No Time for Demoralization
Tuesday in Ohio was a rough day for pro-life Americans. The defeat of Issue 1, a proposal to require a 60 percent majority before state constitutional amendments can be adopted, was deeply disappointing and demoralizing.
Ohio has been an atypical state in many ways: pro-life, a GOP governor and legislature, Donald Trump has carried it twice and every Republican occupant of the White House has won it.
Despite all that, we were frankly clobbered at the polls. How did this happen? There are quite a few usual suspects. Once again, we were heavily outspent. National abortion groups like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood spent freely – and early. One Person, One Vote, the key group against Issue 1, raised $14.8 million, 85 percent of it from out of state. The American left has multiple billionaires on their side, and we have few. Theirs showed, and all but one of ours did not.
Advertising in the fight broke new ground. CNN’s Dana Bash featured one ad, by something called the Progress Action Fund, she called “risqué.” That doesn’t begin to describe it. The graphic ad featured a couple having sex. As the man reaches in a drawer for a condom, a white-haired man appears in a suit and tells the couple he is their Republican Congressman, clutches the condom, and announces, “Now that we’re in charge, we’re banning birth control.”
Imagine a pro-life ad that included such a complete lie. You can only imagine it, because no group would make such a reckless ad and, if it did, no station, including CNN, would air it.
My ally, Marjorie Dannenfelser of SBA Pro-Life America, hit the nail on the head after the vote. Our grassroots battled hard, she said, but “the silence of the establishment and business community in Ohio left a vacuum too large to overcome.” While the left went on the air from day one, the contributions from leading GOP voices were late and often little.
Marjorie calls it the “ostrich strategy,” and the left will be only too happy to bury the rest of the GOP carcass where its head is stuck now.
Another Ohio vote, on a radical abortion initiative itself, is just 90 days away.
The FBI Under Pressure for Religious Targeting
Meanwhile, back in the real world, an actual GOP Congressman from Ohio is doing the right thing to protect basic freedoms. You’ll remember back in February when a January 23 memo was leaked from the FBI’s Richmond field office detailing a plan to target “traditionalist Catholics” for investigation regarding “extremist threats.”
In a July hearing, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) pressed FBI director Christopher Wray about the memo. Wray replied saying the memo was a “single product by a single field office.” Jordan pointed out the memo as delivered to his committee was heavily redacted and demanded an unredacted copy.
Yesterday Jordan’s committee released a less-redacted copy of the memo which showed that, contrary to Wray’s attempt at reassurance, multiple FBI field offices, including the Los Angeles and Portland bureaus, were involved in creating the memo aimed at traditionalist Catholics.
The House Committee is now demanding that the FBI explain why the involvement of other offices was redacted, offering Wray a chance to amend his erroneous testimony, and requesting the FBI turn over all communiques among these FBI field offices regarding the targeting.
Someone in multiple FBI offices apparently believes the law enforcement agency has a stake in disputes within a church over questions of dogma and liturgy, and it has something to do with terrorism. The animus toward Christianity is obvious. Director Wray has more than a little explaining to do – and quickly.
Killer Camps
This summer, many parents and children eagerly welcomed the return of summer camps, where kids participated in a wide variety of outdoor events and educational opportunities.
But what if your kids were learning how to kidnap soldiers, train with automatic weapons, target police officers on a shooting range, crawl under barbed wire and fire anti-tank missiles, all while chanting, “Death to Israel”?
What? That doesn’t sound appropriate to you? Well, I should certainly hope not, because it isn’t appropriate at all. It’s child abuse. But that’s exactly what’s happening at summer camps in Gaza run by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority.
Every year, reports about these outrageous “killer camps” appear in the news, but they are largely ignored – especially by the “mainstream media” and anti-Israel politicians in Washington who have a high tolerance for dead Jews.
Palestinians are training their children for war, teaching them to hate Israel (here and here) and how to kill Jews. These are real neo-Nazis, and Joe Biden is funding them.