News

Who is more conservative on the marriage issue? Trump, Cruz, Carson or Rubio?

2 Comments
Texas Senator Ted Cruz
Texas Senator Ted Cruz

Let’s see who is getting the endorsements of prominent social conservatives.

The first story is from the Washington Examiner.

It says:

Ted Cruz picked up the endorsement of the National Organization for Marriage, an organization that opposes gay marriage, on Wednesday.

In a statement, NOM president Brian S. Brown said endorsing Cruz was a difficult decision as so many other “tremendous candidates” remain, including Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Marco Rubio. But the group chose Cruz, Brown wrote, because he is a “proven champion” of marriage.

“We are endorsing Sen. Ted Cruz because of the urgent need for a marriage champion to emerge from the crowded field and capture the nomination,” Brown wrote. “Unless conservatives come together behind a full-spectrum candidate — pro-marriage, pro-life, strong national defense, etc. — there is a real risk that someone like Donald Trump could win the nomination, which would be disastrous. We need a president with a proven track record of matching strong principles with concrete action, someone who will champion the fight for marriage, not walk away from it.”

Brown wrote that Trump “folded like a cheap suit” when it came to the issue of marriage, and that electing a “pro-marriage” president would mean NOM’s supporters would have an excellent chance of reversing the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage nationwide.

What I love about that is that unlike so many pro-life organizations, NOM is aware of these other issues (economics, foreign policy) and how they are all connected. Family Research Council is another organization that really undertstands how different issues are connected – they are not merely social conservatives.

NOM is the organization that is always going to bat for marriage against the Human Rights Campaign, the organization that was linked to convicted domestic terrorist and gay activist Floyd Lee Corkins.

Why would NOM endorse Cruz? Take a look for yourself:

Transcript from Real Clear Politics.

SEN. TED CRUZ: Let me ask a question: Is there something about the left, and I am going to put the media in this category, that is obsessed with sex? Why is it the only question you want to ask concerns homosexuals? Okay, you can ask those questions over and over and over again. I recognize that you’re reading questions from MSNBC…

[…]You’re wincing. You don’t want to talk about foreign policy. I recognize you want to ask another question about gay rights. Well, you know. ISIS is executing homosexuals. You want to talk about gay rights? This week was a very bad week for gay rights because the expansion of ISIS, the expansion of radical, theocratic, Islamic zealots that crucify Christians, that behead children and that murder homosexuals. That ought to be concerning you far more than asking six questions all on the same topic.

REPORTER: Do you have a personal animosity against gay Americans?

CRUZ: Do you have a personal animosity against Christians sir? Your line of questioning is highly curious. You seem fixated on a particular subject. Look, I’m a Christian. Scripture commands us to love everybody and what I have been talking about, with respect to same-sex marriage, is the Constitution which is what we should all be focused on. The Constitution gives marriage to elected state legislators. It doesn’t give the power of marriage to a president, or to unelected judges to tear down the decisions enacted by democratically elected state legislatures.

Cruz has pledged to ignore the Supreme Court decision that redefined marriage, and he has written about various ways that conservatives could fight back in National Review. He’s been critical of Obama’s efforts to push gay and transgender issues in the armed forces. Anyone else saying things like that? Bobby Jindal was pretty good on gay marriage, but now the only two who are good on marriage are Cruz and Rubio. Cruz is by far the best, though – he graduated from Harvard Law, clerked for former Chief Justice Rehnquist, and has argued and won many cases at the Supreme Court. It’s easy to see why he was picked as the best person to defend marriage. He has the record of doing it.

Anyway, next up, the social conservatives in Iowa. Who do they like in the GOP primary?

The radically leftist CNN has the story.

Excerpt:

Evangelical leader and powerbroker Bob Vander Plaats gave Ted Cruz’s campaign a boost Thursday morning with an endorsement as the Texas Republican fights Donald Trump for the lead in Iowa.

“The extraordinary leader that we need for these extraordinary times is U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz,” Vander Plaats. the president and CEO of the conservative Family Leader organization, said at a press conference at the Iowa state Capitol.

Vander Plaats is seen as one of the most influential kingmakers in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. His close alignment with political networks and activist followings could help tip the scales in the Iowa caucuses. Vander Plaats endorsed Iowa caucus winner Rick Santorum in 2012.

[…]Vander Plaats evaluated candidates on character, competence, the company that they keep, and an infrastructure “that can go the distance and become the nominee.”

“We will be going all in for Sen. Ted Cruz,” Vander Plaats said. “We have found him as a man of deep character. A man that we can fully trust, who has a consistency of convictions, who loves his god, loves his spouse, and who loves his family. We also see him to be very, very competent. Not always popular, but very competent. He has challenged both sides of the aisle. He understands what it’s going to take to get the country out of the mess that we’re currently in. We believe that he is exceptionally competent and that adds to his extraordinary leadership.”

[…]Cruz has also locked up the endorsement of Rep. Steve King, another influential Iowan among social conservative voters.

Cruz is doing pretty well in the latest national poll, as of Thursday night:

Latest GOP primary poll has Cruz in second place
Latest GOP primary poll has Cruz in second place

Now, I think everyone agrees that Bobby Jindal was the best on the pro-life issue and on the pro-marriage issue. Nobody fought harder for the unborn and for natural marriage. But Jindal is out, Cruz is the next best. I get the feeling that he would push to allow states to decide these issues, which would be a good compromise, at this point. At least Cruz is comfortable talking about these issues, which is more than most of the other candidates do.

Polemics

Does archaeological evidence confirm names, dates and places in the Bible?

2 Comments
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: let's take a look at the facts
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: let’s take a look at the facts

I spotted this post on Be Thinking by UK apologist Peter S. Williams. (H/T Eric Chabot at Think Apologetics)

So let me pick the ones I liked most for this post.

Here’s a good one:

Jerusalem and The Pool of Bethesda

John 5:1-15 describes a pool in Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, called Bethesda, surrounded by five covered colonnades. Until the 19th century, there was no evidence outside of John for the existence of this pool and John’s unusual description “caused bible scholars to doubt the reliability of John’s account, but the pool was duly uncovered in the 1930s – with four colonnades around its edges and one across its middle.”[38] Ian Wilson reports: “Exhaustive excavations by Israeli archaeologist Professor Joachim Jeremias have brought to light precisely such a building, still including two huge, deep-cut cisterns, in the environs of Jerusalem’s Crusader Church of St Anne.”[39]

And this one:

Jerusalem and The Pool of Siloam

In the 400s AD, a church was built above a pool attached to Hezekiah’s water tunnel to commemorate the healing of a blind man reported in John 9:1-7. Until recently, this was considered to be the Pool of Siloam from the time of Christ. However, during sewerage works in June 2004 engineers stumbled upon a 1stcentury ritual pool when they uncovered some ancient steps during pipe maintenance near the mouth of Hezekiah’s tunnel. By the summer of 2005, archaeologists had revealed what was “without doubt the missing pool of Siloam.”[40] Mark D. Roberts reports that: “In the plaster of this pool were found coins that establish the date of the pool to the years before and after Jesus. There is little question that this is in fact the pool of Siloam, to which Jesus sent the blind man in John 9.”[41]

I just read this one because I am working my way through John. In case you haven’t read John, you really should it’s my favorite gospel.

Here’s another one:

Herod the Great

We have a bronze coin minted by Herod the Great. On the obverse side (i.e. the bottom) is a tripod and ceremonial bowl with the inscription ‘Herod king’ and the year the coin was struck, ‘year 3’ (of Herod’s reign), or 37 BC.

In 1996 Israeli Professor of Archaeology Ehud Netzer discovered in Masada a piece of broken pottery with an inscription, called an ostracon. This piece had Herod’s name on it and was part of an amphora used for transportation (probably wine), dated to c. 19 BC. The inscription is in Latin and reads, “Herod the Great King of the Jews (or Judea)”, the first such that mentions the full title of King Herod.

Herodium is a man-made mountain in the Judean wilderness rising over 2,475 feet above sea level. In 23 BC Herod the Great built a palace fortress here on top of a natural hill. Seven stories of living rooms, storage areas, cisterns, a bathhouse, and a courtyard filled with bushes and flowering plants were constructed. The whole complex was surrounded and partly buried by a sloping fill of earth and gravel. Herod’s tomb and sarcophagus were discovered at the base of Herodium by archaeologist Ehud Netzer in 2007.

And one more:

The ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus’ Ossuary

James, the brother of Jesus, was martyred in AD 62. A mid-1st century AD chalk ossuary discovered in 2002 bears the inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” ( ‘Ya’akov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua’). Historian Paul L. Maier states that“there is strong (though not absolutely conclusive) evidence that, yes, the ossuary and its inscription are not only authentic, but that the inscribed names are the New Testament personalities.“[68] New Testament scholar Ben Witherington states that:“If, as seems probable, the ossuary found in the vicinity of Jerusalem and dated to about AD 63 is indeed the burial box of James, the brother of Jesus, this inscription is the most important extra-biblical evidence of its kind.”[69] According to Hershel Shanks, editor in chief of the Biblical Archaeological Review: “this box is [more] likely the ossuary of James, the brother of Jesus of Nazareth, than not. In my opinion … it is likely that this inscription does mention the James and Joseph and Jesus of the New Testament.”

And finally one short one:

Tiberius Caesar

The Denarius coin, 14-37 AD, is commonly referred to as the ‘Tribute Penny’ from the Bible. The coin shows a portrait of Tiberius Caesar. Craig L. Blomberg comments: “Jesus’ famous saying about giving to Caesar what was his and to God what his (Mark 12:17 and parallels) makes even more sense when one discovers that most of the Roman coins in use at the time had images of Caesar on them.”[48]

This is a good article to bookmark in case you are ever looking for a quick, searchable reference on archaeology and the Bible. There are many more examples in that post.

 

News

Ted Cruz invites climate scientists to Washington, D.C. to discuss climate change

2 Comments
Texas Senator Ted Cruz
Texas Senator Ted Cruz

This is from the Daily Signal, and what is interesting is how the Democrats respond to the scientific evidence presented by the scientists.

Excerpt:

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz convened a subcommittee hearing Tuesday to dispute the validity of research from climate “alarmists,” whose findings have become central to crafting environmental policy.

Cruz used his opening remarks to detail the 2013 expedition where a ship of 74 people sent into Antarctica to research climate change got stuck in ice, forcing an airlift rescue a week later.

“This expedition was there to document how the ice was vanishing in the Antarctic, but the ship became stuck,” Cruz said before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. “It had run into an inconvenient truth, as Al Gore might put it.”

Cruz, who chairs the subcommittee, also noted Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2009 claim that the Arctic would be “ice-free” by the summer of 2013—which was the same year the researchers became trapped in ice.

Republicans on the committee said the hearing was intended to shed light on “opposing viewpoints in the field of climate science,” which Cruz said are “reflexively” brushed aside by policymakers.

He repeatedly pointed to satellite data that found no significant global warming during the past 18 years, a slowdown often referred to as the warming “pause.”

“Global warming alarmists don’t like these data. They are inconvenient to their narrative,” Cruz said. “But facts and evidence matter.”

Judith Curry, former chair of Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, testified that while climate scientists uniformly agree that surface temperatures have increased during the past century, there is “considerable” disagreement about whether humans drive global warming and if warming is dangerous to the planet.

Curry’s research led her to findings that natural causes could be playing a larger role in warming than human activity, challenging what many consider “settled” conclusions in the climate debate.

But instead of leading to reignited deliberation, Curry said the science community quickly branded her a “heretic” for challenging the status quo.

“In their efforts to promote their ‘cause,’ the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem,” she said, adding: “This behavior risks destroying science’s reputation for honesty and objectivity. Without this objectivity and honesty, scientists become regarded as merely another lobbyist group.”

Democrats denounced the four witnesses Republicans called to testify as climate change “deniers” in a press conference held prior to the hearing.

Here are the satellite measurements:

Satellite measurements of global temperature
Satellite measurements of global temperature (University of Alabama – Huntsville)

(Source)

I have blogged about the growing ice extents and the 18-year pause in global warming (according to atmospheric measurements, not Al Gore movies) before. I am glad that someone is trying to confront the Democrats with the experimental science.

More people are looking at the records of the presidential candidates on issues like global warming socialism, and as a result, Cruz is climbing in the polls:

Thirty-five percent of Republican primary voters support Trump, up 13 points since October, and his highest level of support in CBS News polling. Ted Cruz (16 percent) has moved into second place, while Ben Carson, who led the October poll, has dropped to third.

Marco Rubio is in fourth place with 9 percent. Jeb Bush is getting the backing of just 3 percent of Republican primary voters nationwide, his lowest percentage to date in CBS News polling. Carly Fiorina’s support has also dropped; she is at just 1 percent now.

Most of the interviews for this poll were conducted before Trump made statements concerning a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

I realize there is a certain segment of the population that is supporting Trump because they vote for people based on sound bites. A candidate who sounds tough excites them more than a candidate who has performed tough actions. It takes work to look into the candidate’s past and see what actions they’ve taken to prove their conservative convictions. Trump supporters seem unwilling to put the work in. Trump is on record as being “very pro-choice” – he even supports partial-birth abortion. And and he also supports the DREAM act and amnesty. Some people might like to think that saying “I’m pro-life” makes you pro-life, but sane people think that pro-life credentials are established by pro-life actions. Trump has no pro-life actions. And border security credentials are established by border security actions. Trump has no border security actions. And of course, Trump considers gay marriage to be “the law of the land”, because 5 judges said so.

Election time is not the time for people to be swayed by words. It’s the time to look for actions.