Official who penalized ‘Sweetcakes’ accused of violating Constitution

Aaron and Melissa Klein were fined $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.

An Oregon state official and his agency violated the U.S. Constitution in multiple ways when they assessed a $135,000 penalty against Sweetcakes by Melissa bakery owners Aaron and Melissa Klein for refusing to violate their Christian faith by creating a wedding cake for a lesbian duo, according to a new appeal filed in the long-running case.

“In America, you’re protected by the Constitution, and you’re also innocent until proven guilty,” said Kelly Shackelford, president of First Liberty Institute, which is working on the Kleins’ case.

“Commissioner Brad Avakian decided the Kleins were guilty before he even heard their case. This is an egregious violation of the Kleins’ rights to due process. We hope the Oregon Court of Appeals will remedy this by reversing or dismissing the government’s case against the Kleins.”

Boyden Gray, former ambassador to the European Union and founding partner of Boyden Gray and Associates, noted the Constitution “guarantees the rights of free exercise of religion, free speech, and due process for every American.”

Gray also has joined in the Kleins’ case.

“We hope the Oregon Court of Appeals will defend the Kleins’ rights in accordance with state and federal law,” he said.

The case was prompted by the Kleins’ decision in 2013 not to make a cake for a lesbian duo. The couple had sold products to the women before and said they would again but declined to provide the cake because its message violated their religious beliefs.

Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries responded with a lengthy and wide-ranging attack on the couple, ordering them to pay the $135,000 penalty and not to say “certain things about their religious faith.”

Officials overseeing the case even stated publicly that people with such beliefs need to be “rehabilitated,” according to court recrods.

Paul Kengor, Ph.D., has written “Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left has Sabotaged Family and Marriage,” to explain the influence of “extreme-left radicals” on the American family.

The Kleins eventually closed their bakery.

Now they have appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals, arguing the state violated their constitutional rights to religious freedom, free speech and due process.

Avakian, for example, before hearing the case against the Kleins, “made numerous public comments on social media and in media interviews revealing his intent to rule against them,” according to the brief.

“He stated that the Kleins had ‘disobey[ed]’ Oregon law and needed to be ‘rehabilitate[d].’ By failing to recuse himself from the case, while harboring a bias against the Kleins, Commissioner Avakian deprived the Kleins of their right to due process with a fair hearing before an impartial tribunal.”

The brief also contends the $135,000 penalty was gratuitous and excessive and that the agency order violates Oregon law, the state constitution and the U.S. Constitution. The complaint asserts the state agency violated constitutional prohibitions against compelled speech, free speech, due process and limits on the exercise of their religion.

Avakian did not respond to WND email and telephone requests for comment.

See the Big List of Christian Coercion compiled by WND, where officials, business owners and others have been bludgeoned by the law, activists – even judges – for their faith.

“This case addresses a BOLI final order misinterpreting Oregon’s public accommodations law, ORS 659A.403, which requires business to sell their goods and services to all persons, regardless of protected characteristics like sexual orientation. BOLI’s misapplication of Oregon law violates both the Oregon and United States Constitutions,” the brief argues.

“It unlawfully compels two law-abiding Oregon citizens, the Kleins, to devote their time and talents to create art destined for use in expressive events conveying messages that contradict their deeply and sincerely held religious beliefs,” it says.

The dispute, the brief says, “is about “the state forcing business owners to publicly facilitate ceremonies, rituals, and other expressive events with which they have fundamental and often, as in this case, religious disagreements. BOLI says the Kleins’ refusal to create custom-designed cakes for same-sex weddings tells complainants that ‘there are places [they] cannot go, things ]they] cannot … be.”

“The Kleins, however, have no power over where the complainants go, what they can be, or whether their identities are worthy of recognition. BOLI, of course, does have those powers over the Kleins and others like them. And its final order sends a clear message that their identity as a religious people is not worthy of state recognition and that they cannot operate a business in Oregon unless they facilitate same-sex weddings.”

The state said its ruling was about how “people in a free society should choose to treat each other.”

“BOLI’s charge is to fairly and impartially enforce the law, not to use it to bring about its vision of a free society, compelling people to engage in speech that violates their consciences in the name of rehabilitat[ing] religious dissenters,” the brief says.

It points out that refusing to do “gay weddings” is not the same as refusing to sell services to “gay” people.

Under the agency’s standard, the brief points out, a feminist photographer could be forced to facilitate fraternity initiations with pictures and an atheist store manager could be forced to provide bread for Wiccan rituals.

Citing Thomas Jefferson’s statement that compelling a man “to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors” is “tyrannical,” the brief argues that the people of Oregon have given BOLI certain powers, but not the authority “to determine how people in a society should treat each other, compelling speech and running roughshod over sincere religious beliefs.”

It also explains there were significant problems with the evidence that the state agency accepted, including the claim from Cheryl McPherson, the mother of complainant Rachel Cryer, that Aaron Klein called her an “abomination.”

What actually happened was that she went to the bakery to “confront” the Kleins about their beliefs and instruct them that she believed the Bible to be silent about “same-sex relationships.”

Aaron Klein listened to her, then responded with a verse from Leviticus: “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.”

McPherson left and reported that Klein had called her an “abomination,” a variation of the evidence that was not addressed by the state agency’s ruling, the brief explains.

The agency also repeatedly rejected the Kleins’ attempts to obtain a fair evaluation by restricting witnesses they could question regarding the evidence and refusing their requests to disqualify certain components.

The Kleins’ brief cites a recent ruling from a parallel agency in Colorado that ruled homosexual advocates who are bakers legally could refuse to produce a cake with a biblical message on it.

“There is no basis, however, in law or logic for forcing some bakers to associate with expressive events (same sex weddings) while exempting others from associating with expressive messages (Bible passages),” the brief argues.

WND previously reported that Samaritan’s Purse CEO Franklin Graham, who also is CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, called the ruling against the Kleins a travesty for the First Amendment.

Graham reacted on his Facebook page to the Oregon ruling against the Kleins.

Paul Kengor, Ph.D., has written “Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left has Sabotaged Family and Marriage,” to explain the influence of “extreme-left radicals” on the American family.

He wrote: “This is unbelievable! … Brad Avakian, Oregon’s Bureau of Labor & Industries Commissioner, upheld [the previous] ruling that the Kleins have to pay the lesbian couple $135,000 for a long list of alleged damages including: ‘acute loss of confidence,’ ‘high blood pressure,’ ‘impaired digestion,’ ‘loss of appetite,’ ‘migraine headaches,’ ‘pale and sick at home after work,’ ‘resumption of smoking habit,’ ‘weight gain,’ and ‘worry.’ Give me a break. In my opinion, this couple should pay the Kleins $135,000 for all they’ve been through!”

He continued: “Even more outrageous is that Avakian has also now ordered the Kleins to ‘cease and desist’ from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs. This is an outright attack on their ‪#‎freedomofspeech‬. A senior attorney with the The Heritage Foundation was absolutely right when he said, ‘It is exactly this kind of oppressive persecution by government officials that led the pilgrims to America.’”

On Monday, WND reported four members of the Colorado Supreme Court, including a justice who boasts on a state website of being a homosexual-rights advocate, refused to intervene in a case in the state that is similar to the Kleins’. There, a state agency ruling is forcing a Colorado baker to violate his Christian faith by baking a cake for a homosexual duo.

The court on Monday issued a terse statement denying a petition for review. It said that Chief Justice Nancy Rice and Justice Nathan Coats would have reviewed the case because of the important constitutional questions it raises. But four other justices, including Monica Marquiz, who boasts of winning the Colorado GLBT Bar Association’s 2009 Outstanding GLBT Attorney Award, joined with a growing social movement that insists homosexual rights trump the religious rights protected by the Constitution.

For Rice and Coats, the issues that need to be reviewed include whether the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) “requires Phillips to create artistic expression that contravenes his religious beliefs about marriage,” whether “applying CADA to force Phillips to create artistic expression that contravenes his religious beliefs about marriage violates his free speech rights under the United States and Colorado Constitutions” and whether “applying CADA to force Phillips to create artistic expression that violates his religious beliefs about marriage infringes his free exercise rights under the United States and Colorado Constitutions.”

The other three justices joining the campaign were Brian Boatright, William Hood III and Richard Gabriel..

Colorado’s antagonism to Christians was apparent when Diann Rice, a member of the state civil rights commission, which reviewed the allegations, said: “I would also like to reiterate what we said in the hearing or the last meeting. Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust, whether it be – I mean, we – we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to – to use their religion to hurt others.”

Hear a recording of Rice’s statement:

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See the Big List of Christian Coercion compiled by WND, where officials, business owners and others have been bludgeoned by the law, activists – even judges – for their faith.

 

Feds: Schools must violate 1st Amendment

The federal government has ruled that in order to meet its demands under Title IX, the law regulating equal access to educational opportunities at colleges and universities, the schools must violate the First Amendment, an activist organization has charged.

“The Department of Justice now interprets Title IX to require colleges and universities to violate the First Amendment,” a report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education confirmed this week.

It cited a recent letter from the agency to the University of New Mexico that “found the university improperly defined sexual harassment. DOJ flatly declared that ‘[u]nwelcome conduct of a sexual nature’ – including ‘verbal conduct’ – is sexual harassment ‘regardless of whether it causes a hostile environment or is quid pro quo.’”

“The Department of Justice has put universities in an impossible position: violate the Constitution or risk losing federal funding,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. “The federal government’s push for a national speech code is at odds with decades of legal precedent. University presidents must find the courage to stand up to this federal overreach.”

At issue is how colleges and universities handle complaints of sexual assault and more.

In the demand to the University of New Mexico, the federal government requires controls and punishment for verbal statements to which it objects.

See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

“To comply with Title IX, DOJ states that a college or university ‘carries the responsibility to investigate’ all speech of a sexual nature that someone subjectively finds unwelcome, even if that speech is protected by the First Amendment or an institution’s promises of free speech,” the report said.

The report called the mandate a “shockingly broad conception of sexual harassment” and said it “all but guarantees that colleges and universities nationwide will subject students and faculty to months-long investigations – or worse – for protected speech.”

It listed a number of recent cases, such as the months-long investigation into Northwestern University Professor Laura Kipnis who questioned “sexual paranoia” on campus. Also, the comedic articles posted by a satire blog by a Syracuse University law student got him investigated for harassment, FIRE’s report said.

The organization noted that the DOJ statement “would not just legitimize” all such investigations, “it would require campuses to either conduct such investigations routinely or face potential federal sanctions.”

The federal agency’s letter sets the bar high for schools to act.

“The school has responsibility to respond to allegations of sexual harassment of which they are or should have been aware, regardless of whether a student has complained, asked the school to take action, or identified the harassment as a form of discrimination,” the letter said.

The school also was instructed to do its own investigation of allegations even while an associated criminal investigation is proceeding.

And it defined what a wide range of actions – or even inactions – can be construed as sexual harassment: “Sexual harassment is unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature and can include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature, such as sexual assault or acts of sexual violence. ”

FIRE’s report said the federal government’s rationale “doubles down on the unconstitutional and controversial ‘blueprint’ definition of sexual harassment jointly issued by the DOJ and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in a May 2013 findings letter to the University of Montana.”

“Requiring colleges to investigate and record ‘unwelcome’ speech about sex or gender in an effort to end sexual harassment or assault on campus is no more constitutional than would be a government effort to investigate and record all ‘unpatriotic’ speech in order to root out treason,” said Robert Shibley, FIRE’s executive director. “Students, faculty, and administrators must not give in to this kind of campus totalitarianism…”

The organization sponsored a lawsuit earlier this year against Louisiana State University in which the definitions from the federal government are challenged.

There, Teresa Buchanan, a tenured associate professor of early childhood education in LSU’s acclaimed teacher certification program, was fired for “sexual harassment” under an LSU policy that tracks the federal government’s broad definition. Her lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of that situation.

WND also reported weeks ago that American universities already have paid some $36 million to students who sued after they were injured by federally mandated campus sexual-misbehavior rules that are based on a “preponderance of evidence.”

See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

Shibley said the OCR circumvented federal law in its pronouncements at the time that students an be convicted based on that standard of evidence.

But last September, Colorado’s openly homosexual member of Congress, Rep. Jared Polis., D-Colo., advocated an even lower standard for expelling students.

“If there are 10 people who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10 people,” said Polis.

Reason.com reported Polis said colleges should remove students even if there is only a suspicion of guilt.

“It certainly seems reasonable that a school for its own purposes might want to use a preponderance of evidence standard, or even a lower standard,” he said during a House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training hearing.

“Perhaps a likelihood standard. … If I was running a (private college) I might say, well, even if there is only a 20 or 30 percent chance that it happened, I would want to remove this individual,” he said.

See the Polis comments:

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While only four lawsuits were filed against universities in response to their handling of allegations from 2008 to 2010, between 2012 and 2014 there were 18 cases, representing a four-fold increase, according to a report by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments that is touted as the “most comprehensive listing of campus sex lawsuits ever.”

 

Draft for girls enters congressional pipeline to White House

A plan to draft girls into the U.S. military has entered the congressional pipeline en route to the desk of President Obama, who already has been key in opening the nation’s military to open homosexuality and females in the foxholes, thanks to several Republicans who joined with the almost-unanimous Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee.

It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., ended up voting against his own amendment that he said he introduced to begin a conversation about the issue of women in the military’s tip-of-the-spear combat troops and mandatory enlistment.

Hunter is opposed to the Obama’ administration’s recent moves to install women in even the most dangerous, violent military positions. He said the draft now is sexist, because it targets young men, and not young women.

But, the Washington Post said his “gamble that committee members would shy away from forcing women into the draft backfired when a slim majority – including five Republicans – opted to endorse the measure by a vote of 32 to 30.”

If it makes it through Congress, it would demand that young girls and women ages 18 to 26 register with the Selective Service, which would run any draft that would be imposed.

So far, there seems to be tentative acceptance from Sen. John McCain, a senior senator on the Senate Armed Services Committee, but reluctance from House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Officials at Center for Military Readiness, who have studied the issue, surveyed the experts and analyzed the problem for years, said the “Draft America’s Daughters” plan, an amendment to the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, is just wrong.

“It is unfortunate that all Democrats and a few liberal Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee voted for Congressman Duncan Hunter’s ‘Draft America’s Daughters’ amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017,” said CMR chief Elaine Donnelly.

“Committee Chairman ‘Mac’ Thornberry, R-Texas, to his credit, tried to deter the vote, but Republican members Martha McSally, Arizona, Personnel Subcommittee Chairman Joe Heck, Nevada, and Chris Gibson, New York joined with feminist Democrats in approving Hunter’s amendment, 32-30,” she said.

“The intent of the measure was to draw attention to inconvenient facts and major problems with the administration’s no-exceptions-allowed plans to order minimally qualified women into direct ground combat units such as the infantry,” Donnelly said.

“Selective Service is a national defense contingency policy, and there is nothing ‘sexist’ about it. Gender-related physiological differences between men and women fully justify women’s exemption from direct ground combat units that attack the enemy with deliberate offensive action. The same realities apply to Selective Service law as well,” she said.

“Congressman Hunter voted against his own bill, but approval by the House and eventually by the Senate and President Obama would result in unsuspecting girls-next-door facing Selective Service obligations and a possible future draft in the event of a national emergency,” she warned.

“If Selective Service were re-activated to fight an existential threat, thousands of women could be called up for accelerated military training. Only a few might meet the demanding standards of combat arms units such as the infantry,” she said. ‘Would the expenditure of time, effort, and resources to find those few women, and to train them for combat arms units where military needs are greatest, be worth it? Only Congress has the right, and the responsibility, to say ‘No’ on national security grounds – especially when women are free to volunteer, as they always have.”

Her organization recently issued a report on “Women, War, and Selective Service Obligations.”

It said, “The argument could be made that including women in the draft pool could actually hinder the flexibility, efficiency and speed necessary to respond to a national crisis. As Prof. Woodruff explains, if Selective Service called up women and men ages 18-26 in roughly equal numbers, the administrative burden of finding the theoretical one-in-four woman who might be qualified would make it more difficulty to find better-qualified persons.”

It noted, “If 75 percent of the men can meet the combat standards but only 25 percent of the women can meet the same standards, considerably more time, effort and resources would be expended testing, evaluating and screening women to identify the 25 percent who qualify.”

Donnelly continued, “During a time of national emergency, when the very survival of our nation depends upon success on the battlefield, political paralysis and an administrative nightmare trying to find and induct a few qualified women would weaken America’s defenses. For the same reasons that women should not be ordered into the infantry, more lives would be put at risk at the worst possible time.”

She warned that if certain political influences prevail, the courts could strike the constitutionality of Selective Service, meaning “there will be no law at all.”

Donnelly pointed out, “Three years of comprehensive, scientific studies, which Congress has yet to consider, clearly show that assigning minimally qualified women to the combat arms will make fighting units less strong, less fast, more vulnerable to debilitating injuries, less deployable on short notice, and less capable during prolonged direct ground combat deployments.

“Selective Service registration is a low-cost contingency plan that backs-up the all-volunteer force, both active-duty and reserve. Contrary to statements made by Rep. McSally in support of the Hunter amendment, Selective Service does not register or draft people for support roles or playing in the band.

“Like all insurance policies, the system is not necessary . . . until it is. A major national emergency, perhaps on multiple fronts, might require national mobilization and rapid induction of sufficient numbers of civilians who are capable of replacing casualties fallen in battle,” Donnelly said.

WND had reported only weeks earlier when the Pentagon’s top brass said if all military jobs must be open to women, then lawmakers should make it mandatory for them to register for future drafts.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chief of staff of the Army, and Gen. Robert B. Neller, the Marine Corps commandant, told the Senate Armed Services Committee then that registering all women for Selective Service is an appropriate request given the push to make military occupational specialties gender-neutral.

“Now that the restrictions that exempted women from [combat jobs] don’t exist, then you’re a citizen of a United States,” Gen. Neller told Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the Washington Post reported. “It doesn’t mean you’re going to serve, but you [need to] register.”

“Senator, I think that all eligible and qualified men and women should register for the draft,” added Milley.

 

Congress should give EMP threat ‘highest priority,’ says expert

Imagine life without electronics. No computer, no TV, no smartphone, no Web. Your credit card is useless because the entire banking system needs computers to operate. Don’t try to hop in your car and drive to safe location – modern cars rely on electricity to function, and in any case you won’t be able to refill your tank at a gas station because gas pumps rely on electricity, too.

Think this couldn’t happen in today’s America?

Think again, says former Defense Department security policy analyst and WND national security writer Michael Maloof. All it would take is an EMP attack to knock out all “life-sustaining critical infrastructure.”

“When I say life-sustaining critical infrastructures, I’m talking about any of those that have a dependency on the electrical grid system,” Maloof explained during a recent appearance on Stand for Truth Radio with Susan Knowles.

“And if the electrical grid system is knocked out, it affects everything that depends upon that electrical grid. It could include our telecommunications, our banking and finance systems, our petroleum and natural gas transportation systems, our food and water delivery systems, our emergency services. It also affects all of the automated control devices that we take for granted every day, like the automatic control of lights, our surge system.”

He added, “It would be a nightmare you’ll never wake up from.”

An EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, can result from a naturally occurring solar flare, but it can also follow from a man-caused nuclear explosion at high altitude. A powerful EMP can fry all electronic devices in a region or even an entire country, depending on how large the explosion is.

WND has done plenty of in-depth reporting over the years on the dangers of EMP.

Such an event would also render hospitals unable to help their patients, as they rely on electronics. People with pacemakers or other electrical-based medical devices would suddenly lose their source of life.

“One thing people don’t really talk about is the impact it would have on nuclear reactors,” added Maloof, who wrote about the EMP threat in his book “A Nation Forsaken.” “When you look at what happened in Fukushima in Japan a few years ago with just one reactor, the impact on something like 147 nuclear reactors we have in the United States could be not only catastrophic, but cataclysmic.”

The EMP threat is not merely hypothetical.

Maloof reported in WND recently that North Korea now has two satellites in orbit over the United States capable of launching a surprise EMP attack that could evade U.S. National Missile Defenses. He also warned Knowles’ radio audience about North Korea’s underground testing of nuclear devices.

“[Experts I’ve spoken to] believe that they are hydrogen weapons purposely designed for low kinetic yield but high-intensity gamma rays so that they can have a maximum EMP effect,” Maloof revealed.

But an EMP attack need not come from North Korea; any hostile country could theoretically fire a missile designed to explode at a high altitude over the United States, according to Maloof. He pointed out Cuba still has nuclear-capable SA-2s left over from the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

What’s more, it doesn’t even take a nation to carry out an attack. Maloof said any “technically inclined” person can make a flux gun, which can create the effect of an EMP on a local area. Certain websites show ordinary people how to make these flux guns, leading to concerns about lone wolf EMP attacks.

It’s not as if the U.S. government doesn’t know about the EMP threat. Maloof said the Air Force recently tested a drone with EMP equipment on it and knocked out all the computers in a high-rise apartment building.

He also said Congress has been briefed on a simple radar that can be mounted on the back of a truck or hidden in a van and aimed outward to fry other cars’ electronic equipment.

“I’ve been concerned that such a device could be aimed at an aircraft that might be either landing or taking off from [Reagan] National Airport,” Maloof warned.

And yet, Congress has so far failed to act with urgency to guard the nation against a potential EMP attack. This inaction frustrates Maloof.

“The warnings are there!” he exclaimed. “We’re doing it to ourselves. We’re not shooting ourselves in the foot; we’re shooting ourselves in the head… Congress is so constipated, they’re not giving the attention that this thing needs. It should be given the highest priority, and it’s not.”

Maloof noted other countries are taking steps to guard against an EMP attack – Russia, China, Israel and Iran among them.

“The Chinese actually do military maneuvers assuming an EMP assault from the United States, so some of their military doctrine now is incorporating, what if they’re attacked initially with an EMP? How would they cope with that?” he revealed. “So we’re just acting dumb and happy over here.”

Maloof lamented that none of the current presidential candidates is prioritizing the EMP issue, either. He said of the five candidates left in the race, Ted Cruz is the only one he has heard refer to EMPs. But he also said Donald Trump’s advisers have approached him seeking background information on the EMP threat.

If the U.S. would give EMP the highest priority, and if it had cooperation from private industries, Maloof estimates it would cost $20 billion to guard the country against an EMP attack.

“That’s chump change when you consider the amounts that we spend elsewhere, like the Iraq War, foreign aid and assistance to Pakistan every year,” he noted. “I mean, we could be paying for doing this and making sure we can mitigate this problem significantly if we make a concerted effort.”

However, Maloof said even if we were to start today, it would probably take at least five years to implement a solid plan to protect the nation from an EMP strike. And he cautioned the U.S. never would be able to completely eliminate the threat – only mitigate it.

One step he wants to see the Department of Homeland Security take is to make an EMP event one of their 15 national planning scenarios. Such a move would direct state and local officials in charge of emergency preparedness to “kick into high gear,” as Maloof put it.

“If all communications are knocked out, how do people communicate?” he asked rhetorically. “How do first responders know what to do? And that’s why some of us have actually started working with state and local governments to make them aware of EMP and to take the necessary action at the local levels.”

Maloof thinks local authorities should recreate the old “defense shelters” of a bygone era so locals know where to go in an emergency to receive stored food, water and medicine. This would reduce the sense of panic and chaos if an EMP attack knocked out all communications.

However, it’s not just the government’s job to prepare. Maloof advises everyone to pack a “go bag” with essential items they would need in an emergency: food, water, a first-aid kit, a firearm, certain types of knives and a book on survival.

But the go bag is only to be used by those who have to flee their homes in an emergency. Maloof recommends people store up an ample supply of food, water and medicine in their houses. A firearm is essential, he said, because in the chaotic aftermath of an EMP attack, many people will be desperate enough to try and steal what they need to survive. Those who have the most will be at the greatest risk.

“More and more people are becoming more self-sustaining, living off the grid,” Maloof observed. “They’ll have fewer problems, but they’re going to be the first targets.”

Most importantly, Maloof called for a groundswell of local action, given that the federal government has done nothing to guard against the EMP threat. He said it’s up to citizens to convince their governors and state and local legislatures to implement the necessary precautions.

“If we don’t take the action, then when it happens, it’s too late,” Maloof stated bluntly. “We’ve known about this for… about 50 years and we have done very, very little about it. Other countries are doing something about it, and it’s just unbelievable given the dependency that the United States has on electronics and technology — which has made us the greatest country in the world, [but] it also turns out to be our Achilles’ heel, because unless we deal with the EMP issue, what’s helped make us strong could actually kill us.”

The conservative crackup

Donald Trump

The conservative movement is at war with itself. Leading conservative institutions are putting intense pressure on Republican politicians to try to stop frontrunner Donald Trump, which can only lead to a contested convention. But others are supporting Trump.

Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, one of the nation’s most respected and long established conservative groups, is embroiled in a leadership battle which will be settled in the courts, apparently over support for Trump.

And the upcoming Indiana primary could prove the last stand for conservative activists who claim Trump must be stopped at all costs, even if it means splitting the Republican Party.

The long predicted conservative crackup may finally have arrived.

Earlier this week, conservative activists expressed their frustration with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence for not taking action against Donald Trump by endorsing Ted Cruz.

Jonah Goldberg of National Review mocked the governor by saying, “Someone slap a photo of Mike Pence on a milk carton.”

The editors of the magazine said, “Mike Pence needs to step up.”

And conservative activist Erick Erickson expressed fury at Pence’s lack of action by asking, “Why the hell would I ever support Mike Pence again?”

When Pence finally did endorse Cruz, it was preceded with a lengthy tribute to Trump and assurances he wasn’t “against anybody.” Many conservatives responded with scorn, with some even charging Pence had done more harm than good.

Erickson called it “weakness.” And National Review’s David French called on conservatives to commit to not support Donald Trump, even if he does secure the Republican nomination before the convention.

Trump opponents have already begun trying to “blacklist” Trump’s supporters within the conservative movement and subvert organizations which do not support Ted Cruz.

This even includes activists of long standing such as Schlafly. According to a recent report from Jerome Corsi, Cruz supporters within Eagle Forum have been accused by Schlafly’s attorney of trying to “seize control of Eagle Forum from founder Phyllis Schlafly over her support of Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.”

Andrea Tantaros of Fox News may also be a victim. In a brief statement, the television channel said “issues have arisen” with Tantaros’ contract and she will no longer be appearing on the network for some time. Tantaros recently alleged on air certain conservative activists were telling her she should lose her job.

Trump also continues to defy conservative orthodoxy, recently by championing an “America First” foreign policy which conservative foreign policy analyst Charles Krauthammer condemned as “contradictory” and “confused.”

In contrast, Pat Buchanan celebrated Trump’s foreign policy as a repudiation of the “Bush II-neocon deformity.”

Adding to the confusion among conservatives, Trump is aggressively promoting his opposition to so-called “free trade agreements” in manufacturing heavy Indiana.

Even when endorsing Cruz, Mike Pence specifically thanked Trump for bringing attention to the air conditioning and refrigeration company Carrier’s decision to outsource jobs to Mexico. Traditionally, support for “free trade” has been a central pillar of the conservative movement.

George Hawley, a political science professor and the author of “Right Wing Critics of American Conservatism,” argues the danger to the conservative movement is real.

“The founder of the American Spectator, R. Emmett Tyrell, once remarked conservatism is ‘America’s longest dying political movement,’ but just because its obituary has been premature in the past doesn’t mean it is invincible,” said Hawley. “If Trump wins the nomination despite conservative objections, or if Trump is stopped but the Republican coalition cannot be put back together, the conservative movement will be in real trouble. Conservatism is not going to go away, but its influence is waning.”

What could be taking its place is a new spirit of populist nationalism, which even veteran conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh suggests may prove more popular than conservatism. Instead of talking about limited government and the Constitution, Trump hammers away at issues of national pride, bad trade deals, and illegal immigration.

Trump’s proposal for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration into the United States has also proven overwhelmingly popular among Republican voters in every area of the country even though other Republican leaders oppose it.

Hawley cautioned it is often difficult to determine what voters actually believe on issues of trade and immigration because answers can vary widely depending on the wording of public opinion surveys. However, he said Trump’s current prominence speaks for itself.

“Trump’s success so far indicates that there is a real consistency for economic protectionism and new immigration restrictions,” Hawley told WND. “Whether that constituency is large enough to win a general election at the national level remains to be seen.”

Marc Fitch, author of “Shmexperts: How Ideology And Power Are Disguised As Science,” says Trump’s rise is a result of Republicans’ failure to adhere to conservative principle.

“I don’t think that conservatives have had control of the Capitol since Reagan,” said Fitch. “Conservatism is a philosophy. It has not been represented in government and if it had been we might not be where we are today. Conservatism is not going anywhere. Donald Trump and his supporters may succeed in changing the Republican Party but to say that they are changing a philosophy that is hundreds of years old is to get a little too excited about the present day and forget the past.”

Phil Elmore, a WND columnist, believes the talk about the conservative crackup is a bit too early.

“I think this assumes, incorrectly, that the conservative movement was ever united,” he said. “We saw some great coalitions form when the tea party first came along. We’ve seen other moments of unity in the past. But those coalitions fade, recombine, break up, and reform and always have. We are not a monolithic movement even though the libs, who are far more united, want to paint us as such.

“We as conservatives can’t agree on the best approach to preserve liberty or even what liberty means. The liberals, the Democrats, the progressives, they can always agree on how much they hate freedom.”

But ideology may prove secondary to issues of identity as the Indiana vote nears. A Trump rally in Costa Mesa and a Trump address to the California Republican convention have both been marred by large protests featuring anti-Trump activists waving Mexican flags.

On Friday, Trump himself was forced to jump a barrier and enter a conference by the backdoor to avoid the hostile crowds. Television news prominently covered the protests, lessening the media impact of the Pence endorsement.

Peter Brimelow, a former senior editor at National Review, the founder of VDARE.com and a past contributor to WND, argues the conservative movement will be forced to embrace nationalist and populist themes whether it wants to or not.

“Conservatism Inc. has sowed the wind and is now reaping the whirlwind, not just on immigration and trade but on its total surrender to political correctness,” he told WND. “It abandoned nationalism and refused to do anything about immigration back when it was a manageable problem. Now it is breaking out of control. Trump picked up these nationalist themes and now the self-styled conservative intellectuals are horrified to find that they are popular. If the GOP doesn’t shift in response, it will simply die. And it deserves to.”

 

GOP warned, ‘It’s not either Trump or Jesus’

GOP front-runner Donald Trump

Bishop E.W. Jackson, the former Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia and fervent Ted Cruz supporter, says the GOP must unite around its presidential nominee, even if it’s Donald Trump,  to stop Hillary Clinton from returning to the White House.

Jackson, who still holds out hope for Cruz at the moment, wrote an open letter to all Republicans, urging them to stop the personal bickering over their preferred candidates and prepare to confront Clinton in the general election.

“I’m profoundly concerned about the stark and mean-spirited differences that are emerging between these candidates that are by and large personal, not always policy, and that this is going to interfere with their ability to mend fences and come together,” said Jackson in an interview conducted in response to his letter.

“I’ve heard them make statements that they’ll never support each other. That’s terrible for the party. That’s terrible for the general election. I decided I’d had enough of it,” he told WND and Radio America. “We need to call for unity, and we need to prepare to defeat Hillary Clinton.”

The ‘Stop Hillary’ campaign is on fire! Join the surging response to this theme: ‘Clinton for prosecution, not president’

Exit polls in various states show anywhere from 25-40 percent of non-Trump voters in Republican contests plan will not vote for Trump if he is the nominee. The #NeverTrump campaign among many grassroots activists is also vowing to hold firm.

Jackson strongly disagrees.

“Would they prefer Hillary Clinton?” laughed Jackson. “It’s very simple. Would they prefer Hillary Clinton? She is the alternative. We’re not dealing with this in a vacuum. It’s not either Trump or Jesus. It’s Trump or Hillary Clinton.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Bishop E.W. Jackson:

http://ift.tt/1UyqoPZ

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Reiterating that he thinks Cruz would be a better president than Trump, Jackson said Trump’s stand on several issues convince him it is worth the effort to help the front-runner defeat Clinton if Trump emerges as the nominee.

“Trump does espouse pro-life positions,” Jackson said. “Trump does espouse the importance of the free market and creating jobs. Trump does express his concern about the erosion of religious liberty in our country. He has said some things that give me hope. I have absolutely no hope with Hillary Clinton.

“Some of the other issues we may not always agree on, but my goodness, I have far more agreement with him than I do with her,” Jackson said.

He then rattled off several issues that terrify him if Clinton is elected.

“Hillary Clinton was a Saul Alinsky devotee. She was discipled by him,” Jackson said. “She clearly uses the free market when she wants to, but I have no doubt that she sees the free market as the enemy of equality and the enemy of fairness and will do the same thing that Barack Obama has done.”

Trump has offered kind words about Planned Parenthood in this campaign but has also denounced its abortion practices. Jackson said Hillary is far more cozy with the nation’s largest abortion provider.

“Hillary Clinton is clearly a major supporter of Planned Parenthood,” he said. “She thinks it’s just the greatest thing since Carter’s Little Liver Pills were invented. She’s going to do everything in her power, not only to preserve, but to expand the power of Planned Parenthood. And Hillary Clinton has not even once spoken about any threat to religious liberty.”

The ‘Stop Hillary’ campaign is on fire! Join the surging response to this theme: ‘Clinton for prosecution, not president’

In his letter, Jackson said he’s personally experienced the disastrous effects of a fractured party. In 2013, Jackson was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia on the ticket that included gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli and attorney general candidate Mark Obenshain. All three lost.

In our interview, Jackson elaborated on why the lack of unity was lethal for the GOP in a tight race.

“Very prominent Republicans who, for personal reasons perhaps and maybe reasons I don’t fully understand, decided they were going to do everything in their power to undermine the ticket. In effect, for a short time there, we didn’t really have a party,” Jackson said.

“It was just a gang of individuals who were divided against each other and didn’t care whether the party won or not. They just cared that the people they didn’t like lost. And of course, they got their wish.”

Democrat Terry McAuliffe was elected governor, and Democrats Ralph Northam and Mark Herring won the lieutenant governor and attorney general races respectively.

“The commonwealth has suffered as a result,” Jackson said. “I don’t want our country to suffer as a result of the same kind of behavior at the national level.”

Jackson stated that if Trump gets within 100 delegates of the 1,237 he needs for a majority, then it’s in the GOP’s best interest to choose Trump as the nominee.

“I think to deny Donald Trump the nomination (if he is within 100 delegates) is going to fracture the party, perhaps irreparably,” he said. “At that point, I would really have some soul-searching to do.”

As much as he prefers Cruz, Jackson said he may well back Trump on the convention floor for the sake of the party.

“I might just have to say, ‘It’s time to wait. Ted Cruz is young enough that he can come back, young enough that maybe we’ll see him as president of the United States one day. Maybe this is not his time,’” Jackson said.

“Now we’re not there yet, but we may come to that point.”

Monica Lewinsky jokes are back

(MSNBC) Monica Lewinsky is about to become a punchline and political ammo — again.

The onetime White House intern’s affair with then-President Bill Clinton got the former president impeached by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and made her the butt of every tawdry joke for a decade. Lewinsky now advocates against the kind of bullying she endured, and works hard to stay out of the press outside of that work.

But with a woman whose marriage was intimately examined on the House floor in the late ’90s leading the Democratic Party race, and a Republican front-runner who champions gendered attacks and for whom nothing — not even whose wife is hotter — off limits, the Lewinsky scandal is back in the headlines.

Glenn Beck smothers face in Cheetos to look like Trump

Radio host Glenn Beck smothers face in Cheetos to look like GOP front-runner Donald Trump (Photo: screenshot)

Radio host Glenn Beck smothers face in Cheetos to look like GOP front-runner Donald Trump (Photo: screenshot)

In an wacky attempt to mock Donald Trump’s orange-hued tan, radio host Glenn Beck and his co-hosts smothered their faces in crushed Cheetos on Friday.

Beck and his buddies performed the stunt on his radio show, “The Glenn Beck Program.”

In a video of the episode posted on YouTube by RightWingWatch.org, Beck can be seen donning a set of swim goggles before he takes his Cheetos-dust plunge.

“After seeing Donald Trump on television, we thought, if you wore the swim goggles and you stuck your face in Cheetos, crushed Cheetos, that you would look just like Donald Trump in the end.”

Watch the video: 

http://ift.tt/1UyqoPZ

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One of Beck’s co-hosts noted that Daily Wire Editor Ben Shapiro first made the Cheetos-Trump connection.

After he had smothered his face in a pie plate of Cheetos, Beck emerged with a “dangerously cheesy” orange beard.

“The secret is, and I think Donald has mastered this, you have to roll your face in it,” Beck said. “You have to roll your face in it.”

Radio host Glenn Beck and co-host smother faces in Cheetos to look like GOP front-runner Donald Trump (Photo: screenshot)

Former GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio made headlines in February when he mocked Trump’s spray tan after Trump teased him for wearing makeup to a debate.

“[It’s] amazing to me that the guy with the worst spray tan in America is attacking me for putting on makeup,” Rubio said at a campaign event in Kennesaw, Georgia.

Rubio added, “Donald Trump likes to sue people; he should sue whoever did that to his face.”

Meanwhile, over at Buzzfeed.com, staffer Jen Lewis used Photoshop to remove Trump’s tan and posted the result with the headline, “I Photoshopped Trump without his fake tan and now I can’t sleep at night”:

What? Public schools now encourage homeschooling?

With a few notable exceptions, government schools have had an antagonistic relationship with homeschoolers, which is why a move by Indiana public educators to promote parental instruction has drawn attention.

It turns out, however, that Indiana school districts have been pushing underperforming and troublemaking students into homeschooling in an apparent attempt to improve the schools’ statistical performance marks.

The Home School Legal Defense Association, the world’s premiere advocate for homeschoolers, caught wind of the development and expressed opposition at a meeting of the Indiana Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights regarding homeschooling.

T.J. Schmidt, an HSLDA staff attorney, explained in a report that the advisory committee was discussing policies and practices that “push public schoolchildren out of classrooms and into the courts and on to prison.”

“Those concerned about this ‘pipeline’ typically identified two different types of students as being most vulnerable: 1) students whose lack of interest in school head them toward becoming dropouts or being expelled because of bad behavior, and 2) low-performing students who are pushed out in a perverse attempt by some school officials to boost their school’s overall test scores.”

See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

Those scenarios only rarely have any direct connection to homeschooling, he said.

“True, we do regularly talk to and help plenty of fed-up parents who are trying to get their children out [of] a troubled situation in the public school. Many other parents we talk to are frustrated by the apparent inability of local school officials to address the specific needs of their children who struggle academically and make only minimal progress each year,” he said.

But Schmidt said homeschooling became part of the discussion in Indiana for a different reason.

“Some school corporations in Indiana appear to be actively pushing parents of troubled teens or underperforming students into homeschooling,” he explained.

“This allows the school corporation to treat these students as transfers instead of dropouts, thereby improving their graduation rates and lowering their dropout rates. Some schools even encouraged those they have expelled to begin homeschooling,” said Schmidt.

“Most school officials are not doing this to help these students but simply get them out of their system,” he said.

The problem was noticed by alert members of the Indiana Association of Home Educators, said Schmidt, who brought the issue to HSLDA.

As a result, the international organization was able to take part in a discussion of the issue.

Critics of homeschooling have contended “homeschooling needs increased government oversight.”

“Not surprisingly, when homeschooling was discussed at the civil rights advisory committee meeting, members heard a very inaccurate description of parents’ responsibilities for educating a child in Indiana,” Schmidt wrote. “In fact, the testimony referred to the status of homeschooling in Indiana as the ‘wild west’ and implied that homeschool students were destined to be lost without any chance of being educated.”

He submitted testimony explaining that Indiana law has treated homeschool parents the same as it treats most nonpublic schools for roughly 100 years.

“I informed the committee that state law requires parents operating a nonpublic (home) school program to provide ‘instruction equivalent to that given in the public schools.’”

He explained to the committee that homeschool parents in the U.S. spend more than $1 billion a year educating their children at home. And almost without exception, they are required to provide an education equivalent to that in public schools.

“Homeschooling is a fundamental right that is protected by the Indiana laws and the U.S. Constitution,” he told the committee. “The purpose of compulsory attendance laws in Indiana is to ensure that children be educationed, not that they should be educated in any particular way. The courts, the Constitution, and the Indiana statutes all indicate that parents have the right to control their children’s education, including the right to provide an education for them at home.”

See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

HSLDA, which works with more than 2,300 families in Indiana, said the bottom line is that parents are required to provide a satisfactory education to their children, and there are ordinary procedures available to authorities to address the rare abuses.

Schmidt said HSLDA will monitor the committee’s report when it becomes available later this year.

Tahoe backtracks, allows owners to replace destroyed house

Government regulators of housing and development near South Lake Tahoe have reversed a ruling that prevented a couple from replacing a house on their land that was destroyed in a forest fire.

Teresa Avila-Burns and Ray Burns bought the property in foreclosure in 2009, two years after the house burned down. Their intent was to build a new home on the property for their elderly mothers.

But the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency ruled that the couple could not put a home on the same footprint because officials were worried about contaminating the water of Lake Tahoe, which is some five miles away.

Now the governmental agency has reversed itself, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation, which brought a case on behalf of the couple.

PLF had argued in a complaint that the TRPA was violating the Fifth Amendment by refusing to allow the home to be rebuilt after the couple bought the property out of foreclosure for that very purpose.

“As our lawsuit argued, TRPA was engaged in a clear-cut, unconstitutional taking,” said PLF staff attorney Christopher Kieser. “Because of the strength of our Fifth Amendment claim, TRPA started to backtrack soon after we filed our lawsuit.”

The Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from taking private property without paying for it. In this case, the agency was preventing the couple from using their land.

TRPA eventually proposed a settlement that will allow the couple to build a house on the property near the place where the original house stood, PLF said.

“Before turning to PLF for help, Ray and Teresa had wrangled with the regulators for years,” Kieser said. “Now, faced with being hauled before a court, TRPA is finally recognizing this couple’s fundamental rights, so they can finally move ahead with their dream to build a Lake Tahoe home for their elderly mothers.”

What happens when the government breaks its own laws?” Judge Andrew Napolitano reveals the answer in “Constitutional Chaos.”

Even though the site, inside a developed residential area, had a home until the 2007 fire, the TRPA abruptly ruled that the parcel the Burns had purchased was entirely inside a “Stream Environment Zone” and so no building permit could be issued for the site.

The Pacific Legal Foundation argued in court that there are ways for government to take private property for essential government functions, but if the Burns case applied, the government was constitutionally required to pay fair compensation.

In their settlement offer, the building regulators agreed that the Burns could use 3,100 square feet of their land for development, including a house with a footprint of 2,435 square feet.

That gives the couple “enough room to build a house near the same place on the property that the previous home had stood,” PLF said.

“This settlement is an enormous win for us and for the rights of all property owners,” Teresa Avila-Burns said in a statement released by PLF. “Ray and I really did have all of our property rights taken away by the regulators, and there was no chance our rights would be restored if PLF had not gone to bat for us.”

WND reported when the case was filed that the regional agency had banned building on the property only after the couple had bought the land out of foreclosure in 2009.

They had been told by several regulators they could build and spent $1,400 on a building “right,” one of several that was allocated under a program to control building projects.

What happens when the government breaks its own laws?” Judge Andrew Napolitano reveals the answer in “Constitutional Chaos.”

Then the agency said it would not allow them to build and would not compensate them for restricting the use of their land.

The case highlighted the problem with the government agency’s designation of the land as a “Stream Environment Zone.” The parcel is located about 5.3 miles from Lake Tahoe. Between the parcel and the lake lies the city of South Lake Tahoe, with substantial urban commercial and residential development.

The couple’s lawyers noted the parcel not only is inside a developed subdivision, it is “on a major paved street, with concrete curbs, and a driveway curb cut into the property.”

“It has electrical service, public water, public sewer, and telephone services. Most surrounding parcels are developed with existing single-family homes.”

Teresa, a nurse, and Ray, a construction project manager, long had vacationed in the area and had dreamed a buying land there. Their opportunity came in 2009 when the land came available under a foreclosure process that followed the wildfire.

They hired a designer, bought a housing allocation from El Dorado County, as TRPA instructed, and were making construction plans.

Then the TRPA suddenly determined the land was in the stream zone, and no building would be allowed.