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Hagel, Brennan, Kerry ... and now Denis McDonough. President Barack Obama plans to name Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough as his next chief of staff, a Democratic source briefed on the plans tells POLITICO. McDonough would replace Jack Lew, the communist Obama nominated to be his new Treasury secretary. Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor and a former senior fellow at the uber far left Center for American Progress, is the man most responsible for orchestrating the Benghazi jihad cover-up. McDonough rewrote the CIA talking points on Benghazi, misrepresenting the video, when the true motive behind the terrorist attack...

Can anyone point to the map and tell me where Muldrow, Oklahoma is? If you have not learned where this little town is by now, let me give you an education. It is near the border of Oklahoma and Arkansas and it has become the latest community to undergo a steady attack on Christianity. It is also the town where I grew up. I graduated from Muldrow High School in 1980 and I never dreamed it would be the center of so much attention. We were known for having a terrible football team, but great basketball players. We also produced...

In early April, Army Reserve soldiers in Pennsylvania were told in a redeployment briefing that evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics were "extremists," the same category as al Qaeda. Later that month, the Southern Baptist Convention's website was blocked on Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps bases due to what the military's software filter told Web users was "hostile content." And in early May, news reports said that an anti-Christian crusader had proposed new rules for the Pentagon so that military-service members could be court-martialed for sharing their faith. But the initial reports on these matters were exaggerated, taken out...

As Orthodox Christians held Easter masses Saturday in the Middle East, North Africa and around the world, President Obama greeted the faithful saying Jesus' sacrifice "so that we might have eternal life" is an apt reminder this year with the region facing violent persecution. "For millions of Orthodox Christians, this is a joyful time," Obama said in a statement issued by the White House on Saturday. "But it's also a reminder of the sacrifice Christ made so that we might have eternal life. His decision to choose love in the face of hate; hope in the face of despair is...

Diverse Group of Amicus Briefs Ask the High Court to Protect a Peaceful Hutterite ColonyFor Immediate Release: May 3, 2013Media Contact: Emily Hardman, ehardman@becketfund.org, 202.349.7224Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, the State of Michigan, twenty-one First Amendment scholars, and eighteen religious organizations representing tens of millions of religious believers filed friend-of-the-court briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the Court to hear a religious liberty appeal on behalf of a Hutterite colony in Montana. The question in the case is whether the Hutterites, who trace their history to the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, can be forced to provide workers’ compensation insurance...

Despite significant improvements since the hard-line Taliban ruled Afghanistan, religious freedom remains poor, especially for minorities, and Afghans still can't debate religion or question prevailing Islamic orthodoxies without fear of being punished, a U.S. commission said in a new report on Tuesday. As the country braces for next year's presidential election and the planned withdrawal of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014, the panel urges the U.S. government and its allies to work harder to promote religious rights in the war-torn nation. The environment for exercising religious freedom remains "exceedingly poor" for dissenting members of Afghanistan's Sunni...

Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. – Psalm 73:6 “Gay pride” necessitates anti-Christian hate. It must. “Gay marriage” and other “sexual orientation”-based laws do violence to freedom and truth. They are the hammer with which the postmodern left intends to bludgeon bloody religious liberty and the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic. According to the unequivocal moral precepts of the Judeo-Christian tradition – explicit throughout both the Old and New Testaments – homosexual behavior is a sin. Sin is evil. Homosexual behavior is the central, defining characteristic of so-called “gay marriage.” Therefore, “gay marriage” is evil. Christians are obligated...

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 12, 2013 (Acton Institute) - “What right do they have to do this, to take away our freedoms?” Mary Anne Yep, co-founder and vice president of Triune Health Group in Chicago, recently asked of the Obama administration regarding the HHS Mandate. On Monday when the official comment period closed, thousands of individuals swamped the Department of Health and Human Services with concerns about the HHS Mandate and the effect it would have on religious liberty in the United States. The Heritage Foundation recently posted an updateabout HHS and the people against it: After more than a year...

(Following is a brief summary of the article's contents) Raleigh, North Carolina - Two North Carolina legislators introduced a state resolution asserting the State of North Carolina can make its own laws regarding the establishment of religion. [See the article for further details.]

Liberals who demand church-state separation would pitch a fit if a public school decided to perform a play that reverently told stories of the Old Testament, whether it was the story of creation, the story of Noah, or Moses or Joseph and his brothers. But somehow, if a public school decides to put on a play mocking God and the Old Testament, that is not a church-state violation. The separation police don't want religious (or atheist) minorities to face religious indoctrination in a public school. But anti-religious indoctrination mocking the Judeo-Christian majority is a glorious festival of free speech. Take,...

America’s free-speech model is in desperate need of an update, says an American-Muslim human rights activist who recently spoke at an event linked to an Obama administration appointee. Dr. Qasim Rashid argued that cyber-bullying laws could be used to limit freedom of expression – such as the burning of Korans -- in war time: “When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in times of peace are a hindrance to this effort,” Rashid said on March 19 at Howard University. “And their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and…no court can regard...

A Florida Atlantic University student said he was punished after he refused a professor’s directive to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” written on it. The university, meanwhile, is defending the assignment as a lesson in debate. “I’m not going to be sitting in a class having my religious rights desecrated,” student Ryan Rotela told television station WPEC. “I truly see this as I’m being punished.” Rotela, who is a devout Mormon, said the instructor in his Intercultural Communications class told the students to write the name “Jesus” on a sheet of paper. Then, they were...

I’d like to start off this column about apologetics with an apology. I apologize to all the people I’ve sat next to on airplanes, occasionally exchanging a few words about going to Atlanta but nary a mention about going to heaven. To be precise, I’m no master of evangelism. Any successes I’ve had in focusing the attention of others on what’s most important have been accidental (seems that way to me) and utterly foreordained (by God). So, you are getting the following from me as reporter, not the frequent practitioner I should be—and what I can report is that...

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. Secretary of State John Kerry chose an interesting place to deliver his first foreign policy address. The former Massachusetts senator spoke at the University of Virginia. He was introduced by the university’s president, Teresa Sullivan. Dr. Sullivan noted that the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, had served as the first Secretary of State. Unlike today’s foreign policy elites, Mr. Jefferson thought religious freedom was fundamental to our political liberties. He authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which he introduced into the state’s General Assembly in 1779. It was a world historical...

A federal judge has given a victory to free speech and religious expression, dismissing a six-year-old lawsuit filed by the ACLU against a Ten Commandments display in Dixie County, Florida. The 12,000-pound monument was erected at the Dixie County courthouse in 2006 by local resident Joe Anderson, who was given permission by the county and who maintained the display at his own expense. In addition to the Decalogue, the display included the simple admonition, “Love God and keep His Commandments.” In 2007 a visitor to the county was offended by the display and contacted the ACLU in an attempt to...

A former British airlines worker was just told by a European human-rights court that she does, in fact, have the right to wear a crucifix on her neck. That such a thing would even have to go to court seems quite the sign of the times. It comes as Brits are faced with same-sex-marriage legislation that, if passed, would likely leave churches facing lawsuits when some clerics inevitably refuse to carry out such weddings. The decision came down on "Religious Freedom Day" here in America. "Foremost among the rights Americans hold sacred is the freedom to worship as we choose,"...

Welcome to Obamaland where our inalienable rights are being gradually degraded. Now that President Obama needs never to curry electoral favor again will government’s grasping overreach soon strangle a successful arts-and-crafts company? “We’re just going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” says attorney Kyle Duncan of the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty. Mr. Duncan represents Hobby Lobby, a family-owned retail chain risking severe penalties for putting principles before profits. Limited self-government descends into tyranny. Hobby Lobby faces looming fines of up to $1.3 million per day for refusing to abide a spurious provision of the...

WASHINGTON, D.C.,January 13, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Provisions that protect the conscience rights of military chaplains that were included in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) are “unnecessary and ill-advised” said President Obama in a signing statement this week. Section 533 of the defense bill was crafted in response to fears that the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell� policy under the Obama administration would lead to reprisals against chaplains who have moral objections to the homosexual lifestyle, or who refuse to perform same-sex “weddings.� That section says that no member of the armed forces may “require a...

Alliance Defending Freedom recently settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of Julea Ward, a former graduate student at Eastern Michigan University who was expelled from her counseling program after refusing to violate her religious beliefs. Media reports have unfortunately suggested that Julea’s lawsuit involved her refusal to counsel a client because he identified as gay: this is untrue. Instead, her case involved her religious objection to being forced to provide counseling about sexual relationships outside of marriage, an objection which applies equally to homosexual and heterosexual clients. Her objection is to providing counseling on certain topics, not to counseling any...

In a legal argument formally presented in federal court in the case of Hobby Lobby v. Kathleen Sebelius, the Obama administration is claiming that the First Amendment—which expressly denies the government the authority to prohibit the “free exercise” of religion—nonetheless allows it to force Christians to directly violate their religious beliefs even on a matter that involves the life and death of innocent human beings. … The Obama administration is making a two-fold argument for why it can force Christians to act against their faith in complying with the regulation it has issued under the Obamacare law that requires virtually...

Americans' affirmation of the "right to choose" is a feature of our national identity. No matter where you go or what you're doing, chances are you are confronted with a plethora of choices. Go to the supermarket and you are confronted with a dizzying array of options for each and every product you wish to buy. Seventeen brands of Greek style yogurt. Forty-five flavors of coffee creamer. Thirty-seven different kinds of peanut butter. The same may be said of cell phone carriers, automobiles, clothing brands... you name it. The freedom of "choice" also figures prominently in the political realm, and...

In the weeks before Christmas, many Christians read about John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke. They see that ordinary people came asking John if it was possible for them, too, to prepare the way for the Lord. Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” Soldiers came as well, asking, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be...

The strategic situation after a year, and the terrain ahead As the Catholic Church and the Obama administration approach the first anniversary of what has become the most serious confrontation between the Church and the federal government in U.S. history — a confrontation caused by a regulatory mandate implementing Obamacare — a review of the strategic situation is in order, with an eye to the terrain ahead. But given the confusions about this struggle that were sown in many minds during the presidential campaign (not least by the vice president of the United States), it is important to begin by...

Student religious groups should not have to appoint leaders who do not share their beliefs, a student judiciary at Tufts University announced on Wednesday (Dec. 5). It was a big victory for a Christian group on campus that had lost official recognition in October. Like several other private colleges, Tufts has an "all comers" policy that requires official student organizations to be open to all students for both membership and leadership, regardless of beliefs. But in reviewing a discrimination complaint filed against Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF), the largest evangelical group on the Medford, Mass., campus, the Tufts Committee on Student...

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò SOUTH BEND, Indiana, Nov. 23, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pope Benedict’s emissary to the United States warned earlier this month that Catholic professors and public officials who rebel from Church teaching on key issues such as abortion and marriage represent a “grave” threat to religious liberty. “We have witnessed that some instructors who claim the moniker ‘Catholic’ are often the sources of teachings that conflict with, rather than explain and defend, Catholic teachings in the important public policy issues of the day,” said Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. “This, my brothers and sisters, is a grave and major...

The jig is up. The news is out. Pastors across America have called the left’s bluff. The empty words “separation of church and state” – a phrase found nowhere in the U.S. Constitution – have lost their sting. Yes, “separation” still applies, but only insofar as it requires the state to remain separate from the church. That is to say, that government not interfere with the free exercise of either speech or religion. For decades, hard-left anti-theist groups like the ACLU, People for the American Way (PFAW) and Barry Lynn’s Americans United (AU) have employed a cynical disinformation scheme...

Blood is staining the globe. Not the blood of terrorists (enemies of America), but the blood of innocent Americans. We cannot resuscitate our loved ones. We can only attempt to clean President Obama’s bloodstains by removing him—and all who think like him—from public office. There is no need to “judge” Obama’s heart to realize that he is unfit to lead; God will be his judge. We need only objectively view the results of his puerile national security policy and his unconstitutional healthcare mandates: Blood in Benghazi On September 11, four Americans including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens were killed in...

Over the last six months or so, the Catholic Church in the United States has found itself in some tension with the executive branch of the federal government over a very grave issue: religious freedom. Can a government bureau, in this case the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), define for us or any faith community what is ministry and how it can be exercised? Can government also coerce the church to violate its conscience? Obama had personally assured me that he would do nothing to impede the good work of the Church in health care, education, and charity,...

Multi-religious prayer almost inevitably leads to false interpretations, to indifference as to the content of what is believed or not believed, and thus to the dissolution of real faith.” So wrote Joseph Ratzinger in 1986. Even then, the man who would later become Pope Benedict XVI was renowned as a singularly deep thinker on the finer points of religious belief systems — to say nothing of the sweeping themes. As head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, Cardinal Ratzinger was ruminating on the World Prayer Day for Peace, forged by his legendary papal predecessor, John Paul II. Though he was among...

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - To share the details of this weekend's rallies, Catholic Online sat down to talk to Eric Scheidler of the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Coalition. COL: Hello Eric. What's happening this weekend? SCHEIDLER: On Saturday, October 20, tens out thousands of faithful Americans will gather in 140 cities and town across the United States to protest the Obama administration's HHS Mandate, and raise the crucial issue of religious freedom before the public in advance of Election Day. COL: Why is this important? / Why should people care about this? SCHEIDLER: The HHS Mandate is...

This is an incredible ad the Catholic Church is running for values. http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=D9vQt6IXXaM&hd

www,wnd.com/2012/09/out of the pews and into the streets.

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As the November general election approaches, America’s Catholic bishops have been walking a fine line as they strive to avoid appearances of partisanship while at the same time they wage a high-profile battle against the Obama administration over religious freedom. Earlier this month, one of the leading lights in the U.S. episcopate insisted he “certainly” could not vote for Obama, while not specifically endorsing his Republic opponent Mitt Romney. Asked whether a Catholic could vote for Obama in good faith, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia replied: “I can only speak in terms of my...

Mike Barnicle has suggested that the Department of Justice consider prosecuting Florida pastor Terry Jones in the death of the American ambassador to Egypt and deaths occurring during riots last year in Afghanistan. Hat tip readers Melody, Jonathan R., Ray R. Barnicle made his suggestion on today's Morning Joe, during a discussion of the attacks on the American embassy in Egypt and the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where the American ambassador died after an attack by an Libyan mob. Fellow panelist Donny Deutsch responded by saying he was "thinking the same thing" as Barnicle. View the video here.

(CNN) -- The Republican National Convention will make history Wednesday night. Ishwar Singh, wearing a turban and beard, will take the stage and lead thousands of conservatives in prayer. For the first time in U.S. history, a Sikh American will give the invocation at a Republican National Convention. The inclusion of a Sikh prayer on the stage comes just a few weeks after a gunman opened fire on Sikhs praying in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six and hospitalizing three more in what could be the largest racially motivated mass shooting in recent U.S. history. Many praise the invocation as a...

A federal appeals court has determined a federal judge was right to throw out a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama’s decision to force taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a decision throwing out a lawsuit challenging the funding, which President George W. Bush stopped and Obama allowed just months after entering office. The bringers of the lawsuit argued Obama’s executive order forcing taxpayer funding violated the 1996 Dickey-Wicker law that prohibits taxpayer of any scientific research that results in the destruction of human embryos, unborn children at...

Eugene Volokh has been doing extensive blogging on the Volokh Conspiracy Blog about Elane Photography v. Willock That is where I heard about this case of a Photographer being forced by the government to take pictures of an private event that violates the photographer's beliefs. This case is about a photographer in New Mexico who did not want to take pictures of a gay marriage wedding because it violated their beliefs. This gay couple could have went anywhere else but they decide to go to court to force this photographer to take their money and take pictures for them at...

A judge has sided with a Colorado company whose owners oppose contraception and blocked a federal mandate that the company’s health insurance for employees include birth control coverage. The mandate stems from President Obama’s controversial Affordable Care Act. Senior U.S. District Judge John Kane issued an order Friday that bars the government from enforcing the requirement against Hercules Industries, Inc., a Denver heating and air conditioning company. The judge, in an 18-page decision, cited the owners’ religious rights as the basis for his temporary injunction. The owners are Roman Catholics whose religious beliefs are consistent with the church’s teaching against...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was “waging war on the Catholic Church”—an apparent reference to the Obamacare regulation she finalized earlier this year that requires nearly all health-care plans to offer sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs free of charge. “This secretary of HHS is a radical. She is waging war on the Catholic Church. She’s adopted radical positions on a range of issues,” Gingrich said during a conference call on Wednesday. … In its lawsuit against the HHS and Sebelius, the Archdiocese of New York cited similar comments made...

The Left, by its very nature, is ideologically driven. Ideology has a tendency to crowd out reason for the sake of vision. Witness the fact that certain members of the Left now want Americans to believe the Obama abortion pill mandate—which violates religious freedom—is, in fact, an exercise of religious freedom. Rabbi Arthur Waskow articulates this clearly in a recent Huffington Post column . In Waskow’s words, those who oppose the mandate requiring employers to provide insurance covering abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception for their employees—whether doing so violates their consciences or not—are actually “attacking religious freedom in the guise...

William, Paul and James Newland and their sister, Christine Ketterhagen, who together own Hercules Industries, have no right to conduct their family business in a manner that comports with their Catholic faith. The federal government can and will compel them to either surrender their business or to engage in activities the Catholic faith teaches are intrinsically immoral. This is exactly what President Barack Obama's Justice Department told a U.S. district court in a formal filing last week. Never before has an administration taken such a bold step to strip Americans of the freedom of conscience -- a right for which,...

The monstrous Islamic persecution, oppression and slaughter of Christians, Coptic Christians, Baha’is, Chaldo-Assyrians, Ahmadis, Jews and non-Muslims throughout the Middle East, South Central Asia and other Muslim countries cannot be sanctioned. But Obama is doing just that. Obama's Muslim advisers have gone so far as to block Middle Eastern Christians' access to the White house. Now, Obama has his henchmen like Jim Webb holding up any attempts at legislation to protect and/or defend these helpless minorities in Congress. Lawmakers clash over Middle East religious minorities bill The Hill, July 12 Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) ripped into Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.)...

On Thursday, June 28, 2012 the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate of the Affordable care Act (aka Obama Care). The dense opinion was authored for a 5- 4majority by Chief Justice John Roberts. Justices Kennedy, Alito, Scalia and Thomas strongly dissented. However, a Court speaks through its majority. The Majority opinion upheld the mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, not under the Commerce Clause, but as an exercise of Congress' power to tax. The Obama Administration initially argued that the penalty for non-compliance with the Affordable Care Act's mandate to purchase...

A Chinese priest who publicly quit the state-sanctioned Catholic Church and was made bishop with the pope's approval was taken away by officials last weekend and is being held in his seminary, a source said on Tuesday, in a move likely to further strain relations between Beijing and the Vatican. The incident is the latest sticking point in a long-running dispute over the status of China's state-backed church, which rejects papal control. Beijing and the Vatican differ over who has the authority to appoint bishops. Thaddeus Ma Daqin's movements have been restricted... Ma announced he was leaving the Communist Party-run...

America's Roman Catholic bishops just completed the "Fortnight for Freedom," a two-week period intended to "support a great national campaign of teaching and witness for religious liberty." As evangelical and Catholic leaders have spent the past year opposing the Obama administration's so-called contraceptive mandate, the timing, motives, and agenda driving the "Fortnight for Freedom" have prompted widespread commentary. Rather than scrutinizing the Fortnight's agenda, Protestants could examine deeper questions than what took place on the surface. It's important to consider the Fortnight's placement on the calendar—the significance of the Fortnight's dates, June 21 to July 4—to understand the nature of...

In the closing Mass for the Fortnight for Freedom today at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput reflects on the religious-liberty threats we face and urges authenticity in the fight to protect it, reminding those gathered that freedom is not a gift of Caesar, but God. Full text, as prepared, courtesy of the archdiocese of Philadelphia:(For a recent interview with the Archbishop Chaput on freedom in America, click here.)    Philadelphia is the place where both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were written.  For more than two centuries, these...

Catholic Founding Fathers - The Carroll FamilyCHARLES CARROLL CARTERGeorge Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin. Nearly every schoolchild recognizes them as the Founding Fathers. But there were a great many more Founding Fathers, even if their names are not so familiar as the above. Several of those lesser-known men who played key roles in the creation of the United States of America were Catholics. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin. Nearly every schoolchild recognizes them as the Founding Fathers — signers of the Declaration of Independence, framers of the...

Christians rally at statehouse over Obama mandate

The Obligations of Religious FreedomThere is a paradox to religious freedom — a genuine gain arising from an apparent loss. The dilemma goes something like this: If you want your religious beliefs to be protected, you must protect religious beliefs that fundamentally differ from your own. This does not require an endorsement of those beliefs, but it does require a certain respect for them.[2] Competing claims of truth and belief don’t easily coexist. However, “religious freedom for me but not for thee” cannot work, especially in a world as diverse as ours. Centuries of sectarian conflict have shown that such...

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, alongside Catholic Bishop Richard E. Pates of the Diocese of Des Moines, led more than 1,000 people Sunday afternoon from St. Ambrose Cathedral down Locust Street to the east side of the Iowa State Capitol in a celebration of religious freedom. The 1.7 mile march was part of a national Fortnight for Freedom a two-week campaign of prayer vigils and rallies aimed at drawing attention to what Catholic churches and other-faith based organizations consider government attacks on religious freedom. Ann Block, a Catholic who belongs to St. Francis Parish in West Des Moines, said she first...