Author: WatchmenMinistryNID

(Dennis Prager) There are many ways in which to divide humanity — the decent and the indecent, the happy and the unhappy, the cowardly and the courageous, those who lead and those who follow, etc.

Two major divisions that are less often noted but highly consequential are between those who want to control others and those who have little interest in controlling others, and between the related categories of those who are comfortable with being controlled by others and those who detest being controlled by others.

Those who seek to control others and those who seek to be controlled by others would seem to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But they are not. Both groups are overwhelmingly populated by individuals on the Left.

They currently dominate four of the five English-speaking countries (the United Kingdom may be the one exception). The ease with which Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders have accepted the loss of liberty in their respective countries has been the saddest and most frightening development since the rise of totalitarianism in the early 20th century.  (Read More)

(PJ Media) The Mayor of Hudson, Ohio is as mad as hell about students in his small Akron suburb being told to write “a sex scene you wouldn’t show your mom,” and wants “all five school board members to resign or face possible criminal charges,” according to a report on Monday in the Akron Beacon Journal.

Mayor Craig Shubert made his demand after parents complained about some of the material in a book called 642 Things to Write About used in local schools’ Writing in the Liberal Arts II class.

“I’m going to give you a simple choice,” Shubert told the school board. “You either choose to resign from this board of education or you will be charged.”  (Read More)

(Family Research Council) For most Democrats, creating political distractions is an art form. Not so much for Joe Biden, whose idea of changing the conversation on Afghanistan was starting a civil war over the COVID vaccine. Late last week, when the president threw down his national mandate, it was like taking people’s minds off burnt toast by setting your house on fire. Sure, it got Americans to stop talking about the Taliban, but only because they were on the phone with their attorneys looking for ways to sue the government.

For the White House, it was another catastrophic failure in a presidency littered with self-destructive choices. In just three months, Biden’s approval rating is in the place where he spent most of 2020: the basement. Down 16 points since the summer, the administration is taking on enough water to put out all of California’s wildfires. And yet, there’s no indication that this president understands or cares what’s happening to his country or credibility. He’s too busy wagging his finger at skeptical Americans like an exasperated parent whose “patience is wearing thin.”  (Read More)

(The Federalist) Some on the right saw a golden opportunity for A-Class mockery when Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez showed up to this year’s annual Met Gala wearing a ridiculous white dress that said “tax the rich” on its backside.

There is nothing to laugh at or make fun of here. This is simply another example of those in power, those running our most influential cultural and political institutions, sending a message: There’s a new social hierarchy in America. And this one isn’t about what you can afford to do, it’s about what you’re allowed to do.

That’s the way this works now. The misery of social distancing and mask-wearing during the pandemic, both pushed by Democrats and the “experts,” are for you, the help, to endure. Not the rich and famous. Not the ones who establish and insist on those rules.  (Read More)

(Faith & Freedom) A Sammamish, Washington high school banned students from wearing red, white, and blue for its “Patriot’s Day” football game last Friday because the educators said a demonstration of patriotism could be “racially insensitive.” And “offensive” to some individuals.

The school principal said the student-led expression of patriotism could “unintentionally cause offense to some who see it differently.”

Welcome to your taxpayer-funded public “education” in an upscale suburb of Seattle.

The students were stunned. And mad. So are many of the parents.

I suspect the school administration would have been fine with it, had the students led a demonstration in Seattle demanding the city give Chief Seattle his name back with reparations for it’s unauthorized use—or something similar.

But not an expression of patriotism. That crosses the line.  (Read More)

(Gem State Patriot) I was inspired by a sermon at church last week and it is very appropriate for what is happening in our world today. Psalm 146 is about putting our trust in the proper place and not in princes who in today’s world would be considered those who we have elected to positions of power. The promise of justice from God seems timely and needed in today’s world, especially when we see so much corruption. We have princes of every kind who are asking us to put our trust in them. They come in the form of Mayors, Governors, Senators, Congressman, learned medical Gurus of every kind and even the President.

The question is have these princes who we have put into high office and entrusted to make decisions in our lives actually earned our trust? I would contend that the jury is still out and from what we have seen thus far our princes are not necessarily working for the best interests of the people. In many cases there appears to be a good many ulterior motives and large amounts of corruption behind their actions. Why is it that so many of us now put our faith in these princes instead of God who redeems the otherwise hopeless situations.  (Read More)

(PJ Media) A few thousand protesters greeted President Joe Biden Monday in Boise, Idaho, where Air Force One stopped for a few hours on its way to California (Biden spoke at a Monday night rally for embattled California Gov. Gavin Newsom).

Biden visited the Gem State on a sunny afternoon as part of a Western state tour to promote his administration’s ideological economic agenda.

Colorfully clad Americans opposed to the Biden agenda gathered early in the morning, carrying signs protesting everything from the president’s recent vaccine mandates to the tragic Afghanistan withdrawal.  (Read More)

(Daily Signal) The pro-life group Live Action claimed Tuesday that Google banned “all” Live Action ads, accusing the tech company of siding “squarely with extremist pro-abortion political ideology.”

“They aren’t hiding their bias anymore,” Lila Rose, Live Action founder and president, said in a statement. “Google’s censorship baldly reveals that the corporation is in the pocket of the abortion industry.”

Live Action said in a press release that Google banned the promotion of “all” the organization’s ads, including its “Baby Olivia” ad as well as one about the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline, which is managed by a team of medical professionals, according to the pro-life group.  (Read More)

(LifeNews) Staff at Texas Right to Life are now facing death threats and intense harassment and the nation’s biggest abortion business is to blame.

As National Review reports, Planned Parenthood doxxed a pro-life advocate in its legal papers filed in its desperate attempt to stop the Texas abortion ban and prevent the state pro-life group from enforcing it.

Leftists are no strangers to doxxing pro-life and conservative people they disagree with, it’s a modern method of subjecting people and their families to harassment and potential violence as a form of intimidation to get them to stop standing up for their values. In this case, Planned Parenthood lawyers carelessly — or purposefully — exposed private information about the name and address of pro-life advocates in their publicly-accessible legal briefs so anyone could find the information and intimidate them.  (Read More)

(Family Research Council) When the Taliban swept through Kabul, stunning the world, leader Zabihullah Mujahid tried to soften the extremists’ image. “We want to build the future and forget what happened in the past,” he insisted. But forgetting will not come so easily for the West, who watched for years as hard-line Islamists brutalized their women and tortured non-conformists. Even now, reporters, former interpreters, and soldiers are being hunted down and massacred by death squads — sparking plenty of doubts about a kinder, gentler Taliban.

The leaders’ charm offensive, which started when the Taliban took the capital, has been interesting to watch. Girls, the regime promised in August, will be free. They can work, play, and continue their education, a spokesman said — ignoring the fact that women had just been ordered home indefinitely.  (Read More)

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins made the following comments:

“President, or more appropriately, Comrade Biden’s vaccine mandate affecting millions of Americans is an unprecedented and unacceptable abuse of power. If allowed to stand, this will have far-reaching consequences for civil liberties, conscience rights, religious freedom, human dignity, and the ability of families to make health decisions.

“President Biden is telling Americans that you will be vaccinated or be placed on a special watch list and possibly lose your job. For a president who pledged to bring unity to the country, this dictate will bring more significant division and further erode trust between Americans and their government. His heavy-handed approach will turn people against the very vaccine he is trying to promote. I’m not anti-vaccine; in fact, I encourage those in high-risk categories to get the vaccine. Decisions of vaccination should be made based on science and not politics. The Biden administration’s failure to include natural immunity, health status, and religious objections in their immunization campaign raises numerous efficacy and ethical questions.”  (Read More)

(Family Research Council) It must have been a relief for the White House to put Joe Biden on a plane to New Jersey Tuesday. For the first time in weeks, the president got to talk about a disaster he didn’t create. And yet, while he surveyed the wreckage from Hurricane Ida, the world’s attention was still 6,900 miles away on the damage that can’t be undone: Biden’s disastrous exit from Afghanistan.

“Every time I don’t think this situation can get any worse,” Congressman Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) shook his head, “it does.” Not even a year into his term, the cries for Biden’s resignation are growing with every horrifying headline out of Kabul. Rattled by images of their president, hunched over his podium like a beaten man, Americans are struggling to make sense of any administration that would leave its own people behind. And yet, leaders from both parties warn, that’s exactly what’s happening. Even now, six planes sit idle on a tarmac in northern Afghanistan, hostages to Biden’s weakness.

And what is the State Department’s big concern? Not that passport-holding Americans are held prisoner by terrorists, but that the new Taliban government isn’t “inclusive” enough.  (Read More)

(Redoubt News) Boise Mayor Lauren McLean signed a resolution in support of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public K-12 education.

McLean has chosen to align herself with mayors from cities that were ravaged and shattered by violent riots during 2020. The resolution is co-sponsored by Ted Wheeler (Portland, OR), Greg Fischer (Louisville, KY), and Lori E. Lightfoot (Chicago, IL).

The resolution, adopted at the United State Conference of Mayors 89th Annual Meeting, states that McLean and the co-sponsors support implementing CRT’s racial discrimination in public school curriculum and programming. The resolution argues that all academic achievement gaps are evidence of racial discrimination and proposes CRT in education as the cure rather than higher standards, content mastery in teacher training, or other education innovations.  (Read More)

(The Federalist) The city of Portland moved to ban official business with — and travel to — Texas Friday, after a Lone Star State law went into effect protecting babies with a heart beat from being aborted.

It’s not surprising; Portland’s been flirting with dangerously illiberal secessionist thinking for a while now. Just last year, they allowed the federal government’s courthouse and officers to come under violence siege for weeks, even referring to lawful federal officers as “occupiers.” Threatening neighboring governments fits in perfectly (and even trails the California government).

Does banning business with another American government sound illegal? No one cares: More and more, even asking if something is legal has been relegated to a relic from a time and place that no longer exists in our country. There is no more “legal” or “illegal” — all that matters is whether something is desired by the leftists in charge.  (Read More)

(Townhall) There is little that reveals the immorality and dishonesty of the left more than its labeling the term “colorblind” racist.

Here are just a few of countless examples:

The University of California publishes a list of “microaggressions” — terms and ideas it considers racist — that white people should avoid using. The list includes the term “colorblindness” as well as statements such as “there is only one race, the human race.”

The left’s racist war on colorblindness is everywhere.

Psychology Today published an article by a psychology professor titled, “Colorblind Ideology Is a Form of Racism.”  (Read More)

(Faith & Freedom) 900 new pages of previously undisclosed information from Dr. Fauci’s NIH, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), is beginning to turn on the light in regard to what was going on in the darkness of secrecy.

A molecular biologist at Rutgers University, after reviewing the material, is accusing Dr. Fauci and the NIH Director Francis Collins of being “untruthful”—echoing what Sen. Rand Paul, also a doctor, was saying last May.

(Christian Post) The social media platform TikTok is exposing minors to countless videos that feature adult content involving sexual acts and drug usage through search algorithms, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal.

In a report titled “How TikTok Serves Up Sex and Drug Videos to Minors” published Wednesday, reporters noted that the newspaper created bot accounts disguised as users between the ages 13 to 15 to gauge what kind of content children are being exposed to on the platform.

These bot accounts quickly found themselves being guided to hundreds of videos that feature adult content, including drug use and sexual roleplay.  (Read More)

(CNSNews) Groups of Americans across the country are fighting back against COVID vaccine and mask mandates by quitting their jobs, walking out of school and taking legal action.

In Chicago, school bus drivers are quitting in droves, with as many as sixty school bus drivers resigning in a single day rather than be vaccinated, NPR reports. The shortage is so severe that the school district canceled school bus service and even reached out to Uber and Lyft for help – but, neither rideshare company requires its drivers be vaccinated.

Chicago Public Schools District has even begun offering bribes of $1,000 upfront and $500 a month to parents willing to drive their kids to school, Yahoo! News reports.

Last week, dozens of students at Colorado’s Thunder Ridge High School staged a walkout to protest a mask mandate, where they were joined by Ranch View Middle School students and their parents.  (Read More)

(Standing For Freedom Center) The state of California has already had to pay millions of dollars to churches for state and county governments’ assault on religious freedom as a result of their unconstitutional COVID-19 restrictions, yet one county government continues its attacks on Calvary Chapel San Jose.

Santa Clara County officials are continuing to press forward with its demand that Calvary Chapel pay $2.8 million in fines for violating its health orders — despite the fact that the Supreme Court has since ruled on five separate occasions that governments cannot treat churches more harshly than businesses or other gatherings — even during a public health emergency.

This unequal treatment was objectively practiced by Santa Clara County. In just one example, county officials encouraged mass protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death, yet only allowed Calvary Chapel (and other churches) to have 100 attendees in their cars outside for worship services, or 25 attendees if they were outside of their cars.  (Read More)

(Daily Signal) Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is urging Amazon to remove books and other products that spread “COVID-19 misinformation” from its online marketplace.

Warren identified a variety of products that are among the top results when consumers search for certain items and books about COVID-19 in a letter sent Tuesday to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. The products promote “false and misleading” conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, Warren alleges in the letter.

“This pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products—an unethical, unacceptable, and potentially unlawful course of action from one of the nation’s largest retailers,” Warren writes…  (Read More)

(RedState) As RedState reported yesterday afternoon, a Texas law that bans abortions after a heartbeat is detected (typically after 6-8 weeks) has officially gone into effect. That left pro-abortion advocates reeling and lashing out over their sacred sacrament being curtailed.

But there was one last hope to try to stop the law — the Supreme Court.

Fortunately, that hope has been dashed, at least for the time being. The nation’s highest court ruled last night that they would not block the Texas abortion law, allowing it to proceed as other litigation efforts take place.

John Roberts, ever the judicial coward, voted with the liberals to block the law, though, he then signaled he would not block enforcement by another party. His fence-straddling has become the thing of legends at this point.  (Read More)

(Standing for Freedom Center) This week, as the eyes of the nation remain fixed on Afghanistan as tens of thousands of people clamor for the chance to evacuate the Taliban-controlled nation, private groups have stepped up to do what they can to help those most likely to be targeted by the new violent regime.

The Nazarene Fund, which was founded “to liberate the captive, to free the enslaved, and to rescue, rebuild and restore the lives of Christians and other persecuted religious and ethnic minorities wherever and whenever they are in need,” was one such group, and their efforts have been breathtaking.

“While we slept,” Beck revealed in a social media post on Tuesday, “the Nazarene Fund was busy loading planes. This was the second planeload of Afghanistan Christian refugees leaving Kabul.”  (Read More)

(Faith & Freedom) Washington State Governor Jay Inslee is now requiring thousands of employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of their employment.

This includes state employees, healthcare workers, teachers, school volunteers, and coaches.

However the state has provided a “religious exemption”—If your faith passes the state test.

Everyone, regardless of employer, regardless of the state you live in, should be informed.

This thinking is not isolated to Washington State.

The state is fine with you and your religion, as long as you don’t act on that faith. Or talk about it out loud.  (Read More)

(The Federalist) Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the American people have been told to “follow the science.” Yet for a year and a half, they’ve heard contradicting messages from self-appointed prophets of “the science” like Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

We learned that politicians who claimed their decisions were science-driven often ignored scientific findings that didn’t fit certain political narratives. We discovered that scientists are fallible human beings, and some would let personal interests and political views cloud their judgment.

Is science itself one of the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic? I asked Dr. Scott Atlas at the 13th annual Freedom Conference hosted by the Steamboat Institute, a Colorado-based nonprofit organization.

Atlas has refused to be silenced. He has a lot to say about how the scientific field and Americans’ trust in it have been tremendously harmed during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Science has been not just a victim,” he told me, “but actively participated in the self-destruction of its credibility.”  (Read More)

(LifeNews) Pro-life Americans are celebrating the state of Texas today, which becomes the first state in the nation to have an abortion ban go into effect after the Supreme Court declined to block it.

As LifeNews.com reported, Texas just became the first state in nearly 50 years to be allowed to protect unborn babies by banning almost all abortions.

On Wednesday, the state heartbeat law went into effect, prohibiting abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable, about six weeks of pregnancy. The legislation has the potential to save tens of thousands of babies’ lives in Texas, including about 100 every day.

Leading pro-life groups are celebrating the excellent news.  (Read More)