You need to spend the two minutes it takes to watch this.
This will bring the color out of the White House?
The administration will have to step back and try to find a way out of this one?
OBAMA SURPRISED
If this doesn’t say it, nothing will. Amazing NRA Support from where you’d least expect it.
Obama did not see this coming so please pass it on quickly as it will most likely be pulled and deleted.
Black conservative leaders discuss how the NRA was created to protect freed slaves
WATCH: Hijab-Wearing Woman Visits Brussels Memorial Site, What She Does Next On Live TV Is Jaw-Dropping
“Well my friends, that’s not going to happen.”
A woman wearing a hijab walked through the Brussels memorial site, where she proceeded to pick up an Israeli flag among the items left and rip it up. The unidentified woman also took a Palestinian flag from the memorial and held unto it.
A French-language station captured the incident, though none of the new commentators made mention of it.
The Daily Mail reports, “During the clip, which is just over one minute long, a woman wearing a hijab, a brown coat and a scarf picks up a Palestinian flag from the candle-lit vigil and takes it over to an Israeli flag.
“She bends down to pick up the blue and white Israeli flag and begins ripping it up, before placing the pieces beneath another flag, which looks as though it could be the symbol of Georgia,” according to the news outlet.
What is not clear from the footage is whether the woman replaces the torn up Israeli flag with the Palestinian one in her hand. No one lingering near the memorial appears to approach the woman regarding her unusual, provocative actions.
“In all these cases, the terrorists have no resolvable grievances,” Netanyhau continued. “It’s not as though we could offer them Brussels or Istanbul or California or even the West Bank. That won’t satisfy their grievances, because what they seek is our utter destruction and their total domination.
“Their basic demand is that we should simply disappear. Well my friends, that’s not going to happen,” he promised. “The only way to defeat these terrorists is to join together and fight them together. That’s how we’ll defeat terrorism – with political unity and with moral clarity. I think we have that in abundance.”
D’Souza: New Hillary Movie Could Get Him ‘Life in Prison’
As far fetched as it might sound, following the release of his film “2016: Obama’s America,” D’Souza ended up spending eight months in federal confinement for violating a campaign finance law.
D’Souza spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and said:
“If that film got me eight months in the slammer, this new movie is going to earn me life in prison. It’s time to take the gloves off.”
D’Souza’s new film takes on the Democratic party. It exposes what most Republicans already know, but most Democrats don’t want to know: that the Democratic party is the party that fought to keep slavery legal, gave rise to Jim Crow and groups like the KKK.
D’Souza told CPAC that the Democrats try to sell the notion that their party is the party of civil rights, in spite of its truly sordid past that proves just the opposite. But it is the Democratic party’s insistence on blaming America as a whole while diverting attention away from themselves that has the filmmaker pushing back:
“The reality is America didn’t do it, the Democrats did. Now, another story from the Democrats is they changed, that somehow recently they became enlightened and they became the good guys and the bad guys all became the Republicans. This is the story of the so-called switch. But the truth of it is there never was a switch. The Democrats now are the same as they always were.
This concept of “you work, I eat” is still the center of the politics of the Democratic Party. They were playing plantation politics back then and they are playing plantation politics right now.”
You’ll be able to catch the movie in theaters the week of the Democratic Party convention.
Here is the trailer for D’Souza’s film, “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.”
Obama says difference between communism, capitalism doesn’t matter
The president’s assertion came in response to a question about whether public or private funding creates more efficient organizations.
“So often in the past there has been a division between left and right, between capitalists and communists or socialists, and especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate,” Obama said.
“Those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don’t have to worry about whether it really fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory. You should just decide what works,” he added.
Obama went on to praise the education and healthcare systems under Cuba’s longtime communist governance.
Though, he conceded, Havana still “looks like it did in the 1950s” because of its communist economy.
“To president Castro, I said you’ve made great progress in educating young people [Cuban dictators indoctrinate its youth]. Every child in Cuba gets a basic education. Medical care, the life expectancy of Cubans is equivalent to the United States despite it being a very poor country because they have access to health care. That’s a huge achievement,” he said. “They should be congratulated. But you drive around Havana and you see the economy is not working. It looks like it did in the 1950s.”
Jesus Lives
Jesus Lives
Socrates may have no writings on his own, but Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes — all of whom we know existed — wrote about Socrates. We derive knowledge of Socrates from those who did know him and wrote about him. The same is true of Jesus.
Though modern scholarship has spent a good bit of time trying to disprove Biblical writings — again, if you start from the premise that they are frauds, guess what you’ll probably conclude — we do largely know that Matthew was written by the Apostle Matthew, Mark written based on testimony from Peter, Luke written by a doctor who interviewed eyewitnesses and investigated their claims, and John by the Apostle John. Three of the four were based on eye witnesses and the fourth was based on interviews with eye witnesses by one who later became an eye witness to the works of the Apostles. Additionally, the separate books of Peter, John, James, and Jude were written by eye witnesses.
It goes beyond those books though. We know that a man named Irenaeus existed. He was born in 130 AD in Turkey and died in 202 AD in France. We have writings from Irenaeus and we have writings of others documenting his existence. We know from Irenaeus that he studied under another man named Polycarp.
We know Polycarp existed. We have writings from Polycarp and we have writings about Polycarp. He was born around 69 AD and was martyred in 155 AD. From the writings of others about Polycarp and from Polycarp himself we learned that he, along with a man named Ignatius, studied under an older man named John.
Ignatius, who wrote and was written about, with Polycarp, were two of the early second generation leaders of the church. Ignatius was born some time around 35 AD and was martyred by being fed to wild beasts around 107 AD. Ignatius and Polycarp both claim that they studied under a man named John who they both identified as the Apostle John. They attribute the Gospel of John to him and much of what they learned about Christ to his eye witness.
There was also a man named Clement who existed. We know he existed because of his writings and the writings of others. Paul referenced Clement in Philippians 4:3.
Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.
Clement, through his writings and the writings of others, came into contact with Peter, Paul, and possibly John. Clement, not an eye witness to Christ, was an eye witness to these other men.
Irenaeus claimed Polycarp and Ignatius studied under the Apostle John. Polycarp and Ignatius made the same claim, treating John as an eye witness to Christ. Clement, an eye witness to Peter and Paul for sure, documented their existence and their claims to be eye witnesses to Christ.
Peter, John, Matthew, James and Jude all wrote books of the Bible claiming to be eye witnesses to both Jesus and the events of his life. Then there is Paul, who we know persecuted the early church, then claimed a supernatural physical visit from Christ after his death. The other church leaders who he had sought to kill took him into the church and affirmed his ministry. But we do not even have to get to Paul to establish this — either Jesus existed or a great many people over a century collaborated in an elaborate conspiracy to create him.
To claim Jesus did not exist, we must also declare a bunch of other people — who we know existed by their own writings and the writings of others — did not exist.
So that all leads to the next question:
If Jesus existed, why did so many claim him to be God?
Here, I have to give a good bit of credit to Pastor Mark Driscoll and his sermon on James. Driscoll is getting a lot of criticism these days over plagiarism allegations. I am reading the book in question and will address that at some point. But for now, just know that Driscoll’s sermon is Biblically based and Biblically sound. Also, I do like Driscoll, would very much like to meet him, and think he is worth reading. I’ll add reservations and caveats about his book at a later date. Suffice it to say, I do not think the controversy disqualifying.
So, to get to Jesus’s claims about himself and others’ claims about him, we first need to broach an issue. The Bible claims he had brothers. At the Council of Constantinople in 553 AD, the early church declared that Mary was “ever virgin.” Many Christians believe this. It is not just a Catholic belief. Early Protestant leaders like Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Zwingli, and others agreed. They interpreted the references to Jesus’s “brothers and sisters” as either (1) Joseph’s children from a prior marriage or (2) his closest cousins in an extended family.
Going into this, understand I think Jesus’s brothers and sisters were his half-brothers and sisters, all younger than him, from the marriage between Mary and Joseph. But for purposes here, we should all agree that, at least, his “brothers and sisters” were his closest family who knew him best — whether half siblings or closest cousins. There are a number of passages that reference them in the New Testament and the sense of the phrasing is that they were his closest relatives.
Mark 6:1-6 describes the family thusly:
He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, ‘Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?’
Matthew 13:53–57, in accordance, reads:
And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there, and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?”
Jesus had four brothers: James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (later called Jude). He had at least two sisters. The tradition at the time was the oldest son typically received the grandfather’s name. We know that Joseph’s father’s name was Jacob. Matthew 1:16 tells us, “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.”
James is the Greek derivative for Jacob. We can conclude that James was either Joseph’s oldest natural born son or the oldest son of Joseph’s own brother. If the second son was indeed Joseph’s son, it makes sense the first son is named for the grandfather and the second son for the father himself.
This also explains why there are so many Jacobs, James, and Judases in the Bible. Jacob, in particular, was very popular given Genesis.
Many people may not realize that, based on the eye witness accounts of Jesus’s friends, Jesus’s family thought he was a nutter. So much for the “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” framing. His family was all in for lunatic. See Mark 3:21, 31–35:
“And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind.’”
“. . . And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.’ And he answered them, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.’”
Today, as Mark Driscoll and others have noted, we would call this an intervention. Jesus’s “mother and his brothers came” trying “to seize him” because they thought he was a nutter claiming to be God. The most extraordinary thing about this is that Jesus’s own mother was involved. Luke 1 tells us the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.”
Mary clearly knew he was special and from the Lord. John 2:1-5 — an eye witness account — tells us
On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Despite what she had experienced and knew, Mary too went with Jesus’s brothers to seize him and carry him home. Note that Mary stuck with Jesus the whole way through his life, unlike his brothers and sisters — no doubt coming to a richer and richer understanding of her son over time.
John tells us Jesus’s brothers wanted him gone. John 7:2-5 notes
Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, ‘Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.’ For not even his brothers believed in him.
This is Jesus’s brothers confronting him telling him that if he really thinks he is a big deal — if he really thinks he is God — he needs to go to the big city and show everyone. He needs to tell the world, which he can’t do in a small town. They want him gone, with his friends, and given the implications of what they’re telling him to do, they may very well think he is going to get himself killed.
The brothers who had tried to stage an intervention had given up and wanted their brother gone. And Jesus goes. He winds up being arrested, tried, tortured, and crucified. The most striking thing here is that his brothers did not even show up at the execution. His mother was there. The mother, who with the brothers, had tried to save Jesus from himself — she was there. But the brothers were not.
From the account in Matthew 27:55,56
There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.
From Mark 15:40,41:
There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.
From Luke 23:49:
And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.
Lastly, from John 19:25-27:
but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
From John we learn that Jesus, from the cross and about to die, told John that he had to look after Mary. We learn that “from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” Why? The brothers who had tried to stage an intervention would not show up at the execution. Mary was there with no immediate family. John, the Apostle, had to take her into “his own home.”
And Jesus died.
If that were all there were, lunatic he would be. The family would have been right. They tried to intervene to no avail. The brothers sent Jesus packing. He got himself arrested, tried, and killed. They wouldn’t even show up as he hung on the cross dying. Or at least we have a record of who was there and not one of those eye witness accounts documents his brothers being there. Jesus’s best friend is commanded to take care of Jesus’s mother as if they were son and mother.
That would be the end of it, except something extraordinary happened.
From Acts 1:14 we learn that “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.”
It is clear from the text that these are not the Apostles. These are James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude — these are the family members who had tried to seize him, urged him to leave, and would not show up at his death. They were in the early church. So what happened? Seriously? These people thought he was crazy. They, his family, knew him best. Were he some sinner or a jerk they would not make up the early church after he, the lunatic jerk, had died. But there they were.
Look at James alone. James became a leader in the early church. Paul called him a pillar. Paul traveled to Jerusalem after his conversion to meet with the Apostles and with James. This is James the brother of Jesus, not James the Apostle. James the brother of Jesus, called James the Just, came to be referred to as “camel knees” because he was on his knees praying so much.
James the brother who had rejected Christ in life became a pillar of the early church vested with authority.
Paul, writing to the Galatians documents
“When they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles.” (Galatians 2:7–9)
From Acts 15:12-21:
And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, ‘Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written,
“After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.”
Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.’
Paul sought out James and Peter — Paul, the guy Jesus himself had told to go preach to the Gentiles, went to find Jesus’s brother who had rejected Jesus in life. He didn’t just seek him out, we learn from Paul and others that James had, in fact, become a well known and established authority figure in the early church. He considered himself a servant of Jesus, not his brother — a servant to a living God who had been crucified.
In 62 AD, early church history notes that the local Jews of Jerusalem went to James. They respected him. They told him they wanted him to tell all of Jesus’s followers that, being Jesus’s brother, he could testify Jesus was not God. Made sense, didn’t it? Here’s the guy who escorted Jesus out of town and wouldn’t show up to the funeral because his brother was an embarrassing nutter. Also, here is a guy, being Jesus’s brother, who could claim part of Jesus’s legacy and become the icon himself.
But by 62 AD, James was so invested in the idea that Jesus was the Risen Lord he told the Jews the crowd was right. Jesus was Lord. Enraged, the Jews carried him to the top of the temple and threw him off. When he did not die, they stoned him and beat him with clubs until he died.
Then, the early church tells us, Jesus’s brother Simon took James’s place.
Along the way, Jesus’s brother Jude also became a church leader. He too eventually was killed by the Roman state in a purge of Christians. Accounts are mixed as to whether it was his children or grandchildren, but it appears his grandchildren were called before the Emperor. They testified that that their relative Jesus had been talking about a return at the last day, not an imminent take over of the Empire — that he was King in Heaven. They were spared, became leaders within the church themselves, and were executed by a later Emperor.
Jesus’s family, who had rejected him in life, were willing to die proclaiming he had risen. Something had to have happened. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that Jesus “appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.” (1 Corinthians 15:5-7)
It is a silly thing to say that Jesus did not exist. There is an ample historic record to show, through eye witnesses, that Jesus and Socrates both existed. Many atheists concede Jesus existed, but, unlike with Socrates, they say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
One of Christ’s friends betrayed him, then committed suicide.
Eleven of the twelve who followed Jesus were willing to go to the ends of the earth to proclaim him God.
Ten of the twelve met terrible deaths because they would not recant that Jesus was God. The tenth, John, lived in exile. His students and others documented the numerous attempts to kill John.
Jesus’s brothers, who rejected him in life, embraced him as a risen, living God after his death. They too were willing to be put to death for refusing to recant after Christ’s crucifixion what they refused to believe when he walked and talked with them.
Others came claiming to be the messiah. Their claims did not last. The man named Jesus not only must have been a spectacularly charismatic person, who surrounded himself with spectacularly charismatic people — all of whom were willing to be tortured and killed — because Jesus and these men were able to recruit into faith a lot of others who, over two thousand years, grew into the world’s largest religion. Many of them were persecuted, tortured, and killed in horribly gruesome ways. Still they persisted in the faith.
So either these men were charismatic liars so invested in their lies they were willing to be tortured and killed or they were telling the truth.
Those who do not want to believe will not believe. As for the rest of us — Christ’s own family rejected him as a lunatic then, after his torture and crucifixion, picked up the cross claiming Christ had risen. And they too, the brothers who rejected him in life, were willing to die proclaiming him risen.
That’s pretty extraordinary to me.
Illinois Rising Dan Proft discusses 2016 Election with John Tillman
On this edition of “Illinois Rising”, Dan Proft and John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, discuss Chicago’s recent ban on smokeless tobacco at baseball games, the Governors budget strategy, why big city school systems are going broke and the Presidential race – why is Kasich still in?
Extreme Islamic Terrorism and Global Response
Extreme Islamic Terrorism and Global Response
Vassilios Damiras
Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation – GSFC CEO/Chairman
In Greece, SYRIZA is a criminal/terrorist organization same way as Golden Dawn. New Democracy and the rest political parties of the corrupt democratic arch have no plans or clue how to defeat ISIS or to design an assertive foreign policy based on NATO and American strategic principles. In addition, Greek Libertarians or now they have adopted a new name Europeanists do not want to upset Islamic extremists, because they do not support state power even when terrorism is a major threat. Moreover, in Greece, retired armed forces officers aimlessly orbiting the coffee shops waiting to be picked up but corrupt politicians and become so-called advisers. Then, they promote useless and weak patriotism. Some they write books that profess how patriotic were. Now, they never mentioned that they were the puppets of the socialists and other corrupt politicians. Of course, most of them I can say close all of them during the socialist utopia entered the military academies due to loyalty to Papandreou. Papandreou was dreaming of doing his own Republican Guard units. The Islamists use and will use Greece to attack European and American targets. Also, do not forget Adonis Georgiadis, the vice chair of New Democracy. That guy speaks like the bunny of the Duracell batteries commercial. When you say to him the problems of the New Democracy, his reply is, to vote for SYRIZA. The Greek diaspora is clueless to promote the Greek national interests. The main thing for the Greek diaspora is to eat gyros and promote a weird style of Hellenism.
The mistake was that the USA relaxed its political influence over Greece, Turkey, and Europe. Of course, President Barack Hussein Obama is a left-wing believer and Donald Trump is a populist that speaks to himself regarding defense and foreign policy. The supporters of Trump are angry and want an isolated America. Thus, America foreign policy is weak and confused. If the USA does not lead in global affairs extreme Islamic terrorism and the mafia states Russia and China will prevail. The next American president needs to execute a strong realistic foreign and defense policy. The American foreign policy needs to reaffirm its influence in Europe and the Middle East. Only then the world has a chance for a brighter and safer future.
Newt's thoughts on Brussels
Thoughts on Brussels
Originally published at the Washington Times
Hours after the horrific terror attacks in Brussels on Tuesday, a correspondent on one of the American cable networks remarked that ordinary Belgians were predicting grimly that security would be very tight that day–and that the next day, it would return to the same casual mediocrity that had failed to stop the attack in the first place.
The Belgians were speaking from experience–from an awful familiarity with how their security services respond to the terror threats that are so frequent in European cities.
But they might just as well have been describing the reaction of Western civilization itself–its response to a virulent ideology that is determined to destroy it by any means necessary.
Again and again, we are attacked by people who have warned us of exactly what they intend to do, who have explained exactly what motivates them, and who have proved beyond doubt that they are sincere. Again and again, we respond to the violence with shock, psychoanalysis, and a brief surge of force before going back to life–and business, and security–as usual.
That’s what happened after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and other targets in France last winter. It’s what happened after the shootings on Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris last summer. And what happened after the stabbings at the University of California at Merced last fall. And after the Paris attacks the same month. And after the San Bernardino attack a few weeks later.
When will the Western world decide to be serious about confronting this threat? After there is a biological or chemical attack in one of these cities–or worse?
Tuesday’s events in Belgium came days after the police arrested Salah Abdeslam, the final surviving terrorist behind the most recent Paris attacks. He was residing in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels. He had been there, and eluded capture, for more than four months.
When Abdeslam was arrested, the neighborhood rioted. The people threw garbage and bottles at the police. Belgian media reported that the community had known the fugitive was hiding there the whole time.
How can we have neighborhoods in European cities that shelter terrorists and then riot when we catch someone responsible for the murder of 130 innocent people (and the injury of hundreds more)?
The challenge, of course, is much greater than a single neighborhood. Claude Moniquet, a former French intelligence officer, told CBS News that he could “agree to say that Molenbeek is a hotbed of terrorism if we agree at the same time to say that is not the only hotbed of terrorism in Europe.”
“You could find the same in London,” he continued. “You could find the same in the north of France.”
These are countries whose residents travel freely throughout western Europe and even to the United States and Canada, with little or no scrutiny.
In other words, the Brussels attacks should be a reminder that meeting the threat is going to require real changes and force us to reassess decades of assumptions. Swapping out our Facebook profile pictures and lightening up landmarks in solidarity will not be enough to address the danger we have allowed to grow up within Western countries.
Which brings us to the President’s trip to Cuba this week. President Obama has long aimed to sew closer ties with the Cuban regime, inspired by an idealistic internationalism that has clashed with the reality of events throughout his presidency–up through and including the attacks today.
As part of his effort to woo the Cuban dictatorship and signal his righteousness to the nations of the world, the President has been determined to close our terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
Yet here too he has been frustrated by reality. It seems no other members of the “international community” will agree to take their fair share of the terrorists. Perhaps it’s because, whether in Europe or the Middle East or South Asia, they are all too familiar with the type.
For the President, the juxtaposition of the Brussels attack with his tour of our hemisphere’s last communist dictatorship must have been at least a little chilling. Let’s hope it produces an epiphany in this final year of his presidency: to preserve the delicate balance between freedom and security that the Western democracies have uniquely maintained, we will certainly need Guantanamo, or places like it.
Your Friend,
Newt
The case came after Jaime Caetano, a homeless woman with an abusive ex-boyfriend, was arrested for defending herself from the abuser with a stun gun after police failed to keep him away pursuant to the multiple restraining orders she had filed against the man. Prosecutors charged that Caetano had broken the law by defending herself with the stun gun because the devices were illegal under Massachusetts law and not protected by the 2nd Amendment.
The Supreme Court cited Heller earlier this week as it unanimously overturned a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in the case which maintained that stun guns are not protected as self-defense weapons under the 2nd Amendment because they “were not in common use” when the Bill of Rights was composed.
That, as you know, is also a common refrain from anti-2ndAmendment Americans who don’t believe law abiding citizens should have access to semi-automatic firearms and high capacity magazines.
Here’s what the Supreme Court had to say about the lower court decision:
The Court has held that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” District of Columbia v. Heller… and that this “Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States,” McDonald v. Chicago… In this case, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massachusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining “whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected by the Second Amendment.”
In Heller, the Supreme Court cemented the right of the individual to keep firearms in the home for self-defense without interference from government regulatory schemes aimed at making gun ownership impossible.
The later McDonald case cleared up some confusion left after the Heller ruling, with the Supreme Court deciding that state and local governments must adhere to the same 2nd Amendment standards as the federal government.
The Supreme Court declined to take on the case at the federal level, instead sending it back to the lower court demanding “further proceedings not inconsistent” with the SCOTUS opinion.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas chided the Massachusetts court and said if the courts aren’t willing to protect Americans’ self-defense rights, no one will.
“If the fundamental right of self-defense does not protect Caetano, then the safety of all Americans is left to the mercy of state authorities who may be more concerned about disarming the people than about keeping them safe,” they noted.
Gun rights advocates applauded the Supreme Court’s position on the stun gun issue in Massachusetts.
Alan Gottlieb, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said in a statement. “Just because something didn’t exist at the time the Constitution was ratified doesn’t mean it isn’t protected. By that same reasoning, no modern newspaper, online publication, or broadcast media would be protected by the First Amendment in the Bay State, and we all know that’s nonsense.”
Still, the Supreme Court’s decision to send the stun gun case back to the Massachusetts court rather than clearing up what lower courts continue to get wrong about its rulings in cases like Heller andMcDonald leaves plenty of room for uncertainty about how it may handle future 2nd Amendment challenges.
Homer District 33C School Board Meeting March 22, 2016
Summary of
Homer School Board
Barb Wilson, President Angela Adolf, Vice President Amy Blank, Secretary
Ed Campins, Member Elizabeth Hitzeman, Member Debra Martin, Member
Russ Petrizzo, Member
The Board of Education approved a 1.0 FTE position recommendation and job description for Support Programs Coordinator.
The Board of Education approved a job description for Teacher – Transi- tional Bilingual Education.
The Board of Education approved a 2.5 FTE position recommendation and job description for Teacher – Transitional Program of Instruction.
The Board of Education approved a job descr iption for Record Secretary to the Board of Education.
Michael Portwood, Director of Human Resources, presented an update on staffing, including teacher renewals, retirements and resignations. Recommend- ed for tenure are: William Keasler, Shannon Schroeder, Renee Schwab, Gina Suggs, Jennifer Woods and Jason Zenawick. Retiring at the end of the 2015-16 school year are: Janice Burke, Nancy Grivas, Catherine Kuzel, Cheryl Popek, Karen DeFilippis, Dorene Jonelis, Linda Politano and Mary Beth Rebollar. To- gether, the eight retirees have 206 years of experience between them.
Nora Skentzos, Director of Special Services, presented an over view of the district’s Behavior Support Services and indicated the district is seeing an in- crease in the number of students being diagnosed with anxiety, depression and other mental health needs. She recommended the district reallocate one of its seven social worker positions and hire a Behavior Support Specialist to meet the student needs. The reallocation would leave one social worker at each school. The recommendation was approved by the board.
The Board of Education approved notices of retirement from Vanda Jokubauskas, Celeste Rupsis, Donna Gritzman and Rebecca Worley.
The Board of Education adopted a r solution to transfer $1,000,000 from the working cash fund to operations and maintenance fund.
The Board of Education adopted a resolution to transfer $6,000,000 from the working cash fund to the educational fund.
The Board of Education approved a suppor t staff collective bar gaining agreement for wages, benefits and other terms and conditions of employment, effective 2015-16 through 2016-17.
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