Previously, I blogged about a piece of legislation called the Women’s Health Protection Act, which passed in the House of Representatives shortly after Joe Biden took office. We’ll see what’s in the bill in a minute. The bill is in the news again because it failed to pass the Senate.

Life News reports:

Senate Republicans, with the help of Democrat Senator Joe Manchin, voted to defeat a Democrat bill that would overturn every pro-life law in America and legalize abortions up to birth.

Lawmakers voted 48-46 against cloture — against ending debate and allowing a vote on the the misnamed Women’s Health Protection Act. As a result the filibuster against the radical pro-abortion legislation was sustained and the bill is defeated, as 60 votes were necessary to move ahead to a vote on the bill.

All Republicans voted pro-life against cloture on the radical pro-abortion bill and all Democrats voted pro-abortion for cloture, except for Manchin.

[…]The bill would:

• Eliminate all state and federal parental consent laws in relation to abortion
• Eliminate all state informed consent laws, including those that allow women to view an ultrasound prior to abortion
• Prevent states from passing laws to protect babies at 20 weeks, thereby joining countries like North Korea, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, and the Netherlands in not protecting unborn children later in development
• Force doctors and nurses opposed to abortion to lose their jobs, and Catholic hospitals could lose public funds unless they perform abortions
• Eliminate decades-long limitations on direct taxpayer funding of abortion – including the popular Hyde Amendment, which has saved more than 2 million lives since enacted

In short, the legislation would overturn all federal and state pro-life laws and make it illegal for elected officials to even introduce pro-life legislation.

The bill passed the House in September 2021, by a vote of 218-11. Not one single Republican voted in favor of the bill. Not one. Because this bill is abortion extremism. This bill forces healthcare workers to participate in the killing of unborn babies. And taxpayers would have to pay for the abortions.

Although you might think that most Christian leaders like Beth Moore, Russell Moore, David French, Tim Keller, etc. would oppose an extremist bill like this, I think they wouldn’t. Judging from their support for Joe Biden during the election, who promised to sign the bill if it made it to his desk, I think that their goal would be to make this bill become law.

Even though Evangelicals for Biden failed to get the abortion law they wanted, they’ve still gotten a lot of wins under Joe Biden.

Life News is pretty upset about Biden’s policies so far.

They write:

Joe Biden is rapidly becoming the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history as he takes multiple actions to expand abortions and force taxpayers to subsidize them.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration released a rule that will force taxpayers to fund the abortion industry through the Title X family planning program.

The rule, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will end a pro-life regulation that President Donald Trump put in place to ensure Title X grants are not used to subsidize the killing of unborn babies in abortions.

Pro-life groups like Susan B. Anthony List and National Right to Life considered Trump to be the most pro-life president ever. I even wrote about all the specific actions, policies and nominations he did to help the pro-life cause. That’s the kind of article that our pious pastors and conservative leaders should have written, if they were serious about getting results instead of virtue-signaling. When it comes to politics, you have to look at the actions taken by the candidates – what did they achieve? – not their words.

We have an election this year, and now seems like a good time to remind everyone about Facebook’s bias in favor of the Democrat party. Take a look at this article from The Federalist.

It says:

Nearly $9 million in Zuckerberg grant funds directed solely to five Democratic strongholds in Wisconsin violated the state’s election code’s prohibition on bribery. That conclusion represents but one of the many troubling findings detailed in the report submitted today by a state-appointed special counsel to the Wisconsin Assembly.

[…]The first unlawful action, according to the report, concerned the payment of grant funds to five Wisconsin counties that were used to facilitate voting. That arrangement, Gableman wrote, violated Wis. Stat. § 12.11, which prohibits election bribery by providing it is illegal to offer anything of value to or for any person in order to induce any elector to go to the polls or vote.

According to the report, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg providing financing that allowed the Center for Tech and Civic Life to offer nearly $9 million in “Zuck Bucks” to Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay counties. In exchange, the “Zuckerberg 5,” as the report called the counties, in effect, operated Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts. Those grant funds then paid for illegal drop boxes to be placed in Democratic voting strongholds.

A week ago, Facebook was in trouble again for meddling in elections.

The Washington Examiner reported:

Facebook blocked Texas GOP gubernatorial candidate Chad Prather from accessing his page on the site only eight days before the primary election.

Prather told the Washington Examiner the ban resulted from a months-old comment discussing the events of Jan 6. A commentator, who Prather confirmed tends to “spam” his page and “comments nonstop,” called the events of the day an “insurrection.”

Prather responded by pointing out that even the FBI didn’t classify the event as an insurrection, further accusing the commentator of using “victimhood” in her favor.

As a result, Facebook banned him for “bullying.”

Facebook notified Prather he was banned from his page for seven days starting Feb 21. The primary election is March 1.

“They silenced my campaign on Facebook,” Prather said. “This is illegal. This is interference. This is absolutely a travesty to the political process of free and fair elections.”

Facebook / Meta uses partisan “fact-checkers” (censors) like Lead Stories, Politifact, etc. to suppress ideas that support the Republican party.

Here’s the about Politifact, reported by The Blaze:

Fact-checking website PolitiFact recently engaged in some head-scratching analysis in an attempt to discredit a claim made by Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo — but ended up doing the exact opposite.

[…]Bartiromo said this: “The United States is also reliant on Russian oil — we have doubled our imports from Russia in the last year. So, [there’s] no question why President Biden is begging OPEC and others to pump more oil.”

[…]In a Monday column, PolitiFact parachuted in to assess Bartiromo’s claim that the U.S. doubled oil imports from Russia as “mostly false.”

Normally, oil imports and energy imports — which include refined products — are categorized separately. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, which PolitiFact cites multiple times, shows as much by breaking down crude oil imports in a separate chart.

A spokesperson for Bartiromo evidently explained this to PolitiFact, resulting in the fact-checker admitting, “The U.S. more than doubled its crude oil imports from Russia, to about 208,000 barrels a day in the first 11 months of 2021, from 76,000 barrels a day in 2020.”

Amazingly, that wasn’t enough for the fact-checker to change its assessment, even while it openly admitted that Bartiromo’s specific claim was accurate.

The author of that “fact check” has a degree in English. ENGLISH. That’s the kind of imbecile that Facebook / Meta uses to censor conservatives, especially before elections.

Although Donald Trump was President for four years, he didn’t do much to rein in the power of Big Tech. But there are other Republicans running for President in 2024 who are taking action.

News Max reports:

Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Florida, has directed state officials to investigate Facebook for alleged election interference, it was announced Monday.

The governor’s action came after a report that Facebook possibly influenced numerous state and local races by exempting elite users from the social platform’s own rules.

“It’s no secret that Big Tech censors have long enforced their own rules inconsistently,” DeSantis said in a statement released by his office. “If this new report is true, Facebook has violated Florida law to put its thumb on the scale of numerous state and local races.”

[…]”Floridians deserve to know how much this corporate titan has influenced our elections,” he said. “That is why I am directing Secretary Lee to use all legal means to uncover violations of Florida’s election laws.

“The thought of Facebook clandestinely manipulating elections is an affront to the basic principles of our republic. We the people have the right to choose our representatives, whether or not Silicon Valley approves.”

On this blog, I’ve documented a long line of disturbing anti-American behavior by Facebook / Meta. We have an election coming up, and I don’t want to lose because of Big Tech interference. Make sure everyone knows what Facebook / Meta does.

Related posts

• Peer-reviewed medical journal blasts Facebook “fact checkers” for censorship
• Facebook has a long record of censoring speech critical of Democrats
• Facebook fact-checker caught plagiarizing 54 articles
• Facebook “non-partisan” fact-checker revealed to be a far-left Trump-hating Democrat
• Facebook “fact-checker” Politifact forced to retract “false” rating against Candace Owens
• When Facebook fact-checkers conflict with peer-reviewed studies, who is right?
• Potential violation of election law: Facebook and Twitter censor Biden scandal
• Facebook and Google removing content that harms Democrat party
• Facebook censors interview with abortion survivor to help Democrats win 2020 election
• Facebook uses pro-abortion “fact checkers” to label pro-life pages “fake news”
• Facebook bans Christian apologist David Wood for posting the death threats he received
• Facebook censors criticism of Democrat Party, especially before “important elections”
• Spotify joins Google, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter in censoring Prager University
• Facebook bans Franklin Graham for “hate speech”, Google YouTube shadow-bans pro-life videos
• Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter ally with leftist group linked to domestic terrorism
• Facebook enlists left-wing Politifact and Snopes to censor criticism of Democrats

I’m not originally from the United States, and when I go back home to visit, one of the questions that I get asked a lot is “why do Americans own so many guns?” So in this post, I wanted to look at some stories from the United States about crime and gun violence and see why so many Americans own guns.

My favorite writer on these issues is Amy Swearer, who writes for the Daily Signal. I find that her articles are useful for explaining to people who don’t own guns, or want to ban guns, why it might be a good idea to own a gun, and to know how to use it.

The first article to see is a review of 14 examples of defensive gun use from December 2021.

She writes:

As 2022 begins, cities across the nation are experiencing unprecedented spikes in serious, violent crimes. Meanwhile, many public officials continue to push overly lenient and nonsensical prosecution policies that further endanger the public and embolden criminals.

Americans are becoming increasingly aware of just how important the right to keep and bear arms can be, especially when the government cannot be counted upon to protect them from violent threats.

Almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

She has 14 examples in the article, and here are a few of them:

Dec. 12, Fairfax, Virginia: Police said a burglar armed with a knife entered a home through an unlocked door and refused to leave after residents confronted him. When the burglar lunged toward one resident with the knife, the resident—armed with a gun—fired a warning shot into the floor. The resident then held the burglar at gunpoint until police arrived.

Dec. 15, Lakeland, Florida: A homeowner shot an intruder who used a flowerpot to smash through a glass door. Police arrested the intruder, who had an extensive criminal history including 14 felony convictions. The homeowner “did exactly what he had a right to do,” Sheriff Grady Judd said in a press release. “I commend him for protecting himself and defending his home.”

Dec. 18, Cairo, Georgia: An elderly woman, awakened by noise in the middle of the night, confronted several armed intruders who had broken in. At least one intruder opened fire and wounded the woman, but she shot back with her own gun, prompting the intruders to flee. Police later arrested seven suspects in the home invasion, including five under age 16.

Dec. 22, Abbottstown, Pennsylvania: A disturbed man wearing nothing but a shirt broke into an elderly couple’s home and violently assaulted them, police said. The woman’s husband was able to grab a handgun from the bedroom and fatally shot the attacker as he beat her. The husband and wife suffered serious injuries, but were expected to recover.

Like Amy says, if you live in a blue state, or even in a blue city in a red state, then you can’t count on law enforcement to protect you. They are too busy being politically correct, or trampling unarmed peaceful protesters with horses. You have to be able to defend yourself, and your loved ones.

And here are some more from January 2022:

Just one month into 2022, it became clear that the new year hasn’t brought relief from the unprecedented spikes in violent crime in many cities since the summer of 2020.

Take Philadelphia, for example. With 140 carjackings reported through the first five weeks of 2022, the city is well on pace to surpass last year’s total of 757 carjackings.

Portland, Oregon, meanwhile, experienced more homicides and shootings in January 2022 than in January 2021—doubly concerning, since 2021 was by far the most violent year in Portland’s history.

And here are a few of the stories:

Jan. 13, Philadelphia: After a good Samaritan intervened to help a woman who was being harassed on a commuter train, police said, the harasser followed him off the train and attacked him with a knife. However, the good Samaritan had a concealed carry permit and happened to be armed that day. He shot and wounded his assailant.

Jan. 27, Fort Worth, Texas: An armed carjacker opened fire on a driver, wounding him. But the driver was able to draw his own gun and shoot back, potentially saving his life and sending the carjacker fleeing. The  car was recovered a short time later after the carjacker, wounded and in serious condition, stopped to ask for help.

The  one about the Good Samaritan was interesting. One of the reasons why armed men are inclined to help women is because they know that if anything happens, they have a weapon to fight back with. So many young, unmarried women voters want to disarm law-abiding men. But do they realize that if they do that, then only the criminals will have weapons? Do these progressive women think that unarmed men are going to stand up for them against threats?

The peer-reviewed research

Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.

• The Lott book was published by the University of Chicago Press (now in its 3rd edition)
• The Malcolm book was published by Harvard University Press

The book by economist John Lott, linked above, compares the crime rates of all U.S. states that have enacted concealed carry laws, and concludes that violent crime rates dropped after law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry legally-owned firearms. That’s the mirror image of Dr. Malcolm’s Harvard study, which shows that the 1997 UK gun ban caused violent crime rates to MORE THAN DOUBLE in the four years following the ban. But both studies affirm the same conclusion – more legal firearm ownership means less crime.

One of the common mistakes I see anti-gun advocates making is to use the metric of all “gun-related deaths”. First of all, this completely ignores the effects of hand gun ownership on violent crime, as we’ve seen. Take away the guns from law-abiding people and violent crime skyrockets. But using the “gun-related deaths” number is especially wrong, because it includes suicides committed with guns. This is the majority (about two thirds) of gun related deaths, even in a country like America that has a massive inner-city gun violence problem caused by the epidemic of single motherhood by choice. If you take out the gun-related SUICIDES, then the actual number of gun homicides has decreased as gun ownership has grown.

For a couple of useful graphs related to this point, check out this post over at the American Enterprise Institute.