14: The logical coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity
15: The logical coherence of the doctrine of the Incarnation
16: The logical coherence of the doctrine of the Atonement
17: The logical coherence of the doctrine of the Hell
18: Responding to objections to God’s knowledge of the future
My favorite chapters in this book are the ones by Mark Linville on evolution and morality, and the chapter by Robert H. Stein on historical criteria and methodology. This is not an introductory book, this book is an intermediate-level book. You want to read the two Jim Wallace books and the Lee Strobel “Case For” books before you tackle this one.
Much of the book is philosophy and philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Well, I guess everyone knows that I hate non-STEM disciplines, and I only read philosophy because it’s useful for Christian apologetics. If you are like me, and think that only STEM disciplines have value, then this book is for you. You will be able to make use of it in your case-making adventures. It. Works. This is the stuff that gets William Lane Craig invited to all the best universities to debate against all the best atheists. And he beats them all up with it, too.
The leftist Washington Post reports on how Cruz tried to stop the Rubio amnesty by introducing amendments that would undermine support for the bill, or weaken the bill if it did get passed.
Excerpt:
Cruz has been a staunch opponent of giving a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who entered the United States illegally. In 2013, Cruz introduced five amendments:
Cruz 1: To triple the number of Border Patrol agents and quadrupling the equipment along the border.
Cruz 2: To deny means-tested government benefits to those who entered illegally.
Cruz 3: To strip away the pathway to citizenship.
Cruz 4: To expand legal immigration, by increasing employment-based immigration from 140,000 to 1,012,500 per year.
Cruz 5: To raise the H-1B high-skilled worker cap from 65,000 visas to 325,000 per year.
Note that “legalizing” someone can mean just giving them a temporary work permit, so that they are in the country legally, but have no permanent right to stay, much less get citizenship. The thing is, it’s not even clear that Cruz would have voted for the bill with his amendments. His goal was to derail the bill by embedding things in it that the supporters did not want. Like the “no path to citizenship” that Rubio wanted. And this is exactly how Democrats saw his amendments.
Here’s what happened:
When pressed about his 2013 statements and the citizenship amendment after the GOP debate, Cruz said: “It’s called calling their bluff.”
And in a Dec. 16, 2015, interview with Bret Baier on Fox News: “You’ve been around Washington long enough. You know how to defeat bad legislation, which is what that amendment did, is it revealed the hypocrisy of Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] and the Senate Democrats and the establishment Republicans who were supporting them because they all voted against it.”
[…]Current and former Democratic Senate staffers familiar with the negotiations confirmed to The Fact Checker that Cruz’s bill was, indeed, viewed as a poison pill in 2013. Consider the impact some of his amendments would have had on the fragile agreements the coalition negotiated:
Tripling Border Patrol agents: The Senate ultimately approved an amendment to double the number of Border Patrol agents. But tripling the number would’ve gone too far and lost the support of some immigration groups, which believed an even bigger increase would be badly received by border communities and the public.
Expanding legal immigration: Such a dramatic increase in employment-based immigration and H-1B visas went far beyond the coalition’s negotiated cap at 65,000. As The Washington Post’s Paul Kane reported, Democrats, Republicans and their allies in the labor movement and corporate America worked for months to agree on this number, which was backed by the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A slight increase or decrease would have jeopardized support from either the AFL-CIO or the Chamber of Commerce; Cruz’s proposal was a 400 percent increase from the negotiated cap.
Removing pathway to citizenship: This was the major negotiation point for the Gang of Eight, and would have killed the bill.
In reference to the citizenship amendment, then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said during the 2013 hearing: “My concern with this, I feel it would virtually gut the bill … and gut what has been a very careful balance by Republicans and Democrats and the sponsors of it.”
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a Gang of Eight Democrat, echoed the concern at the hearing: “If we do not have a path to citizenship, there is no reform, many of us feel. That is a bottom line here.” The Gang of Eight Republicans on the Judiciary Committee sided with Democrats in rejecting this amendment.
In a statement to The Fact Checker, Schumer confirmed Cruz’s bill was viewed as a poison pill: “This was an attempt to kill the bill, and there was no doubt at the time that Senator Cruz knew it would do exactly that.”
This is what Marco Rubio is getting angry with Cruz about in the debates. Cruz introduced 5 amendments meant to destroy the agreement among supporters of the bill. And the bill died. Rubio actually voted against Cruz’s amendment that would have taken citizenship off the table. He also opposed poison pill amendments by amnesty opponents Mike Lee and Jeff Sessions.
Conservative Mark Levin recently interviewed Jeff Sessions about Ted Cruz’s role in the battle over amnesty, and you can read about it here on the Daily Wire.
The second amnesty battle
Rubio’s amnesty was defeated in 2013, but there was another amnesty to come in 2014. This time, from the pen of Barack Obama.
On Saturday night, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) won a battle, but not the war, against President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration.
Cruz led the fight to force a Senate vote on Obama’s immigration plans, as a condition of approving a massive, $1.1 trillion spending bill for 2015. He was able to make that vote happen by arguing that the spending bill violated the Constitution because it would fund Obama’s plan — a plan Cruz and other Republicans say is illegal because it rewrites immigration law without any input from Congress.
“Tonight is the first opportunity that Congress has to express its disapproval,” Cruz said late Saturday of Obama’s immigration plan.
Cruz lost the vote, as expected in a Senate that is still controlled by Democrats for a few more weeks. But Cruz’s tactics — which forced the Senate to work unexpectedly late into Saturday night — also drew criticism from Republicans, and several GOP senators vote against Cruz.
In the final vote, the Senate decided 22-74 against Cruz — less than half of the Senate’s 45 Republicans voted with Cruz.
[…]Cruz raised his constitutional argument against the bill on Friday night, a move that surprised both Republicans and Democrats and forced the Senate back into the office for a rare Saturday session. After several hours of negotiating, Democrats finally agreed to give Cruz his vote.
The vote itself was a victory — many Republicans have been begging for either the House or Senate to go on the record about Obama’s unilateral immigration decision.
This is why Cruz has few friends in the Senate. It’s not because he is a mean person, it’s because he fights hard for what is right. And few stand with him.
Cruz keeps telling the truth, and people keep calling him a liar for citing their actual words and actions:
It’s important to understand that on Washington, most of the politicians in both parties want amnesty. And that’s why they hate Cruz so much. It’s not his personality, it’s his conservatism.
Marco Rubio with his allies: Democrat Chuck Schumer and RINO John McCain
In the next three days, I’ll be taking a look at three elements of Rubio’s record on illegal immigration:
Rubio co-authored a bill to give 20 million illegal immigrants a path to citizenship: voting and access to welfare payments
Rubio promised a Spanish-speaking audience that he would not rescind Obama’s executive action amnesty if elected President
Rubio co-sponsored a bill to give illegal immigrants in-state tuition in Florida, to be paid for by Florida taxpayers
I’ll do the first one on Tuesday morning, and the second one on Wednesday morning, and the third one on Thursday morning.
The amnesty bill of 2013
Marco Rubio was a co-author of a 2013 bill that would give illegal immigrants permanent residency, as well as a path to citizenship. This would allow them to vote in future elections. There are currently 20-30 million illegal immigrants in the United States who would be affected by this law.
CNN explains what part of the bill that Rubio worked on:
As he has risen in the polls, Rubio has methodically sought to distance himself from the comprehensive immigration bill he coauthored more than two years ago. But Schumer, the veteran New York Democrat, is dragging him back into the fray, shining a spotlight on one of the 44-year-old’s biggest vulnerabilities with the right as top Democrats seek to undermine the GOP senator’s surging candidacy.
“He was not only totally committed — he was in that room with us, four Democrats, four Republicans,” Schumer told CNN Thursday in an interview in his Senate office. “His fingerprints are all over that bill. It has a lot of Rubio imprints.”
Schumer is… saying Rubio was the main architect of the provision to provide a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, something bound to give ammunition to his primary foes who call the measure “amnesty.”
So, Rubio’s part of the bill was the pathway to citizenship. At the very least, he co-authored the bill, and viciously attacked conservatives who spoke out against his path to citizenship bill.
Keep in mind that CNN is factually incorrect about the number of illegal immigrants. The number is not 11 million. The correct number, according to the Border Patrol, is 18-20 million – and that was back in 2013. Would Republicans ever win another election if 18-20 million Democrat voters (unskilled immigrants tend to overwhelmingly vote Democrat) were added to the electorate?
By the way, Marco Rubio reiterated his support for full path-to-citizenship amnesty last month to Chuck Todd on NBC News.
I hope all the Marco Rubio voters will see this post and engage with the details of this man’s record. He swore up and down during his 2010 election campaign that he was “strongly against amnesty” (his own words!), then he went to Washington and led the push for amnesty.
I am not even sure that he is pro-life. He says he is pro-life, but then he told Florida voters that he was not pro-amnesty. If he betrays his supporters on amnesty, then he could easily betray them on defending the unborn, as well. We just don’t know where he stands on anything. He says one thing while campaigning and then leads the fight to do the exact opposite once elected. This was not done in a corner, folks.
Here’s the full list of Rubio errors:
Rubio got a D rating from pro-marriage activist Maggie Gallagher regarding his response to the Obergefell decision, which redefined marriage for all 50 states.
WINTERY KNIGHT 