Are you late for work? Did you forget someone’s birthday? Blame global warming! Everyone else is. Severe acne, bad beer, crumbling gingerbread houses — you name it! These are just some of the things scientists are pinning on what they claim is a man-made climate crisis. Only now, it isn’t just scientists. It’s the president too. On Monday, the White House joined in the charade, desperate for a scapegoat for its pile of foreign policy failures.

Looking for a fall guy for the mess the administration has helped create in the Middle East, President Obama astounded everyone by suggesting global warming was at least partially to blame for the conflict under the Assad regime. “There’s already some interesting work — not definitive, but powerful — showing that droughts that happened in Syria contributed to the unrest and the Syrian civil war,” Obama claimed.

Of course, this isn’t the first time the administration has used the climate hoax to blame-shift. The Pentagon and Homeland Security have both waded into the murky water of the warming debate. For liberals, it’s become the blanket excuse for everything. Every mistake that’s made, every display of irresponsibility and ineptness is chalked up to climbing temperatures and gas-chugging suburbans. Even more amusing, the president made the statement standing next to Hollywood’s Leo DiCaprio, whose record on the environment is more than a little hypocritical. Earlier this year, he won an award for his emphasis on the climate issue — and flew 8,000 miles to pick it up in a carbon-emitting private jet! Now, he’s at the South Lawn of the White House promoting his new global warming flick, Before the Flood, where he argued that climate skeptics should be kicked out of the political process.

“The scientific consensus is in and the argument is now over, if you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in facts or in science or empirical truths and therefore, in my humble opinion, should not be allowed to hold public office,” he insisted. How’s that for tolerant? If you challenge the Left’s ideas or refuse to surrender national autonomy to international treaties, you’re suddenly ineligible from participating in the political process. First, the climate crowd wanted to lock up climate change deniers, now it wants to exclude them from their right to run for office. As shocking as this is we should not be surprised. This is the same intolerant approach that was attempted in San Antonio to force acceptance of same-sex marriage. Businesses would have been prohibited from doing business with the city if they have moral or religious opposition to same-sex marriage or the redefinition of gender.

But as far as factual leaps are concerned, NBC’s Ron Allen is right there with the president. His suggestion that an international climate agreement could stop hurricanes like Matthew from happening takes the cake. On Wednesday, he joined MSNBC to talk about the president’s environmental push, saying, “It’s very interesting that this is happening a day when there’s a hurricane bearing down on the U.S. and in the Caribbean, because these severe storms, beach erosions, intense weather episodes that we’ve had is perhaps the most practical sample of what the president was talking about as the threat that the planet faces.” Then, as Newsbusters points out, he told host Kate Snow that Matthew “is what this whole climate agreement signed by 190 nations and now ratified by 60 or so is designed to stop.”

Well, someone had better tell the hurricane that, because it’s about to bear down on states like Florida and South Carolina. The idea that man can stop nature is as ridiculous as insisting that car emissions are fueling a civil war. You just can’t make this stuff up — unless, apparently, you’re a liberal!

Originally published here.

Abortion Chief Richards Wrong on Rights

Would you trust your health to someone who can’t answer basic legal questions? At Planned Parenthood, millions of women have. The group’s president, Cecile Richards, continued to prove that she either doesn’t care or doesn’t understand the fundamental truths about the lives she encounters every day. During a radio interview with WHO News radio in Iowa, Richards was asked, “At what point does that child — or that unborn person, fetus — whatever you want to call it — at what point does that baby get the constitutional rights?” Richards’s response? “Well, I don’t really, actually — I don’t know that there’s an exact answer for that.” Because, she went on awkwardly, “…There are, as you know, restrictions on women’s ability to terminate a pregnancy — and when they can, but until a pregnancy is viable they have the right to make that decision.”

As in 2014, when she told a reporter that she didn’t think when life begins is “relevant,” Richards seems to have no concept of the inherent dignity of the unborn child, or its right to life, which is recognized by the government in laws like the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and by the founders in guiding documents like the Declaration of Independence. The rights of the person (including persons in the womb!) have their roots in the Old Testament — but if Richards is unwilling to accept that source, how about Blackstone’s Commentary on the Law, which was the foundation for America’s? The U.S. Supreme Court quotes it. Our forefathers based the Constitution on it. It’s not as if the questions of the liberty and freedom of the person have not been addressed. Planned Parenthood has either conveniently forgotten or overlooked history — both of which enable them to continue ignoring the rights and worth of the generations of children they’ve extinguished.

Originally published here.

Can’t See D. Forest for the HRCs

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is putting most of their marbles on the elections in North Carolina. HRC, assisted by a liberal and complicit media, has succeeded in deceiving a portion of the public into thinking that HB 2 is an anti-LGBTQ bill rather than what it is, a response to the city of Charlotte forcing private entities to establish gender free locker rooms, changing rooms, showers and bathrooms. According to Politico, HRC is launching the largest “get-out-the-vote” campaign in its 35-year history. “It’s a multi-state effort that will attempt to reach beyond HRC’s 2 million members and supporters to try to turn out other like-minded voters. HRC says they view North Carolina as key, and they hope to contact more than 400,000 voters through phone calls and an online ad campaign, according to the organization. Other initial targets include Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Along with using years of its own internal data, HRC is working with Catalist, a progressive data group, to identify voters.”

North Carolina became ground zero in the debate over the gender agenda after state leaders had the courage to challenge the Left’s radical agenda that violates the privacy of citizens and threatens their security. HRC believes that if they can eliminate leaders like Gov. Pat McCrory and Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, then leaders in other states will start flying white flags on issue of morality, security, and religious freedom. No doubt it would have that effect (on some politicians) but there are men and women of conviction, like McCrory and Forest, who — despite the threats and deceptive tactics used to defeat them — are standing firm for the benefit and well-being of their citizens. If you stand firm against the cultural bullies, the people, as they do in North Carolina, can see through the media distortion.

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.