Retired neurosurgeon, Ben Carson, called an end to his presidential bid and simultaneously the non-profit organization My Faith Votes announced that he will chair the group.
“I believe Christians in this country can easily determine the next president of the United States and all other national and local leaders, should they simply show up at the polls. When we do vote, We The People will once again solidify our commitment to the Judeo-Christian values upon which our nation was founded.” -- Dr. Ben Carson, former 2016 GOP presidential candidate
The tax-exempt nonprofit educational group [My Faith Votes] says it will undertake a national media campaign that will gather steam into the November presidential election.
"In the last four presidential elections, an average of less than five million votes separated the major candidates." My Faith Votes President Sealy Yates, said in a statement. "Yet, more than 25 million Christians didn't bother to even show up at the polls in 2012."
The group said Carson agreed to take on the position the same day he announced he could not see a "path forward" for his presidential campaign on Wednesday. He did not participate in the GOP debate on Thursday.
Asked if the new job would preclude him from endorsing a fellow candidate, Carson confidante and business manager Armstrong Williams said he was "never" going to endorse a candidate.
While Carson's new group is non-partisan and non-denominational, he will focus on campaigning to convince Christians to use their power to vote, My Faith Votes' spokesman Johnnie Moore explained. In an email, Moore also said the organization's central cause is to remind people of faith of their moral responsibility to vote by tapping televangelists, local preachers, radio personalities, and even YouTube. The organization is also planning to talk to Catholic leaders next.
The non-Muslim residents of Hamtramck, Michigan complained so much about the "noise" coming from the Islamic center loudspeakers (the Muslim call to prayer) that the Muslim residents organized an effort to gain a majority on the city council. It appears the "noise" will remain.
“We were lied to. We were told it would never be turned into a mosque.” -- Carol Marsh, resident
“It’s only a matter of time before we’ll see a Muslim mayor.” -- Dawud Walid, Executive Director, Michigan Chapter, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
For background, click headlines below to read previous articles:
[At the] city council meeting, several residents of the Hamtramck Senior Plaza apartments on Holbrook complained about the volume level of the call to prayer coming from the Ideal Islamic Center, located across from the apartment complex.
[Resident Jeanette Powell] said the call or prayer was broadcast at 6 a.m. and found the volume “overbearing.”
The center on Holbrook was not the only mosque accused of broadcasting the call too loudly.
Susan Dunn, who is a candidate for city council, said the new mosque on St. Aubin St., the Abu-Bakr Al-Siddique Islamic Center, also broadcasts the call loudly. Dunn lives on Hewitt St., which is a block away from the center.
The week before Election Day in Hamtramck, hundreds of Muslims packed the City Council chambers.
They were outraged over a complaint made by council candidate Susan Dunn over the Islamic call to prayer that is broadcast outdoors from mosques, which she said were too loud.
The following week, three Muslim candidates out of six were the top vote-getters, winning council seats. After their inauguration this month, Hamtramck became what is believed to be the first city in the U.S. with a Muslim-majority City Council. Four of its six council members are Muslim, three of them immigrants.
The story of how that happened offers insight into the political ambitions of the city's Muslim community in a time of intense debate about Islam in the West. And it shows how diverse groups — from Polish Catholics to Bangladeshi Muslims to African-American Protestants — can get along, city leaders say.
[Local businesswoman Karen] Majewski, whose family emigrated from Poland in the early 20th century, admitted to a few concerns of her own. Business owners within 500 feet of one of Hamtramck’s four mosques can’t obtain a liquor license, she complained, a notable development in a place that flouted Prohibition-era laws by openly operating bars. The restrictions could thwart efforts to create an entertainment hub downtown, said the pro-commerce mayor.
And while Majewski advocated to allow mosques to issue calls to prayer, she understands why some longtime residents are struggling to adjust to the sound that echos through the city’s streets five times each day.
While the city’s Polish Catholic population has shrunk from 90 percent in 1970 to about 11 percent today, in part as the old residents have moved to more prosperous suburbs, Polish American culture still permeates the town.
Hamtramck’s exceedingly low home prices and relatively low crime rate have proved especially attractive to new immigrants, whose presence is visible everywhere. Most of the women strolling Joseph Campau Avenue wear hijabs, or headscarves, and niqabs, veils that leave only the area around the eyes open. Many of the markets advertise their wares in Arabic or Bengali, and some display signs telling customers that owners will return shortly — gone to pray, much in the same way Polish businesses once signaled that employees had gone to Mass.
Many longtime residents point to 2004 as the year they suspected that the town’s culture had shifted irrevocably. It was then that the city council gave permission to al-Islah Islamic Center to broadcast its call to prayer from speakers atop its roof.
. . . The city council’s approval of an ordinance to allow mosques to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer onto public streets made it one of the few cities in the United States to approve the practice, according to a 2004 story in the Detroit News. “This is about uniting our community,” Shabad Ahmed, the first and only Muslim member of the Hamtramck City Council, told the newspaper.
Fast forward to 2015, when the city of some 22,000 people physically surrounded by but politically separate from Detroit has elected a Muslim-majority city council, believed to be the first in the nation. On Tuesday, the city elected three new city council members, making the council four of six members of Muslim faith.
Dearborn, which is part of the Detroit metro area, attracts most of the national attention over its Arab population, but its Muslim population is not as concentrated as Hamtramck.
Federal bureaucrats closed Washington D.C. on Friday in the face of the deadly winter weather front closing in on the city, but tens of thousands of citizens braved the weather in D.C. for the 43rd annual March for Life to denounce the deadly politics of Roe v. Wade that is responsible for killing scores of millions of unborn children. The national mainstream media was virtually absent the event and only one 2016 presidential candidate showed up — a woman!
“The establishment media and political class don’t want us to talk about what the abortion industry is doing. You saw what happened when I talked about the horrific truth of the planned parenthood videos during a Republican debate. Unlike the media, you’ve watched the videos. You’ve seen an aborted baby, it’s legs kicking, it’s heart beating while the technician describes how they would keep these babies alive to harvest their organs.” -- Carly Fiorina, Republican presidential candidate, at the March for Life
With much of the D.C. region in the midst of complete shut-down frenzy – grocery and sled stores were packed, though downtown D.C. was quiet — for what is predicted to be a historic snow storm, city officials had suggested to the March for Life organizers that they prioritize participants’ safety – what sounded like a hint to cancel. But actual snow held off for the first hour or so of the event, giving protesters a chance to rally at the foot of the Washington Monument, before the temperatures plunged and the snow began to fall as the march up to the Supreme Court began.
The overall scene was dramatically smaller than normal, with usually-crowded sidewalks and lawns all along the Mall instead dotted with protesters, including nuns and priests in their garb and packs of Catholic school students holding signs and wearing hats that matched their group. Evangelical leaders made a concerted effort this year to bring their activists to what is traditionally a strongly Catholic event and several national evangelical leaders spoke from the stage to the rally.
Among those in the crowd was Richard Stith, 71, an Indiana law professor who called himself a part of a segment he dubbed “lefties for life” — Catholics whom he said support issues like the death penalty and LGBT rights as part of “a consistent ethic for life.” He said he had been a member of a group called Socialists for Life as well and always felt welcome at the march.
Tens of thousands of the movement’s faithful — made up largely of high school and college students outfitted in matching jackets, scarves or hats — took to the streets to protest on the 43rd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
Event organizers also took notice [of the youthful demographic], passing out signs proclaiming the arrival of the “Pro-Life Generation.”
“A lot of us are young people — the pro-life generation — who care about life from womb to tomb,” said Victor Esposito, 20, who was with a group of students from Catholic University of America wearing red embroidered scarves.
“There’s come this recognition that as more and more science and technology comes out, we begin to recognize that life really does start at conception,” he added.
The theme of the March, “Pro-life and pro-women go hand in hand,” sought to emphasize the gender diversity of the anti-abortion-rights movement, challenging the narrative that opposition to abortion constitutes a “war on women.”
In her trademark pointed and articulate style, Fiorina launched an attack on abortion rights and the groups that promote them . . . "You can scream and throw condoms at me all day long — you cannot scare me," Fiorina said, to cheers from the crowd of activists gathered on the National Mall. "I know the value of life."
While nearly all of Fiorina's Republican opponents hold the same positions on abortion, favoring more restrictions on it and backing recent efforts by Congress to block public funding for Planned Parenthood, Fiorina has eagerly embraced the topic in a way the others haven't.
"Ideological feminism now shuts down conversation on college campuses and in the media," Fiorina said at the March for Life. "If you are a conservative who doesn't believe the litany of the Left, you are waging a war on women."
There's broad feeling among the anti-abortion movement that it needs more focus on how abortion affects women, partially to counter the "war on women" messaging that Democrats, Planned Parenthood and other supporters of abortion rights have pushed. Fiorina agrees with that goal.
Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has, in exchange for the endorsement of Planned Parenthood, pledged to repeal the decades-old "Hyde Amendment" that restricts federal funding of abortion (except in cases of rape, incest and life endangerment) as “it’s just hard to justify” because “reproductive rights are a fundamental human right.”
“I will say, consistently and proudly, Planned Parenthood should be funded, supported, and celebrated – not undermined, misrepresented, and demonized.” -- Hillary Clinton
When asked if she would support congressional efforts to repeal the Hyde Amendment, Hillary Clinton wasted no time pondering her answer: “Yes.”
Restrictions like Hyde have had devastating consequences for women. According to data from the Guttmacher Institute [which is associated with Planned Parenthood], one in four women are forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term because they can’t afford a medical intervention without insurance.
But last year, House Democrats introduced a bill—The EACH Woman Act—to challenge Hyde and require abortion coverage under all healthcare and insurance provided by the federal government. The measure would also prohibit states from placing restrictions on private health insurance companies looking to offer a full range of reproductive health services, including abortion.
Opposition to direct federal funding of elective abortion is so strong that Democrats didn't attempt to repeal the Hyde amendment when they held the White House and overwhelming majorities in the Congress from 2009 to 2011. A 2010 Quinnipiac poll found that American voters opposed public funding of abortion by a 40-point margin--67 percent to 27 percent.
Although a President Hillary Clinton would likely face tough opposition in Congress to repealing the Hyde amendment, it may only take one Supreme Court appointment to accomplish that goal. Restrictions on taxpayer funding of abortion were upheld by the Supreme Court by a 6-3 decision in 1980 and by a 5-4 decision in 1991.
In 2009, Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Bill Clinton appointee, said she was "surprised" the Court upheld the Hyde amendment because she believed "concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of" would lead the Court to declare a constitutional right to taxpayer-funded abortion. It would only take the replacement of just one Republican-appointed justice to give liberal activists a solid majority on the Supreme Court.
. . . not only does Hillary Clinton want abortion on demand up until the moment you can shake Junior’s hand; she also wants to force taxpayers, abortion opponents included, to pay for it. This is more than coercion; it’s public policy as vindictiveness, a taxpayer-funded middle finger at every person of goodwill with whom she disagrees.
Hillary is not the first Clinton to oppose Hyde. During his 1992 campaign, her husband promised to kill the amendment . . .
It’s worth noting that the Hyde Amendment is hardly a solution to the question of taxpayer funding for abortions. Money is fungible: The $500 million taxpayers give to Planned Parenthood may not [currently] be used to pay for abortions directly (according to the amendment), but that’s a $500 million cushion on top of which Planned Parenthood can conduct its slaughterous business. But at least the amendment recognizes, and seeks modestly to accommodate, people’s differences of conscience on this issue.
. . . at a New Hampshire event at which Planned Parenthood endorsed Clinton, the Democratic candidate embraced the reproductive health organization’s president Cecile Richards to the tune of Katy Perry’s Roar, and promised to the youthful and diverse pro-choice crowd: “I will always have your back.” . . . the events mark the latest stage in what is increasingly looking to be an explicitly feminist presidential campaign.
[Hillary Clinton] has chosen to take a stronger stance on abortion during this campaign [compared to 2008]. As a senator and throughout her career Clinton has supported pro-choice policies, but she has also come under fire in the past from pro-choice advocates for what they say is language that stigmatizes abortion.
Clinton’s past mantra on the procedure has been “safe, legal, and rare,” a formulation that suggests there’s something inherently wrong with abortion. Now, though, instead of talking about reducing the number of abortions, or insisting that they should be rare, she seems to be heeding the call of reproductive rights and justice activists such as Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, the vice-president for strategic partnerships at Advocates for Youth, who has written: “What if we stopped focusing on the number of abortions and instead focused on the women themselves?”
As the teacher's union and myriad other liberal organizations mount a campaign to recall conservative school board members of the Jeffco Public Schools of Jefferson County in Golden, Colorado (the state's second-largest district), Planned Parenthood sees this as a golden opportunity to increase revenue and therefore has launched a campaign telling voters to dump abstinence-based sex education in favor of their $125 per student sex kits.
The question facing voters is whether to oust a polarizing school board that has championed charter schools, performance-based teacher pay and other education measures supported by conservatives. Supporters of the recall have raised more than $250,000, about $15,000 of that from the local teachers’ union. . . .
Voters here are almost evenly divided among Democrats, Republicans and independents. In November 2013, voters broke with union-supported candidates to elect a slate of school board hopefuls running as conservative reformers.
All five seats on the board are up for election: the three conservatives facing a recall and two seats being vacated by more liberal members.
“I can take it,” said Julie Williams, one of the three conservatives, who said she had received harassing emails. “For my kids, it’s been pretty hard. I come from a strong family. We believe in standing on principle, even with malicious attacks on me personally.”
Campaign finance reports released this week show more than $450,000 has been raised by candidates and committees involved in the recall. But other organizations that act indirectly — including Americans for Prosperity, which supports the current board — do not have to file their spending. There are estimates that as much as $1 million already may have been spent on the recall.
The three union-backed candidates to replace the board members facing a recall have reported more than $144,900 in campaign contributions.
Committees supporting and opposing the recall have reported a total of about $181,000. . . .
Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado, a non-profit 501(c)4 organization, has sent letters to voters asking them to become involved in the school board recalls by first signing the petition to recall their elected officials, then volunteering for the effort to oust their local school board members.
. . . the Planned Parenthood group boasts of advancing “Colorado youths’ rights to real sex education and reproductive health care.” The group still opposes the state’s Parental Notification Act passed by the legislature in 2003 that requires parents of school-aged children under the age of 18 must be notified within 48 hours prior to abortion.
. . . Planned Parenthood is selling sex kits to local schools—including schools in the county in question—which Planned Parenthood’s own national website calls “Birth Control Training Kits.”
According to Planned Parenthood’s website, each of the kits contains 10 male condoms, two “female condoms,” one intrauterine contraceptive, one package of oral contraceptives, one “dental dam,” two samples of “water-based lubricants,” “cycle beads” for natural family planning purposes, one “Today” contraceptive sponge, one “syringe” containing a Depo Provera shot, and two vaginal contraceptive spermicidal films.
At least one local official in Jefferson County familiar with the kit reports that it includes a faux “Plan B” pill to familiarize school-aged students with “the morning after” pill.
For decades, abstinence-only extremists have targeted Colorado schools and students. The goal of these programs is to shame and scare youth out of sexual activity and they have proven ineffective in reducing unintended pregnancy rates.
As one of the leading reproductive health advocacy organizations in the state, Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado (PPVC) works to advocate for and protect young people’s access to age-appropriate, complete and real sex education in Colorado schools. PPVC was part of a coalition of advocates who worked with the Colorado General Assembly in 2013 to put guidelines in place for public schools who provide sex education. These guidelines require that schools that provide sex education do so in a way that is “medically accurate, age-appropriate, evidence-based, culturally-sensitive and inclusive of positive youth development.”
To help voters in choosing school board candidates, PPVC invited and collected surveys from candidates on a variety of questions concerning reproductive health and education. As a result of the survey, PPVC is issuing this list of Colorado school board candidates who are identified as “supporters” of comprehensive sex education and young people’s access to reproductive health care.
2015 Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado's School Board Candidate Supporters of Reproductive Health and Education:
Susan Harmon - Jefferson County School Board District 2 Ron Mitchell – Jefferson County School Board District 5
The survey includes questions about implementation of age-appropriate, medically accurate, evidence-based sex education, teaching consent and sexual assault awareness and prevention, and support of curriculum that makes LGBTQ [homosexual, bisexual, transgender, etc.] youth feel included in sex education curricula and anti-bullying and harassment strategies. The survey also asks if the candidates support minors’ access to confidential reproductive healthcare services, and that such services should be available at school-based health centers. These services and protections are vital to ensure youth have access to the reproductive health care they need.
To read about the sexualization/abortion campaign above, CLICK HERE.
Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden competed Saturday for endorsements in speeches before the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), America's largest homosexual activist group, whose co-founder was arrested for anal sex with a boy. If elected president, Hillary promised to change the Civil Rights Act of 1964 via a Federal Equality Act to provide even more "gay rights." Biden said that the military must eliminate restrictions that limit full inclusion of mentally ill sexual deviants.
“The American people are already with you. . . . There are homophobes still left. Most of them are running for president, I think.” -- Vice President Joe Biden
For background, click headlines below to read previous articles:
The vice president spoke to 3,500 LGBT activists and leaders in a cavernous subterranean ballroom at the Washington Convention Center for the annual Human Rights Campaign dinner, a speaking gig Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton turned down in order to appear on “Saturday Night Live,” The New York Times reported.
Biden is close to deciding on a 2016 presidential bid against Clinton, and the LGBT community is an important constituency for any Democrat eyeing the White House. He contrasted with the former secretary of state at one point on Saturday, telling gay rights activists that equality would come easily now — even though just hours before Clinton had warned the same group that further change would be difficult.
Though Clinton gave up the keynote spot to the vice president, she addressed the group’s breakfast meeting early Saturday instead, giving the first speech of her 2016 campaign exclusively focused on LGBT rights. She thanked the Human Rights Campaign for helping “change a lot of minds, including mine” on marriage equality.
On policy, Clinton and Biden lined up almost perfectly. They both called for a new focus on transgender rights and working to expand LGBT rights abroad. They identified the same three specific domestic policy goals: A federal equality act that would extend civil rights protections to LGBT Americans, allowing trans people serve in the military, and upgrading to “honorable discharge” the status of service members who were kicked out of the military under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
Biden's declaration at the Human Rights Campaign's annual dinner Saturday [at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, in Washington, D.C.] goes further than anything the Obama administration has said before, evoking memories of when Biden outpaced President Barack Obama in endorsing gay marriage. Although the White House says Obama supports a Pentagon review aimed at ending the transgender ban, neither Obama nor the military has said definitively that the policy will be changed.
"No longer is there any question transgender people are able to serve in the United States military," Biden told a crowd of 3,000 gay rights activists at the group's star-studded gala.
Biden, who is considering running for president, declared transgender rights to be "the civil rights issue of our time" as he delivered the keynote speech, just hours after Hillary Rodham Clinton — his top rival if he enters the race — gave a rousing address elevating LGBT rights as a main pillar of 2016 bid. Biden said gays and lesbians shouldn't fear "those shrill voices" trying to undo gay marriage and other advances because Americans "have moved so far beyond them and their appeals to prejudice and fear and homophobia."
"I see the injustices and the dangers that you and your families still face," [Hillary] told hundreds of gay activists at the annual meeting of the Human Rights Campaign. "I'm running for president to stand up for the fundamental rights of LGBT Americans."
Clinton, in her appearance, said she has been "fighting alongside you and others for equal rights and I'm just getting warmed up."
The statement marked a remarkable evolution for Clinton, who opposed same-sex marriage for more than two decades in public life as first lady, senator and presidential candidate. As recently as this year, Clinton said that while she personally supported gay marriage, the issue was best left for states to decide —a position held by most of the Republican presidential field.
Since then, Clinton has placed equal rights at the forefront of her campaign, in part a reflection of the growing political and financial strength of the gay community in Democratic politics.
Hillary Clinton pledged Saturday to champion new federal laws banning discrimination against gays and lesbians and warned that Republican presidential candidates will try to undo a Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, among other protections, if elected.
Republicans running for president would enact policies that will discriminate against and hurt gays and lesbians and their families, she said. Progress on equal rights "can be undone," Clinton told the annual gala of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest activist group working for gay rights.
Clinton also pledged to press a new generation of laws to protect the gay and lesbian community, including penalties on child welfare agencies that discriminate against them, nondiscrimination protections in the military for transgender individuals and laws to help prevent violence against transgender people, many of whom are female minorities.
To hear Biden tell it, he’s been with the Human Rights Campaign for longer than the Human Rights Campaign has been around, this time pulling one of his less frequently used stories about his father to talk about a time when he was 17 years old—this would have been 1959—and he saw two men in business suits kiss each other goodbye on their way to work.
“Joey, they’re in love with each other. It’s that simple,” Biden recalled his father telling him, then turning his attention to the 3,500 activists in black tie and their history of work: “You left the Supreme Court no choice whatsoever but to recognize the simple proposition my father taught me 50 years ago.”
After the fury over presidential candidate Ben Carson saying that he wouldn't support a Muslim for president because Islamic Sharia Law is in conflict with the Constitution, liberal attack media have dug up old video of Carson explaining to a Christian audience that evolution is a satanic theory.
Thus, the media is asking, Can a Bible-believing Christian be president?
“[Socialists] have to knock down the strongest pillars: the Judeo-Christian belief system and the strong family values.” “[The theory of evolution] has become what is scientifically, politically correct. Amazingly, there are a significant number of scientists who do not believe it but they’re afraid to say anything.” -- Dr. Ben Carson, retired director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital
For background, click headlines below to read previous articles:
On Tuesday, Buzzfeed uncovered a speech given by Carson in 2012 in which he called the Big Bang Theory part of the fairy tales created by scientists and said Darwin's theory of evolution was "encouraged" by the devil.
The speech, titled "Celebration of Creation," also includes Carson calling scientists "highfalutin" and the Big Bang "ridiculous."
Carson, who has always been outspoken about his views on creationism, is no stranger to bombastic viewpoints and opinions.
[This week] several articles have been written pointing to a 2011 speech Carson delivered to fellow Seventh Day Adventists. Titled “Celebration of Creation” . . .
“I find the big bang really quite fascinating. I mean, here you have all these highfalutin scientists and they’re saying it was this gigantic explosion and everything came into perfect order. Now these are the same scientists that go around touting the second law of thermodynamics, which is entropy, which says that things move toward a state of disorganization,” Carson said in his 2011 speech. “So now you’re gonna have this big explosion and everything becomes perfectly organized and when you ask them about it they say, ‘Well we can explain this, based on probability theory because if there’s enough big explosions, over a long period of time, billions and billions of years, one of them will be the perfect explosion,” continued Carson. “So I say what you’re telling me is if I blow a hurricane through a junkyard enough times over billions and billions of years, eventually after one of those hurricanes there will be a 747 fully loaded and ready to fly.”
In a speech at Cedarville University Tuesday, Carson defended his comments, saying he shouldn’t be denigrated for his faith.
“Here’s the key, I then say to [evolutionists] look, ‘I’m not going to criticize you. You have a lot more faith then I have.’ I don’t have enough faith to believe that,” he said, according to BuzzFeed News.
He added, “I give you credit for that, but I’m not going to denigrate you because of your faith and you shouldn’t denigrate me for mine. And that’s the kind of attitude … that I think is very important in the society in which we live today.”
Carson has argued for the superiority of creationism over the theory of evolution. In an interview with Newsweek earlier this year, he distanced himself from certitude about the Earth’s age. “I don’t know how old the earth is and the distance between ages,” he said. “There could be a billion years between ages.” He has said that his beliefs about science and religion “correlate.”
Carson’s rise in the polls as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination has spurred interest in the church that has shaped so much of his life. If he continues to gain momentum, Americans are bound to have questions about the Seventh-day Adventists, just as they did about Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith and, at another time, John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism.
Adventists share many of the ideological tenets of evangelical Christianity. Carson the Adventist is another voice in a large field of Christian conservative presidential candidates, such as Baptists Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz and Catholic Rick Santorum. By some estimates, there are 1.2 million Adventists in the U.S.
Evangelicals make up a major part of Carson’s current base . . .
“You know, scientists like Sir Isaac Newton – considered one of the most scientific minds ever, inventor of calculus, so many things – had a strong belief in God, big mission outreach,” said Dr. Carson. “Einstein! When you think about genius, what is the word you come up with? Einstein. He believed in God.”
“One of the things I’m hoping to do over the next few years, one of the books coming up on my docket,” Carson continued, “is called The Organ of Species – not The Origin of Species, The Organ of Species – and we’re going to talk about the organs of the body and how they completely refute evolution, and several other things as well.”
In 2004, Carson served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and in 2008 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2010, Dr. Carson was elected into the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, considered one of the most prestigious honors in medicine.
Presidential candidate U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is pleading with all Bible-believing Christians to pray and call on their own local church leaders to engage the battle against abortionists and stop government funding of Planned Parenthood. Yesterday, Sen. Cruz told thousands of Christian leaders via a conference call that they have the utmost duty to protect the unborn.
"How did America become a country that harvests organs from unborn children? And who has the courage to stop it?" -- Ted Cruz campaign ad
[Ted Cruz'] latest pitch to religious voters came in a conference call Tuesday with church pastors from around the country.
In the conference call earlier, and at every campaign event, Cruz attacks Planned Parenthood. He highlights the recent series of undercover videos from an anti-abortion-rights group accusing the organization of selling fetal tissue from abortions for profit.
Cruz argues that he can win the nomination — and the presidency — by motivating real conservatives and not worrying at all about winning moderates. That's something he and others argue imperiled Republicans' chances in the last several elections.
More than 100,000 pastors received e-mail invitations over the weekend to participate in conference calls with Cruz on Tuesday in which they will learn details of the [defund Planned Parenthood] plan to mobilize churchgoers in every congressional district beginning Aug. 30. The requests were sent on the heels of the Texas Republican’s “Rally for Religious Liberty,” which drew 2,500 people to a Des Moines ballroom Friday.
Heading into the primary season, it wasn’t clear how significant a role social issues would play in the selection of the Republican nominee. But social conservatives and evangelical voters say they have been galvanized by a one-two punch this summer: first, the Supreme Court’s decision that same-sex marriage should be legal in all 50 states — and then, the release of hidden-camera videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the donation of fetal tissue in a seemingly cavalier fashion.
All of the Republican candidates have found themselves spending more trail time on both issues over the past few months. Those fighting most fiercely for religious voters have made them central to their campaigns. But few candidates have made the burgeoning “religious liberty” movement in opposition to same-sex marriage and the fight to deny funding to Planned Parenthood as much of their campaign centerpiece as Cruz has — and perhaps no one is as well positioned to benefit politically from a renewed focus on those issues.
The recent exposure of Planned Parenthood's barbaric practices of harvesting the body parts of innocent babies and selling them to the highest bidder has brought about a pressing need to end tax payer support of this institution.
As the son of a pastor, I know you bear a high and holy calling on your lives. I am urging you to confront this evil in our nation by praying and preaching with an unbridled passion until funding for Planned Parenthood ends, and this barbaric practice is purged from the land.
Over the next two weeks, with the support of your prayers and the impact of your preaching, I intend to lead an effort to end taxpayer support of Planned Parenthood.
The battle we face is not political. It is spiritual. To enter this arena in a prayerless condition invites failure. . . .
To read the entire E-mail from Sen. Ted Cruz above, CLICK HERE.
Cruz is working with the American Renewal Project, a conservative group that encourages pastors to run for elected office on a campaign to defund Planned Parenthood.
“Our call to action primarily, number one, is to get the pastors to return to prayer on this and every issue,” said the Rev. Ken Graves, who spoke on Tuesday’s teleconference call.
Too many of of the nation’s evangelical pastors “have come to believe that we have no freedom, no right to speak,” said Graves, senior pastor at Calvary Chapel in Bangor, Maine, and a speaker on the 20-minute call. He encouraged his fellow pastors to exercise their right to talk about Planned Parenthood and other issues according to their understanding of Scripture.
And Graves said the pastors stand on firm legal ground. “The word is out that pastors have the freedom, that they’re not a lower caste of American people,” he said. They can both speak out and engage in the process.”
The phone call is part of a larger 50-state campaign by Cruz to end taxpayer support for Planned Parenthood — a campaign likely to raise his profile in a Republican primary race where the vote of social conservatives is seen as up for grabs.
[Sen. Cruz] asked that pastors preach a message Aug. 30 “calling on your people to enter into this spiritual battle for the soul of their nation.” A link on the American Renewal Project points to an outline for a sample sermon titled: “The Cry of the Innocent for the Soul of a Nation.”
Finally, Cruz asked pastors to lead congregations in a “Day of Prayer and Fasting,” on Wednesday, Sept. 9, and use Wednesday night services asking God “to move in the hearts of men and women in government to vote to end the slaughter of the innocents.”
“Now more than ever it is the role of the church, as well as our pastors and faith leaders, to stand up and speak the truth with absolute clarity,” Cruz said in a telephone conference call.
“I would encourage every pastor on this call to preach the truth about what is happening with Planned Parenthood. I recognize these are topics that are not without controversy, and they invite criticism when faith leaders speak candidly about them,” he said.
“If we cannot speak about this, there is very little that we can stand up and speak about. Preaching from the pulpit biblical values on life and comparing those values, the teachings of Jesus, to this nationwide business of trafficking in the body parts of unborn children is a message that needs to be heard across this nation.”
Cruz urged the pastors to lift up America’s leaders in prayer as well as pray for action against the sale of human body parts by the abortion provider.
Christians persecuted for their faith went on stage at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa last night to discuss how they were victimized by their own government and stripped of their jobs, businesses and religious liberty. Republican presidential candidate and Texas U.S. senator Ted Cruz, hosting the event, told the crowd that America is nearing the end of its founding principle of freedom of religion if Bible-believing Christians don't rise up immediately.
"Is the next victim of persecution your pastor? Your charity, where you volunteer your time at a crisis pregnancy center?" ". . . there is this liberal intolerance that says that anyone that dares follow a Biblical teaching of marriage, that is the union of one man and one woman must be persecuted, must be fined and must be driven out of business." -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
Cruz, looking to gain traction in an early voting state with a heavy concentration of evangelical Christians, held a highly organized and produced "Rally for Religious Liberty" Friday night. The rally featured live music, interviews with people who said their religious liberty was violated and sermon-like speeches from Cruz, who tried to cement himself as the candidate of choice for evangelical voters in a crowded Republican primary field.
"There is a war on faith in America today," Cruz said, later noting that 54 million evangelical Christians stayed home during the 2012 election.
"I'm here to tell you, we will stay home no longer," he said as the audience, which filled a ballroom and the campaign estimated to number 2,500 people, cheered.
While Cruz will be competing for the evangelical vote with candidates including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former senator Rick Santorum and neurosurgeon Ben Carson, few have been as vociferous about the notion that religious liberty is under attack than Cruz. . . .
First up onstage Friday night were Dick and Betty Odgaard, an Iowa couple who would not host a gay wedding at a venue they owned because they felt doing so would violate their religious beliefs. The two have been the subject of a lawsuit and closed their business. The senator sat down with the Odgaards onstage and prompted them to tell their story, bringing Betty Odgaard to the verge of tears.
“I know this has been a very hard journey,” Cruz told them, leaning over to hold Betty Odgaard’s hand in a rare public display of softer emotions from the senator. “Scripture tells us, God ordered our steps.”
“Amen,” she replied.
“I’m convinced you have gone down this road, endured the pain, endured the attacks, endured the hatred, precisely to put you where you are here today, for such a time as this,” he said, to applause.
Cruz spoke about his experience defending freedom of religion at the Supreme Court and what he said were the threats facing religious liberty.
"These threats have been growing, they have been growing for decades but never have the threats been greater to religious liberty than they are right here and now today," he said.
"These threats are not imagined, they're not made up. These are real people leading real lives who found themselves facing persecution simply for living out their faith. There is a war on faith in America today."
The event featured guest speakers who had faced consequences of upholding their religious beliefs, from losing a job to vandalism to losing a business.
"They didn't ask for confrontation and the government came to them and said, 'Choose between faith and obedience to government power,' and they said, 'I follow a higher power and that is God almighty,'" Cruz said.
In his opening remarks [at the Community Choice Credit Union Convention Center] during the “Rally for Religious Liberty,” Cruz referenced a number of Supreme Court cases regarding religious issues that came down to a 5-4 decision.
“You want to know what this election is about? We are one justice away from the Supreme Court saying ‘every image of God shall be torn down,’” said Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas said.
Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who endorsed Cruz earlier this week, interviewed the other guests. They included Barronelle Stutzman, a florist sued for declining to provide flowers to a same-sex marriage, and Oregon bakers Melissa and Aaron Kline, who declined to provide a cake to a same-sex marriage, among others.
“These are just everyday people like all of you in this room and yet they find themselves on the front line in the battle for the soul of this culture,” Deace said.
While Sen. Ted Cruz was grilling pork chops at the Iowa State Fair today, actress Ellen Page, wearing a hat and sunglasses, snuck her way up to the grill and asked the GOP presidential candidate about "the persecution of gays in the workplace and LGBT rights."
"Well, what we’re seeing right now, we’re seeing Bible-believing Christians being persecuted for living according to their faith," Cruz responded.
The Texas senator, 44, went on to argue today that "no one has the right to force someone else to abandon their faith and their conscience."
"Imagine, hypothetically, you had a gay florist and imagine two evangelicals wanted to get married and they decide, ‘You know what, I disagree with your faith and I don’t want to provide flowers,’" Cruz posed to Page.
As the mainstream media set traps to ensnare pro-lifers in the 2016 presidential quest, most conservative candidates bite their tongues to avoid another 2012 "Todd Akin moment." However, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker boldly answered the "gotcha question" in Thursday's GOP debate:
". . . I’ve got a position I think is consistent with many Americans out there in that I believe that that is an unborn child in need of protection out there, and I’ve said many a time that that unborn child can be protected and there are many other alternatives that will also protect the life of that mother. That’s been consistently proven."
[FOX News debate] Moderator Megyn Kelly asked Scott Walker how he could justify opposing an exception to an abortion ban in cases where a woman’s life was in danger, though he did sign a bill with such an exception.
. . . Kelly’s question to Walker pointedly played from the left: “Would you really let a mother die rather than have an abortion, and with 83% of the American public in favor of a life exception, are you too out of the mainstream on this issue to win the general election?”
. . . Even for the party long aligned in opposition to the procedure, the issue of exceptions has been politically challenging. Though the Republican party platform calls for a ban without exceptions, previous GOP presidential nominees Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush generally said they favored such exceptions. The politics around rape and the specter of a woman dying are considered too toxic for a general election.
Moderate Republicans said Friday they are concerned about the potential for Democrats to revive their “war on women” line of attack from 2012, when they successfully portrayed presidential nominee Mitt Romney and other Republicans as out of touch with or even hostile to the concerns of women.
“Republicans have to be careful not to fall into the trap laid by Democrats so successfully in the 2010 election into the 2012 election cycle,” said Steve Schmidt, a former top presidential campaign adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Friday compared the crop of Republican hopefuls to Todd Akin, whose 2012 Senate bid was derailed when he said “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy.
Abortion rights activists say that in some cases, the only option to protect a woman's life is to end her pregnancy.
"It's a false choice. There is always a better option out there," Walker told Fox News' Sean Hannity on Thursday night.
"I've said for years, medically there's always a better choice than choosing between the life of an unborn baby and the life of the mother," he added. "Medically that's just a nonissue."
Walker answered that he has a position on the issue "that's in line with everyday America."
The legislation makes performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to three and a half years in prison and $10,000 in fines. The only way abortions after 20 weeks are allowed is if the mother is likely to die or be severely injured.
Late on Monday, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton attacked Walker on Twitter for the new law, writing, “Gov. Walker signed dangerous abortion restrictions into law in WI - without exceptions for rape or incest. Extreme and unacceptable. -H.”
While Walker has a long history of opposing abortions . . . Walker's record includes defunding Planned Parenthood; requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, a law currently blocked by a federal court judge; and requiring women to have ultrasounds and be shown images of the fetus before having an abortion.
The governor's signature makes Wisconsin the 15th state to pass similar bans. There is no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
"For people, regardless of where they might stand, when an unborn child can feel pain I think most people feel it's appropriate to protect that child," Walker said.
Bans on abortion after 20 weeks are popular, at least on the surface. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in November of 2014 found that 6 in 10 Americans support banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, except in cases of rape or incest.
In 2012, a panel of obstetric and gynecological experts signed the Dublin Declaration, which states that “direct abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman… there is a fundamental difference between abortion, and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatment results in the loss of life of her unborn child.”
When the mother’s life is at stake, medical actions are taken with the intent to save the woman, not to dispose of the child.
Abortion proponents like to remind us that we’re not living in the 19th century or even the 1950s, but they conveniently forget that means we can handle medically challenging pregnancies and deliveries better than ever before. In a 2004 study from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, only 4% of women cited “physical problem with my health” as reason for getting an abortion. But never has literal abortion actually been necessary to save the life of the mother, and no woman should be made to believe otherwise. This is where definition comes into play, and where media figures like Kelly get it wrong.
And that’s the reality: abortion is never medically necessary to save a mother’s life. . . . This is reinforced by the testimony of Dr. Anthony Levatino, a reformed abortionist, who described a typical “life of the mother” case as he saw it:
“During my time at Albany Medical Center I managed hundreds of such cases by ‘terminating’ pregnancies [via live delivery by C-section] to save mothers' lives. In all those hundreds of cases, the number of unborn children that I had to deliberately kill was zero.”
In other words, when a life-in-danger medical condition arises, the solution is not to kill the baby, but to address what’s wrong with the woman. Granted, if we’re talking before viability, this may not always result in the preborn child surviving.
Thursday in New York at the Women in The World Summit, in her first presidential candidate speech, Hillary Clinton denounced “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases” for denying abortions to women and called on fellow feminists to counter such Christian influence in America and around the world.
“Far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth. All the laws we've passed don’t count for much if they’re not enforced,” Clinton said.
“Rights have to exist in practice — not just on paper,” Clinton argued. “Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will."
“And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed,” Clinton added.
During Hillary Clinton’s keynote address at Thursday’s Women In the World conference, the presidential candidate said that despite a drop in the rates of death during childbirth, women still don’t have access to “reproductive health care and safe childbirth,” and that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed” to achieve the full advancement of women. . . .
Reproductive health does includes abortion, but unsafe abortions account for only 13 percent of all global maternal deaths, according to a 2010 report from the University of Essex. The report also found that:
Globally, around 80 percent of maternal deaths are due to obstetric complications; mainly haemorrhage, sepsis, unsafe abortion, pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, and prolonged or obstructed labour […] Almost all cases of maternal mortality are preventable. An estimated 74 percent of maternal deaths could be averted if all women had access to the interventions for preventing or treating pregnancy and birth complications, in particular emergency obstetric care.
“Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will,” she explained. “And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed. As I have said and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the 21st century and not just for women but for everyone — and not just in far away countries but right here in the United States.”
The event took place at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. Media CEO Tina Brown welcomed other women to the stage, including Ashley Judd and Helen Mirren, as well as numerous female political activists and businesswomen.
During the speech, Clinton also touted the new pro-abortion Attorney General the Senate confirmed on Friday. “Finally, finally, Loretta Lynch will be able to assume the position she has trained her lifetime for,” Clinton said. And she condemned the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision protecting pro-life businesses from being forced to pay for abortion-causing drugs for their employees.
Last year, Clinton said that to be pro-woman is to be pro-abortion. . . .
Recently, Clinton refused to say if she would support any limits on late-term abortions.
In her role as Secretary of State Clinton pressed for abortion on an international scale. . . .
Clinton says she admires Margaret Sanger, the racist founder of the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
