Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Ebola Czar Cartoon


City threatens to arrest ministers who refuse to perform same-sex weddings


Two Christian ministers who own an Idaho wedding chapel were told they had to either perform same-sex weddings or face jail time and up to a $1,000 fine, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court.
Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Donald and Evelyn Knapp, ordained ministers who own the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel in Coeur d’Alene.
“Right now they are at risk of being prosecuted,” their ADF attorney, Jeremy Tedesco, told me. “The threat of enforcement is more than just credible.”
“The Knapps are in fear that if they exercise their First Amendment rights they will be cited, prosecuted and sent to jail.”- Alliance Defending Freedom attorney, Jeremy Tedesco
According to the lawsuit, the wedding chapel is registered with the state as a “religious corporation” limited to performing “one-man-one-woman marriages as defined by the Holy Bible.”
But the chapel is also registered as a for-profit business – not as a church or place of worship – and city officials said that means the owners must comply with a local nondiscrimination ordinance.
That ordinance, passed last year, prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, and it applies to housing, employment and public accommodation.
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City Attorney Warren Wilson told The Spokesman-Review in May that the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel likely would be required to follow the ordinance.
“I would think that the Hitching Post would probably be considered a place of public accommodation that would be subject to the ordinance,” he said.
He also told television station KXLY that any wedding chapel that turns away a gay couple would in theory be violating the law, “and you’re looking at a potential misdemeanor citation.” 
Wilson confirmed to Knapp my worst fear -- that even ordained ministers would be required to perform same-sex weddings.
“Wilson also responded that Mr. Knapp was not exempt from the ordinance because the Hitching Post was a business and not a church,” the lawsuit states.
And if he refused to perform the ceremonies, Wilson reportedly told the minister that he could be fined up to $1,000 and sentenced to up to 180 days in jail.
Now all of that was a moot point because, until last week, gay marriage was not legal in Idaho.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an order on May 13 allowing same-sex marriages to commence in Idaho on Oct. 15. Two days later, the folks at the Hitching Post received a telephone call.
A man had called to inquire about a same-sex wedding ceremony. The Hitching Post declined, putting it in violation of the law.
City officials did not respond to my requests for an interview, nor did they respond to requests from local news outlets.
“The government should not force ordained ministers to act contrary to their faith under threat of jail time and criminal fines,” Tedesco said.
“The city is on seriously flawed legal ground, and our lawsuit intends to ensure that this couple’s freedom to adhere to their own faith as pastors is protected, just as the First Amendment intended.”
Alliance Defending Freedom also filed a temporary restraining order to stop the city from enforcing the ordinance.
“The Knapps are in fear that if they exercise their First Amendment rights they will be cited, prosecuted and sent to jail,” Tedesco told me.
It’s hard to believe this could happen in the United States. But as the lawsuit states, the Knapps are in a “constant state of fear that they may have to go to jail, pay substantial fines, or both, resulting in them losing the business that God has called them to operate and which they have faithfully operated for 25 years.”
The lawsuit came the same week that the city of Houston issued subpoenas demanding that five Christian pastors turn over sermons dealing with homosexuality and gender identity.
What in heaven’s name is happening to our country, folks? I was under the assumption that churches and pastors would not be impacted by same-sex marriage.
“The other side insisted this would never happen – that pastors would not have to perform same-sex marriages,” Tedesco told me. “The reality is – it’s already happening.”
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told me it’s “open season on Americans who refuse to bow to the government’s redefinition of marriage.”
“Americans are witnesses to the reality that redefining marriage is less about the marriage altar and more about fundamentally altering the freedoms of the other 98 percent of Americans,” Perkins said.
Why should evangelical Christian ministers be forced to perform and celebrate any marriage that conflicts with their beliefs?
“This is the brave new world of government-sanctioned same-sex unions – where Americans are forced to celebrate these unions regardless of their religious beliefs,” Perkins told me.
As I write in my new book, “God Less America,” we are living in a day when those who support traditional marriage are coming under fierce attack. 
The incidents in Houston and now in Coeur d’Alene are the just the latest examples of a disturbing trend in the culture war – direct attacks on clergy.
“Government officials are making clear they will use their government power to punish those who oppose the advances of homosexual activists,” Perkins said.
I’m afraid Mr. Perkins is absolutely right.
No one should be discriminated against but have you noticed that any time a city passes a “nondiscrimination” ordinance, it’s the Christians who wind up being discriminated against?

Dem candidate Nunn uses HW Bush image in campaign ad -- despite being warned


Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn once again has used former President George H.W. Bush’s image to push her own Senate bid, despite repeatedly being asked by the 41st president not to do that. 
Bush already endorsed Nunn's Republican opponent, David Perdue, and his office is not happy about Nunn defying his wishes again. 
Nunn’s new ad is meant to respond to Perdue's narrative that she is a President Obama lackey. The ad, which began airing Saturday, tries to explain a photo the Perdue camp has used of her standing next to the sitting president. The picture was taken at an Oct. 16, 2009, event that Nunn and Obama attended.
Nunn’s new 30-second ad starts off with the same picture that Perdue uses in his ads. In the ad, Nunn asks, “Have you seen this picture? It’s the one David Perdue has used to try and attack me in this campaign. But what he doesn’t tell you is that it was taken at an event honoring President [H.W.] Bush, who I worked for as CEO of his Points of Life Foundation.” 
The ad then shows an image of Nunn next to the 41st president. (Nunn, as noted in the ad, previously ran the Points of Light Foundation alongside Neil Bush, the ex-president's son, for several years.) 
Bush spokesman Jim McGrath made clear that the former president did not approve that message. 
“Michelle and her team have been clearly, repeatedly and consistently told that President Bush did not want them to use his photo as part of this campaign,” McGrath said in an email to FoxNews.com. “Apparently, the Nunn team feels they can repeatedly disregard the former president’s wishes, which is very disappointing because it’s so disrespectful.”
This is not the first time Bush 41 has emerged as an issue in the Georgia Senate race. 
Earlier in the campaign season, Perdue aired ads claiming the foundation previously led by Nunn and founded by Bush gave money to organizations linked to terrorists.
The ad triggered a feud of sorts between the Perdue camp and the president’s son, Neil Bush, who is the current chairman of the Points of Light Foundation. The younger Bush called the allegations “ridiculous.” 
"Neither Points of Light nor Michelle Nunn have had anything to do with funneling money from our organization to terrorist organizations," Neil Bush said in an interview at the time with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 
The office of George H.W. Bush, though, did not speak out against the ad. 
McGrath has criticized Nunn before, saying that she did not have permission to use the president’s photos in any of her campaign ads and that Bush’s objections had been privately communicated to Nunn’s camp. 
The Georgia Senate race is one of the most competitive in the country. Nunn and Perdue have been trading the lead in the polls; an average of polling from Real Clear Politics shows the race virtually tied. 
Democratic groups have turned their attention to the Georgia Senate race and recently allocated another $1 million in television ads for Nunn.
Both candidates come from political families.
Nunn is the daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn – a conservative Democrat who served as Georgia’s senator from 1972-1997. Perdue’s cousin, Sonny Perdue, served as a state senator for more than a decade and was governor of Georgia from 2003 until 2011.
Calls to Nunn’s campaign headquarters for comment were not immediately returned.

Ebola ‘czar’ to skip House hearing, aide says


America's newly appointed Ebola ‘czar’ is not yet in the House — at least not the ones on Pennsylvania Avenue or Capitol Hill.
Ron Klain, appointed last Friday by President Obama to direct the nation's response to the Ebola crisis, sent his regrets Monday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which had invited him to testify this Friday, a committee aide told Fox News.
Klain was invited to join Defense and Health and Human Services department officials also slated to testify at the hearing.
“The White House has informed us that he has not yet officially started and will not be able to attend Friday,” the committee aide told Fox News.
Klain, a former chief of staff to vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden, has yet to formally start his new assignment — though he was spotted on the White House campus on Saturday. Fox News was told, however, that he did not meet with the president – and was not part of an all-hands-on-deck Ebola meeting that same day.
He is expected to start sometime this week.
Despite bipartisan calls for an Ebola czar, however, the selection of Klain angered some Republicans, who complained he has no health care experience. Klain, after leaving Biden's staff, went into the private sector, serving as president of Case Holdings and general counsel for venture-capital firm Revolution LLC. 
“That the president chose a political operative rather than a health care expert to head up his administration’s response to an outbreak of a deadly disease says a lot – and nothing positive – about the White House’s line of thinking,” Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., said in a statement on Friday.
Health officials, though, have defended Klain as someone who brings needed managerial experience to a complex task.
“He's a highly experienced, highly talented manager. He's been chief of staff for Vice President Gore, for Vice President Biden, has had experience in the Congress,” Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Monday at a town hall-style meeting. “He will be coordinating the interactions among a multi-agency endeavor that are involved, each of which have their own responsibility.”
Fauci also stressed that Klain is not a “czar.”
“It's an Ebola response coordinator is the title for Ron Klain,” Fauci said.

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