Author: kingsjester

64 year old Christian Conservative husband, father, and grandfather who has been writing since April 2010.

Senator Rand Paul: Taking a Stand for Freedom

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

rand paulAs I woke up this morning, I learned that Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) had wrapped up, at the thirteenth hour, what had been nicknamed the Filiblizzard, brought about by the nomination of John O. Brennan to the post of CIA Director and the plans by President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to use unmanned drones to hunt down and kill American Citizens on American soil.

The Washington Times has the story:

After years in the shadows, the administration’s secret drone program burst into very public view Wednesday with lawmakers grilling the attorney general over legal justification for targeted killings and Sen. Rand Paul launching an old-style one-man filibuster to demand answers from President Obama.

The Kentucky Republican held the floor for almost 13 hours, effectively blocking a vote on the nomination of John O. Brennan, whom Mr. Obama has tapped to be CIA director. He said he would relent only if the administration publicly vowed not to target Americans on U.S. soil.

“This is a long, drawn-out day, but it’s to try to get some answers,” Mr. Paul said after he crossed the eight-hour mark late Wednesday evening. “It’s to try to shame the president into doing the right thing.”

Democrats, who control the chamber, were forced to delay a vote on the Brennan nomination until at least Thursday, and it could go into the weekend, depending on what other blockades Republicans erect.

At issue is the administration’s argument that it can kill those it suspects have ties to terrorism, including U.S. citizens, without having to put them on trial.

The fulcrum of the debate is the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, which many lawmakers said gives too much power to the executive branch — and raises tricky questions about whether drones could be used to execute Americans in the United States.

The administration has only recently acknowledged the drone program and says it is seeking a public debate in order to find common ground on what Americans are ready to accept.

“I think there is going to be a greater effort at the transparency. A number of steps are going to be taken. I expect you will hear the president speaking about this,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told the SenateJudiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.

But he faced bipartisan demands for more information and more clarity on what is and what isn’t allowed.

“You can hear almost unanimous concern about transparency and wrestling with how to move forward here in a way that protects both our constitutional liberties and our security as a nation,” Sen. Christopher A. Coons, Delaware Democrat, told Mr. Holder.

Under close questioning by Sen. Ted Cruz, Mr. Holder repeatedly said American citizens on U.S. soil were not “appropriate” targets for extrajudicial executions.

Mr. Cruz said that wasn’t good enough.

“You keep saying ‘appropriate.’ My question isn’t about propriety. My question is about whether something is constitutional or not,” the Texas Republican said.

“Let me be clear: Translate my ‘appropriate’ to ‘no.’ I thought I was saying no, all right? No,” Mr. Holder said.

Mr. Holder also said he is not sure Congress could ban the president from using drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil.

But, of course, as Obama said, “I am not a dictator”. Yeah, right.

The longest spoken filibuster in American history was by Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who went on for 24 hours and 18 minutes in filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Thurmond began speaking at 8:54 p.m. on August 28, 1957 and did not stop until 9:12 p.m. on the 29th.

That rhetorical marathon took a lot of preparation, though. Here are some of the details, according to the Associated Press:

Thurmond took a steam bath earlier in the day to rid his body of excess liquid. This avoided the potential for any “accidents” in the chamber.

He went to the floor armed with cough drops and malted milk tablets.

He allowed others to make short remarks and ask questions during his time, allowing him to sneak off to the cloakroom to gobble a sandwich.

He had his aide wait in the cloakroom with a pail when he was about to step down from the dais in case of an emergency evacuation.

So far, Paul’s discussion has been much more lively than Thurmond’s speech, with heavy ad-libbing and contributions from seven different Senators, including Democrat Ron Wyden.

A major question, though, is what exactly did Thurmond talk about for 24 straight hours? Most of the content of the then-55-year-old’s speech was about the right to a trial by jury.

Via Michael McGraw-Herdeg on Quora, here’s what Thurmond talked about for one straight day:

Thurmond read, verbatim, the voting laws of each one of the 48 states.

He read the U.S. criminal code

He read a Supreme Court decision, followed by more laws. A friend brought him a glass of orange juice.

He allowed Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson to conduct some minor Senate business, such as preparing to swear-in the new Senator from Wisconsin, with a promise that Thurmond will be allowed to resume his filibuster.

At 1:40 a.m., Thurmond talked about jury trials.

By 6:45 a.m., Thurmond was having a back and forth with an arriving Senator about the bill. The Senator then left for breakfast with President Eisenhower.

Thurmond fielded questions from sympathetic Senators looking to give his voice a break.

Thurmond read the Declaration of Independence.

Thurmond allowed Johnson to swear in the new Senator from Wisconsin at roughly 1 p.m.

Thurmond welcomed Italian dignitaries to the chamber and then resumed discussing jury trials.

Thurmond took questions from sympathetic Senators again, as well as abuse from adversaries.

A letter from the President Dwight D. Eisenhower momentarily interrupted the discussion of jury trials.

The Senator finished up with a summary of his opposition to the bill. “Mr. President, I urge every Member of this body to consider this bill most carefully. I hope the Senate will see fit to kill it. I expect to vote against the bill. [Laughter.]”

The Senate later passed the bill. Thurmond’s oratorical marathon didn’t change a single vote.

Senator Paul’s filibuster may not , either. But, at least he did something.

Which is more than I can say for the RINOs up on Capitol Hill.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Sequestration: Palin and the Petulant President

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

palin-newsweekobamababyObama has locked the American People out of  “The People’s House”.

The Washington Times reports that

The White House announced Tuesday that it is canceling tours of the president’s home for the foreseeable future as the sequester spending cuts begin to bite and the administration makes good on its warnings of painful decisions.

Announcement of the decision — made in an email from the White House Visitors Office — came hours after The Washington Times reported on another administration email that seemed to show at least one agency has been instructed to make sure the cuts are as painful as President Obama promised they would be.

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.

In a related story, posted at washingtonexaminer.com:

House investigators learned Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials developed plans to release about 5,000 illegal immigrant detainees, although Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has denied responsibility for the decision.

“An internal document obtained by the House Judiciary Committee shows that Administration officials at ICE prepared cold calculations to release thousands of criminal aliens onto the streets and did not demonstrate any consideration of the impact this decision would have on the safety of Americans,” committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., announced.

The ICE document contains a table that proposes “reduc[ing] invoiced daily population by 1,000 weekly.” Between February 22 and March 31st, this plan would drop the number of detainees from 30,748 to 25,748.

“The decision to release detained aliens undermines the Department of Homeland Security’s mission to keep our homeland secure and instead makes our communities less safe and more vulnerable to crime,” Goodlatte said. “[R]egardless of sequestration, DHS actually has plenty of funding to pay for the detention of criminal aliens. Unfortunately, it seems Administration officials are more interested in using sequestration to promote their political agenda than as an opportunity to get our nation’s fiscal house in order.”

Napolitano said that it wasn’t her decision, even though ICE is part of DHS. “Detainee populations and how that is managed back and forth is really handled by career officials in the field,” she told ABC.

She also confirmed that the releases would continue. “We are going to manage our way through this by identifying the lowest risk detainees, and putting them into some kind of alternative to release,” Napolitano said at a Politico event, per The Daily Caller.

The New York Times profiled a “low risk” detainee released by ICE. The detainee was taken into custody “when it was discovered that he had violated probation for a conviction in 2005 of simple assault, simple battery and child abuse, charges that sprung from a domestic dispute with his wife at the time.” NRO’s Jim Geraghty asked, “If convictions for ‘simple assault, simple battery and child abuse’ make you ‘low-risk,’ what do you have to do for Janet Napolitano to consider you ‘high-risk’?”

Back on February 26th, Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin posted the following on her Facebook Page:

D.C.: Cut the Drama. Do Your Job.

Americans are sick and tired of yet another ginned-up crisis. D.C. needs to grow up, get to work, and live within its means. The real economic Armageddon looming before us is our runaway debt, not the sequester, which the President advocated for and signed into law and is now running around denouncing because he never had any genuine intention of reining in his reckless spending.

Remember that this sequestration deal came about because of the long debt ceiling standoff in the summer of 2011. It wasn’t the ideal outcome for anyone, but it did at least include real deficit reduction of about $110 billion per year for 10 years, which is still nowhere near enough to close our massive deficit. Keep in mind that since the sequester passed, the President has already hit American families and small business owners with his tax increases, or “more revenue” as he likes to call it. The American public doesn’t want tax increases; we want government to rein in its overspending.

If we can’t stomach modest cuts that would lower federal spending by a mere 0.3% per year out of a current federal budget of $3.6 trillion, then we might as well signal to the whole world that we have no serious intention of dealing with our debt problem.

If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits, then we’re done. Put a fork in us. We’re finished. We’re going to default eventually and that’s why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.

If we ARE serious about putting our fiscal house in order, then let’s stop the hysterics, tighten our belts, and take our medicine.

Governor Palin was prophetic. It now appears that, instead of working with Congress to come up with a compromise, Obama would rather live up to the nickname I gave him in 2009, acting  like “The Petulant President” that he is.

Now, he is locking us, the ones he is supposed to be serving, out of the house that we built and are still financing. 

Obama is determined to make his “Chicken Little” pretentious predictions about the Sequestration come true, no matter how much they hurt the people he is supposed to be protecting from “enemies foreign and domestic”.

Instead, our anti-American President, though his idiotic “Smart Power!” Foreign Policy, and his clueless Domestic Policy of unconditional amnesty and Obamanomics, which is is putting us all in the Poor House, has himself become the enemy of the American People.

This is not Presidential Leadership. This is Presidential  Sabotage.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama’s Tax Revenues Set Record. Economy Still Stinks.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

monopoly2Obama’s second term economic policy is based on the Beatles song, Taxman:

Let me tell you how it will be. It’s one for you, nineteen for me.

CSMonitor.com has the story:

An impasse over the shape of the federal budget keeps boiling down to this basic plotline: Democrats say the solution to high deficits must include more tax revenue, while Republicans say the fundamental problem is spending.

Failure to reach a middle ground has prompted automatic spending cuts known as the “sequester” to go into effect. This wasn’t Plan A, or even Plan B, for either side.

As the politicians look for a way forward, conservative lawmakers say that new budget projections make their case for them. Federal tax revenue is forecast to hit a record $2.7 trillion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

“Spending is the problem, which means cutting spending is the solution. It’s that simple,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State on Saturday, as she gave congressional Republicans’ weekly address to the nation. She cited the CBO forecast of record revenues.

Case closed?

Not so fast. The budget numbers tell a more complicated story – one that makes fiscal politics difficult for both parties.Yes, if $2.7 trillion in revenue materializes this year, that would set a record. It would surpass the prior peak of $2.6 trillion, set back in fiscal year 2007 before the recession began.

But that doesn’t mean federal tax receipts are fully back to normal.

Economists generally compare taxes and spending to the size of overall economy. That’s because demands on government often increase as the economy grows and population rises. And the value of tax receipts needs to be adjusted for inflation, to give a real sense of purchasing power.

Tax revenue will total 16.9 percent of gross domestic product this year, the CBO predicts, compared with 18.5 percent of GDP in 2007. It looks as if it will take another year, until 2014, for tax revenue to get back to 18 percent of GDP, which has been the average level since 1973.

But here’s the big issue: There’s no level of tax revenue or federal spending that’s automatically the “right” level. Yesterday’s averages don’t tell us what tomorrow’s should be.

And most signs point toward difficult choices ahead. Entitlement programs including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are taking up an ever larger share of federal spending.

Is spending “the problem”? Yes, in one sense. If federal outlays could be steered permanently back to their 35-year average of 21 percent of GDP, much of the national-debt problem would be solved.

But the answer is no in another sense. In polls, Americans are generally reluctant to see cuts in those major entitlement programs. They don’t call Social Security or Medicare “the problem”.

That is because Baby Boomers, like myself, understand how a great president can turn around this nation’s economy. We lived through it and we told our children how it happened.

When President Reagan entered office in 1981, he faced actually much worse economic problems than President Obama faced in 2009. Three worsening recessions starting in 1969 were about to culminate in the worst of all in 1981-1982, with unemployment soaring into double digits at a peak of 10.8%. At the same time America suffered roaring double-digit inflation, with the CPI registering at 11.3% in 1979 and 13.5% in 1980 (25% in two years). The Washington establishment at the time argued that this inflation was now endemic to the American economy, and could not be stopped, at least not without a calamitous economic collapse.

All of the above was accompanied by double -digit interest rates, with the prime rate peaking at 21.5% in 1980. The poverty rate started increasing in 1978, eventually climbing by an astounding 33%, from 11.4% to 15.2%. A fall in real median family income that began in 1978 snowballed to a decline of almost 10% by 1982. In addition, from 1968 to 1982, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 70% of its real value, reflecting an overall collapse of stocks.

President Reagan campaigned on an explicitly articulated, four-point economic program to reverse this slow motion collapse of the American economy:

1. Cut tax rates to restore incentives for economic growth, which was implemented first with a reduction in the top income tax rate of 70% down to 50%, and then a 25% across-the-board reduction in income tax rates for everyone. The 1986 tax reform then reduced tax rates further, leaving just two rates, 28% and 15%.

2. Spending reductions, including a $31 billion cut in spending in 1981, close to 5% of the federal budget then, or the equivalent of about $175 billion in spending cuts for the year today. In constant dollars, nondefense discretionary spending declined by 14.4% from 1981 to 1982, and by 16.8% from 1981 to 1983. Moreover, in constant dollars, this nondefense discretionary spending never returned to its 1981 level for the rest of Reagan’s two terms! Even with the Reagan defense buildup, which won the Cold War without firing a shot, total federal spending declined from a high of 23.5% of GDP in 1983 to 21.3% in 1988 and 21.2% in 1989. That’s a real reduction in the size of government relative to the economy of 10%.

3. Anti-inflation monetary policy restraining money supply growth compared to demand, to maintain a stronger, more stable dollar value.

4. Deregulation, which saved consumers an estimated $100 billion per year in lower prices. Reagan’s first executive order, in fact, eliminated price controls on oil and natural gas. Production soared, and aided by a strong dollar the price of oil declined by more than 50%.

These economic policies amounted to the most successful economic experiment in world history. The Reagan recovery started in official records in November 1982, and lasted 92 months without a recession until July 1990, when the tax increases of the 1990 budget deal killed it. This set a new record for the longest peacetime expansion ever, the previous high in peacetime being 58 months.

During this seven-year recovery, the economy grew by almost one-third, the equivalent of adding the entire economy of West Germany, the third-largest in the world at the time, to the U.S. economy. In 1984 alone real economic growth boomed by 6.8%, the highest in 50 years. Nearly 20 million new jobs were created during the recovery, increasing U.S. civilian employment by almost 20%. Unemployment fell to 5.3% by 1989.

The shocking rise in inflation during the Nixon and Carter years was reversed. Astoundingly, inflation from 1980 was reduced by more than half by 1982, to 6.2%. It was cut in half again for 1983, to 3.2%, never to be heard from again until recently. The contractionary, tight-money policies needed to kill this inflation inexorably created the steep recession of 1981 to 1982, which is why Reagan did not suffer politically catastrophic blame for that recession.

Real per-capita disposable income increased by 18% from 1982 to 1989, meaning the American standard of living increased by almost 20% in just seven years. The poverty rate declined every year from 1984 to 1989, dropping by one-sixth from its peak. The stock market more than tripled in value from 1980 to 1990, a larger increase than in any previous decade.

For all of you Liberal idiots who dared tried to compare the Manchurian President to the Gipper:  Y’all need to quit smoking the Hopium.

Obama failed efforts toward “fixing” our economy, remind me of Rosanne Barr singing the National Anthem: tone-deaf, flat, and extremely painful.

Until He Comes, 

KJ

Sequestration? What Sequestration? Obama Gives OUR Money to Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

michelleobama2The Sequester has kicked in and Obama and his minions are still whining about how badly Sequestration with hurt our country. Evidently, great humanitarian that Obama is, he does not want to see his friends in Egyptian’s Musalim Brotherhood “hurting” as bad as we are.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday rewarded Egypt for President Mohammed Morsi’s pledges of political and economic reforms by releasing $250 million in American aid to support the country’s “future as a democracy.”

Yet Kerry also served notice that the Obama administration will keep close watch on how Morsi, who came to power in June as Egypt’s first freely elected president, honors his commitment and that additional U.S. assistance would depend on it.

“The path to that future has clearly been difficult and much work remains,” Kerry said in a statement after wrapping up two days of meetings in Egypt, a deeply divided country in the wake of the revolution that ousted longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt is trying to meet conditions to close on a $4.8 billion loan package from the International Monetary Fund. An agreement would unlock more of the $1 billion in U.S. assistance promised by President Barack Obama last year and set to begin flowing with Kerry’s announcement.

“The United States can and wants to do more,” Kerry said. “Reaching an agreement with the IMF will require further effort on the part of the Egyptian government and broad support for reform by all Egyptians. When Egypt takes the difficult steps to strengthen its economy and build political unity and justice, we will work with our Congress at home on additional support.”

Kerry cited Egypt’s “extreme needs” and Morsi’s “assurances that he plans to complete the IMF process” when he told the president that the U.S. would provide $190 million of a long-term $450 million pledge “in a good-faith effort to spur reform and help the Egyptian people at this difficult time.” The release of the rest of the $450 million and the other $550 million tranche of the $1 billion that Obama announced will be tied to successful reforms, officials said.

Separately, the top U.S. diplomat announced $60 million for a new fund for “direct support of key engines of democratic change,” including Egypt’s entrepreneurs and its young people. Kerry held out the prospect of U.S. assistance to this fund climbing to $300 million over time.

Recapping his meetings with political figures, business leaders and representatives of outside groups, Kerry said he heard of their “deep concern about the political course of their country, the need to strengthen human rights protections, justice and the rule of law, and their fundamental anxiety about the economic future of Egypt.”

Those issues came up in “a very candid and constructive manner” during Kerry’s talks with Morsi.

“It is clear that more hard work and compromise will be required to restore unity, political stability and economic health to Egypt,” Kerry said.Ever since November 22nd, when President Morsi issued a declaration that granted him broad powers above the reach of any court, Egypt has become increasingly tense and politically fractured. After Morsi’s declaration, a Brotherhood-dominated constituent assembly rushed to finish a draft of a new constitution. More than a quarter of the assembly members resigned in protest, and there were clear violations of protocol, but the document was rammed through in a sixteen-hour voting session. Despite months of work, some articles were introduced only in that final session. The result is a slippery foundation for the future: a number of basic rights—including freedom of the press, due process for justice, and equality for women and minorities—aren’t adequately protected.

We’ve already seen just how unstable the Muslim Brotherhood-lead Egyptian Government is. On December 24th, 2012, the New Yorker Magazine reported that

…Ever since November 22nd, when President Morsi issued a declaration that granted him broad powers above the reach of any court, Egypt has become increasingly tense and politically fractured. After Morsi’s declaration, a Brotherhood-dominated constituent assembly rushed to finish a draft of a new constitution. More than a quarter of the assembly members resigned in protest, and there were clear violations of protocol, but the document was rammed through in a sixteen-hour voting session. Despite months of work, some articles were introduced only in that final session. The result is a slippery foundation for the future: a number of basic rights—including freedom of the press, due process for justice, and equality for women and minorities—aren’t adequately protected.

But the most revealing moment of the crisis occurred a week and a half ago. With protesters camped outside the Presidential Palace, in Cairo, Brotherhood members led a group of men who attacked peaceful demonstrators and tore down their tents. The violence kicked off an evening of escalating counterattacks; in the end, nine people died and more than a thousand were injured, with both sides sustaining heavy casualties. Some protesters, women among them, were detained and tortured by civilian groups that included members of the Brotherhood. Morsi, in a clumsy and dishonest speech to the nation, blamed it all on “thugs” and a “fifth column” organized by the remnants of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. But there was no question who had started the fighting. It was the first clearly documented case of political violence in more than fifty years of Muslim Brotherhood activity in Egypt.

Nonviolence has always been a point of pride for the organization. Some of its offshoot groups, like Hamas, have engaged in terrorism, but the Brotherhood never endorsed acts of violence in Egypt, despite decades of oppression under Mubarak that included the imprisonment of most of its leaders. That restraint, however, like the talk of coöperation, seems to have evaporated with the first taste of power. Sometimes an organization is nonviolent on principle, and sometimes it is nonviolent simply because it finds itself in a position of weakness.

For many Egyptians, it’s been a depressing month. The military seems to be aligned with Morsi, at least for the moment, and the country lacks a strong and coherent political alternative to the Brotherhood. Nevertheless, there are some reasons for optimism. The public response has been impressive, with tens of thousands of peaceful protesters surrounding the palace on many nights. These crowds are largely middle class, but they comprise people from all walks of life, including many who identify themselves as former supporters of Morsi. There are more women than usual. And expectations have changed since the beginning of the revolution. For almost two years, the media have operated with a freedom that never existed under Mubarak, and Egypt has held essentially fair elections for both parliament and the Presidency. Such progress remains fragile, but at least certain demands are being established.

Meanwhile, the Brotherhood has failed to evolve in the wake of the revolution. Traditionally, the organization’s strengths have been local religious training and charity work, which have made it effective at mobilizing grassroots support for elections. But for decades it was banned from full participation in Egypt’s government, so it has never been tested in the more subtle and complicated aspects of national politics. The leadership is dominated by people from technical fields: of the eighteen members of the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau, fifteen are doctors, engineers, or scientists. Their careers may not have taught them the arts of negotiation and compromise, and Morsi, an engineer by training, has shown no real flexibility in response to the unfolding crisis. Eight of his advisers and aides have resigned in the past three weeks. From the outside, it’s hard to distinguish between calculation and incompetence. On Sunday evening, the government suddenly announced major tax increases for a wide variety of goods, including gasoline, electricity, cooking oil, cigarettes, and alcohol—hardly a savvy move in a country with a ravaged economy and an ongoing political crisis. Later that night, after the decree had inspired a mad rush on Cairo liquor stores, Morsi cancelled it with a message posted on his Facebook page at 2:13 a.m.

The Brotherhood has “a huge ability to withstand negotiations that never reach anything,” Gaber Gad Nassar, one of the most prominent members who quit the constituent assembly, said last week. Nassar is a professor of constitutional law at Cairo University, and his analysis could be seen as either deeply pessimistic or perversely optimistic, depending on the tone of your inshallah. “They are extremely keen to take over power and use it,” he said. “However, the biggest problem they face is the lack of talent qualified to do that.” Critics have always made this point—that the worst thing that could happen to the Brotherhood might be a rise to power, because then their weaknesses would be exposed. But this is small consolation in Cairo. The world is full of bad regimes that survive just because they hurt others more than they hurt themselves. ♦

This Administration is having a hissy fit, claiming that they are not able to adequately fund our own government, while at the same time, they are giving money to an organization which is the Godfather of Muslim Terrorists Groups and hates our nation with an unholy passion.

Are Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, and the rest of the idiots in this administration tone deaf or dangerously stupid?

I vote for tone deaf and dangerously stupid. God help us.

Until He comes,

KJ

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop: A Man of Science. A Man of Faith

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

koopThe finest Surgeon General of the United States in our generation, C. Everett Koopp, passed away this past week.

The following very fair biography is courtesy of msnbc.com (Can you believe it?)

To judge from the reaction on the left, when Ronald Reagan announced his choice for Surgeon General 32 years ago, you would have thought the man he’d chosen had a horn and tail.

C. Everett Koop, who passed away this week at the impressive age of 96, had been the chief of surgery at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, where he’d pioneered revolutionary techniques that saved countless infant lives. He was also a committed Christian whose faith and medical work had made him a fervent opponent of abortion. Democrats roared in protest and sent months fighting the nomination. Reagan had been elected with a major assist from the burgeoning Christian Right, and Koop perfectly symbolized the hard-right, almost theocratic direction liberals believed the new president wanted to take the country.

“The nomination” The New York Times declared in one of many editorials condemning Koop’s selection, “is a disservice not only to the Public Health Service and the public itself, but also to Dr. Koop. He is being honored for the most cynical of reasons–not for his medical skills but for his political compatibility.”

But his opponents didn’t really know Koop. And actually, Reagan didn’t either. [ I disagree…but, let’s move on] Because he was also a man of science, and of immense integrity–and when he was finally confirmed in the spring of 1981, Koop set about confounding critics and cheerleaders alike, becoming the most consequential surgeon general in the nation’s history and probably the single most important public health voice of the last three decades.

Smoking was one of his first crusades. The tobacco companies and their powerful allies in Congress denied it, but the evidence was overwhelming: Cigarette smoking was killing Americans in droves. Koop had little official power, but he did have a big platform, and he used it fearlessly–issuing blunt reports on the fatal risks of cigarettes, a landmark warning about the danger of second-hand smoke, and barnstorming the country to urge Americans to change their habits. Jesse Helms–one of the conservatives who’d championed his nomination–turned on him. The governor of North Carolina screamed for his impeachment. It all made Koop’s boss in the White House uncomfortable–but the smoking rate went down.

Then there was AIDS. The earliest reports of the killer virus coincided with the start of Reagan’s presidency, but as the death rate spiked and the mystery deepened, the president and his administration said little and did even less. Except for Dr. Koop, who saw AIDS not as a niche concern of gay men–a constituency much of Reagan’s political base was openly hostile to–but as the public health crisis it was. ”It is time,” Koop said, “to put self-defeating attitudes aside and recognize that we are fighting a disease–not people.” He issued a report that shocked the nation and enraged the right: the AIDS epidemic was only getting worse, Koop said, and while abstinence was the only sure way to stop its spread, the use of condoms by those who opted for sexual activity was essential.

When Reagan asked Koop to study the health risks that abortion posed to women, the surgeon general complied. Ardent abortion foes were hopeful: finally, a way to tilt the abortion debate back in their favor. But Koop did his study and reported back with words that bitterly disappointed the president and his supporters: “I regret, Mr. President, that in spite of a diligent review on the part of many in the Public Health Service and in the private sector, the scientific studies do not provide conclusive data about the health effects of abortion on women.”

C. Everett Koop left office just as committed to his faith and just as opposed to abortion as he had been when he entered office. But his personal moral views never clouded his judgment, or his commitment to public health. He was–and still is–a model surgeon general and his legacy is a reminder that sometimes the worst thing you can do is to judge a book by its cover.

Of course, I disagree with MSNBC on one point. Dr. Koop’s “personal moral view”, aka his Christian Faith, guided the decisions he made, in all aspects of his life. This article first appeared in the March 6, 1987, issue of Christianity Today. At the time, C. Everett Koop was Surgeon General of the United States.

My mother was 87 when she died of uterine cancer. She was in a coma, during which people actually asked me if I wanted to put her on dialysis. That would have been ridiculous for personal, spiritual, and economic reasons.

I do not believe—and have never taught—that every patient should be kept alive for the longest time possible. Nor have I said every patient has to have the last bit of high-tech heroic treatment available. I do believe in the right of the patient to say, “I have lived my life,” and to choose his or her own treatment. But that question becomes complicated when we consider the decisions people make for others who are not cognitive and have not made their final wishes known.

Right now, I am 70 years old and in excellent health. If my kidneys shut down tomorrow, let’s say, after a severe infection, I don’t know how long I would want to be on dialysis. It would be foolish and a waste of resources for me to have a kidney transplant at my age. I would probably opt to clean up my affairs, say goodbye to my family, and drift out in uremia.

The important point is that my wife and I know exactly how each of us feels about the end of life. This will be crucial if the time comes to make such a decision and I’m not then able to do so.

Of course, all such talk has different connotations for the Christian than for the non-Christian. My wife knows I do not believe in being ushered out of this life with a lethal injection. I want to hang around long enough to be sure my family is taken care of. But after that, I don’t want my life prolonged in great discomfort when it is fruitless.

I don’t look forward to the manner in which I am going to die. But I do not fear death. Indeed, the way in which we face death is a matter of faith. For the Christian, it is not the end.

Thank you, Dr. Koop, for your service to this nation, and your love of God and Country. You will be missed, sir. Godspeed.

Until He Comes, 

KJ

“I Am Not A Dictator; I’m The President” …Really?

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics3 Comments

obamaburningconstitutionYeah. And, Nixon was not a crook.

That was  a proclamation uttered by the 45th leader of our nation, spoken during a press conference held yesterday, as his plans to tax Americans more were thwarted by Capital Hill Republicans, who finally found their collective spine.

Fox News reports

President Obama signed an order authorizing the government to begin cutting $85 billion from federal accounts, officially enacting across-the-board spending reductions.

Obama acted Friday, the deadline for the president and Congress to avoid the steep, one-year cuts.

The president placed blame squarely on Republican lawmakers at a Friday press conference for failing to stop automatic spending cuts that were to begin kicking in later in the day, calling the cuts “dumb, arbitrary.”

Republicans, for their part, said the fault was his, for insisting that increased taxes be part of the resolution

The president said the impact of the cuts won’t immediately be felt, but middle class families will begin to “have their lives disrupted in significant ways.” He said that as long as the cuts stay in effect, Americans will know that the economy could have been better had they been averted.

“The pain, though, will be real,” Obama said.

He said he still believed the cuts could be replaced but he wanted a deal that includes more tax revenue.

“Let’s be clear: None of this is necessary,” Obama told reporters at the White House. “It’s happening because of a choice that Republicans in Congress have made. We shouldn’t be making a series of dumb, arbitrary cuts to things.”

Obama met for less than an hour Friday morning with House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

Boehner’s office said he and McConnell told Obama they’re willing to close tax loopholes but only to lower taxes overall, not to replace spending cuts. Obama and congressional leaders have agreed that Congress should pass a bill funding the government beyond the end of March while they keep working on a way to replace the spending cuts, Boehner’s office said.

“The president got his tax hikes on January 1st,” Boehner said bluntly after the meeting with Obama. “The discussion about revenue in my view is over. It’s about taking on the spending problem here in Washington.”

On Thursday, two proposals aimed at blunting the blame over the cuts — one Democratic and the other Republican — were rejected in the Senate.

Sequestration is just the latest in a long line of actions (or inactions) by President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) that could be called incompetent and best…and dictatorial , at worst.

Since low information voters re-elected the Manchurian President, he has blatantly attacked average American citizens, in a manner reminiscent of a “benevolent” dictator.

Let”s examine some of his benevolence:

1. Attacking a Free Press – Obama has always been very petulant and condescending toward those who disagree with his brilliance. He spent his first term as president in a constant war with Fox News and Conservative Talk Radio,. Now, he has upped the ante by attacked famed Liberal Journalistic Icon Bob Woodward, of Watergate Fame, who dared to point out the ‘madness” of the Petulant President. Since Woodward’s truth-telling, he has been the target of a smear campaign by Obama’s ministers of propaganda, who have called him everything by a child of God. The Emperor has no clothes!

2. Attacking American Citizens – Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have ruled that it is perfectly legal for unmanned drones to assassinate American citizens anywhere around the globe, if it is deemed that they are an “Enemy of the State”. Unthinkable? Wait…there’s more.  These same unmanned drones will be flying in the skies above our homes! SkyNet has become aware.

3. Attacking Christianity – Under the guise of the implementation of Obamacare, Catholic Hospitals are being told that they have to provide free contraception, including the abortiafacient known as the Morning After Pill, an egregious slap in the face to these institutions and a blatant attack on their denomination’s beliefs. Castro turned on the Church also, after he became dictator.

3. Attacking Christianity, Part 2 – Obama is pushing the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the redefinition of a centuries-old word, which is defined as a sacred bond, established by God, between a man and a woman.”Gay marriage, a contradiction in terms, would begin a descent down a slippery slope, regardless of the current national meme, offered by “the smartest people in the room”. Caligula’s Horse approves.

5. Attacking the Constitution – Obama and his lackeys has seized upon the mass murder of children, committed by a psychopath, in Newtown, Connecticut, to launch an all-out offensive against Americans’ Second Amendment Rights to keep and bare arms. Under the rallying cry of “It’s for the children”, ignorant Leftists across the country have joined arm-in-arm, marching lockstep, to take away those eviiil guns from law-abiding citizens, while ignoring those who are actually killing our children.  They don’t don’t call them outlaws, for nothin’. 

The greatest American President in our lifetime, Ronald Wilson Reagan had this to say concerning our country’s present plight:

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

My bride and I are keeping our 5 year old grandson, Robert, this weekend. I wonder what kind of country will be left for him, if average Americans do not push back against the Machiavellian schemes of this Manchurian President.

We must take a stand against the Tyranny of the Minority.

We must take a stand for Liberty and Traditional American Values.

It’s for the children.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Sequestration Apocalypse is Upon Us! We’re Doomed! …Or Something…

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

chickenlittleToday is the day when the world as we know it is supposed to end, according to Obama and his minions.

The Washington Times reported yesterday that

The law mandating the so-called sequester cuts requires the president to sign an order for the across-the-board spending reductions to begin. White House press secretary Jay Carney said unless the parties reach a deal, Mr. Obama would sign such an order sometime before midnight.

“11:59 and 59 seconds, because he’s ever hopeful,” Mr. Carney joked.

The likelihood of the sequester cuts taking effect grew Thursday as both sides repeated their intractable negotiating positions. The White House said it would not accept spending cuts without revenue increases from eliminating certain tax breaks. Republican leaders said they will not agree to raising more tax revenue, and called on the administration to commit to real spending cuts.SEE RELATED: Looking for budget cuts? GOP suggests checking out Obamacare

“I’m happy to work with the president,” said Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican. “But the House has done its job.”

The House passed two measures last year that would have replaced the sequester, for example, by sparing the Defense Department from cuts and instead targeting programs such as food stamps. Senate Democrats refused to consider the measures.

Senate Republicans failed in an attempt Thursday to approve a measure that would have given Mr. Obama more discretion in how to impose the cuts. The White House said it would have vetoed the plan.

“No amount of flexibility changes the fact that these severe cuts threaten thousands of middle-class jobs and slash vital services for children, seniors and our troops and military families,” Mr. Carney said.

Mr. Obama is seeking as much as $580 billion in new tax revenue by closing loopholes for mostly wealthy individuals and ending tax breaks for oil companies and others.

Just who is responsible for Sequestration?

“The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.”

— President Obama, in the third presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2012

The president seems to have a selective memory. Per The Washington Post:

The battle over raising the debt ceiling consumed Washington in the summer of 2011, with Republicans refusing to agree to raise it unless spending was cut by an equivalent amount. Obama pressed but failed to get an agreement on raising revenue as part of the package.Woodward’s book details the efforts to come up with an enforcement mechanism that would make sure the cuts took place — and virtually every mention shows this was a White House gambit.

Here is a short summary of how it went down:

The White House proposed the idea of a compulsory trigger, with Sperling calling it an “automatic sequester,” though initially it was to include tax revenue, not just spending cuts. Boehner was “nervous” about using it as a budget tool.

Once tax increases were off the table, the White House staff came up with a sequestration plan that only had spending cuts and sold Harry Reid on the idea.

This is the third reference to the White House putting together the plan for sequester. Granted, they are using language from a congressional law from a quarter-century earlier, but that seems a thin reed on which to say this came from Congress. In fact, Lew had been a policy advisor to then House Speaker Tip O’Neill from 1979 to 1987, and so was familiar with the law.

Republicans agreed to the White House proposal for a sequester.

Republicans had to work through the night to understand the White House proposal.

Of course, the fact that Obama actually proposed the sequester, is the reason they are attacking Bob Woodward.  Obama, his administration, and the sycophantic Left want that fact buried as deeply as possible.

After reading this, is there any doubt that the most transparent Administration in American History has a believability problem, per foxnews.com?

Earlier this month President Barack Obama praised his administration as “the most transparent administration in history.”

American voters disagree.

A new Fox News poll finds that 37 percent of voters think the Obama administration is less open and transparent than previous administrations, and another 35 percent say it is about as transparent as others.

Twenty-six percent agree President Obama has met a 2008 presidential campaign commitment to openness and that his administration is more transparent than others.

The issue rose to the surface again last week when the White House press corps was shut out from watching President Obama play golf with Tiger Woods. Prior to that reporters had been questioning the openness of the administration on weightier issues, such as the Benghazi attack on U.S. diplomats.

The differing views of the administration’s transparency have a strong partisan bias.

By a 38 percentage-point margin, Democrats say Obama has been more transparent than previous presidents, while Republicans say it has been less open by a 58-point margin. Among independents, 14 percent say Obama has been more open, 40 percent say less open and 45 percent say it’s been about the same as others.

By contrast, by a 62-29 percent margin, voters say media coverage of Washington and the White House is focusing more on silly issues of little importance for the country than serious issues of great importance.

And, that’s why, way back in 2009, I nicknamed Obama “The Petulant President”.

I wonder if he will throw a Presidential Temper Tantrum at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, if he does not get his way today?

As we say in Dixie, ol’ Scooter is

All hat. No cattle.

Until He Comes,

KJ

From Watergate to Sequester Madness

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

obamakingThe summer before I entered the 9th Grade, something even more historic than my family’s move to a new neighborhood happened in our nation’s capital.

On 17th June 1972, 5 men were arrested for breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Initially, it was assumed that it was just a simple burglary that went wrong. However, when investigations started, it was found out that the men had entered the office to repair bugs that they had installed into the office nearly a week earlier.

On further investigations, it was found out that the so-called burglars were some how connected to the White House and were given the task to spy on the Democrats. One of the “burglars” arrested was named Jim McCord Jr. He was the security officer for Richard Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President. Even a diary was found which had the contact number of E Howard Hunt, who was an intelligence agent and a member of the White House plumbers, which was a secret team of agents working at the behest of the White House. The investigators went on to figure out that the E Howard Hunt along G Gordon Liddy were the brains behind the first break in. Soon it was found that there were many agents responsible for spying on the Democrats. A check meant for Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign was traced to the bank account of one of the burglars. This led the investigators to conclude that the campaign funds were being used to fund these illegal activities. However, even at this stage, it did not stop Richard Nixon, a Republican, to win the US president election.

James McCord sent a letter to the trial judge naming other people who were part of this conspiracy. With more and more evidence being unearthed, it was soon clear that Richard Nixon was personally involved in the scandal along with several members from his administration. It was also discovered that many of the conversations regarding the conspiracy took place in the Oval Office and these conversations were taped. Initially, Nixon denied the presence of the tapes, but due to US Supreme Court order, he was forced to hand over the tapes containing the damning conversations. However, some important conversations from these tapes were missing.

The US Congress was forced to begin the process of impeachment against Richard Nixon. However, before the culmination of the process, Nixon resigned on 9th August 1974. While Nixon himself did not serve any prison time, many of his aides were found guilty by the Grand Jury.

Between 1972 and 1976, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein became two of the most famous journalists in America as they became known as the reporters who broke the biggest story in American politics. Beginning with the investigation of a “third-rate burglary” of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex, Woodward and Bernstein gradually discovered and reported the system of political “dirty tricks” and crimes that caused the indictments of forty White House and administration officials, and ultimately, the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Now, Bob Woodward is making news again, by stating facts about a sitting president, whose ethical standards are so low, they would have to borrow a ladder to climb to pitiful.

BusinessInsider.com reports that

Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a “very senior person” at the White House warned him in an email that he would “regret doing this,” the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.

CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined.

“I think they’re confused,” Woodward said of the White House’s pushback on his reporting.

Earlier today on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Woodward ripped into Obama in what has become an ongoing feud between the veteran Washington Post journalist and the White House. Woodward said Obama was showing a “kind of madness I haven’t seen in a long time” for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns.

The Defense Department said in early February that it would not deploy the U.S.S. Harry Truman to the Persian Gulf, citing budget concerns relating to the looming cuts known as the sequester.

“Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, ‘Oh, by the way, I can’t do this because of some budget document?'” Woodward said on MSNBC.

“Or George W. Bush saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to invade Iraq because I can’t get the aircraft carriers I need?'” Or even Bill Clinton saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to attack Saddam Hussein’s intelligence headquarters,’ … because of some budget document?”

Last weekend, Woodward called out Obama for what he said was “moving the goal posts” on the sequester by requesting that revenue be part of a deal to avert it.

emporersnewclothesBy playing the role of the child proclaiming that

The Emperor has no clothes on!

Woodward has made himself the target of scorn and ridicule by the self-same Liberal Pundits who once paid him thousands of dollars to speak at their rubber-chicken banquets.

He has become a pariah to the Liberal Elite, having dared question their messiah’s infallibility and unmatched brilliance.

To quote Police Lt. John McCLane,

Welcome to the party, pal!

Until He Comes,

KJ

Sequestration is Coming!!! Run For the Hills!!! Or Something….

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

ObamafraudJust 2 days away from the End of the World as we know it (according to Obama and his minions) and I feel fine.

However, ol’ Scooter is getting desperate…and dangerous.

The Washington Times reported yesterday, that

The sequester is officially still three days away, but the Obama administration already is making the first cuts, with officials confirming that the Homeland Security Department already has released several hundred illegal immigrants from detention in order to save money.

The move is proving controversial. Immigrant-rights groups say it shows the administration was detaining folks it never should have gone after in the first place, while Republicans questioned the decision-making.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that runs the detention facilities, said that with both sequesters and the annual spending bills looming, officials have tried to find places to cut, and releasing low-priority immigrants is one of those ways.

“Over the last week, ICE has reviewed several hundred cases and placed these individuals on methods of supervision less costly than detention,” ICE said in a statement. “All of these individuals remain in removal proceedings. Priority for detention remains on serious criminal offenders and other individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety.”

While being released from detention, the illegal immigrants are still subject to supervision — either by electronic device or by being required to check in with ICE by phone or in person.

The move first was reported by The Huffington Post on Monday.

The sequesters are $85 billion in spending cuts this year, followed by equivalent cuts for the rest of this decade. They were set in motion by the 2011 debt deal and will require across-the-board cuts to all government spending save for entitlements such as Social Security.

The cuts take effect on Friday, and all sides on Capitol Hill say they want to avert them — though they cannot agree on how to do so.

SEE RELATED: White House raises terror threat, warns illegals could flood borders after sequester cuts

The Obama administration, which wants to see the cuts replaced in large part by new tax increases, has warned that the sequesters will hurt national security.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday told reporters at the White House that she would be forced to furlough Border Patrol agents, pulling them from their rounds along the U.S.-Mexico border.

She also hinted at the decision to release illegal immigrants, saying she would not be able to maintain the full slate of 34,000 detention beds mandated by Congress.

“How am I supposed to pay for those? There’s only so much I can do,” she said.

United We Dream, an immigrant-rights group, said the releases show the administration had been keeping folks detained who never should have been there.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer disagrees…

I’m appalled to learn the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has begun to release hundreds of illegal aliens from custody, the first of potentially thousands to soon be freed under the guise of federal budget cuts. This is pure political posturing and the height of absurdity given that the releases are being granted before the federal ‘sequestration’ cuts have even gone into effect.

This represents a return to exactly the kind of catch-and-release procedures that have long made a mockery of our country’s immigration system. The news is especially concerning when coupled with DHS’ acknowledgment today that it may not be able to maintain operation of 34,000 immigration jail beds, as mandated by Congress.

Everyone knows the federal government must get a handle on spending, and it is well past time that the President begin working with Congress to find real budget solutions. But we cannot let public safety and the rule of law be collateral damage of the President’s failed leadership to pass a budget.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin hits the nail on the head concerning Friday’s upcoming”Apocalypse”…

D.C.: Cut the Drama. Do Your Job.

Americans are sick and tired of yet another ginned-up crisis. D.C. needs to grow up, get to work, and live within its means. The real economic Armageddon looming before us is our runaway debt, not the sequester, which the President advocated for and signed into law and is now running around denouncing because he never had any genuine intention of reining in his reckless spending.

Remember that this sequestration deal came about because of the long debt ceiling standoff in the summer of 2011. It wasn’t the ideal outcome for anyone, but it did at least include real deficit reduction of about $110 billion per year for 10 years, which is still nowhere near enough to close our massive deficit. Keep in mind that since the sequester passed, the President has already hit American families and small business owners with his tax increases, or “more revenue” as he likes to call it. The American public doesn’t want tax increases; we want government to rein in its overspending.

If we can’t stomach modest cuts that would lower federal spending by a mere 0.3% per year out of a current federal budget of $3.6 trillion, then we might as well signal to the whole world that we have no serious intention of dealing with our debt problem.

If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits, then we’re done. Put a fork in us. We’re finished. We’re going to default eventually and that’s why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.

If we ARE serious about putting our fiscal house in order, then let’s stop the hysterics, tighten our belts, and take our medicine.

Twice,  publicly and privately, Barack Hussein Obama has taken the following Oath of Office, as specified in Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

How is what he has just done, in releasing into the citizenry, those who have broken the law, not a violation of that Oath?

How are his attempts at needlessly panicking the citizenry, not a flagrant abuse of office?

Finally, what is Scooter going to do when the “Apocalyptic Sequesters hits Friday, and none of his dire warnings come to pass, and, he is exposed for the fraud that he is?

Until He Comes,

KJ

Atheists Complain About “Extensive Discrimination” to the UN. Christian Martyrs Unavailable for Comment.

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics3 Comments

unlogoAn International Group representing atheists, humanists, and freethinkers told the United Nations yesterday that they face widespread discrimination around the world. In fact, according to them, when they express their views, they are treated as criminals in some countries, and even subject to to capital punishment.

The group presented a document to the UN’s human Rights Council that claims atheism has been banned by law in a number of countries where people were forced to officially adopt a faith.

According to Reuters News Service on Yahoo.com…

“Extensive discrimination by governments against atheists, humanists and the non-religious occurs worldwide,” declared the grouping, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) which has some 120 member bodies in 45 countries.

In Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan “atheists can face the death penalty on the grounds of their belief” although this was in violation of U.N. human rights accords, the IHEU said.

Further, in several others legal measures “effectively criminalize atheism (and) the expression and manifestation of atheist beliefs” or lead to systematic discrimination against freethinkers, the document declared.

It was submitted to the rights council as it opened its annual Spring session against a background of new efforts in the U.N. by Muslim countries to obtain a world ban on denigration of religion, especially what they call “Islamophobia”.

Three of the states with legislation providing for death for blasphemy against Islam, a charge which can be applied to atheists who publicly reveal their ideas, are on the council – Pakistan, Mauritania and Maldives.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the council on Monday there was a “rising trend” of Islamophobia, adding: “We condemn all sorts of incitement to hatred and religious discrimination against Muslims and people of other faiths.”

And earlier this month a top official of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said the body would be focusing on getting agreement on criminalizing denigration of religion in coming talks with Western countries.

In November last year, the head of the 21-country Arab League told the U.N. Security Council in New York his organisation wanted a binding international framework to ensure “that religious faith and its symbols are respected”.

The IHEU, and other non-governmental rights groupings, argue that many Muslim governments use this terminology and the concept of “religious blasphemy” within their own countries to cow both atheists and followers of other religions.

A number of these governments “prosecute people who express their religious doubt or dissent, regardless of whether those dissenters identify as atheist”, the IHEU document submitted to the rights council said.

Islamic countries – including Bangladesh, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey – had also stepped up prosecution of “blasphemous” expression of criticism of religion in social media like Facebook and Twitter.

OIC countries have 15 seats on the council, all from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and make up just less than one third of the rights body.

Notice that Christian countries are not mentioned by this group?

Per CatholicNews.org…

…there are currently 2.18 billion Christians in more than 200 countries around the world, representing nearly a third of the estimated 6.9 billion global population in 2010.

The study, conducted by the US-based Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, found Christians to be so geographically widespread that no single continent or region can indisputably claim to be the centre of global Christianity.

The study, Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population, cites that 100 years ago, two-thirds of the world’s Christians lived in Europe but today only about a quarter of all Christians live there.

More than one-third of Christians live in the Americas; about a quarter live in sub-Saharan Africa and 13 percent live in Asia and the Pacific.

The data indicates that during the past 100 years, the number of Christians around the world has more than tripled from historical estimates of approximately 600 million in 1910 to more than 2 billion today.

But the world’s overall population has also risen rapidly, from an estimated 1.8 billion in 1910 to 6.9 billion in 2010. As a result, Christians make up about the same portion of the world’s population in 2010 (32 percent) as they did a century ago (35 percent).

The study also reveals that although Europe and the Americas are still home to a majority (63 percent) of the world’s Christians, that share is much lower than it was in 1910 when it was 93 percent. In the past 100 years, the number of Christians grew significantly in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.

In fact…

In 2012, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (GCTS) reported that globally every day there are 800 less atheists per day, 1,100 less non-religious (agnostic) people per day and 83,000 more people professing to be Christians per day.

In 2011, the American Spectator declared concerning research published in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research:

“The report estimates about 80,000 new Christians every day, 79,000 new Muslims every day, and 300 fewer atheists every day. These atheists are presumably disproportionately represented in the West, while religion is thriving in the Global South, where charismatic Christianity is exploding.”

An Observation….

Christians are being martyred for their faith every day.

According to deseretnews.com, in an article posted 9/2/11,,

On average, a Christian is martyred every five minutes — killed because of their faith.

Zenit.org and CatholicCulture.org reported on a presentation by Massimo Introvigne of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that he gave in this summer at the “International Conference on Inter-religious dialogue between Christians, Jews and Muslims.”

Introvigne told the conference gathered near Budapest the number of Christians killed every year for their faith is about 105,000. And these are only those who were put to death because they were Christians. It does not include those killed as victims of war.

“If these numbers are not cried out to the world, if this slaughter is not stopped, if it is not acknowledged that the persecution of Christians is the first worldwide emergency in the matter of violence and religious discrimination, the dialogue between religions will only produce beautiful conferences but no concrete results,” Introvigne said according to Zenit.org.

Introvigne wrote an article for the Center for Studies on New Religions website that explained more behind the numbers. The statistics came from the late David B. Barrett and the Center for Study of Global Christianity.

Barrett and Todd M. Johnson said from AD 30 to 2000, 70 million Christians died as martyrs. The majority of those martyrs were not in ancient times. There were 45 million Christian martyrs in the 20th century. Introvigne emphasized these figures “exclude those killed for national, ethnic or political reasons who just happened to be Christian but were not killed because of their being Christian.”

Barrett and Johnson’s figures attribute 31.6 million of those 70 million Christian martyrs to atheist persecutors. Muslims killed another 9.1 million Christians.

When is the United Nations going to do something about the persecution of Christians throughout the world? 

History shows that believers faced death at the hands of both Muslims and atheists.

Unfortunately for the “free thinkers” living in Muslim-dominated countries, Islam does not teach forgiveness and compassion. Their faith teaches conversion and obedience…and death to the infidels.

Until He Comes,

KJ