What Christians Can Learn from Secular Humanism

From Breakpoint.org (Jan. 23, 2023):

A few months ago, a group called Humanists International updated their “defining statement of World Humanism.” Though they explicitly state that the statement “is not a creed,” it is—and it serves as an update to what’s known as “the Amsterdam Declaration,” the official statement of World Humanism, last updated in 2002. In that edition, the World Humanist Congress stated that “the solutions to the world’s problems lie in human thought and action.” 

While that is an interesting claim to make only a year after the “human thought and action” on display in the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, secular humanists interpreted those events in defense of their creed. According to the 2002 statement, “Humanism is a response to the widespread demand for an alternative to dogmatic religion.” In other words, some people become terrorists because they’re religious, not because they’re human. That argument was persuasive at the time. In fact, in the years following 9/11, secular humanism seemed to get a second wind in Western culture, as evidenced by the rise of the so-called “New Atheism.”

However, advocates for secular humanism have always resembled the cynical onlookers portrayed by Friedrich Nietzsche in his parable of “the Madman.” When “the madman” declares “I seek God! I seek God!” the onlookers mock him. “Has God gotten lost, like a child?” they ask. “Has he gone on a voyage?” After all, this was the end of the 19th century. Who believed in God anymore?

What the mockers missed, Nietzsche’s parable taught, is that even as the secular intellectuals of his day mocked belief in God, they were holding on for dear life to the fruits of the faith they disdained. In fact, they seemed blissfully unaware of what untethering the world from God would entail, both for individuals and for society. No longer could social norms like human rights, scientific progress, or the preference of kindness over cruelty be justified, much less maintained. After all, only a belief in a particular type of Creator could ground such notions. “What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?” asked Nietzsche.

The secular humanism of the 20th century has been in steep decline for decades now, overwhelmed by a worldview that holds that there is no universal, discernible story of reality that can be known, that we’re all trapped in our own people groups and in our own understanding of reality that is defined by some sort of inner sense of knowledge. In such a context, reading the Amsterdam Statement seems almost quaint, like watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie or some other show committed to showing human goodness in a time gone by. Complete sections of the statement are written as if the 20th century never happened:

We are convinced that the solutions to the world’s problems lie in human reason, and action. We advocate the application of science and free inquiry to these problems, remembering that while science provides the means, human values must define the ends. We seek to use science and technology to enhance human well-being, and never callously or destructively.

Other sections claim all that God brings to the world, while rejecting God Himself.

We value all sources of individual joy and fulfillment that harm no other, and we believe that … ethical living is a lifelong undertaking.

We therefore treasure artistic creativity and imagination and recognize the transforming power of literature, music, and the visual and performing arts. We cherish the beauty of the natural world and its potential to bring wonder, awe, and tranquility. … We esteem the quest for knowledge, and the humility, wisdom, and insight it bestows.

One wonders what the Madman would have to say to this.

From its very beginning, secular humanism has, in various ways, promised to save the world. Not only have these promises failed, but no coherent vision has even been offered of what a “saved world” would look like. Like the progressives of today, who promise progress without any fixed definition of better or worse, all that’s left is a pursuit of pleasure, to enshrine self-expression as the highest good. In other words, it was the abject failure of secular humanism that gave birth to the cynical postmodern ethos of today.

If nothing else, secular humanism is a cautionary tale for Christians who think of the Christian faith as a kind of humanist project. Of course, we want to be respectable, intellectual, good people who make the world better. But Christianity is not merely a way of achieving human flourishing. It is first and foremost a Story of reality, an account of the world and human history that is true. This story is the foundation of certain, nonnegotiable moral beliefs that may not be popular, but they are also not up for grabs, and they can’t be separated from the truth claims of Christianity in the first place.

In other words, the Christian creed is not to be updated every few decades, despite what you may have heard. [source]

An interesting take on secular humanism or as it should be called “secular progressism.”

AI: Stroke patient helped to walk by high-tech trousers

From BBC.com (Aug. 15, 2023):

Julie Lloyd, 65, is part of the UK's first trial of the "smart garment" that she described as a breakthrough for fellow stroke patients.

The "NeuroSkin" trousers stimulate her paralysed leg using electrodes controlled by artificial intelligence.

The Stroke Association said new technologies are giving hope to the UK's 1.3 million stroke survivors.

The developers of NeuroSkin said the invention is already revolutionising stroke care in France, but Ms Lloyd is one of the first involved in the UK's own trial.

"My leg is almost feeling as if it's being guided," she said.

Ms Lloyd took part in the UK trial at her physiotherapy clinic in Newport.

After first experiencing an uncomfortable "tingling feeling", she said that within a few minutes she was walking unaided for the first time in six months.

"[My leg] was suddenly propelled up from the floor and made me feel safe walking, and that's the part that I've honestly not felt at all with all the physio I've had," she said.

"I've never felt since my stroke as elated as I feel this moment."

The businesswoman, from Penarth in Vale of Glamorgan, had a minor stroke in January which resulted in her left arm and left leg being partially paralysed. She currently relies on a cane to walk.

"Life before was very energetic, very active," she said, explaining how she ran the Cardiff half marathon before her stroke. "It has taken away a lifestyle I had and that's been terribly tragic."

Her rehabilitation involves hours of repetitive exercises aimed at "teaching" her brain to work around the area damaged by the stroke and make new connections to control her left side.

The progress has been slow and gruelling. But when she got to about 3,000 steps a day with a cane, her physiotherapist recommended she enter the trial of the AI-powered tech. [read more]

Good for her! Glad the tech could help her walk.

‘A World Of Ubiquitous Racism’: New Attack On Game Of Monopoly

From Daily Wire.com (Feb. 23, 2021):

Now the efforts to inject a discussion of racism into every aspect of American life have reached a game that most Americans have cherished for decades: Monopoly.

In a piece for The Atlantic titled, “The Prices on Your Monopoly Board Hold a Dark Secret,” and subheaded, “The property values of the popular game reflect a legacy of racism and inequality,” author Mary Pilon writes that a 1930s New Jersey realtor named Jesse Raiford “affixed prices to the properties on his board to reflect the actual real-estate hierarchy at the time. And in Atlantic City, as in so much of the rest of the United States, that hierarchy reflects a bitter legacy of racism and residential segregation.”

Pilon writes of Cyril and Ruth Harvey, “friends of Raiford’s who played a key role in popularizing the game,” that they lived on expensive Pennsylvania Avenue but had “previously lived on Ventnor Avenue, one of the yellow properties that represented some of Atlantic City’s wealthier neighborhoods, with their high walls and fences and racial covenants that excluded Black citizens.”

“The Harveys employed a Black maid named Clara Watson,” he notes. “She lived on Baltic Avenue in a low-income, Black neighborhood, not far from Mediterranean Avenue. On the Monopoly board, those are priced cheapest, at $60.”

After quoting Temple University history professor Bryant Simon stating, “Atlantic City, like all mass resorts, manufactured and sold an easily consumed and widely shared fantasy,” Pilon continues, “Around the time that Monopoly was taking hold in Atlantic City, ballots there were marked ‘W’ for white voters and ‘C’ for ‘colored’ voters, Simon said. It would take countless demonstrations and protests and a long struggle by the city’s Black residents to secure their civil rights, but the Monopoly board records a world of ubiquitous racism.”

Pilon notes there were other versions of Monopoly that featured other cities, noting, “people localized the boards to reflect their own communities.”

Of the Atlantic City Monopoly board, Pilon writes, “The board didn’t just record exclusion and discrimination; it also hinted at the dynamic life of the diverse city where the game was played. The city’s thriving Black business community centered on Kentucky Avenue, often known as ‘Ky. at the curb.’ … Farther down the board, restaurants run by Chinese Americans thrived on Oriental Avenue and Jewish delis could be found in the area.”

Turning to the current era, Pilon states, “The impact of the decisions made during Monopoly’s heyday is still felt today. Atlantic City is a ‘redlined epicure’ of the state, according to the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, and it leads the state in foreclosures. The rate of white homeownership in New Jersey stands at 77 percent, but Black homeownership is scarcely half of that, at 41 percent.”

Pilon concludes, “commonplace objects tucked into our closets and handed down from one generation to another can tell us important things about our past.”

Sometimes, those objects “reflect patterns that many Americans, particularly those who have benefited from them, don’t even think to question, arrangements that have been naturalized over time.”

“Monopoly still offers us the chance to understand how deep-seated those injustices can be,” she writes. “We simply have to look closely enough at the board.”

In September 2019, The Daily Wire reported of a new version of Monopoly created to please feminists:

CNN reports that “Ms. Monopoly,” unveiled this week, will celebrate “women’s empowerment” by reconfiguring the classic Monopoly board to be more “female-friendly,” including bumping the pay of female players who make it all the way around the board’s list of properties by rewarding them with extra pay. The theory is that women make only around $.70 for every dollar men make in the real world, so Monopoly will give them an advantage.

“Unlike the classic game, women will collect 240 Monopoly bucks when they pass ‘go,’ while male players will collect the usual 200. The idea is to create a game where women make more than men, the first game to do so, according to Hasbro,” CNN reports.

It’s “a fun new take on the game that creates a world where women have an advantage often enjoyed by men,” the company said in a statement emailed to major news organizations.

[source]

Stupid. When everything is seen as racism then nothing can be racist. The word loses meaning.

Trump terminates Biden's CBP One app, marking a strong start to illegal immigration crackdown

From The Blaze.com (Jan. 20):

President Donald Trump wasted no time on Monday, immediately terminating the previous administration's Customs and Border Protection app that ushered thousands of illegal aliens into the United States.

The Biden administration's CBP One mobile app allowed 1,450 foreign nationals per day to schedule an appointment at a port of entry to make an asylum claim.

Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, previously called for the application's termination.

"Creating programs to allow thousands of people in this country a week that we don't properly vet and that we know don't qualify is not the answer," he stated.

Immediately following Trump's inauguration on Monday afternoon, the CBP website released an update regarding its mobile app.

The alert read, "Effective January 20, 2025, the functionalities of CBP One™ that previously allowed undocumented aliens to submit advance information and schedule appointments at eight southwest border ports of entry is no longer available, and existing appointments have been cancelled."

A Sunday report from CBS News estimated that 270,000 foreign nationals were waiting to secure appointments through the application. Roughly 30,000 individuals had an appointment scheduled, it stated.

The Biden administration's mobile app, established in January 2023, allowed approximately 919,000 foreign nationals into the U.S. as of January 16, 2025.

A video posted on social media Monday showed migrants in Ciudad Juárez crying after they learned that the program had been terminated and any appointments were no longer valid.

Trump stated during his inauguration speech, "I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places in which they came."

The House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee Republicans reacted to Trump's decision to shut down CBP One.

"President Trump is already taking action to end the border crisis by returning the use of the CBP One app to its original intent," it stated. "Biden's unlawful abuse of the CBP One app facilitated the flood of otherwise inadmissible aliens into the U.S. and empowered criminal cartels."

Homan has also stated that the administration plans to implement worksite raids as part of its mass deportation promises. The border czar has floated creating a hotline where citizens can report suspected illegal alien criminals. Trump is expected to sign an executive order to end birthright citizenship. [source]

Good. It was a bad idea to begin with then again that was part of Briben's plan to increase illegal immigration.

Marco Rubio Is Right, The Postwar Liberal Order Was A ‘Dangerous Delusion’

From The Federalist.com (Jan. 17):

During his confirmation hearing for secretary of state on Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., leveled a searing critique of the postwar international order and the globalist ideology that sustains it. For generations, that ideology has dominated the corridors of power in Washington and guided American foreign policy almost without question. It has not served us well, and it’s long past time to discard it.

Rubio took direct aim at the postwar liberal order in his opening statement, signaling a major shift in American foreign policy under a second Trump administration. In Rubio’s telling, repudiating postwar globalism means a return of American foreign policy based on the American national interest, a recovery of our American identity, and a recognition that our national interests are not always going to be aligned with the interests of the so-called “international community” or global corporations.

It was a “dangerous delusion,” said Rubio, to think that the end of the Cold War meant the end of history and “that all the nations of the world would now become members of the democratic western-led community, that a foreign policy that served the national interest could now be replaced by one that served the liberal world order, and that all mankind was now destined to abandon national sovereignty and national identity and would instead become one human family, and citizens of the world.”

The hallmarks of this delusional ideology, Rubio went on, included “an almost religious commitment to free and unfettered trade,” which was pursued at the expense of our national economy. It also included “an irrational zeal for maximum freedom of movement of people,” which has caused a “mass migration crisis.” (Note that Rubio doesn’t qualify or limit this merely to “illegal immigration.”)

These twin pillars of the postwar liberal order, free trade and open borders, are the logical policy endpoints of the globalist ideology that first gained traction in the aftermath of World War Two and were adopted without question at the end of the Cold War. Where did this ideology come from though, and why has it been so thoroughly embraced for so long?

One of the major architects of it was Karl Popper, an Austrian philosopher who during World War Two wrote The Open Society And Its Enemies, a major philosophical work which would prove massively influential in the decades after its publication in 1945. Popper believed the fascist regimes responsible for the Second World War arose from what he called the authoritarian personality, which produced a tribal or “closed society,” marked above all by deference to authority and subordination of the individual to the collective. Such societies tend to be nationalistic, authoritarian or totalitarian, and committed to concrete ideas about transcendent or metaphysical truth.

The task facing the world in the aftermath of World War Two and the horrors of Auschwitz, wrote Popper, was to ensure that nothing like that could ever happen again. The only way to do that, he argued, was to banish the closed society altogether, reject transcendence, embrace disenchantment, and pursue a radically open society. Popper was a philosopher of science, and wrote in a formal, academic style, but his anti-metaphysical ideas translated to a politics of openness and a society in which everything was open to critical questioning and empirical falsification. Nothing was really true, in other words, except the need for openness and a rejection of what R.R. Reno has called “the strong gods” of national identity, religion, and transcendence. Popper thought we must define for ourselves the truths we need, even truth about reality itself: “Facts as such have no meaning; they gain it only through our decisions.”

In his 2019 book, Return of the Strong Gods, Reno argues that Popper’s influence on the postwar liberal order cannot be overstated — and that’s a big problem for us today. The danger of an open society is that at some point it begins to come apart. If nothing binds a nation together, it cannot cohere, and will eventually collapse.

Today we aren’t facing the war-ravaged world that Popper was, but one that has been dangerously weakened by the open society ideology that he espoused. “Our problems are the opposite of those faced by the men who went to war to defeat Hitler,” writes Reno. “We are imperiled by a spiritual vacuum and the apathy it brings. The political culture of the West has become politically inert, winnowed down to technocratic management of private utilities and personal freedoms. Our danger is a dissolving society, not a closed one; the therapeutic personality, not the authoritarian one.”

This is what Rubio was getting at in his opening statement, and it’s a theme that’s been running right through the heart of our political discourse since Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015. Are we going to be an endlessly open society, committed only to open borders and free trade, with no sense of national solidarity or loyalty to the American nation and people? Or are we going to rediscover what the West cast aside after World War Two, and embrace again the loyalties and truth-claims that enable a nation and a people to cohere and pursue their collective interests over and against those of other nations?

To be sure, Rubio and Trump and the entire populist MAGA movement stand in contrast to a bipartisan consensus that has ruled in Washington for many decades now. In his televised address on Wednesday, President Joe Biden repeatedly referred to America as an idea. It’s a familiar claim, that America is based on the universal proposition that all men are created equal, therefore anyone who accepts the proposition can become an American.

But the limits of this claim should by now be obvious. America is more than an idea, it is a people bound together by a shared past and a common future. We have a distinct language, culture, and way of life. We are also not, as Elon Musk thinks, simply an indifferent meritocracy derived from a proposition of human equality. Much of Asia is also a meritocracy, and no one mistakes it for America.

Indeed, the proposition of human equality at the heart of our nation is above all a religious claim, specifically a Christian one. We have to understand “America as an idea” in that context. If America is an idea, the idea is not some version of the radical individualism and anti-metaphysics of Karl Popper, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the inheritance of Christian Europe. Put another way, the idea is western civilization itself, formed and sustained by Christian claims about God and man.

In concrete policy terms, a rejection of the postwar liberal order and a return to a politics of national solidarity will mean turning away from unfettered global free trade that benefits multinational corporations at the expense of America’s working families. It will mean rejecting mass immigration — legal and illegal — and recognizing that open borders are a force for destabilization and social chaos. And on the world stage it will mean recognizing that America’s national interests are not always served by deference to international bodies, corporate profits, and a rising GDP. [source]

Rubio is right. The vision that Popper had (which Soros still believes in) was ultimately not workable. Additionally, there is nothing wrong with believing in the transcendence, and there is nothing wrong with nationalism in and of itself.

More Rubio articles:

• Rubio Wins Unanimous Nod to Be Top US Diplomat
• Marco Rubio tells diplomats he will end State Department programs that ‘open the door to censorship’
• Trump State Department Bans LGBT Pride, BLM Flags At Embassies, Consulates
• Rubio Threatens Bounties on Taliban Leaders Over Detained Americans
• Marco Rubio declares Trump’s interest in Greenland and Panama Canal ‘is not a joke’
• Sec. Marco Rubio Wins Big Migrant Deportation Deal with Guatemala

God’s Thoughts Should Be Our Thoughts: Truth Is Revealed and Knowable

From Breakpoint.org (Jan. 19, 2023):

Isaiah 55:8-9 are among those verses that have taken on a life of their own in Christian circles:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Christians often cite these verses as meaning that God’s thoughts and ways are so transcendent and inscrutable, we cannot know them. This is, we are told, a reason for comfort for the Christian, especially when circumstances around us are confusing and painful. Some even use these verses to defend a kind of Christian anti-intellectualism. After all, if God is unknowable, why study theology at all? When having a “childlike” faith is confused with a purely emotive faith, there’s no sense in stewarding our minds to the knowledge and worship of God. Unfortunately, this way of approaching God has further devolved into the idea that if God is unknowable, we can’t really know His moral will when it comes especially to certain behaviors and lifestyles.

Of course, it is true that God is omniscient, and we are not. He not only knows vastly more than we can imagine or comprehend, He is the source of all knowledge. Because there is so much He has not revealed, there is no sense in which humans could ever know God exhaustively. All of which is why my friend Greg Koukl often says that Christians should never read a Bible verse. What he means is that Christians should never read only one verse by itself.

In the context of the verses before and after, Isaiah 55:8-9 does not suggest that we cannot know God’s thoughts and ways. In fact, Isaiah is saying the exact opposite. Two verses earlier, Isaiah says:

Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

Did you catch that? The wicked man should “forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts….” Why? So, they can think the higher thoughts and adopt the higher ways of God. Far from an excuse for not studying or seeking the mind of God, this passage is actually an urgent call to make God’s thoughts and ways our thoughts and ways. And if we fail to have His thoughts and ways, Isaiah clearly states, He invites us to repent so we can have them.

What God has chosen to not reveal is much, but the entire narrative of Scripture reveals a God committed to making Himself known. Just because we cannot know Him exhaustively does not mean we cannot know Him truthfully.

In fact, this is a crucial foundation of a Christian worldview. Specifically, it’s Christian epistemology, a 50-cent word that just means the study of how we know. The answer is not complicated: We know because God has not hidden Himself but has revealed Himself generously in His creation and in Scripture.

By seeking and studying what God has revealed, we can make God’s thoughts our thoughts. We have, Paul wrote, the mind of Christ. We can know His design for human beings and for marriage and family, the purpose of government, the rightful end and object of worship, the significance of art and music and the place of science, and especially what has gone wrong with our world and what He’s doing to set it right. The ultimate goal is not to know things about God or even about His mighty acts in history. It is to know Him, and as Jesus put it, to love Him, with all our heart, soul, and mind.

Dr. David Dockery opens his new book, What Does It Mean to Be a Thoughtful Christian?, warning that if we’re counting on the “shielding cocoon” of church and family to keep our kids from asking hard questions or hearing other worldviews, we’re in for a shock. They will hear these things, and they will face questions to which they don’t know the answers. We must prepare them to find those answers by being thoughtful Christians. [source]

More than 1,600 scientists, including two Nobel laureates, declare climate 'emergency' a myth

From Just the News.com (Aug. 28, 2023):

A coalition of 1,609 scientists from around the world have signed a declaration stating “there is no climate emergency” and that they “strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy” being pushed across the globe. The declaration itself does not demonize carbon monoxide and does not discuss any harmful effect of other pollutants. The thrust of the declaration challenges the hysteria brought about by the narrative of imminent doom.

The declaration, put together by the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL), was made public this month and urges that “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific.”

CLINTEL is an independent foundation that operates in the fields of climate change and climate policy. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok.

“Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures,” the declaration says.

Of the 1,609 scientists who have signed the declaration, two signatories are Nobel Prize laureates. The most recent to sign is Nobel Prize winner Dr. John F. Clauser, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. In an announcement from CLINTEL, Clauser is quoted as saying "Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists."

The underlying report that engendered the declaration lays out a series of statements challenging many of the common climate claims. For example, one of the most common claims – and repeated without question by many – is that the earth will soon pass "tipping points that will lead to catastrophic environmental damage, including dangerous sea level rise, entire species going extinct, and even greater suffering in many nations, especially the poorest."

The sense of immediate crisis has been repeated constantly by mainstream media, including The New York Times, which said flatly, "Earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade."

In 2009, former vice president Al Gore famously predicted that "the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013." He later backtracked, according to Reuters, who said Gore was merely quoting other scientific reports. Gore had three years earlier published "An Inconvenient Truth" the subtitle of which was "The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It." A documentary film based on the book earned $24,146,161 in gross receipts that year.

Celebrity activist Greta Thunberg tweeted in 2018 – five years after Gore's doomsday prediction – that "climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years." The Highland County Press reported that she deleted the tweet.

Last week, John Kerry, President Biden's "Special Presidential Envoy for Climate" spoke at a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, saying that "scientists who have spent a lifetime tracking this human-made crisis described themselves as 'alarmed' and 'terrified.' As one said unequivocally, “we are now in uncharted territory.”

"So now, humanity is inexorably threatened by humanity itself—by those seducing people into buying into a completely fictitious alternative reality where we don’t need to act and we don’t even need to care," Kerry added.

The signatories to the CLINTEL declaration say that global warming is “far slower than predicted,” and that “inadequate models” often guide climate policy.

The CLINTEL declaration comes at a time when recent claims abound that natural disasters such as the wildfires in Maui and Canada, the heatwaves across the globe and other events are driven by climate change. The declaration goes on to challenge the ever-ready blame on climate change, stating “There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent.”

As President Biden and countless world leaders push heavily for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 the scientists assert that this is not only “unrealistic,” but harmful to world economies.

“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050,” the paper reads, proposing “adaptation instead of mitigation.” [source]

Well, isn’t that nice to know. Just as I thought—a hoax.

IRS unable to locate millions of tax records, watchdog says

From Politico.com (Aug. 10, 2023):

The IRS lost track of millions of sensitive individual and business tax records that should have been transferred from a closed agency facility in California and is also unable to locate thousands of records that were stored at a facility in Utah, according to a new watchdog report.

As part of a review of the IRS’ mandatory storage of old tax records in microfilm backup cartridges, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a report released Thursday that it found significant deficiencies in safeguarding and accounting for millions of tax records that contain sensitive taxpayer information.

The watchdog said it found seven empty boxes at the IRS’ facility in Ogden, Utah, that should have contained as many as 168 microfilm cartridges, which hold up to 2,000 photographic images each, and that the IRS personnel there were unable to point to the location of the cartridges.

TIGTA noted that this may be because the vendor responsible for creating the cartridges went out of business abruptly in 2018.

The IRS also can’t find any cartridges containing tax records from fiscal year 2010 that were supposed to be transferred to its Kansas City processing center from its processing center in Fresno, Calif., when it shut down in 2021.

“The personal taxpayer and tax information included on these backup cartridges is key information that can be used to commit tax refund fraud identity theft,” the report said.

The IRS has come under fire before by Republicans for improper handling of taxpayer information, such as its destruction of 30 million paper tax returns in March of 2021 during the height of the pandemic that subsequently caused an outcry from the tax community.

GOP lawmakers have likewise hounded the agency to explain how nonprofit news organization ProPublica got its hands on a trove of thousands of tax returns from the nation’s wealthiest people that it used for a June 2021 exposé.

The IRS watchdog further said that agency personnel have not been doing required annual inventories of the microfilm cartridges and urged the IRS to better restrict access to the tax records. The cartridges at the Ogden facility are stored on open shelving in the middle of a large warehouse, TIGTA noted.

IRS Wage and Investment Commissioner Kenneth C. Corbin said in a letter in response to TIGTA’s report that persistent underfunding of the agency had forced it to redirect employees responsible for the cartridge inventories to higher priorities.

Corbin said the agency is still working through shipments of tax records to submission processing centers across the nation and that officials are “confident that as the backlog of non-tax documents is processed, the remaining cartridges will be incorporated.” [source]

Maybe instead of training them to carry firearms, they need more training in keeping track of tax records. The IRS definitely doesn't need more funding. That's an excuse for incompetence.

Hopefully, the new IRS administrator can find the lost tax records.

Trump pardons peaceful pro-life activists targeted by Biden DOJ

From The Blaze.com (Jan. 23):

On the eve of the 52nd annual March for Life demonstration on the National Mall, President Donald Trump issued pardons for 23 pro-life protesters whom the Biden Department of Justice worked strenuously to lock away.

"They should not have been prosecuted," said Trump. "Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honor to sign this."

The president added that the fact some were still languishing in prison was "ridiculous."

Those who received pardons were apparently all convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which Texas Rep. Chip Roy (R) and other Republicans have long sought to repeal.

Roy told Blaze News in advance of the pardons that it was "tremendous news" that Trump was set to "pardon the brave pro-life Americans who were unjustly targeted by Biden's weaponized DOJ. These Americans are peaceful, pro-life Americans who were singled out and targeted by their government solely because of their beliefs."

The pardons — which were urged by the Thomas More Society and Republican lawmakers, including Roy, Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (Fla.) — amount to another promise kept by the president, who suggested in a June 22 speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition that he would pardon peaceful pro-life activists such as Paulette Harlow, who was sentenced to two years in prison by a Clinton-appointed judge despite suffering from a debilitating medical condition.

Trump vowed that upon taking office, he would "rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who's unjustly victimized by the Biden regime, including Paulette, so we can get them out of the gulags and back to their families where they belong."

The FACE Act, ratified by President Bill Clinton in 1994, was supposed to protect access to churches and abortion facilities alike but ended up weaponized by the Biden Department of Justice to lock up peaceful pro-life protesters — protesters like Jean Marshall, 74; Joan Bell, 76; John Hinshaw, 69; Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising director of activism Lauren Handy; and concentration camp survivor Eva Edl.

The FACE Act law has almost exclusively been used in recent years against pro-life activists, even when the nation saw a massive uptick in attacks by abortion radicals on churches and pro-life pregnancy centers following the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. [read more]

Good! It's about time. They should never haven been arrested just for expressing their First Amendment right. Definitely persecuted by the Briben regime.

Jan. 6 nightmare over for 1,500 Americans as Trump issues pardons, commutations

From The Blaze.com (Jan. 20):

More than 1,500 Americans are celebrating the end of a prosecutorial nightmare now that President Donald Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of those charged with offenses related to the protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

On Monday evening, just a few hours after taking the oath of office for the second time in eight years, Trump issued a "full, complete and unconditional" blanket pardon for most Jan. 6 defendants, whom Trump called political "hostages." Those who will benefit from such a pardon number more than 1,500, according to estimates.

Additionally, Trump commuted the sentences of 14 other Jan. 6 convicts, meaning they still retain their convictions but are sentenced to time served. Those individuals are Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Thomas Caldwell, Jessica Watkins, Roberto Minuta, Edward Vallejo, David Moerschel, Joseph Hackett, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Dominic Pezzola, and Jeremy Bertino.

"This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation," read a proclamation from the White House.

The proclamation also orders the attorney general to ensure the immediate release of any Jan. 6 inmates currently in custody and "to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021."

Among those with pending indictments is Blaze News investigative reporter Steve Baker. Baker described himself as "emotional" about the potential end to the ruthless prosecution against him.

"They intended to destroy my life," Baker said. "They weren't capable of doing that. They did not do that."

Despite the harrowing ordeal he has endured and many sleepless nights, Baker still considers himself one of the lucky ones. "So many others lost everything," Baker explained. These people lost their homes, their freedom, and their livelihoods for merely walking "through an open door in the Capitol on January 6," he said.

Though Trump's proclamation will bring many J6ers' legal troubles to a swift end, questions still linger about some of the victims of what Baker described as "the weaponization of the Biden DOJ."

For instance, at least some of those who received commuted sentences have already served those same sentences, so the commutation does them little good. Trump has already stated that he is open to revisiting these cases and, if warranted, upgrading some to full pardons.

Another issue relates to those with pending indictments. As Trump has ordered his attorney general, who has not yet taken office, to "pursue dismissal," it's unclear what would happen if judges refused to cooperate. [source]

Good. Those peaceful protestors were setup. And for those who trespassed, they served long enough (some could say too long).

Excerpts from the book “Factfulness”

Teaching kids critical thinking skills:

• We should be teaching our children that there are countries on all different levels of health and income and that most are in the middle.
• We should be teaching them about their own country’s socioeconomic position in relation to the rest of the world, and how that is changing.
• We should be teaching them how their own country progressed through the income levels to get to where it is now, and how to use that knowledge to understand what life is like in other countries today.
• We should be teaching them that people are moving up the income levels and most things are improving for them.
• We should be teaching them what life was really like in the past so that they do not mistakenly think that no progress has been made.
• We should be teaching them how to hold the two ideas at the same time: that bad things are going on in the world, but that many things are getting better.
• We should be teaching them that cultural and religious stereotypes are useless for understanding the world.
• We should be teaching them how to consume the news and spot the drama without becoming stressed or hopeless.
• We should be teaching them the common ways that people will try to trick them with numbers.
• We should be teaching them that the world will keep changing and they will have to update their knowledge and worldview throughout their lives.
• Most important of all, we should be teaching our children humility and curiosity.

Factfulness rules of thumb:

1. Gap. The irresistible temptation we have to divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups, with an imagined gap—a huge chasm of injustice—in between. Solution: Look for the majority.
2. Negativity. Our tendency to notice the bad more than the good. Solution: Expect bad news.
3. Straight line. The false idea that the populations are just increasing in a straight line. Solution: Lines might bend.
4. Fear. Calculate the risks.
5. Size. Get things in proportion.
6. Generalization. Question your categories.
7. Destiny. Slow change is still change.
8. Single. The preference for single causes and single solutions. Solution: Get a toolbox.
9. Blame. Resist pointing your finger.
10. Urgency. Taking immediate action in the face of a perceived imminent danger. Solution: Take small steps.

Source: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things are Better Than You Think (2018) by Hans Roslin.

School district uses ChatGPT to help remove library books

From PopSci.com (Aug. 14, 2023):

Against a nationwide backdrop of book bans and censorship campaigns, Iowa educators are turning to ChatGPT to help decide which titles should be removed from their school library shelves in order to legally comply with recent Republican-backed state legislation, PopSci has learned.

According to an August 11 article in the Iowa state newspaper The Gazette, spotted by PEN America, the Mason City Community School District recently removed 19 books from its collection ahead of its quickly approaching 2023-24 academic year. The ban attempts to comply with a new law requiring Iowa school library catalogs to be both “age appropriate” and devoid of “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” Speaking with The Gazette last week, Mason City’s Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Bridgette Exman argued it was “simply not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements.”

“Frankly, we have more important things to do than spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to protect kids from books,” Exman tells PopSci via email. “At the same time, we do have a legal and ethical obligation to comply with the law. Our goal here really is a defensible process.”

According to The Gazette, the resulting strategy involved compiling a master list of commonly challenged books, then utilizing a previously unnamed “AI software” to supposedly provide textual analysis for each title. Flagged books were then removed from Mason City’s 7-12th grade school library collections and “stored in the Administrative Center” as educators “await further guidance or clarity.” Titles included Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights.

“We are confident this process will ensure the spirit of the law is enacted here in Mason City,” Exman said at the time. When asked to clarify what software Mason City administrators harnessed to help with their decisions on supposedly sexually explicit material, Exman revealed their AI tool of choice: “We used Chat GPT [sic] to help answer that question,” says Exman, who believes Senate File 496’s “age-appropriateness” stipulation is “pretty subjective… [but] the depictions or descriptions of sex acts filter is more objective.” [read more]

Not a bad idea. But what about false positives and false negatives? If ChatGPT determines a book to be banned, the school district shouldn't automatically ban it. The AI should instead label the book as "possibly banned" and then let the school district make the final decision. People shouldn't be left out of the decision loop.

IRS Agent Fatally Shoots Fellow Agent At Phoenix Weapons Training Center Following Agency's Mass Armament

From DC Enquirer.com (Aug. 19, 2023):

Reports released Friday have confirmed that an Internal Revenue Service Agent was fatally shot during a firearms training exercise in Phoenix, Arizona. The shooting occurred Thursday evening at the firing range of the Phoenix Federal Prison, a facility utilized for interagency training of regional agencies during a "routine training" according to the FBI.

The Hill reported that the details of the incident were unavailable as of Friday evening. The FBI issued a statement via its Phoenix office saying,

“To preserve the integrity and capabilities of the investigation, details of the ongoing process will not be released. Findings of the FBI investigation will be turned over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona for review.”

“The FBI’s investigation will be methodical and thorough to address every element of the incident,” the agency stated.

RAWSALERTS reported Thursday that an "Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent lost their life due to an inadvertent shooting by another agent. The incident occurred during a routine training exercise at the Federal Correctional Institution. Authorities said the agent was immediately taken to the hospital to be treated for the injury. The agent passed away shortly after arriving at the hospital."

Friday evening, the IRS identified the agent killed as Special Agent Patrick Bauer, 47, according to ABC News.

No other injuries were reported and the identity of the agent who fired the fatal shot has not been released. The outlet reported that Charlotte M. Dennis, a spokesperson for the IRS Phoenix field office stated Bauer was a retired Master Sergeant of the Arizona Air National Guard and left behind a wife and four children. He was transported to HonorHealth Deer Valley Medical Center after the incident and died shortly after arriving.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) which holds jurisdiction over the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Phoenix said it is actively looking into the “shooting incident,” according to Breaking911 but the FBOP is unable to provide additional specifics but added that the range was in use by multiple federal agencies at the time the shooting occurred.

As reported by The Western Journal in August 2022 a little over a year before the shooting, the IRS has been heavily weaponized under the Biden administration with Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) expressing alarm at the time and asking why the agency needs over $700k worth of ammunition.

In an appearance on Fox News he said, “Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the heaviest artillery an IRS agent would need would be a calculator. I imagine the IRS in green eyeshades and cubicles — not busting doors down and emptying Glock clips on our fellow Americans. Certainly, it’s troubling that in 2022 alone, the IRS has spent around $725,000 on ammunition. So here’s the Biden plan: Disarm Americans, open the border, empty the prisons — but rest assured, they’ll still collect your taxes, and they need $725,000 worth of ammunition, apparently, to get the job done.”

It would appear that tragically, the training being conducted following this massive armament campaign—with 3,282 pistols, 621 shotguns, 539 rifles, 15 fully automatic firearms, and 4 revolvers per OpenTheBooks.com reports, roughly as a much fully loaded infantry battalion as noted in The Western Journal— has already cost an agent's life. [source]

This is why IRS agents shouldn't have weapons. If agents have to visit a place that is potentially dangerous, they should have FBI agents accompany them. That's what the FBI is for.

The Full, Updated List of President Donald Trump’s Day One Executive Orders

From Breitbart.com (Jan. 21):

President Donald Trump signed 118 executive orders, actions, and memoranda on January 20, 2025, within hours of taking the Oath of Office.

They are as follows:

1. Rescinding 78 executive orders by President Joe Biden. Revocations include:

• Biden’s order to make “equity,” rather than “equality,” the focus of federal policy;
• Biden’s order to include illegal aliens in the Census;
• Biden’s order to impose coronavirus mandates and restrictions;
• Biden’s order to allow transgender individuals to serve in the military;
• Biden’s order to ban private prisons;
• Biden’s order to prioritize climate change; to ease immigration enforcement;
• Biden’s order to revoke sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC);
• Biden’s order to establish a court-packing commission to make the Supreme Court permanently liberal;
• Biden’s order to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in federal hiring;
• Biden’s order to restrict offshore oil and gas development;
• Biden’s order to impose sanctions on Israelis linked to the political right;
• Biden’s order to rescind Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism; and
• Biden’s order to revoke many of Trump’s executive orders from his first term.

1. Restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship
2. Ending the weaponization of the federal government against political opposition
3. Compelling all federal employees to show up at work physically
4. Freezing all new federal regulations, pending review
5. Freezing the hiring of new federal employees
6. Relieving inflation by directing federal agencies to find ways to lower prices
7. Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords
8. Pardoning (roughly 1500) and commuting the sentences (14) of January 6 defendants
9. Suspending the ban on TikTok, pending further review
10. Withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO)
11. Countering the “Deep State” by extending presidential control over federal policy officials
12. Revoking the security clearances of the 51 officials who signed the Hunter Biden “Russian disinformation” letter
13. Declaring a national emergency on the southern border
14. Clearing the backlog of security clearances for the incoming administration
15. Establishing an “America First” trade policy, including a review of trade with China, and enabling tariffs
16. Assigning the U.S. military to help protect the border
17. Unleashing U.S. fossil fuel exploration and development, and ending the electric vehicle (EV) mandate
18. Suspending refugee admission programs, with exceptions
19. Ending birthright citizenship
20. Building the wall and securing the border
21. Allocating more water to California farmers and communities, rather than to the delta smelt fish
22. Restoring the death penalty on the federal level and encouraging its use on the state level for capital crimes
23. Promoting “beautiful” federal architecture in civic buildings
24. Making it easier for the president to fire senior executives in the “Deep State”
25. Declaring a national energy emergency
26. Withdrawing offshore wind leases, temporarily
27. Pausing and reevaluating U.S. foreign aid programs
28. Reorganizing the National Security Council (NSC)
29. Rescinding the U.S. agreement to the OECD “global tax”
30. Enforcing existing immigration law to the fullest and repealing every directive otherwise
31. Reopening Alaskan energy resources, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)
32. Barring terrorist supporters (like pro-Hamas activists) from the U.S.
33. Placing “America First” as the core of U.S. foreign policy
34. Establishing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
35. Recognizing two genders, male and female
36. Ending government DEI programs
37. Prioritizing skill, not DEI, in federal hiring
38. Designating Mexican cartels as foreign terror organizations
39. Restoring traditional place names, such as Mt. McKinley
40. Allowing states to help guard the U.S. border against invasion

More such executive orders are expected in the days to come, as Trump is expected to issue over 200 executive orders, actions, and memoranda — as suggested by The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days. [read more]

Wow! That's quite a few EOs. His writing hand must be tired.

Other EOs:

• Overlooked Line In Trump’s Energy Actions Could Instantly Improve Quality Of Life
• Trump Signs Executive Order Suspending Migrant Entry at Southern Border
• Trump signs executive order on developing artificial intelligence ‘free from ideological bias’
• Trump signs executive order on cryptocurrency
• Trump’s Executive Order Ends ‘Trans’ Tyranny and Protects Females
• Trump’s FEMA Executive Order Takes Aim At Supervisor Who Told Workers To Skip His Supporters
• Trump says that Iron Dome construction will be 'immediate,' signs executive order
• Trump to Sign Order Addressing Antisemitism
• Trump Issues Order Banning Child Gender Transition Care
• Trump Executive Order Seeks End to K-12 'Indoctrination'
• Trump signs executive order preventing men from competing in women's sports: 'It's about time'
  
• NCAA Policy Change: Men Barred From Women's Sports
  
• Trump signs order sanctioning ICC over Israel arrest warrants, probe of US soldiers
  
• Trump Freezes South Africa Aid: 'Massive Human Rights Violations'
  
• ‘BACK TO PLASTIC’: Trump to sign executive order to stop push for paper straws
  
• Trump Orders End to DOJ Abuse of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
  
• Trump Signs Executive Order Imposing Tariffs On Steel And Aluminum
  
• Trump’s 300 Executive Actions Made His First Week The Most Consequential In Presidential History
• Trump’s New Deal: 100 days to reverse the legacy of FDR
  

12 Disgraceful Acts Biden Has Committed (So Far) On His Way Out The White House Door

From The Federalist.com (Jan. 18):

By now, most Americans are familiar with the horrendous policies enacted by outgoing President Joe Biden. From leaving our southern border wide open to driving up inflation, the Democrat commander-in-chief’s tenure in the Oval Office has been an unequivocal disaster for the country and its citizens.

While Biden is set to leave office in disgrace in the next few days, that doesn’t mean he and the left-wing radicals running his administration are finished making stupid and dangerous decisions. In fact, they’re doing everything in their power to thumb their noses at the voters who overwhelmingly rejected their failed “leadership” on their way out the White House door.

1. Releasing Gitmo Prisoners

What better way to leave office than to empty the cells at Guantanamo Bay?

The Biden administration has been busy its last few weeks in office repatriating terrorists and other bad actors imprisoned at Gitmo back to foreign countries throughout the world. The decision appears to be an attempt to fulfill Biden’s pledge to close the high-security detention facility by the end of his presidency.

Unsurprisingly, relocating Gitmo detainees to foreign countries has produced horrendous consequences. According to the New York Post, “Twenty-three years after the 9/11 attacks on NYC, new US intelligence documents reveal 234 ‘rehabbed’ former Gitmo detainees have returned to terrorism and killing Americans — an alarming 32% recidivism rate. Most of them have not been recaptured and are still at large.”

2. Pardoning Hunter

For Americans who have followed the Biden family’s corruption, it came as no surprise when Sleepy Joe doled out a blanket pardon for his son Hunter last month. Rather than only wiping Hunter’s slate clean of his tax and gun charges, Biden’s pardon covered all “offenses against the United States which [Hunter] has committed or may have committed or taken part in” dating back to January 2014.

The move marked a clear attempt by the outgoing president to protect his son (and himself) from criminal investigation into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings.

3. Energy Restrictions

The Biden administration’s war on American energy is nothing new. But his latest action to stymie incoming President Donald Trump’s plans to unleash the country’s oil and gas industries takes on a whole new level of despicable.

As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice reported, Biden issued an executive order earlier this month “banning new oil and gas projects across 625 million acres of ocean across the East and West Coasts, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bering Sea.” While Trump has vowed to undo the “ridiculous” edict, the law weaponized by the outgoing administration to shut down the planned projects will seemingly make such an action much more difficult.

4. Terrible Ship Names

Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of America’s enemies more than naval ships named after two of the most uninspiring leaders in modern U.S. history.

Earlier this week, Biden announced that two future U.S. aircraft carriers will be named after former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Because, as we all know, it’s the presidents who launched America into forever wars in the Middle East (Bush) and committed unspeakable acts with a White House intern in the Oval Office (Clinton) who are deserving of having naval ships named after them.

5. Whitewashing Foreign Policy Failures

By far, one of the worst attributes of the Biden administration was its foreign policy. So naturally, Biden concluded his presidency gaslighting America about how “great” it was.

In a rambling speech, the soon-to-be former president said with a straight face, “Right now, in my view, thanks to our administration, the United States is winning the worldwide competition. … Compared to four years ago, America is stronger, our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker.”

That statement is only true if you ignore how Biden’s weakness and inept foreign policy has invited greater Chinese aggression toward U.S. partners in the Indo-Pacific, a Russian invasion of Ukraine, attacks on U.S. troops in the Middle East by Iranian proxies, and Hamas to launch a deadly terrorist attack on Israel. [read more]

Glad he is not in power any longer. Don't let the door hit when you leave. So long!

The other disgraceful acts are:

1. Student Loan Bailout
2. Ukraine Funding
3. Communist Cuba
4. Lawfare Antics
5. Asinine and Dangerous Commutations
6. Extending Temporary Protections for Foreign Nationals in America
7. Equal Rights Amendment

Bear Grylls’ Survival Hacks and Tips

A CONDOM. I take these mainly for carrying water. A condom takes up almost no space but is very elastic and can hold up to two litres of water. Since they’re waterproof, they’re also good for keeping tinder dry. And you can use them as an improvised rubber glove if you’re treating a wound and want to guard against infection from a dirty hand. Choose a non-lubricated version.

A TAMPON. For firelighting: the absorbent material inside a tampon makes good tinder.

WATERPROOF MATCHES. Lighters are unreliable in cold temperatures and in the wet. Waterproof matches are your best bet for fire-starting in difficult conditions.

A 9-VOLT BATTERY AND SOME STEEL WOOL. A good back-up to waterproof matches. Touch the steel wool to the contacts of the battery. The electric charge will cause the steel wool to burn.

FILTERING WATER. Take off your sock. Better still, take off your underpants. Even better, use a pair of tights. Pour your unfiltered water through the fabric so that the worst of any debris is filtered out.

OTHER TYPES OF FUEL. Dried animal droppings – these can be mixed with dry grass to make a good fire.

RULE OF HANDS. You can estimate how long it will be before darkness falls by measuring how many fingers there are between the bottom of the sun and the horizon (don’t include your thumb). Each finger measures approximately fifteen minutes. This means, neatly, that a hand is about an hour.

Source: How to Stay Alive: The Ultimate Survival Guide for Any Situation (2017) by Bear Grylls.

Hotel clerk saves 2 girls from sex trafficking

From Christian Post.com (Aug. 11, 2023):

Police are commending a hotel worker who thwarted a sex trafficking operation involving two girls in a state that ranks third in human trafficking.

The hotel clerk at the Lago Motor Inn in Lake Worth Beach, Florida, became suspicious after he entered the room on Sunday and observed the girls sitting on a bed with Richard Flores, the 44-year-old suspect. Maria Barrios Calero, 44, is also named as a suspect.

Upon entering the room, the hotel clerk also saw a condom on the bed beside Flores, adding to his suspicions.

“The witness stated he called police after observing how young the two girls appeared to be and their demeanor,” the Palm Beach County Police Department stated in a press release lauding the hotel worker's decisive action.  “Consent to search the room was provided by the hotel clerk, which resulted in locating the condom on top of the bed.”

An investigation by the detectives confirmed the two girls were the victims of a commercial sex trafficking operation, according to the release. According to the authorities, Calero allegedly arranged a “date” between Flores and the minor girls. Flores paid both of the girls to have sexual intercourse with him after they were transported to the hotel.

“Probable cause was developed leading to the arrest of both subjects,” the release states. “Calero was charged with three counts of Human Trafficking (Minor) while Flores was charged with two counts of Human Trafficking (Minor). Both subjects were transported to jail without incident.”

According to a public safety report on Palm Beach County’s website, Florida ranks third out of all states in the country for human trafficking incidents, and Palm Beach County holds the same ranking.

Earlier this week, The Christian Post reported on a separate sex trafficking incident involving a minor.

In that case, the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the California-based company Salesforce should have known that one of its clients, Backpage.com, was involved in the trafficking of minors. The plaintiffs at the center of the case, G.G., and her mother, Deanna Rose, are listed as the defendants in the case.

The pair claim that G.G. fell into the hands of sex traffickers after she ran away from home at the age of 13. The traffickers then used photos of the girl in advertisements for escorts on the now-defunct Backpage.com. The mother later found her daughter's image on the website.

Backpage is accused of failing to remove the ad soliciting sex with underage girls and instead referring the mother to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Writing for the majority opinion, Judge David Hamilton highlighted Salesforce’s business relationship with Backpage, which consisted of helping the latter company develop its marketing technology and software. The plaintiffs allege that this business relationship, which began in 2013, helped Backstage grow “to become the dominant force in online sex trafficking.”

“Salesforce's job was, in part, to help Backpage reach more customers, both in the form of sex traffickers and purchasers of commercial sex,” Hamilton wrote. “In a sense, Salesforce helped Backpage find more sex-trafficking contractors.”

According to the suit, since 2008, Backpage “had been publicly identified by law enforcement, United States Attorneys General, and every state Governor as the biggest and most notorious sex trafficking and pimping website in the United States.”

The suit also noted that in 2010, the National Association of Attorneys General publicly described Backpage as a “hub” of human trafficking, “especially the trafficking of minors.” In October 2016, Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer was arrested for pimping minors.

Salesforce’s profits grew as Backpage’s business expanded, according to the suit, with the latter company’s profits totaling $46 million from the start of 2008 to the end of 2010. From January 2013 through May 2015, Backpage’s revenue reached approximately $346 million, with $340 million of those profits coming from adult advertising. [source]

Good for him!

President Biden Preemptively Pardons General Milley, Anthony Fauci, and January 6 Committee Members

In a statement released Monday morning at 7 a.m. — just several hours before President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, the White House issued a statement from Biden touting them “dedicated, selfless public servants.”

He claimed he believed in the rule of law, but said, “But these are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing.”

House Oversight Committee Republicans reminded Americans that Biden also pardoned his son Hunter Biden — which the outgoing president had told the country he would not do:

Joe Biden will be remembered for using his last few weeks in office to shield his son from the law and protect himself.

Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) posted: “Mark Milley might be pardoned but we will continue to explore ways to hold him accountable.”

Biden’s statement said in full:

Our nation relies on dedicated, selfless public servants every day. They are the lifeblood of our democracy.

Yet alarmingly, public servants have been subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties.

In certain cases, some have even been threatened with criminal prosecutions, including General Mark A. Milley, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, and the members and staff of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. These public servants have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.

General Milley served our nation for more than 40 years, serving in multiple command and leadership posts and deploying to some of the most dangerous parts of the world to protect and defend democracy. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he guided our Armed Forces through complex global security threats and strengthened our existing alliances while forging new ones.

For more than half a century, Dr. Fauci served our country. He saved countless lives by managing the government’s response to pressing health crises, including HIV/AIDS, as well as the Ebola and Zika viruses. During his tenure as my Chief Medical Advisor, he helped the country tackle a once-in-a-century pandemic. The United States is safer and healthier because of him.

On January 6, 2021, American democracy was tested when a mob of insurrectionists attacked the Capitol in an attempt to overturn a fair and free election by force and violence. In light of the significance of that day, Congress established the bipartisan Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol to investigate and report upon the facts, circumstances, and causes of the insurrection. The Select Committee fulfilled this mission with integrity and a commitment to discovering the truth. Rather than accept accountability, those who perpetrated the January 6th attack have taken every opportunity to undermine and intimidate those who participated in the Select Committee in an attempt to rewrite history, erase the stain of January 6th for partisan gain, and seek revenge, including by threatening criminal prosecutions.

I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics. But these are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing. Baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families. Even when individuals have done nothing wrong—and in fact have done the right thing—and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.

That is why I am exercising my authority under the Constitution to pardon General Mark A. Milley, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Members of Congress and staff who served on the Select Committee, and the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the Select Committee. The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense. Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.

[source]

More "innocent" people getting pardons. I wonder how these people were chosen.

Other articles on the pardon:

• Rand Paul: Anthony Fauci Going Down as First Government Scientist to Be Preemptively Pardoned
• Trump slams Biden for pardoning Fauci, Milley and Jan. 6 committee staffers in final hours of presidency: ‘Disgraceful’

Biden Pardons His Siblings and Their Spouses

From Newsmax.com (Jan. 20):

Moments before his presidency ended Monday, Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons for his family members.

Those pardoned include his brother and sister-in-law, James B. Biden and Sara Jones Biden; his sister and her husband, Valerie Biden Owens and John T. Owens, and his other brother, Francis W. Biden.

In a statement, he said:

My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me—the worst kind of partisan politics.  Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.

I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics.  But baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families.  Even when individuals have done nothing wrong and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage their reputations and finances.

That is why I am exercising my power under the Constitution to pardon James B. Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John T. Owens, and Francis W. Biden. The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.

He issued a slew of pardons and commutations in the moments before leaving office, including for aides and allies that have been targeted by Donald Trump. None have been charged with any crimes.

Last month, he pardoned his son, Hunter for tax and gun crimes.

Biden also commuted the life sentence of indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.

Peltier was denied parole as recently as July and wasn’t eligible for parole again until 2026. He was serving life in prison for the deaths of the agents during a standoff on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He will transition to home confinement, Biden said in a statement.

The fight for Peltier’s freedom is entangled with the Indigenous rights movements. Nearly half a century later, his name remains a rallying cry.

An enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, Peltier was active in the American Indian Movement, which began in the 1960s as a local organization in Minneapolis that grappled with issues of police brutality and discrimination against Native Americans. It quickly became a national force.

The movement grabbed headlines in 1973 when it took over the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation, leading to a 71-day standoff with federal agents. Tensions between the movement and the government remained high for years.

On June 26, 1975, agents came to Pine Ridge to serve arrest warrants amid battles over Native treaty rights and self-determination.

After being injured in a shootout, agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were shot in the head at close range, FBI has said. Also killed in the shootout was American Indian Movement member Joseph Stuntz.

Two other movement members, Robert Robideau and Dino Butler, were acquitted of killing Coler and Williams.

After fleeing to Canada and being extradited to the United States, Peltier was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced in 1977 to life in prison, despite defense claims that evidence against him had been falsified. [source]

Not surprising. Briben is covering his family asses with these pardons. But since they are pardoned they can be questioned by a special prosecutor or counsel and can't take the 5th. Then again, he and his family are innocent, right?  So, why the pardons in the first place?

So, he didn't pardon himself? Okay...

Another article on the pardons:

Biden’s Sweeping Last-Minute Pardons Could Come Back To Haunt His Family, Alan Dershowitz Says