News

Meet the young conservative running against a Democrat senator in Ohio

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Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel
Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel

Although Republicans have the House, Senate and White House now, there are still a lot of very liberal senators who need to be defeated in 2018. In Ohio, there is a very liberal and very old senator named Sherrod Brown who faces a challenge from a much young conservative candidate.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Josh Mandel, Ohio’s 39-year-old Republican state treasurer, is making his second attempt to unseat Democrat Sherrod Brown in the U.S. Senate by running as a conservative and defender of the Constitution.

Mandel, a former Marine who served as a state representative before winning election to two terms as state treasurer, spoke with the Washington Free Beacon about his 2018 campaign to “transfer the power from the politicians to the people.”

Among Mandel’s goals as a senator would be instituting term limits to “clean out” veteran politicians who have stayed too long in Washington, torching political correctness in the fight against Islamic extremism, and rolling back federal government regulations that have squeezed entrepreneurs and small businesses. He is also passionate about enforcing immigration laws and protecting Ohio’s oil, gas, and coal industries.

“I think that everyday taxpayers are fed up with the feeling that Washington is rigged on behalf of special interests and lobbyists and I think there is a hunger for a new generation of leaders to come shake this place up,” Mandel said in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the U.S. Capitol building.

The 2018 Senate race will pit the young conservative against Brown, a liberal politician 30 years Mandel’s senior who has been in Washington for more than two decades. The way Mandel sees it, Ohio voters will have a clear choice between a veteran politician who has stayed in Washington to “do well” and a leader from the next generation who is unafraid of standing up for conservative principles.

“I think the voters of Ohio are going to have a choice of do they want someone who ran on term limits and then changed [his] mind so he could spend his entire adult life in Washington like Sherrod Brown, or someone like me who is going to come here to Washington, do as much good as possible, and then go home and live under the budget and laws that I created,” Mandel said.

[…]The young Republican likely faces a fierce battle against Brown, who he unsuccessfully challenged in 2012. Brown defeated Mandel by six points to win reelection to the U.S. Senate.

Brown has served in the Senate since 2007 and represented Ohio’s 13th district in Congress for 13 years before that. The Democrat has had a long career in politics, serving as Ohio’s secretary of state and a member of the state’s general assembly before coming to Washington.

Accomplishments:

When asked about his accomplishments as state treasurer, Mandel pointed to his work releasing the Ohio checkbook online, which gives taxpayers a look at how the state spends its money, and improving Ohio’s rating on government transparency. Mandel also helped dig the state out of an $8 billion budget hole; Ohio’s finances have moved from 43rd to 7th in national rankings since 2011.

Under Obama (and Sherrod Brown), the US national debt went from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in 8 years.

Here is Mandel’s 2018 Senate race ad:

Sherrod Brown has a conservative rating of 7% from Heritage Action. Ohio is a purple state. I think Ohio can do better than 7% in 2018.

Polemics

Luke Barnes discusses the fine-tuning of the fine structure constant

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Fine-tuning of the strong nuclear force and the fine structure constant
Fine-tuning of the strong nuclear force and the fine structure constant

Here is an article from The New Atlantis written by cosmologist Luke Barnes about one specific example of cosmic fine-tuning. (H/T Uncommon Descent via J. Warner Wallace tweet)

Excerpt:

Today, our deepest understanding of the laws of nature is summarized in a set of equations. Using these equations, we can make very precise calculations of the most elementary physical phenomena, calculations that are confirmed by experimental evidence. But to make these predictions, we have to plug in some numbers that cannot themselves be calculated but are derived from measurements of some of the most basic features of the physical universe. These numbers specify such crucial quantities as the masses of fundamental particles and the strengths of their mutual interactions. After extensive experiments under all manner of conditions, physicists have found that these numbers appear not to change in different times and places, so they are called the fundamental constants of nature.

These constants represent the edge of our knowledge. Richard Feynman called one of them — the fine-structure constant, which characterizes the amount of electromagnetic force between charged elementary particles like electrons — “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man.”

[…]A universe that has just small tweaks in the fundamental constants might not have any of the chemical bonds that give us molecules, so say farewell to DNA, and also to rocks, water, and planets. Other tweaks could make the formation of stars or even atoms impossible. And with some values for the physical constants, the universe would have flickered out of existence in a fraction of a second. That the constants are all arranged in what is, mathematically speaking, the very improbable combination that makes our grand, complex, life-bearing universe possible is what physicists mean when they talk about the “fine-tuning” of the universe for life.

Atheists, both rank-and-file and expert, almost universally misunderstand the fine-tuning argument. They imagine that if the constants and quantities specified at the origin of the universe were different, then humans would just have green skin, or maybe forehead ridges, or pointy ears. Atheists tend to get their view of science from science fiction in novels or television or movies, and they base their worldview off of fantasies, since this is less thinking and feels better than letting the scientific evidence influence their worldview.

So what does the scientific evidence actually show?

Barnes explains:

The strong nuclear force, for example, is the glue that holds protons and neutrons together in the nuclei of atoms. If, in a hypothetical universe, it is too weak, then nuclei are not stable and the periodic table disappears again. If it is too strong, then the intense heat of the early universe could convert all hydrogen into helium — meaning that there could be no water, and that 99.97 percent of the 24 million carbon compounds we have discovered would be impossible, too. And, as the chart to the right shows, the forces, like the masses, must be in the right balance. If the electromagnetic force, which is responsible for the attraction and repulsion of charged particles, is too strong or too weak compared to the strong nuclear force, anything from stars to chemical compounds would be impossible.

Stars are particularly finicky when it comes to fundamental constants. If the masses of the fundamental particles are not extremely small, then stars burn out very quickly. Stars in our universe also have the remarkable ability to produce both carbon and oxygen, two of the most important elements to biology. But, a change of just a few percent in the up and down quarks’ masses, or in the forces that hold atoms together, is enough to upset this ability — stars would make either carbon or oxygen, but not both.

It’s very important that theists are well-equipped to explain how individual cases of fine-tuning work. We need to know what you lose if you alter these constants and quantities even slightly. You can read about some more examples in this previous post.

News

Paul Ryan pledges to cut off funding for nation’s largest provider of abortions

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Barack Obama speaking to Planned Parenthood
Barack Obama speaking to Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood got $550 million from taxpayers last year, many of whom are pro-life! What do the Republicans intend to do about it?

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) indicated Thursday that congressional Republicans might push to defund Planned Parenthood using the budget reconciliation process.

Ryan was asked at his weekly press briefing whether the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare would include a provision to redirect hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from Planned Parenthood to women’s health care centers that do not provide abortion.

“Planned Parenthood legislation would be in our reconciliation bill,” Ryan said.

The Democrats introduced the practice of “reconciliation” to get their legislation passed in the Senate by simple majority. And now that they’ve lost the majority in the Senate, reconciliation can be used to get conservative things done:

The reconciliation process allows a simple majority of senators, rather than 60 senators, to pass certain forms of budgetary legislation without the threat of a filibuster. Republicans, who control the Senate 52-48, plan to use reconciliation to repeal major aspects of Obamacare, just as Democrats used reconciliation to amend the law in 2010.

Congressional Republicans passed a bill in 2015 that would have defunded Planned Parenthood in the summer of 2015 after undercover videos were released about the group’s organ harvesting operations. Senate Democrats blocked the bill in August, preventing it from coming to a vote. Reconciliation would help Ryan and Republicans avoid stalling tactics after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

Planned Parenthood received more than $550 million from taxpayers in the 2015 fiscal year, a 5 percent increase from 2014. The government payments accounted for 40 percent of its revenue, according to its 2015 annual report. The group received a huge boost in funding when President Obama took office in 2009 and repealed the Mexico City Policy, which bans the use of taxpayer dollars for abortion in foreign aid.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which was overseen by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave Planned Parenthood $100 million between 2010 and 2012. The group continued to rake in taxpayer cash throughout 2015 and 2016, winning nearly $28 million in awards from federal agencies.

That’s a lot of taxpayer money that the Democrats sent to their buddies at Planned Parenthood. But then, Planned Parenthood made a lot of donations to Democrat politicians running for office.

Earlier this week, my friend Kevin sent me new about the findings of the House of Representatives investigation of Planned Parenthood’s business practices.

Here is a summary of their findings from the Daily Signal:

Planned Parenthood affiliates profited by transferring parts of aborted babies to outside organizations in violation of the law, a special House panel has concluded after a yearlong investigation.

In a 418-page report released Wednesday, the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives also found that other organizations involved in the transfer of fetal tissue broke federal or state law.

In one case, a national Planned Parenthood executive interviewed by staff investigators for the House panel said “it doesn’t bother me” that one vendor, StemExpress, paid Planned Parenthood $55 for an aborted baby’s intact brain and then sold it to a customer for more than $3,000.

“It’s none of my concern. It doesn’t bother me,” the Planned Parenthood executive said, according to the panel’s report.

Republican members of the House panel recommend that authorities pursue charges against Planned Parenthood affiliates, which receive taxpayer money, and other entities for violating the law and related regulations.

“It is my hope that our recommendations will result in some necessary changes within both the abortion and fetal tissue procurement industries,” the panel’s chairman, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said in a press release. “Our hope is that these changes will both protect women and their unborn children, as well as the integrity of scientific research.”

It will be interesting to see how far the Republicans are willing to go on this issue. Vice President Mike Pence recently said that the new administration will be in the business of keeping promises. Well, let’s see them do it.