The Patriot Post® · A Christmas Agenda Yule Love
Next week, Congress will have just settled down for a long winter’s nap. And based on the headlines, it’ll need it. The first order of business for the new Congress is a doozy: repealing Obamacare. With just days before the Hill recesses for Christmas, the GOP is making plans to advance President-elect Trump’s top agenda items right out of the gate in January. For leaders like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), it’s a repeal seven years in the making. And despite what Democrats throw at them, the GOP is more than ready to tackle the biggest failure of President Obama’s two terms.
[Tuesday], in a pool of reporters, McConnell wasn’t shy about the Senate’s plans. He hopes to give Americans a belated gift by toppling a law that’s added trillions to the debt and driven insurance companies — and policy holders — to the brink. It’s time for “more choices, more competition, and more access to health care at a more affordable cost,” Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) argued. Although McConnell would like the Democrats’ “cooperation,” few expect it. New Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has already fired the first warning shot, telling his counterpart: “Bring it on.” Republicans plan to. “I’m sure they’ll try to make it as difficult as possible,” McConnell shrugged. No worry. As with the confirmations of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees, GOP leaders intend on taking advantage of the relaxed rules put in place when Democrats were in control.
Meanwhile, most people are applauding the move as another promise Trump is keeping to voters. For more than a year, he made the repeal of this monstrosity a centerpiece of his campaign. And in December of last year the GOP leadership in the House crafted a way forward in gutting the president’s unworkable system. Through budget reconciliation, Congress was able to advance a measure that hollowed out the not-so “Affordable” Care Act. FRC worked with leadership in the House to include language in the reconciliation bill that would end the forced partnership between taxpayers and organizations like Planned Parenthood (which, incidentally, has now been referred for criminal prosecution for trafficking in aborted baby body parts). That measure passed both chambers only to be vetoed by President Obama, who refuses to sever ties with his signature mistake or his multi-million taxpayer pipeline to the abortion giant. But now that the trail is blazed, the stage is set for Act II. There’s no reason Obamacare shouldn’t be killed and Planned Parenthood defunded by January 2017.
As Trump said more than once, “I am committed to defunding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue to perform abortions and reallocating their funding to community health centers that provide comprehensive health care for women.” And considering the surge of money Cecile Richards’s group has raised on the abortion-funding-sky-is-falling emails, it’s certainly proved one thing: It doesn’t need taxpayers’ support! Since Election Day, Planned Parenthood has raked in 260,000 donations — more than 72,000 in the name of Vice President-elect (and staunch pro-lifer) Mike Pence. Any group that makes roughly $195 million a year just performing abortions isn’t exactly a charity case! Still, Dawn Laguens, Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, complained: “The days of public funding for Planned Parenthood are over when the Trump-Pence administration arrives in Washington, D.C.” Let’s hope so!
Originally published here.
AFA in Lembo after Connecticut Challenge
Liberals sure are gluttons for punishment. After weeks of blowback for harassing conservatives […] the Left’s bullies can’t seem to control themselves. Their latest target? American Family Association. Taking a page out of the IRS’s campaign of intimidation, Connecticut Comptroller Kevin Lembo is threatening to boot our friends at AFA from the state’s charitable giving program, even though they qualify!
In a letter to the organization, Lembo accuses the AFA’s “discriminatory” views of violating the guidelines for the Connecticut State Employee Campaign for Charitable Giving. In particular, he’s frustrated by the group’s enormously successful boycott of Target (1.4 million Americans and counting) for its controversial gender-free bathroom and fitting room policy. “These actions and statements are extremely troubling to me — not only as an openly gay father and spouse — but as administrator of CSEC. The AFA’s statements and mission … appear to discriminate against LGBTQ communities… I am, therefore, initiating an investigation to determine whether AFA is in compliance with the requirements of the CSEC.”
But just as Target is free to adopt outrageous policies, AFA is free to protest them — and nothing about that should jeopardize its status in this program, or as a legitimate 501(c)(3) charity. Unfortunately, these Lois Lerner-style tactics have been a popular tool of intimidation of liberals for years. But that doesn’t make them constitutional! AFA President Tim Wildmon was rightly indignant. “This is a state government official coming directly after your AFA,” he wrote to supporters, “and the letter is nothing more than an attack on AFA for standing strong for biblical principles. Moreover, it is an unconstitutional attack on the First Amendment rights of all religious organizations. The government is not allowed to dictate to religious charities what they can believe in order to participate in the public square.”
Obviously, the comptroller is abusing his power to advance a personal agenda that’s not only lawless but part of a broader strategy to bring greater scrutiny to any religious charity with a tax-exempt status. The Left would be up in arms if a state comptroller happened to be a Baptist and used that as a reason to challenge the charitable giving status of the pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign. See, Lembo has a problem. What he is doing is unconstitutional. As First Liberty Institute’s Hiram Sasser told Fox News’s Todd Starnes, “It’s surprising that a government would still be so bold as to engage in clearly unconstitutional religious viewpoint discrimination.” Surprising, maybe. But short-lived? Probably. Conservatives are fed up with liberals using the government as a weapon to beat Christians over the head with. With any luck, the new administration will take a fast but firm stance reaffirming the rights of faithful people — and institutions — to live and work according to their faith. It’s what the First Amendment guarantees — and what Americans deserve.
Originally published here.
Positive Choices Are Virgin Territory
The key to healthy high schoolers might be where no one was looking: the bedroom! In a revealing report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), officials make it clear that teaching kids to save sex for marriage might just spare them from a long list of other health risks. Students in grades 9-12 who made positive decisions about sex were just as likely (or more!) to avoid other dangerous behaviors.
That’s great news for parents, who were thrilled with the government’s report earlier this year showing that more kids were postponing intimacy than ever before. Of course, as former FRCer Dr. Pat Fagan pointed out, an intact family plays a starring role in a child’s decision to wait. “Virginity among teenagers of all ages correlates closely with the presence of married parents. Each change in family structure during adolescence (from married to divorced, from single to married, or from divorced to step-family) increases the risk of initiation of sexual intercourse for many of the teenage children in these unions.” Not to mention that the best thing you can bring on your honeymoon is your virginity! According to research, it just might save your marriage. Anthony Paik, who surveyed thousands of women as part of an Iowa study a few years ago, found that early sex leads to early divorce.
But what makes this newest study so interesting, explains The Federalist’s Glenn Stanton, is that “it examines widely varied safety and health behaviors from bike helmet and seat belt use to substance abuse, diet, doctor’s visits, exercise, and even tanning bed use.
With regard to smoking, teenage virgins are 3,300 percent less likely to smoke daily than their peers who are sexually involved with someone of the opposite sex, Stanton computed from the report’s data. Teen virgins are 9,500 percent less likely to smoke daily than their peers who are sexually involved with someone of the same sex or in a bisexual relationship. Chaste young people are also extremely less likely to use indoor tanning beds, binge drink, smoke marijuana, ride in cars as passengers with a drunk driver, and get into physical fights than their sexually active peers. Abstinent youth are also more likely to get a solid eight hours of sleep every night and eat breakfast daily.
How much correlation there is between sexual risk avoidance and these other choices is unclear. But what is clear is that the values our teenagers hold have a much bigger impact on the rest of their lives than most people realized. If there’s a moral to this story, it’s this: one good decision leads to another.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.