlier, a jury had sided with Dr. Adams, agreeing that the university was retaliating against the criminology professor for his conservative views. This week, a U.S. District judge followed up on that verdict, ordering UNCW to promote Adams and provide $50,000 in back pay in what many are calling a "landmark anti-discrimination case." Eight years ago, the university's sociology department turned down Adams's application for promotion, despite a folio of awards, student recommendations, 125 speaking appearances, and 11 published peer-review articles. It was the first time, his attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom pointed out, that a professor with that many peer-reviewed pieces had ever been denied promotion at the Department level.
For Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, supporting marriage must feel like an awfully lonely position. But according to a new Rasmussen Poll, it's anything but. In what should be an eye-opening survey that the media will go out of its way to ignore, the survey house announced a flat-out tie between Americans who back same-sex "marriage" and those who don't. Holding almost completely steady from its 2013 numbers, 43% of people, when asked "do you favor or oppose gay marriage," said they supported, compared to another 43% who opposed. The debate, which the media pronounced dead and buried, has never been more alive! Meanwhile, sportscasters are being fired from their jobs and brilliant CEOs are chased out of their offices because of their so-called "extreme" views on marriage. Turns out, the only extremists are the ones prematurely ending the conversation! Despite everything the Obama administration, the courts, and the liberal media has thrown at Americans on marriage, the country is a long way from walking away from natural marriage.
The First Amendment guarantees more than the freedom to speak. It also protects the freedom *not* to speak -- a right the U.S. Supreme Court just denied Elaine Huguenin. For the photographer and her husband, this latest development was a crushing one, especially as Christian business owners continue to find themselves on the losing side of the clash between political correctness and the marketplace. Unfortunately, the Huguenins, who turned down a job to take pictures of a lesbian commitment ceremony, aren't the only victims of this suit -- so are hundreds of other wedding vendors who had hoped the Court would finally provide some clarity in the chaos their own June marriage ruling helped create. Instead, the justices ignored an opportunity to reaffirm the basic principle that the government can't trample on fundamental rights of free speech and religion.
Most people use Mozilla Firefox's web browser to search -- but the extreme Left has been using it to search... and destroy. Short-lived CEO Brendan Eich found that out the hard way, when the long-time employee was chased out of his job for holding a view that -- at the time -- even Barack Obama claimed to subscribe to. Eich, who was under the impression that Mozilla had hired him for his experience not his political views, became the latest trophy on the Left's wall when it was revealed that he'd given $1,000 to the successful Proposition 8 effort *five years ago* in California. Despite Eich's apology, an unfortunate capitulation to the kind of self-censorship activists demand, he ultimately resigned -- joining the growing list of Americans whose reputations and careers are publicly flogged because they dare to express an opinion that reflects the diversity liberals insist they want. At two and a half weeks, Eich held the job longer than Craig James -- who was fired after a single day at Fox Sports Southwest -- but having been involved with Firefox since its inception 16 years ago, the fallout still stings. Like most Americans, he didn't know that exercising the freedoms that make our nation great are the same ones that make him unemployable by the Left's corporate bullies.
What the Founding Fathers hailed as a virtue to be pursued and protected is today being pursued and pummeled by those who want to see religious freedom quarantined to the four walls of our churches. Fortunately, there are still some elected leaders who understand that all our freedoms hinge upon our First Freedom, the freedom of religion. Yesterday, I had the honor of joining Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant (R) at the signing of SB2681 -- the state's Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and had the opportunity to thank him first-hand -- and others who were instrumental in passing the bill -- for their tremendous leadership in defending religious liberty.
