Watchmen Ministry North Idaho

(The Federalist) Open The New York Times’ politics page Thursday morning and the top headline reads, “Democrats Begin Push For Biggest Expansion In Voting Since 1960s.” It’s a story about the most important election power-grab in modern legislative history, with a slim, partisan majority of senators seeking to wrest control of elections away from state governments to ensure Democrat control for decades to come.

For starters, H.R. 1 will ban voter ID requirements, mandate early voting windows, allow outside activist groups to deliver votes for counting, do away with notarized absentee ballots, force states to accept absentees for 10 days after an election is over, narrow the Federal Election Commission by one member to allow for partisan control, mandate counting illegal aliens in voting districts, allow the IRS to investigate non-profits’ political ideas, and make it nearly impossible to sue over the new rules.  (Read More)

(LifeNews) Joe Biden’s administration included pro-life activists on a list of “domestic violent extremists” in a new report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Christian Post reports the report, published March 1, warned that 2021 could be a bad year of violent extremism in America.

It pointed to racial issues, “perceived government overreach,” “narratives” of election fraud, the COVID-19 pandemic and “conspiracy theories promoting violence” as motivations for potential heightened violence.

The report did not name specific groups or individuals, but it did identify several “threat categories” of extremists, including pro-lifers and abortion activists, animal rights activists, anti-government groups and anarchists, and racist groups.  (Read More)

(OneNewsNow) The Biden administration’s vaccine passport scheme is just the teeny-tiny tip of a massive privacy invasion iceberg.

A year ago this week, I began chronicling the worldwide weaponization of COVID-19 by big government and big business to trace and track the health data of untold hundreds of millions of human beings. Let’s review.

In March 2020, Singapore unleashed a Bluetooth app called “TraceTogether” on Google Play and the Apple Store to track people who tested positive for coronavirus and notify others through their cellphones. For those who argue that participation is completely “voluntary,” bear in mind that Singapore functions as a high-tech dictatorship where refusal to comply with stay-at-home orders and refusal to share GPS location data with health bureaucrats are criminal offenses subject to six months’ imprisonment and/or a $10,000 fine.  (Read More)

(Faith & Freedom) Oral Roberts University’s run in the NCAA’s March Madness national championship tournament came to an end Saturday night with a narrow loss—72-70— to Arkansas who is ranked #3 in the nation.

The fact that Oral Roberts University even made the tournament surprised most sports fans across the country—particularly the enlightened sports press.

However, the bigger story that has emerged is that the team and their coach turned the attention toward Jesus Christ—while the secular left turned hell’s wrath on the team, their coach, and the institution itself.  (Read More)

(LifeNews) Facebook whistleblower Cassandra Spencer wrote an exposé about the platform with damning claims of anti-conservative meddling.

The whistleblower who had contracted at Facebook had her life turned upside down after exposing Big Tech bias against conservatives at Facebook. Her tell-all book, “Impact: How I Went behind Enemy Lines in Our Struggle against the Far Left,” made some devastating allegations.

“[A]fter a few weeks on the job in Texas, she said she noticed that some profiles and pages were secretly marked in a way that would reduce the reach of their live videos,” Fox News reported. “She said in the following weeks she saw a pattern, and she only noticed such flags on pages belonging to conservatives, not to any liberals. And that they were hidden from the account holders.”  (Read More)

(The Federalist) The Founding Fathers recognized freedom of expression and religious liberty as core elements of diversity and tolerance. Now, nearly 250 years later, Congress is acting to stamp them out, ushering in a new era of government-sanctioned anti-religious bigotry.

While no one could argue this is motivated by anti-Jewish bias in particular, the disproportionate repression of Jewish religious practice — by a law unironically billed as an “Equality Act,” no less — is far too significant to ignore.

The reason is simple: not only prayer services, but family lifecycle events of all kinds — from circumcisions to bar mitzvahs to weddings to funerals — are commonly divided by biological sex in traditional Orthodox Judaism. This is true whether or not ceremonies are held in synagogues.  (Read More)

(Idaho Freedom Foundation) Special interest groups including big labor unions like the Idaho Education Association seem to be winning the day at the state Legislature, thanks to liberal Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Education Committee.

First, members of the committee rejected a simple House-approved measure to let school boards opt-out of collective bargaining. House Bill 174 would have given locally-elected school boards the ability to decide whether they wanted to negotiate with labor unions. If a union behaves badly, as happened last year when the West Ada Education Association staged a sick-out, the school board would not be compelled to sit at the bargaining table with them, as they are presently under Idaho law.  (Read More)

(LifeNews) …this new Guttmacher report provides interesting information for understanding U.S. abortion trends. In 2012, my Lozier Institute colleague Susan Wills analyzed CDC data and found that the largest abortion-rate declines were taking place among younger age demographics.

These new data suggest that the trend is continuing, as the report shows that between 1980 and 2017, the abortion rate for females between the ages of 15 and 19 fell by more than 82 percent. The abortion rate for 35-to-39-year-olds fell by only 8.5 percent during the same timespan.

The large reduction in the teen abortion rate is partly the result of a higher percentage of pregnant teenagers choosing life for their preborn children. According to these new statistics, the percentage of pregnancies carried to term by women ages 15 to 19 between 1980 and 2017 increased by more than 10 percent.  (Read More)

By Bob Shillingstad

“Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” -John 18:38   “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” -John 14:6

The main source of our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was the Bible and you see it over and over in the text.   The Declaration begins talking about the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and ends with “a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” They understood that our Creator had given us an understanding of right and wrong   There were absolutes of truth when it came to creation, our actions and divine Providence who we were accountable to.

We have abandoned these principles and absolutes and we see this every day as the governing authorities act as if these principles are now to be decided by a vote or dictated to by the “mob”.  If you think what is happening is insanity and we will, at some point, come to our senses you are wrong. Dr. Seuss is suddenly persona non grata because his books are racist. The author J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) is now reviled because she claims boys are born male and girls born female. The Governor of South Dakota is reluctant to prohibit boys from competing as girls in school sports because of pressure from the NCAA and the Chamber of Commerce. It seems to be insanity. Actually it is not.

Wesley Smith, writing in the Epoch Times, stated that: “No. Actually, it’s not. “Canceling,” as it is called, is a coldly calculated strategy implemented with malice aforethought. The goal isn’t to persuade. Social excommunication, media deplatforming, and the trashing of venerable traditions don’t seek to reform institutions or promote societal improvement. Rather, the point is to destroy every traditional religious, social, and political institution judged guilty of constructing Western civilization, toward the end of rebuilding society in the image of Woke.”

Why do we seem to be so impotent in combating this movement?  Look at our state legislature in Idaho.  We allow the state colleges to indoctrinate the students with the most vile propaganda regarding “social justice”, socialism vs. capitalism and free markets, “white privilege” and a trashing of our history.   There is no push back on their budgets or restraints on their actions to remedy this.  Budgets are going to be fully funded.

We have a public tv and radio network (PBS and NPR) that dishes out a consistent, leftist bias about conservative values.  Worse than that their news is twisted, like most main stream media, from reporting the news to being opinion makers with a consistent bias also. We recognize the fact we have a 1st Amendment that protects the press, however, we allocate over $10 million of our tax dollars to support this.  This measure passed again in the house by ONE vote.  Two legislators in Kootenai County voted in favor of the funding.  Who is insane?  But vote against this and you hate Big Bird!  The politicians of both parties face the wrath of judges who will decide when life begins, what marriage is or what gender means. It is now media, corporations, the arts and the judicial system that will be the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong.

The COVID lockdowns have been an excellent example of “group think”.  There is to be no discussion of what works or why we have to give up our freedoms for something that is not a threat to most of the population. Instead, education is disrupted, businesses suffer, churches are impacted along with most of their ministry.  If you would dare to vote against a mask mandate you will have a headline in the local Coeur d’Alene newspaper calling you a liar. The issue was about the meaning of “teaching” at a University.  The cancel culture is not about dialogue it is about destroying dissenters.   We are living in difficult times when our freedoms are at risk.  When you listen to the testimonies of those who lived under communist, totalitarian regimes they point out the similarities to America today.  The threat was not always the government but your employer, teachers, neighbors who could make life difficult if you weren’t thinking correctly.  Are we being programmed for a future that looks more like 1984 or Brave New World?  Pray for our country and leaders.  Be involved and informed.

“I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid before me.”-Psalm 119:30

(OneNewsNow) Whether it comes from woke school administrators or street criminals, anti-Asian animus is anti-Asian animus – and to treat it differently based solely on the identity of the offender is to make obvious that you simply don’t care about anti-Asian animus.

This week, a white man shot to death eight people in Atlanta-area spas, six of them Asian American. According to Atlanta police, the man said he was targeting brothels and blamed the women for his alleged sex addiction. The gunman stated that he had visited two of the spas before and had planned to drive to Florida and target the pornography industry. So far, there is no evidence that the shooter was motivated by anti-Asian animus, making hate-crime charges unlikely at this point.  (Read More)

(PJ Media) Homeschooling rates increased significantly in the fall of 2020, according to a Household Pulse Survey from the Census Bureau. Previous estimates had shown that parents had selected this option at increasing rates between 1999 and 2012, when homeschooling plateaued and remained steady at about 3.3% of children. The pandemic, school closures nationwide, and some parents seeing the racialized and sexualized classroom curricula have changed this statistic significantly.

According to the Census Bureau:

In the first week (April 23-May 5) of Phase 1 of the Household Pulse Survey, about 5.4% of U.S. households with school-aged children reported homeschooling .

By fall, 11.1% of households with school-age children reported homeschooling (Sept. 30-Oct. 12). A clarification was added to the school enrollment question to make sure households were reporting true homeschooling rather than virtual learning through a public or private school.  (Read More)

(Faith & Freedom) Facebook is building an Instagram for kids under the age of 13.

In an internal memo, not intended for the public, executives at Instagram—which is owned by Facebook, said last week: “We have identified youth work as a priority for Instagram and have added it to our H1 priority list.”

In 2017 Facebook launched Messenger Kids, a product aimed at children 6 to 12 years of age who, supposedly, had permission from their parents.

However, in 2019 it was discovered that a design flaw allowed the kids to sidestep their parents and the protection through group chats with unapproved strangers. Thousands of kids exploited that flaw and were chatting with people who were completely unknown to the parents.  (Read More)

(Alliance Defending Freedom) What if your daughter came home from school and told you that she had to change next to a boy in the locker room before gym class? What if your son’s teacher started referring to him with a female name and pronouns at school—and no one notified you? What if your kindergartener came home from school crying because she was afraid she could “turn into” a boy?

Would you be alarmed? Angry? Confused? I would be feeling all of the above and more.

But, as absurd as these examples sound, they’ve actually happened.

And if a legislative priority of the Biden administration becomes law, these occurrences could become a lot more common.  (Read More)

(Education News & Science Today) My colleague David Klinghoffer has a superb post on a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by Joshua Swamidass, a computational biologist who believes that colleges and universities that include “creation science” (undefined) in their curriculum should be blacklisted by the educational and scientific community and potentially lose their accreditation. He argues that only science courses that adhere to “national norms” (also undefined) should count for credit toward science degrees. It’s clear from the context that one workable definition of national norms is “what Darwinists believe.”

Presumably, evolutionary psychology, multiverse theory, materialist neuroscience, transgender pediatrics, and the emerging rivulets of woke science and woke mathematics could nestle on the “national norms” pedestal, whether Swamidass wants them to or not.  (Read More)

(The Federalist) In October 2020, I wrote an opinion article for The Federalist entitled “More Va. Public Schools Using Kids As Guinea Pigs For Critical Race Theory.” As a parent in Loudoun County, Va., I had become extremely concerned that Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) is being hijacked by rabid radicals eager to spend taxpayer money to indoctrinate teachers and students with critical race theory concepts.

Among the many issues I highlighted included: (1) more than $400,000 in taxpayer money spent on “equity consultants”; (2) an unconstitutional speech code preventing school staff from speaking negatively — both at school and in private — about LCPS’s “action-oriented equity practices”; and (3) unconstitutional discrimination in paying for an “equity” focus group, where participants were chosen based solely on race.  (Read More)

By Bob Shillingstad

That title “revival or bust” is a term from a Christian commentator that I listen to whenever he gets to a new level of frustration. Most of us look at this crazy world with the same conclusion and yet we have to realize we serve a sovereign God and with Him we are over-comers and we should not fear.  In the next few weeks we will observe Passover which begins this year on March 27th and Resurrection Sunday on April 4th.  Passover reminds us of God’s power to free the Jews from bondage in miraculous ways and in the process led them to the promised land.  Christ’s death on the cross reminds us that we were saved from the bondage of sin and now have the promise the eternal life in Christ.

“Fear not” is mentioned in the Bible more than 365 times and “fear” in general is mentioned over a 1,000 times.  There is the fear of the Lord, a reverential awe, a reverence for His power and glory, but also respect for His wrath and anger (Psalm 111:10). This is a beneficial fear.  The second type of fear is not beneficial at all, this is the “spirit of fear” mentioned in 2 Timothy 1:7.  A spirit of fearfulness and timidity does not come from God and when it overcomes us we need to trust in and love God completely (Isaiah 41:10). Sadly we see people engulfed in fear and do not look back at God’s faithfulness. That is what Passover and the Resurrection is all about.  God asks us to “remember” hundreds of times in the Bible. Remember persons, His covenant, answering prayer and in many other ways.

Remember the miracles He has done to establish our own country.  The “awakening” or revival in the early 1700’s that was led by pastors in the pulpits and evangelists like George Whitfield.  Without this revival from the Lord we would not have had a revolution and the colonies united and a Constitution based on the Bible.  Worst, we could have ended up like the French Revolution which took place shortly after ours and it ended up denying God and His truth.  The end results were bloodshed, more than 70,000 dead at the guillotine, churches destroyed and we still see the results of that today.

We wonder if a revival could reach people who apparently have rejected God and seem to glorify a sinful lifestyle instead?  The second “great awakening” took place about 75 years after the first in the early 1800’s west of the Appalachian mountains – the “frontier” of that time. It had been settled by Scotch-Irish with little church background, murderers and thieves escaping the law in the home state and settling out of reach of the courts in the frontier.  Circuit riders preaching the gospel at camp meetings outdoors saw miraculous conversions by the hundreds. People fell over where they were as the gospel was preached, only to get up completely changed. The accounts from preachers are exciting to read and today we call this area of Kentucky, Tennessee and the Ohio valley the “Bible Belt” today.

The “hippie” movement of the late ’60’s and 70’s is another example.  “Drugs, sex and rock and roll” was their mantra.  Free love, LSD, rejecting of authority were their guiding principles of life.  What happened?  The “Jesus movement” swept over much of the country coming out of California and thousands were saved.  This was the beginning of the Calvary denomination led by Chuck Smith.

There are so many more revivals and stories of what God has done in our country there just isn’t room here to fit it all in.  Don’t live in fear, we serve an awesome, all powerful God.  Remember what He has done. In order to turn things around spiritually, fiscally and morally, only a true revival would do- a revival that would need to take place nationally, internationally and personally.  We are living in the “times of the signs” mentioned in scripture but that makes it more imperative that we preach the word and reach the unsaved. Even as we seem to be a Romans Chapter One culture we have to remember that there are a lot of lost people but none that are irredeemable.

Pray for our country and its leaders, be involved in local government and the issues. Encourage your pastor and don’t be shy about sharing the good news of Christ yourself. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”  -2 Chronicles 7:14

(The Federalist) When fascism comes to America, it will not be at the point of a gun.

It won’t be installed by CPAC’s favorite 2024 candidate, ridiculous QAnon conspirators, or the destitute MAGA supporters who trashed the U.S. Capitol on January 6. When authoritarianism comes, it will not accompany white supremacists, conspiracy theorists with horned and furry hats, or a frustrated working-class that has seen its dreams evaporate with its jobs.

New authoritarianism will come not through armed insurrection, but as a cure, in a bottle of candy-flavored medicine. It is the noble motive that drugs us, puts us to sleep, while government power over our lives grows.  (Read More)

(PJ Media) Next week, the California Department of Education will vote on a new ethnic studies curriculum that seeks to root out “white supremacy,” “colonization,” and the various evils of American culture. The curriculum aims to reverse Christianity’s alleged “theocide” against Native American gods by leading students in a chant to various indigenous deities, including the Aztec god of human sacrifice. This horrific chant arguably violates the First Amendment, but it also exposes the true ugliness of “woke” supremacy.

The Discovery Institute’s Christopher Rufo exposed the new curriculum in City Journal and published the full documents on his blog.

R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, the original co-chair of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, developed much of the curriculum’s material on early American history. The curriculum cites Cuauhtin’s book Rethinking Ethnic Studies, in which he argues that the United States was founded on “Eurocentric, white supremacist (racist, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous), capitalist (classist), patriarchal (sexist and misogynistic), heteropatriarchal (homophobic), and anthropocentric paradigm brought from Europe.”  (Read More)

(Idaho Freedom Foundation) For years, the University of Idaho has been proudly building itself into a social justice institution. Now that the Idaho Legislature has begun to question public funding for this harmful ideology, the University of Idaho hides as if it were ashamed of its handiwork.

President Scott Green claims the university is “viewpoint neutral” and denies that it has any agenda, social justice or otherwise. No one can believe such denials. UI has a 24-page strategic plan filled with diversity objectives and inclusion goals. A Black Lives Matters-approved reading list has been on its website for months. No similar plan for teaching Western civilization or free market economics can be found. How “neutral” is that?  (Read More)

(Mass Resistance) Few of us understand how truly evil and tyrannical public officials can become in their efforts to appease the LGBT movement’s unbridled obsession with pushing their agenda on children. Unfortunately, most people don’t contemplate that previously unimaginable excesses by the state (as writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned us) are never too far away.

The government of Canada has decided that if a parent does not cooperate with his minor child’s decision to have a sex-change operation, he will face criminal punishment – including prison time.  (Read More)

(LifeNews) I am pro-life, because I believe that human life begins at conception; that all people are of immeasurable value in the eyes of God; and because the right to life is fundamental and unalienable: without the right to life there can be no other rights.

At the moment of conception, a unique and distinct human being is created in her mother’s womb. She has unique DNA from her mother; her hair color, eye color, and many personality traits are determined. A lot of people believe that life begins somewhere in between conception and birth, but they are just confusing themselves with terms like “fetus” and “zygote.” These terms are no different than toddler or teenager; they refer to stages of human development. Toddlers possess the same dignity as teenagers just as fetuses and zygotes possess the same dignity as any other human.  (Read More)

(Gem State Patriot News) As we enter an era of “Cancel Culture“, we see nothing new, only something renewed. When Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany wanted to wage war on England and the rest of the world, he began his march to World War One with a “cancel culture” movement. It was the systematic reconstruction of history and even moral principles of the people. He managed, through his staff, to change the mindset of the people to a point where they were ready to instigate the single most deadly war in the Earth’s history … World War One.

Not having learned from the first experience, Adolf Hitler managed a ‘cancel culture‘ even more extreme than that of the previous dictatorship under the Kaiser. His campaign was swift, enhanced by newer technologies and techniques than those enjoyed by the previous despot. Hitler’s ‘cancel culture‘ rewrote history and changed the very educational institutions from Kindergarten through University level.  (Read More)

(Townhall) Former Justice Department official, consultant and concerned parent Ian Prior recently wrote a lengthy op-ed in The Federalist criticizing critical race theory (CRT) being promoted or taught in Virginia’s taxpayer-funded schools.

Now, his leftist neighbors, who have advocated for illegal behavior like hacking and destroying websites opposed to CRT, are putting him on a list.

A woman named Jen Morse recently posted to the “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County” Facebook page, which is kept private, and urged 636 members to do the following…  (Read More)

(Daily Signal) Critical race theory is a popular left-wing ideology that purports to explain the societal inequalities that prevent racial and ethnic minority groups from achieving social and economic success. While it presents itself as fighting prejudice, a closer look reveals that it is the driving force behind much of today’s left-wing anti-Semitism.

The clearest example of this occurred last year at a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington, D.C. There were chants of “Israel, we know you murder children, too,” and a Harvard student read a poem that called Israel “puppet master of continents,” invoking the stereotype of evil Jews manipulating global politics.

The language used cannot be attributed to the folly of youth, as these stereotypes have also made their way into the halls of Congress.  (Read More)

(The Federalist) Amid Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s sexual harassment allegations, and the scandal over his administration hiding the disgustingly high number of nursing home and group home deaths, few are talking about the elephant in the room. The big scandal isn’t that Cuomo is a creep, because everyone knew that already. The scandal isn’t even that Cuomo lied about nursing home deaths.

The real scandal is what lay behind the high nursing home deaths in New York and a handful of other states led by leftist governors such as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota’s Tim Walz, and Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf. It is the story of how grandpa and grandma got tossed aside for money.  (Read More)