Would Someone Please Tell That Greta Kid

We’ve Just Had the Best Decade in Human History. Seriously

Little of this made the news, because good news is no news

Matt Ridley
The Spectator


Let nobody tell you that the second decade of the 21st century has been a bad time. We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 per cent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 per cent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline.

Little of this made the news, because good news is no news. But I’ve been watching it all closely. Ever since I wrote The Rational Optimist in 2010, I’ve been faced with ‘what about…’ questions: what about the great recession, the euro crisis, Syria, Ukraine, Donald Trump? How can I possibly say that things are getting better, given all that? The answer is: because bad things happen while the world still gets better. Yet get better it does, and it has done so over the course of this decade at a rate that has astonished even starry-eyed me.

Perhaps one of the least fashionable predictions I made nine years ago was that ‘the ecological footprint of human activity is probably shrinking’ and ‘we are getting more sustainable, not less, in the way we use the planet’. That is to say: our population and economy would grow, but we’d learn how to reduce what we take from the planet. And so it has proved. An MIT scientist, Andrew McAfee, recently documented this in a book called More from Less, showing how some nations are beginning to use less stuff: less metal, less water, less land. Not just in proportion to productivity: less stuff overall.

Daily Meditation

Putting Your Faith in Action

Ligonier Ministries

The organized church is torn with strife and distrust. Ultimately, the battle is not so much between conservatives and liberals, evangelicals and activists, or fundamentalists and modernists. The issue now is between belief and unbelief: Is Christianity true or false, real or unreal?

What is deadly to the church is when the external forms of religion are maintained while their substance is discarded. This we call practical atheism. Practical atheism appears when we live as if there were no God. The externals continue, but man becomes the central thrust of devotion as the attention of religious concern shifts away from man’s devotion to God to man’s devotion to man, bypassing God. The “ethic” of Christ continues in a superficial way, having been ripped from its supernatural, transcendent, and divine foundation.

Biblical Christianity knows nothing of a false dichotomy between devotion to God and concern for man. The Great Commandment incorporates both. It is because God is that human life matters so much. It is because of the reality of Christ that ethics are vital. It is because the cross was a real event that the sacraments can minister to us. It is because Christ really defeated death that the church offers hope. It is because of Jesus’ real act of atonement that our forgiveness is more than a feeling.

The church’s life and her creed may be distinguished but never separated. It is possible for the church to believe all the right things and do the wrong things. It is possible also to believe the wrong things and do the right things (but not for very long). We need right faith initiating right action. Honest faith—joined with honest action—bears witness to a real God and a real Christ.

Coram Deo

Examine your heart today: Are you believing the right things, yet doing the wrong things? Are you believing the wrong things while still trying to do the right things?

Passages for Further Study

James 2:17-18
James 2:26

Back From the Brink

Delingpole: The 2010s Were the Twilight of the Elites

James Delingpole
Breitbart London

This was the Decade of the Twilight of the Elites. From Brexit to the U.S. presidential election, from Bolsonaro in Brazil to the people’s revolutions that swept Europe, the arrogant, corrupt and complacent political establishments of the old order fought desperately to uphold their rotten hegemony only to be crushed, schooled and humiliated to the point of near-irrelevance by a mighty wave of populism. Here were some of the key moments…

Donald Trump’s Presidential Victory

No other event in the 2010s is going to eclipse the significance of Donald Trump’s presidential victory. We think of it now as a foregone conclusion but even on election day, President Hillary Clinton seemed so inevitable that bookmakers were offering 9 to 1 odds for anyone foolish enough to bet on a President Donald Trump.

After the damage of the Obama era, the U.S. was just one election cycle away from oblivion: under Hillary, the Swamp’s takeover of the entire political system would have been completed. Ordinary people in the U.S. — the kind, as the CEI’s Myron Ebell memorably put it, who dig stuff or make stuff or grow stuff — understood this and grabbed their chance to save America while they still could.

Nigel Farage versus Bob Geldof on the Thames

Donald Trump’s presidency would probably never have happened without the inspiring example of Brexit; Brexit, in turn, might never have happened without three decades of tireless campaigning by the ebullient, Mister-Toad-like cheeky-chappie Nigel Farage with his trademark cigarettes and pints of beer.

A key moment of the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign was when Farage sailed up the River Thames towards London’s Houses of Parliament in a fleet of fishing boats to be confronted by multi-millionaire pop star Bob Geldof in an expensively chartered floating gin-palace full of champagne-swilling Remainers. Nothing better symbolised the gulf between the globalist, Davos-style elitist metropolitan types who supported Remain and the working class makers, doers and fishers who supported Brexit.

Authoritarian Corruption Festering in the FBI

A Law Unto Itself

If The FBI’s Contempt For The Law Is Not Reined In, Its Abuses Will Get Worse


The former CIA and FBI director’s article is a symptom of how the establishment media has become the propaganda arm of an increasingly robust U.S. authoritarian movement.

Adam Mill
The Federalist

In 2018, the U.S. government filed 1,117 final applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] court for authority for the FBI to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches. One application was withdrawn. One other was denied. The remaining 1,115 were granted.

Hours before the FISA court issued a December 17 order openly declaring that it could no longer trust any of the sworn statements the FBI had submitted to justify spying on Americans, The New York Times published an opinion article by William Webster, a former director of both the FBI and the CIA. Webster wrote, “Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order is, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them.”

Gone are the days The New York Times worked to expose government abuse of power. The New York Times now defends power from truth.

No More ‘Dissent Is Patriotism’

Setting aside the very dubious propositions that the FBI and the CIA should be protected from criticism, let’s plumb the depths of the Webster/NYT argument. Who, according to Webster, has the job of protecting the FBI and the CIA? Webster explains exactly who he means: “I am deeply disturbed by the assertion of President Trump that our ‘current director’ — as he refers to the man he selected for the job of running the F.B.I. — cannot fix what the president calls a broken agency.”

Webster goes on to suggest that the FBI should operate as an independent agency and that he is outraged by the “president’s thinly veiled suggestion that the director, Christopher Wray, like his banished predecessor, James Comey, could be on the chopping block.” He adds, “The independence of both the F.B.I. and its director is critical and should be fiercely protected by each branch of government.” Webster goes on to make it clear that the “rule of law” is threatened by the president criticizing the FBI.

The article is a symptom of how the establishment media has become the propaganda arm of an increasingly robust authoritarian movement in the United States.

Daily Meditation

Discipling and Disciplining

Ligonier Ministries

There is a strange dichotomy in the language of the contemporary church. Much is said and written about the important function of discipling new Christians, while at the same time the function of church discipline has almost vanished. Today, discipline is a word used to refer to the instruction and nurture of the believer. It does not usually carry the connotation of ecclesiastical censure or punishment.

In one sense, this modern version of discipling is linked to the New Testament model. The term disciple in the New Testament means “learner.” The disciples of Jesus were students who enrolled in Jesus’ peripatetic rabbinic school. They addressed Him as “Rabbi” or “Teacher.” To follow Jesus involved literally walking around behind Him as He instructed them (the word peripatetic comes from the Greek word peripateo, which means “to walk”).

The New Testament community was forbearing and patient with its members, embracing a love that covered a multitude of sins. But in the New Testament, church discipleship also involved discipline. Part of apostolic nurture was seen in rebuke and admonition. The church had various levels or degrees of such discipline, ranging from the mild rebuke to the ultimate step of excommunication.

Coram Deo

Do you accept discipline as well as discipling from your local church body? Ask God to make you more receptive to His discipline.

Passages for Further Study

2 Timothy 4:2
Proverbs 9:8
Revelation 3:19

The Amazing Power of The Brain

Boy Born With No Brain Makes Incredible Progress 

Parents Urged to Abort


Will Maule
Faithwire

A British boy born with just 2% of his brain has moved his foot for the first time after undergoing cutting-edge developmental treatment.  Medics did not anticipate that Noah Wall, now seven, would survive past a few days. He was born with a severe case of Spina Bifida, a condition that stunts the development of both the brain and spinal cord.

Convinced that Wall would be born with irredeemable disabilities, doctors urged his parents, Shelly and Rob, to abort their little boy.  “We were offered termination five times,” Rob says in the documentary, “The Boy With No Brain.”

Unwilling to accept that their son’s life was hopeless, the parents chose to keep their baby — and what a wonderful decision that was. Indeed, by age three, Noah’s brain had grown to 80% of what it should be and he rapidly began attaining all his regular cognitive faculties.

Mr Plod

Police Wasted £1.5 Million on Electric Cars 

Too Slow To Chase Criminals

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London


Police forces in the United Kingdom have squandered over a million pounds on electric cars that are incapable of chasing criminals or performing emergency services because the eco-friendly vehicles are too slow and take too long to charge.

A freedom of information request found that police in the UK have spent £1.49 million on 448 green cars and vans. However, the actual cost of the eco-police fleets is likely much higher as many districts have not reported their purchases. 

The official police reports admit that the battery-powered cars are incapable of fulfilling police duties such as chasing criminals or handling emergency response situations and often run out of power before a shift ends. The vehicles are used almost exclusively in non-emergency situations or to drive police chiefs to work, reports the Daily Mail.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has bought dozens of electric cars. However, the force admitted in an internal report that: “The market has not yet sufficiently matured to offer alternatively fuelled vehicles capable of meeting the MPS requirements for the role of pursuit cars.”

A Time of Winnowing

Betrayed with a kiss? State-sanctioned religious persecution rolls out under banners of “protection”

---

17 December 2019

We watch aghast as state-sanctioned persecution of Christians, and other minorities, unfolds globally. In India, the streets are ablaze as protest ignites over a deceptive law proposed by Narendra Modi’s government to “protect” minority migrant groups from discrimination with preferential citizenship rights, all the while excluding and, possibly expelling, Muslim immigrants. Wide-ranging destructive consequences could include a deluge of Hindu migrants displacing fragile Christian and minority ethnic communities in the north-east of the country.

Just a few weeks ago, Russia’s President Putin stood alongside Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban earnestly pledging to protect war-ravaged Christians in “cradle of Christianity” at a joint meeting with Christian leaders from the Middle East. Yet in Russia, both evangelical and Orthodox Christian leaders are sounding alarm bells over heavy-handed misuse of counter-terrorism legislation to oppress Protestant Christians.

Protesters set fire to a bus in New Delhi as protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Bill turned violent

Meanwhile in communist China, a chilling country-wide programme of AI surveillance, designed to watch and record citizens’ every move, will leave no place to hide for already hard-pressed minorities, including Christians who face ever increasing pressures and invasive control in churches and in their daily lives.

A great paradox of these times are the banners of protection, anti-extremism and social cohesion being waved in India, Russia and China where “anti-persecution” policies are perpetrating the very oppression against minorities they claim to be seeking to protect them from.

The Barnabas Fund

Will This Eventually Be The End of The Democratic Party?

Democrats Will Never End The Impeachment Show 

Trump Must Be Gone For Good

Andy Puzder
The Federalist

The Democrats have made one thing perfectly clear throughout their impeachment crusade: they will not rest as long as Donald Trump is president of the United States.

Their obsession with impeachment has little to do with anything President Trump did, and everything to do with who he is. Democrats never expected to lose the 2016 election—especially not to Donald Trump—and resolved to correct the voters’ unforgiveable “mistake” even before the president took office.

The Democrats have floated the idea of impeachment over demonstrably fake Russian collusion conspiracy theories, tabloid drivel about porn stars, and even the president’s criticism of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem.

With time running out before the 2020 presidential race gets into full swing, they seized on the only thing they had left: exaggerated “concerns” with a phone call to the newly elected Ukrainian president, padded with testimony from a slew of disgruntled national security officials upset that the president wanted to make his own foreign policy decisions, and a harebrained theory about how it was all illegal.

By any measure, the charade was a monumental failure.

Extremists Have Taken Control of the Asylum

Amnesty International--a Bad Actor

Amnesty International has been taken over by its "staff", many of whom use the organization to promote their own ideologies and hatred.

David Collier has researched and written a report on the organization.  The Executive Summary reads as follows:

Key findings:

• The research found extreme bias in the output of many Amnesty employees.

• Amnesty has employed people with open pro-terrorist sympathies, crucially relying
on them to provide information upstream that shapes opinion. One Amnesty
consultant was found tweeting support for a terrorist group and sharing advice
about hiding the truth to protect the ‘resistance’. Another was found giving advice to
‘factions’ asking not to publicly identify ‘martyrs’ as belonging to terrorist groups.

• When the existence of this research became public knowledge, some Amnesty staff
deleted public social media accounts in what appears to have been an attempt to
hide evidence.

• Amnesty International has recruited ‘one-cause’ activists despite their obvious
unsuitability for any organisation seeking to demonstrate impartiality.

• ‘Silence’ and ‘noise’ define Amnesty activity. There is silence in some areas and
obsessive noise in others. Amnesty employees choose on whom they wish to focus
on and whom they don’t.

Potentially a Big Deal

Trump is Remaking the Federal Judiciary

Colby Itkowitz
The Washington Post


WASHINGTON - After three years in office, President Donald Trump has remade the federal judiciary, ensuring a conservative tilt for decades and cementing his legacy no matter the outcome of November's election.

Trump nominees make up 1 in 4 U.S. circuit court judges. Two of his picks sit on the Supreme Court. And this past week, as the House voted to impeach the president, the Republican-led Senate confirmed another 13 district court judges.  In total, Trump has installed 187 judges to the federal bench.

Trump's mark on the judiciary is already having far-reaching effects on legislation and liberal priorities. Just last week, the 5th Circuit struck down a core provision of the Affordable Care Act. One of the two appellate judges who ruled against the landmark law was a Trump appointee.  The Supreme Court - where two of the nine justices are conservatives selected by Trump - could eventually hear that case.

The 13 circuit courts are the second most powerful in the nation, serving as a last stop for appeals on lower court rulings, unless the case is taken up by the Supreme Court. So far, Trump has appointed 50 judges to circuit court benches. Comparatively, by this point in President Barack Obama's first term, he had confirmed 25. At the end of his eight years, he had appointed 55 circuit judges.

Trump's appointments have flipped three circuit courts to majority GOP-appointed judges, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York. The president has also selected younger conservatives for these lifetime appointments, ensuring his impact is felt for many years.

Wickedness and Corruption Endorsed by "Christianity Today"

Due Process for a Scavenger Landfill Dog

Douglas Wilson
Blog and Mablog

[An article in which Douglas Wilson exposes the Editor of Christianity Today as being guilty of vacuous nonsense.]

Introduction

So I would like to take a few moments to write about the Trump impeachment fiasco, and to do so without actually talking about Trump himself, or his character, or his tweets, or his hair. For the sake of the argument, allow me to grant all the emotional distaste that your righteous spleen might be able to generate.

A friend of mine recently wrote, apparently pleased with the aftermath of the impeachment vote, that no one should ever be considered to be above the law. This bromide is of course correct, but it was so wildly wide of the mark that I felt like I had to reply. It was a true bromide, but badly and baldly thrown.

And my reply was that while nobody should ever be considered to be above the law, it is even more important that we recognize what is actually occurring here, and state firmly for the record that no one should be considered to be beneath it either. And I wouldn’t hang a landfill scavenger dog on the basis of the kind of wicked and corrupt processes we have witnessed over the last several months.

But CT Wants to Throw the Bum Out

What I intend to do in this space is take a look at the Christianity Today editorial by Mark Galli, the recent one that called for the removal of Trump, and thereby broke the Internet. Whether that removal happens by means of the electoral process or by impeachment, CT has kindly left to our prudential judgment. More about that in just a wee bit.

In the editorial, CT says this: 

“We have reserved judgment on Mr. Trump for years now. Some have criticized us for our reserve.”

Reserve, nothing. This is where I want to throw a flag, and penalize CT for unsportsmanlike conduct.

"Make Feel Good" Ignominy

50,000 Legal Firearms Confiscated in New Zealand ‘Buyback’

Breitbart London

[The following piece gives us insight on how other countries view the "Great Buyback".   We confidently predict that it will have zero impact upon violent crime in New Zealand.  We expect that the criminal gangs, which have grown prodigiously in significant numbers of patched members over the past two years, will continue their mayhem.  The police will not be safer; nor will the general public. Ed.]

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – New Zealand authorities said Saturday their country will be a safer place after owners handed in more than 50,000 guns during a buyback program following a ban on assault weapons. But critics say the process was flawed and many owners have illegally stashed their firearms.

The government banned many types of semi-automatic weapons less than a month after a lone gunman in March killed 51 worshippers at two Christchurch mosques. The police then launched a six-month program to buy the newly banned weapons from owners.

Daily Meditation

Being Clothed in His Righteousness

Ligonier Ministries

The church is our mother, but it is Christ’s bride. In this role, we are the objects of Christ’s affection. We, corporately, are His beloved. Stained and wrinkled, in ourselves we are anything but holy. When we say that the church is holy or refer to her as “holy mother church,” we do so with the knowledge that her holiness is not intrinsic but derived and dependent upon the One who sanctifies her and covers her with the cloak of His righteousness.

As the sensitive husband shelters his wife and in a chivalrous manner lends her his coat when she is chilled, so we are clad from on high by a husband who stops at nothing to defend, protect, and care for His betrothed. His is the ultimate chivalry, a chivalry that no upheaval of earthly custom can eradicate or make passé. This chivalry is not dead because it cannot die.

The bride of Christ is soiled but will one day be presented spotless to the Father by the Son who bought her, who loves her, and who intercedes for her every day. If we love Christ, we must also love His bride. If we love Christ, we must love His church.

Coram Deo

Ask God to rekindle your love for members of the body of Christ, the true church.

Passages for Further Study

Revelation 3:5
Psalm 111:3
2 Peter 3:14

The Saviour of the World Versus the Dragon

Rejoice and Weep

It is appropriate this year to link two realities.  Firstly, today we remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem.  Secondly, we acknowledge that more Christians around the world are being persecuted than ever before.  

The "tidings of great joy" that rang out over Bethlehem over two thousand years ago continue.  All over the world individuals, families, and congregations are today responding to the pronouncement of the angels: 

Luke 2:8-14 English Standard Version (ESV)

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,
    and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  This is the essence of what is represented and accomplished as a result of the coming of the Son of Man to the world. 

At this time, it is particularly appropriate that we remember the suffering of so many Christians at the hands of wicked. 

At least 327 million Christians face persecution according to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), which released its biannual report on Religious Freedom in the World in November, 2018. That is 7 percent of the world’s 2.3 billion Christians estimated by Pew Research Center in 2015. 245 million Christians in the top 50 countries on Open Doors USA’s 2019 World Watch List experience high levels of persecution (i.e.: torture, rape, sex-slavery, forced conversion, murder and genocide), an increase of 14 percent from 2018. Sixty percent of those enduring persecution are children; women and girls are most violated. Release International, a UK-based human rights watchdog in operation for the past 50 years who partners with U.S.-based Voice of the Martyrs said they expect global anti-Christian persecution is set to rise ‘sharply’ in 2019.

Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures

Nancy Pelosi’s Impeachment Blunder Will Play Out In 2020

Impeachment now looks more like an example of that ancient term: a partisan traveshamockery.

Ben Domenech
The Federalist


The decision by Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic House leadership to depart from Washington without resolving whether the Senate trial of the president will even happen is a blunder of potentially serious proportions. It totally undermines everything the Democrats have done narratively for the past several months, embracing their role as defenders of the Constitution against a clear and present danger to its tenets. Instead, impeachment now looks more like an example of that ancient term: a partisan traveshamockery.

Pelosi’s supporters who are hard core Democratic donors and partisans may like this move, since it denies the president the surety of what is almost assuredly going to be a bipartisan vote to acquit him on both charges in the Senate. These are the same people who wanted to extend the process by forcing Mick Mulvaney and John Bolton to testify via the courts, who hold out hope to this day that the Southern District of New York will turn up something on Rudy Giuliani that will make for even more articles of impeachment. They want impeachment now, impeachment tomorrow, impeachment forever – asterisks all the way down.

But for the approximately 30 members who stood with Pelosi to make this tough vote, they don’t want impeachment to extend further into the new year – they want it over as quickly as possible. The narrative argument they can make is obvious: “yes, we voted for impeachment, we had to do it because of the Constitution, but the very next day we proved we could work with the president on trade, and we’ll work with him on prescription drug prices and other issues moving forward.” That’s how they got elected in the first place, after all – and defending those members is what Pelosi has concentrated on. It’s why she didn’t want to do this in the first place.

The idea that Pelosi would hold on to these articles isn’t envisioned in the process or rules. Noah Feldman, who testified for the Democrats during their proceedings, maintains that Trump isn’t actually impeached until the House sends over the articles. It also prompts a host of questions about whether the Senate could hold a trial even if the House does not transmit the Articles of Impeachment. Weird granular debates about legislative rules seems like exactly what’s needed to increase the momentum toward removal, guys – great job.

Daily Meditation

Accepting Nurturing from the Church

Ligonier Ministries

“Holy mother church”—historians are not certain who first said it. The statement has been attributed by some to Cyprian, by others to Augustine. The assertion has survived since the early centuries of Christian history—“Who does not have the church as his mother does not have God as his Father.” From its earliest days, the church was given the appellation “mother.”

The use of paternal and maternal language is an intriguing phenomenon in religion. We cannot deny the virtual universal tendency to seek ultimate consolation in some sort of divine maternity. We have all experienced the piercing poignancy that attends the plaintiff cry of a child who, in the midst of sobs, says, “I want my mommy.” Who of us, when we were children, did not utter these words? Among those who are parents, which of us has not heard these words?

The nurturing function of the church most clearly links it to the maternal image. It is in the church that we are given our spiritual food. We gain strength from the sacraments ministered to us. Through the Word we receive our consolation and the tears of broken hearts are wiped clean. When we are wounded, we go to the church for healing.

Coram Deo

Spend some time reflecting on the nurturing function of the church. Is this evident in your church fellowship?

Passages for Further Study

Ephesians 2:19-21
Hebrews 10:24-25
Matthew 18:20

'Tis the Season

The Heart of the Matter

The season of Christmas has many facets.  As always, it is essential that we move beyond maudlin sentimentality to the heart of the matter.  As always, the Scripture itself cuts to the chase.

The coming into the world of Jesus Christ as Adam's replacement meant that all who turn to Christ and follow Him "receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ."

Here is one of the great divine declarations upon the significance and meaning of Christmas.

Romans 5:12-21 English Standard Version (ESV)

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Good Signs

Boris Johnson Set to Repeal Brexit-Delaying Fixed-Term Parliaments Act

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is starting to implement his Conservative Party agenda, including repealing David Cameron’s Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, which stymied and delayed the Brexit process earlier this year.

After securing an 80 seat majority in last week’s general election, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to abolish the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. The removal of the piece of legislation will be a part of the agenda to be laid out by the government in the Queen’s Speech next week, reports The Times.

The act has been a target for removal by Conservatives, who see it as having unnecessarily delayed Brexit and an impediment to their ability to retain control of the government.  Constitutional Historian David Starkey speaking at the New Culture Forum in Westminster said the act was “a classic illustration of the catastrophe of trying to fuse Conservatism and Liberalism”.

Starkey said that the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act was crafted to undermine the constitutional principles established in the United Kingdom.

Judicial Tyranny in the UK

The Opinion That, ‘Men Cannot Change Into Women’ Is Now Illegal

Such an Opinion ‘Not Worthy of Respect In a Democratic Society’:  It is Therefore Verboten

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London


In a blow to free speech protections in the United Kingdom, a judge in an employment tribunal has ruled that there is no right to question whether a transgender person is a man or a woman.

Maya Forstater, a former tax expert, who was fired from her job at the Centre for Global Development after tweeting that “men cannot change into women“, lost her legal challenge against her firing.  The ruling found that the Equality Act 2010 did not protect Ms Forstater’s right to express the philosophical belief that there are only two genders and therefore her firing was legal, reports The Telegraph.

In his ruling, employment Judge Taylor said that Ms Forstater’s gender-critical position “is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others”.   Judge Taylor argued that the legal rights of a transgender person override Ms Forstater’s right to express her opinions, saying that she was responsible for “enormous pain that can be caused by misgendering a person”.

“If a person has transitioned from male to female and has a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), that person is legally a woman. That is not something [Ms Forstater] is entitled to ignore. [Ms Forstater’s] position is that even if a trans woman has a GRC, she cannot honestly describe herself as a woman. That belief is not worthy of respect in a democratic society,” Taylor said.

“Even paying due regard to the qualified right to freedom of expression, people cannot expect to be protected if their core belief involves violating others’ dignity and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment for them,” he concluded.

In response to the ruling, Ms Forstater said: “I struggle to express the shock and disbelief I feel at reading this judgment, which I think will be shared by the vast majority of people who are familiar with my case.”

RIP David Bellamy

BBC Conspired To Shut Down A Truthful Man

Nature TV Star Cancelled by BBC for Climate Change Wrongthink

James Delingpole
Breitbart London

David Bellamy is dead — and if his name doesn’t mean much to you that is largely the fault of the disgusting BBC.

For a decade or so from the ’70s onwards, botanist and environmentalist Bellamy was just about the biggest nature star on British TV, only equalled in celebrity by his fellow David, David Attenborough.  In some respects, Bellamy was the more famous and better-loved character, especially when comedian Lenny Henry spoofed him as a bearded eccentric with the catchphrase “gwapple me gwapenuts”.  (Bellamy was easy to impersonate because he pronounced his ‘r’s as ‘w’s – a condition known as ‘rhotacism’).

Attenborough specialised in wildlife; Bellamy in plants; both were superstars, even back in the 1970s; both were well on their way to becoming national treasures.  But only one of them did. What happened to Bellamy?

Simple. Bellamy was an early victim of what is now known as cancel culture.

As a nature TV star, Bellamy ought to have been untouchable.

Daily Meditation

Entering into Your Priesthood

Ligonier Ministries

In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther formulated the concept of the priesthood of all believers. Contrary to widespread misconceptions of this doctrine, Luther did not mean to reduce the supernatural concern of personal redemption to a core or essence of social concern.

In reaction to the modernist-fundamentalist controversy, many evangelicals, zealous to retain the biblical concern for personal redemption, began to minimize or even reject the social agenda of the New Testament. Social concern and relief ministry became identified with liberalism. Ministry to the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and the imprisoned was often all-too-willingly surrendered to the state or the liberal church.

This reaction was utterly foreign to and in violation of the clear mandate of Scripture. James wrote concerning the essence of pure religion: “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27, NKJV).

Coram Deo

What are you doing to help those around you who are in distress? Are you keeping yourself clean from the world’s pollution, as James admonishes?

Passages for Further Study

Matthew 5:16
James 1:27
Micah 6:8

Embarrassment At Large

4 Reasons Trump’s Impeachment Is The Weakest In U.S. History

Critics of Trump note that no crime is necessary to impeach the president. While that's true, it speaks to how weak the Democrats' case against Trump is.

Mollie Hemingway
The Federalist


President Donald Trump joined Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson in the club of impeached presidents Wednesday night. Like the other two, Trump will be acquitted by the Senate once the articles of impeachment are delivered.

The case for Trump’s impeachment is the weakest of the three. If we include Richard Nixon, who resigned on his way to impeachment, it’s the weakest of the four. Here’s why.

1. No Actual Crime

Previous impeachments at least had a crime. Andrew Johnson was the first U.S. president to be impeached. He faced 11 articles of impeachment, mostly built around his violation of the Tenure of Office Act of 1867. That act limited the power of presidents to fire employees in Senate-approved positions without the consent of the Senate. While the law was blatantly unconstitutional, Johnson did violate it by getting rid of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

Clinton was impeached for actual crimes that would get the rest of us in a whole lot of trouble. He was impeached for lying to a grand jury about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, false statements he’d made in an earlier deposition, and false statements he allowed his attorney to make about witness tampering. He was also impeached for obstructing justice in a case filed against him by encouraging Lewinsky to make a false statement and give false testimony, by hiding gifts he’d given to her, getting her a job in exchange for favorable testimony, attempted witness tampering with his secretary, and making false and misleading statements to jurors.

Nixon would have been impeached for obstructing an investigation into the unlawful break-in by his Committee to Re-Elect the President at the Watergate building and using the IRS and other agencies to violate others’ privacy.

By contrast, President Trump was not impeached for any recognizable crime. Critics of Trump note that no crime is necessary to impeach the president. While that’s true, it speaks to how weak the Democrats’ case against Trump is.

2. Punishing Trump for Exercising Constitutional Privileges

Trump is being impeached for abusing his power and for obstructing Congress.