Conservative Blogger
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Kentucky clerk's same-sex marriage refusal divides 2016 GOP field
WASHINGTON – The case of Kim Davis, the defiant Kentucky clerk thrown in jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, has divided the 2016 Republican presidential field -- pitting social conservatives championing her cause against others who suggest she's gone too far.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is planning a rally Tuesday in support of Davis, and says he’s offered her “prayers and support.” The Southern Baptist minister, who won the 2008 Iowa caucuses with the help of a social conservative coalition but is struggling in the polls this time around, argues Davis is on sound legal footing and commended her Friday for “not abandoning her religious convictions and standing strong for her religious liberty.”
On his campaign website, Huckabee posted a “Free Kim Davis” petition and demanded “we must end the criminalization of Christianity!"
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum also has come out strong in support of Davis, as has Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Cruz called Davis’ jailing an act of “judicial tyranny” and encouraged “every believer, every constitutionalist, every lover of liberty to stand with Kim Davis.” And he criticized any 2016 candidate not doing so.
Indeed, several other candidates have walked a fine line, and at least hinted they think Davis has overstepped now that gay marriage has been ruled legal nationwide.
Former HP executive Carly Fiorina told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, "I think that we must protect religious liberties with great passion and be willing to expend a lot of political capital to do so now because it’s clear religious liberty is under assault in many, many ways."
She added: "Having said that, when you are a government employee, I think you take on a different role. When you are a government employee as opposed to say, an employee of another kind of organization, then in essence, you are agreeing to act as an arm of the government. And, while I disagree with this court’s decision, their actions are clear."
Fiorina told the host it was now up to Davis to make a personal decision about what is required of her at her job.
“Is she prepared to continue to work for the government, be paid for by the government, in which case she needs to execute the government’s will … or sever her employment with the government and go seek employment elsewhere where her religious liberties would be paramount.”
Whether voters and caucus-goers will see the clerk's case as a litmus test for candidates' social conservative credibility remains to be seen. But the case drags on.
With the clerk herself in jail, the county clerk’s office started to issue same-sex marriage licenses through Davis’ deputy clerks. Davis’ son, Nathan Davis, was the lone holdout from the office.
The first couple to get the license Friday was William Smith Jr. and James Yates.
“I just want the licenses given out,” Yates said. I don’t want her in jail. No one wanted her in jail.”
During a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge David Bunning told Davis she would be released if she promised not to interfere with her employees issuing licenses, but she refused.
In Louisiana, presidential candidate and Gov. Bobby Jindal says the Davis case is exactly like ones where business owners – like florists and bakers -- have refused their services for same-sex ceremonies.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told CNN, “I think it’s absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious liberty.”
Others, like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Marco Rubio, searched for a middle ground.
“While the clerk’s office has a governmental duty to carry out the law, there should be a way to protect the religious freedom and conscience rights of individuals working in the office,” Rubio told The New York Times.
Christie told radio host Laura Ingraham the situation is different when it comes to public employees.
“What I’ve said before is for someone who works in the government has a bit of a different obligation than someone who’s in the private sector or obviously working for education institutions that’s religiously based or others,” he said, adding, “but my point is we have to protect religious liberty and people’s ability to be able to practice their religion freely and openly, and of course we have to enforce the law too.”
During another radio interview with Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said despite Davis’ conviction, “the rule of law is the rule of law.”
Also on Thursday, Marion County Circuit Judge Vance Day, a former chairman of the Oregon Republican Party, began taking steps to create a legal defense fund in response to his decision not to perform same-sex ceremonies.
Houston-area sheriff's deputy remembered during funeral
HOUSTON – Thousands of law enforcement officers stood at attention to form a wall Friday outside one of Houston's largest churches as a 21-gun salute and flyover by police helicopters were carried out in honor of a slain sheriff's deputy.
The symbolic gestures followed the funeral for Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Darren Goforth, who was gunned down at a gas pump a week ago.
"We come to this place with heavy hearts, and have questions we don't really understand," Lt. Don Savell, the sheriff's department chaplain, said as the ceremony began. "We gather to share the grief we all feel and perhaps to find the strength to bear our sorrow and to look for seeds of hope."
Second Baptist Church, which holds 7,000 people, was filled. Some officers stood outside and watched the nearly two-hour service on big-screen televisions, while other spectators gathered outside the suburban convenience store where Goforth was killed to view the funeral on screens set up there. Flowers, balloons, posters and written messages in memory of Goforth still surround the pump where he was shot.
Goforth, 47, was in uniform when he was killed while putting fuel in his patrol car. A 30-year-old Houston man is charged with capital murder. Investigators are still trying to determine a motive.
"Darren Goforth was one of the good guys, one that made a difference," Sheriff Ron Hickman said during the funeral. He said Goforth's life was taken "senselessly and in an act of cowardice" the night of Aug. 28 but that he and others "will answer calls in Darren's honor."
He said about 11,000 officers from "coast to coast" had come to pay respects.
Outside the church after the service, Hickman gave Goforth's wife, Kathleen, the flag that had been draped over the casket.
A line of patrol cars formed a large cross in the parking lot, and two Houston fire trucks with ladders extended formed an arch with a flag extended at the top. People lined streets as the funeral procession drove away. A private burial was planned.
Officers at various Texas law enforcement departments held moments of silence outside their buildings around the time of the funeral.
The killing brought out strong emotions in the law enforcement community, with Hickman suggesting last weekend that it could have been influenced by heightened national tension over the treatment of blacks by police. Goforth was white and the man charged with killing him, Shannon Miles, is black.
The Rev. Ed Young told those at the funeral that he fears evil has reached an "almost epidemic stage" with attacks on those who "wear the blue" — a reference to the police uniform.
But he said he's seen signs of hope in the wake of Goforth's death, with people being supportive of officers and openly praying for them.
"Things are changing," Young said. "There will be a new Houston, a new Texas, a new America.
"And you can write it down. We have your back," he told officers as the funeral crowd stood and applauded.
Pandora's Box: New Orleans prof says Confederate purge would target Andrew Jackson, too
Why not? The PURGE has begun on all offensive History.
With rebel symbols under fire around the nation in the wake of the mass shooting in June of black worshipers at a Charleston, S.C., church by a white supremacist who embraced the stars and bars, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has called for the removal of statues of Confederate stalwarts Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and PGT Beauregard. But a local university dean says a longstanding city ordinance being invoked by Landrieu would just as easily apply to the seventh president, known as "Old Hickory" and famous for defeating the British in the War of 1812's pivotal Battle of New Orleans.
“If they [keep] going down this route, they will open Pandora’s box.”The ordinance allows city officials to remove any statue or monument deemed a nuisance if, among other things, it "honors, praises, or fosters ideologies which are in conflict with the requirements of equal protection for citizens as provided by the constitution and laws of the United States." Taken at its word, and without the benefit of historical context, the ordinance would mandate the removal of the statue of Jackson on horseback that has marked Jackson Square since 1856, said Tulane University Prof. Richard Marksbury.
- Richard Marksbury
“I don’t want to see any statues taken down," Marksbury told FoxNews.com. "I’m trying to prove a point.”
Marksbury, who has called New Orleans home for more than 40 years, said he is dismayed at the calls for removal of historical statues. Jackson owned slaves, battled fiercely against Seminole Indians in Florida, ordered the Cherokee nation onto reservations and signed the Indian Removal Act, all actions that could put his statue at odds with the ordinance. But he was of a different time, and a significant historical figure, said Marksbury. Monuments may be seen as marking history, not necessarily venerating individuals, he said.
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Tulane
University Dean of Continuing Studies Richard Marksbury is proposing
the statue of Andrew Jackson be taken down - but he is not serious.
“If they [keep] going down this route, they will open Pandora’s box,” Marksbury said, explaining why he proposal, first made in a letter to local newspaper The New Orleans Advocate in late July. “My position is that if you remove one, you have to remove them all."
Landrieu's office in New Orleans did not immediately return requests for comment.
Jackson died 16 years before the Civil War but made military history in the War of 1812. When New Orleans was under threat, Jackson took control of the defenses, including militia for various western states and territories. In the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, his 5,000 troops successfully fought off nearly 8,000 British troops, saving the city.
Next on the chopping block is an engraving of the Confederate flag that is part of a mural near the entrance of City Hall according to local TV station Fox8.
"Across our state and our country, there has been broad consensus that confederate flags should not fly over government buildings,” Landrieu said. “Staff is currently researching the history of the etched marble at the entrance of City Hall to determine the process for removing the Confederate flag crest, as well as alternatives to represent the Civil War period of our city's history in this mural."
Orleans Parish Councilman James Gray is in favor of taking down the Confederate monuments in the city, but he does not believe the Confederate engraving should be removed.
"I think it's a real difference in having a mere historical account than having a statue that is set in a place of honor and being maintained by taxpayer dollars," Gray said to Fox8.
Benghazi investigators hoped to question Clinton IT specialist about possible destruction of evidence
Investigators on the Benghazi Select Committee had hoped to question former Clinton IT specialist Bryan Pagliano over the possible destruction of evidence, known in legal circles as “spoliation,” a congressional source told Fox News.
However, in an August 31 letter to Congress, Pagliano’s attorney said the former 2008 campaign staffer who installed and managed Clinton’s personal server and left his IT job at the State Department in February 2013, the same month Clinton stepped down as secretary, would “respectfully assert his Fifth Amendment right” before the Benghazi Select Committee.
“The matters for which Mr. Pagliano’s testimony and documents are being sought by the Select Committee are also the subject of investigative activity by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice,” the letter said.
According to the 2014 Black’s Law Dictionary, spoliation is “the intentional destruction, mutilation, alteration, or concealment of evidence…If proved, spoliation may be used to establish that the evidence was unfavorable to the party responsible. Also termed ‘spoliation of evidence.’”
While it is not known exactly when or who “wiped” Clinton’s personal server, it seems the move came after October 2014,when the State Department requested personal emails be returned as part of her business records.
On his Linked-In account, Pagliano said he served as “strategic advisor and special projects manager” for “a geographically diverse customer base of over 50,000 users around the world” from May 2009 - February 2013.
Committee Republicans have long argued they do not have all the documents that should be available to the investigation, after Clinton, using her personal discretion, purged some 30,000.
Former Clinton policy aide Jake Sullivan, who testified Friday before the Benghazi Committee, has direct knowledge of the policy decisions that established a U.S. consulate in eastern Libya with substandard security that did not meet State Department requirements, as well as direct knowledge of the 2012 attack there and the administration's response.
The Benghazi emails released in May to Congress contained only130 references to Sullivan in an online search, yet the most recent records released Monday contained more than 1,300.
Fox News put additional questions to Pagliano’s attorney, Mark J. MacDougall, Friday about whether his client played a direct role or had knowledge of the server scrub, but MacDougall said there was nothing further to add beyond the letter.
An intelligence source who confirmed to Fox that the FBI’s “A-team” was handling the Clinton email case, described the investigation as “moving along well,” adding investigators remain “confident” deleted records can be recovered because whoever did the scrub may “not be a very good IT guy. There are different standards to scrub when you do it for government vs. commercial.”
The disparities seem difficult to reconcile, also given the most iconic image of Clinton on her blackberry aboard a C-17 military plane was during a 2011 trip to Libya, but the Select Committee said no records were provided from this period.
Friday, September 4, 2015
EXCLUSIVE: Kentucky Clerk: 'This is a fight worth fighting'
UPDATE: A federal judge has ordered a defiant Kentucky clerk to jail after she refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
U.S. District Judge David Bunning told Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis she would be jailed until she complied with his order to issue the licenses. Davis said "thank you" before she was led out of the courtroom by a U.S. marshal. She was not in handcuffs.
Bunning also warned deputy clerks around the state that they could suffer the same fate should they refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
Davis has refused to issue marriages licenses for two months since the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. She argues that her Christian faith should exempt her from signing the licenses.
I’m very steadfast in what I believe. I don’t leave my conscience and my Christian soul out in my vehicle and come in here and pretend to be something I’m not. It’s easy to talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?Liberty Counsel attorney Mat Staver, who is representing Davis, called the ruling “outrageous.”
- Kim Davis, clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky
“If this country has come to this point where a judge jails someone like Kim Davis for their religious convictions – then we have lost our religious liberty,” Staver told me.
He said Davis will be fingerprinted and photographed “just like a criminal.”
“This cannot be tolerated,” he said. “This is ultimately going to spark a huge debate around the country. This is not the kind of country – this is not the America that our founders envisioned.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Kim Davis could become the first Christian in America jailed as a result of the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.
“I’ve weighed the cost and I’m prepared to go to jail, I sure am,” Mrs. Davis told me in an exclusive interview. “This has never been a gay or lesbian issue for me. This is about upholding the word of God.”
“This is a heaven or hell issue for me and for every other Christian that believes,” she said. “This is a fight worth fighting.”
Click here to join Todd’s American Dispatch –a MUST-READ for Conservatives!
Davis is the clerk of Rowan County, Ky. – a small patch of earth in the northeastern part of the state. She was elected last November – taking the place of her mother, who held the position for nearly 40 years.
It’s fair to say that issuing marriage licenses was something of a family business – until the day the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.
Davis is a devout Apostolic Christian, and she knew that should gay marriage become legal, she could not and would not sign her name on a same-sex marriage certificate.
“I would have to either make a decision to stand or I would have to buckle down and leave,” she said, pondering her choices. “And if I left, resigned or chose to retire, I would have no voice for God’s word.
So when that day came, she issued an edict: No more marriage licenses would be issued in Rowan County. It was a decision that would bring down the wrath of militant LGBT activists and their supporters.
“They told my husband they were going to burn us down while we slept in our home,” she said. “He’s been told that he would be beaten up and tied up and made to watch them rape me. I have been told that gays should kill me.”
Liberty Counsel, the public interest law firm that represents Davis, says forcing her to issue same-sex marriage licenses violates her religious beliefs. But the courts don’t seem interested in that argument.
A federal judge ordered her to issue the licenses, an appeals court upheld that decision and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene. Should Davis continue to defy the law, she could be fined or sent to jail.
No matter what the court decides, Davis says she will not violate her religious beliefs – and she will not resign her post.
“I’m very steadfast in what I believe,” she told me. “I don’t leave my conscience and my Christian soul out in my vehicle and come in here and pretend to be something I’m not. It’s easy to talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?”
The mainstream media and the activists have been ruthless. They’ve portrayed her as a monster – a right-wing, homophobic hypocrite. She’s been smeared by tabloid-style reports on her checkered past. They’ve written extensively about her failed marriages.
It’s true, she’s been married four times. But what’s missing in the mainstream media coverage is the context. Her life was radically changed by Jesus Christ in 2011, and since then she has become a different person.
“My God in heaven knows every crack, every crevice, every deep place in my heart,” she said. “And he knows the thoughts that are in my mind before I even think them. And he has given me such a beautiful and wonderful grace through all of this.”
She once lived for the devil, but now she lives for God. She’s a sinner saved by grace.
“I had created such a pit of sin for myself with my very own hands,” she told me.
So how does she handle the reporters and talking heads who call her a hypocrite?
“All I can say to them is if they have a sordid past like what I had, they too can receive the cleansing and renewing, and they can start a fresh life and they can be different,” she said. “They don’t have to remain in their sin, there’s hope for tomorrow.”
Davis did not seek the national spotlight. She had no intention of becoming a spokeswoman for religious liberty, and she bristles at the idea that she is a hero of the faith.
“I’m just a vessel God has chosen for this time and this place,” she said. “I’m no different than any other Christian. It was my appointed time to stand, and their time will come.”
Iran thumbs nose at US even as Obama rallies support for nuke deal
Even as President Obama was securing the Senate support necessary to assure passage of the nuclear deal with Iran, Tehran's top defense officials were scoffing at U.S. claims the pact will restrict the Islamic Republic's military ambitions.
The president has been twisting arms and Secretary of State John Kerry reassuring lawmakers that the deal between Iran and the P5 +1 - members of the UN Security Council plus Germany - will ensure international inspections and bar Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons. This week, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., became the 34th member of the Senate to back the controversial and unpopular deal, meaning that if it is defeated in a vote as expected, Obama will have enough support to sustain his certain veto. But Iran's military brass has answered the U.S. nose-counting by thumbing their nose at America.
“Iran does not plan to issue permission for the [International Atomic Energy Agency] to inspect every site," Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan told Al Mayadeen News Wednesday. "U.S. officials make boastful remarks and imagine that they can impose anything on the Iranian nation because they lack a proper knowledge of the Iranian nation.”
"U.S. officials make boastful remarks and imagine that they can impose anything on the Iranian nation because they lack a proper knowledge of the Iranian nation.”Iran’s official FARS news agency added that “Dehqan had earlier underlined that Tehran would not allow any foreigner to discover Iran's defensive and missile capabilities by inspecting the country's military sites.”
- Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan
On the same day, a top Iranian general told troops preparing for a massive military drill involving up to 250,000 men that “the U.S. and the Zionists should know that the Islamic Revolution will continue enhancing its preparedness until it overthrows Israel and liberates Palestine.”
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Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan vowed that international inspectors will not have access to key sites. (Reuters)
Obama has gone to great lengths to assure skeptics that the deal assures genuine oversight of the Iranian nuclear program, and in an August 19 letter to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., he said the deal is the best chance to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons, which he acknowledged would pose a major threat to Israel.
"It is my steadfast conviction that a nuclear-armed Iran would present a profound security threat to us and to our partners, particularly Israel,” Obama wrote.
Critics of the deal wonder why its supporters listen to Obama regarding Iran's intentions and ignore Iran.
“Within the last 24 hours, Iran has said that the U.S. is the enemy of mankind," said Benjamin Weinthal, a research fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "These highly jingoistic statements from Iran don’t bode well for the enforcement of the agreement.
“There is all this euphoria about Obama securing congressional support for the Iran nuclear deal, but I think it’s worth pointing out that in context a little more than one-third of the Senate supports the deal," Weinthal added. "Given that all the major attitude surveys in the U.S. show a majority of Americans oppose the deal, and a majority of the Senate and the House of Representatives oppose the deal, [Obama] is on very flimsy ground.”
The deal is deeply unpopular in Israel, which has been the target of Iranian threats for years, as well as attacks from the terrorist groups it funds. Israelis fear that the cash infusion to Iran, through unfreezing of funds and the lifting of economic sanctions, will result in new terror attack in the short term and a graver, nuclear threat in the future.
“We are not against a deal,” a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry told FoxNews.com. “We are against this particular deal, because it does not cater to the real dangers represented by Iran. A stronger deal, which would encompass not only the nuclear aspect but also the terrorist activities of Iran, would have been much better.”
Officials in Jerusalem also note that a significant majority of the American public oppose the deal and sympathize with Israel’s predicament.
“The American people get it,” an official Israeli source told today’s Jerusalem Post. “They understand the dangers to Israel. Iranian leaders openly say they will continue their terrorism and aggression, and they will now – with the sanctions relief – have enhanced resources to do, so because the deal will give them billions of dollars.”
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