Videos

CRISIS: Is Obama’s Department of Justice enabling voter registration fraud?

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First, from The Other McCain, a 3-minute summary of the case.

To get a longer summary of the case, you really need check out this PJTV interview with several people connected to the case – Peter N. Kirsanow, who is on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, former Department of Justice attorney Hans von Spakovsky, Todd F. Gaziano who is also on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and another former Department of Justice attorney J. Christian Adams.

The smaller story is that the New Black Panther voter intimidation case was dismissed by political appointees of the Obama administration.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama’s handpicked U.S. Justice Department officials are ignoring civil rights cases in which the alleged victims are whites and they abandoned a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party that resulted in a “travesty of justice.”

Christopher Coates, former voting chief for the department’s Civil Rights Division, testified at a hearing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, after outcries from citizens’ groups and public-interest organization over the Justice Department’s stonewalling a full investigation.

Coates alleges that DOJ officials, for political reasons, dismissed intimidation charges against New Black Panther members who were videotaped outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008 dressed in military-style uniforms—one was brandishing a nightstick—and allegedly hurling racial slurs.

However, the Justice Department reportedly prevented him from testifying and subsequently transferred him to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Carolina.

But what is the worst thing in the Coates testimony? I think it’s this thing below, which Spakovsky mentioned in the PJTV video.

From Verum Serum. (H/T Ace of Spades)

Excerpt from Coates’ testimony:

In June 2009, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) issued its bi-annual report concerning which states appeared not to be complying with Section 8′s list maintenance requirements. The report identified eight states that appeared to be the worst in terms of their non-compliance with the list maintenance requirements of Section 8 [of the Voting Rights Act]. These were states that reported that no voters had been removed from any of their voters’ list in the last two years. Obviously this is a good indication that something is not right with the list maintenance practice in that state. As Chief of the Voting Section, I assigned attorneys to work on this matter, and in September 2009, I forwarded a memorandum to the CRD Front Office asking for approval to go forward with Section 8 list maintenance investigations in these states.

During the time that I was Chief, no approval was given to this project, and my understanding that approval has never been given for that Section 8 list maintenance project to date. That means that we have entered the 2010 election cycle with eight states appearing to be in major noncompliance with the list maintenance requirements of Section 8 of the NVRA, and yet the Voting Section which has the responsibility to enforce that law has yet to take any action.

Ooops, here’s another bombshell in Coates’ testimony, from Hot Air.

Excerpt:

It contains at least one bombshell, which is that Obama appointee Loretta King ordered Coates to stop asking applicants whether they supported race-neutral enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.  The question became necessary because of resistance in the Civil Rights division from career attorneys to enforce the law when it resulted in African-American defendants rather than victims…

Coates says:

In the spring of 2009, Ms. King, who had by then been appointed Acting AAG for Civil Rights by the Obama Administration, called me to her office and specifically instructed me that I was not to ask any other applicants whether they would be willing to, in effect, race-neutrally enforce the VRA.  Ms. King took offense that I was asking such a question of job applicants and directed me not to ask it because she does not support equal enforcement of the provisions of the VRA and had been highly critical of the filing and prosecution of the Ike Brown case.

Stay tuned. And this may explain why the Democrats are able to win elections despite not being competent to govern.

And don’t forget Obama’s former employer ACORN, which is also being investigated for voter fraud. And the NAACP was also mentioned in the PJTV video.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit notes that Robin Carnahan, who is now for a Senate seat in Missouri, refused to clear dead people from voter roles. Gateway Pundit has a nice picture of Obama hugging Robin Carnahan.

News

Over 250,000 children accused of racism by UK teachers since 2000

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The UK government is forcing teachers to accuse 3-year-old children of racism. (H/T The Blog Prof)

Excerpt:

Teachers are being forced to report children as young as three to the authorities for using alleged ‘racist’ language, it was claimed last night.

Munira Mirza, a senior advisor to London Mayor Boris Johnson, said schools were being made to spy on nursery age youngsters by the Race Relations Act 2000.

More than a quarter of a million children have been accused of racism since it became law, she said.

Writing in Prospect magazine, she said: ‘The more we seek to measure racism, the more it seems to grow.

‘Teachers are now required to report incidents of racist abuse among children as young as three to local authorities, resulting in a massive increase of cases and reinforcing the perception that we need an army of experts to manage race relations from cradle to grave.

[…]The Act compelled 43,000 public authorities, including schools and churches, ‘to promote good relations between persons of different racial groups’. Details of the incidents are logged on databases.

Teachers are allowed to report racism even if the alleged ‘victim’ was not offended or if the child does not understand what they were saying.

Freedom of Information replies obtained by civil liberties group the Manifesto Club show that between 2002 and 2009, 280,000 incidents have been reported.

Wow. The government is criminalizing more and more behaviors behaviors in order to create a “crisis” that requires more and more government intervention. This policy was put in by the left-wing Labour party in the UK, naturally. The Nanny-staters who want to micro-manage everyone to play nice.

And before anyone accuses me of being a racist, know that I am a brown person. So that left-wing name-calling doesn’t work on me.

Polemics

Does the Bible teach that faith is opposed to logic and evidence?

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Probably the biggest misconception that I encounter when defending the faith is the mistaken notion of what faith is. Today we are going to get to the bottom of what the Bible says faith is, once and for all. This post will be useful to Christians and atheists, alike.

What is faith according to the Bible?

I am going to reference this article from apologist Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason in my explanation.

Koukl cites three Biblical examples to support the idea that faith is not blind leap-of-faith wishing, but is based on evidence.

  1. Moses went out into the wilderness and he had that first encounter with the burning bush, and God gave him the directive to go back to Egypt and let his people go. Moses said, Yeah, right. What’s going to happen when they say, why should we believe you, Moses?God said, See that staff? Throw it down.Moses threw it down and it turned into a serpent.God said, See that serpent? Pick it up.And he picked it up and it turned back into a staff.God said, Now you take that and do that before the Jewish people and you do that before Pharaoh. And you do this number with the hail, and the frogs, and turning the Nile River into blood. You put the sun out. You do a bunch of other tricks to get their attention.

    And then comes this phrase: “So that they might know that there is a God in Israel.”

  2. [I]n Mark 2 you see Jesus preaching in a house, and you know the story where they take the roof off and let the paralytic down through the roof. Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven.” And people get bugged because how can anyone forgive sins but God alone?Jesus understood what they were thinking and He said this: What’s harder to say, your sins are forgiven, or to rise, take up your pallet and go home?Now, I’ll tell you what would be harder for me to say : Arise, take up your pallet and go home. I can walk into any Bible study and say your sins are forgiven and nobody is going to know if I know what I am talking about or not. But if I lay hands on somebody in a wheelchair and I say, Take up your wheelchair and go home, and they sit there, I look pretty dumb because everyone knows nothing happened.

    But Jesus adds this. He says, “In order that you may know that the Son of Man has the power and authority to forgive sins, I say to you, arise, take up your pallet and go home.” And he got up and he got out. Notice the phrase “In order that you may know”.  Same message, right?

  3. Move over to the Book of Acts. First sermon after Pentecost. Peter was up in front of this massive crowd. He was talking about the resurrection to which he was an eyewitness. He talked about fulfilled prophecy. He talked about the miraculous tongues and the miraculous manifestation of being able to speak in a language you don’t know. Do you think this is physical evidence to those people? I think so. Pretty powerful.Peter tells them, These men are not drunk as it seems, but rather this is a fulfillment of prophecy. David spoke of this. Jesus got out of the grave, and we saw him, and we proclaim this to you.Do you know how he ends his sermon? It’s really great. Acts 2:36. I’ve been a Christian 20 years and I didn’t see this until about a year ago. This is for all of those who think that if you can know it for sure, you can’t exercise faith in it. Here is what Peter said. Acts 2:36, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” There it is again. “Know for certain.”

What is faith according to Bible-based theologians?

I am going to reference this article from theologian C. Michael Patton of Parchment and Pen in my explanation.

Patton explains that according to Reformation (conservative, Bible-based) theologians, faith has 3 parts:

  1. notitia – This is the basic informational foundation of our faith. It is best expressed by the word content. Faith, according to the Reformers must have content. You cannot have faith in nothing. There must be some referential propositional truth to which the faith points. The proposition “Christ rose from the grave,” for example, is a necessary information base that Christians must have.
  2. assensus – This is the assent or confidence that we have that the notitia is correct… This involves evidence which leads to the conviction of the truthfulness of the proposition… This involves intellectual assent and persuasion based upon critical thought… assensus… says, “I am persuaded to believe that Christ rose from the grave.”
  3. fiducia – This is the “resting” in the information based upon a conviction of its truthfulness. Fiducia is best expressed by the English word “trust.”… Fiducia is the personal subjective act of the will to take the final step. It is important to note that while fiducia goes beyond or transcends the intellect, it is built upon its foundation.

So, Biblical faith is really trust. Trust(3) can only occur after intellectual assent(2), based on evidence and thought. Intellectual assent(2) can only occur after the propositional information(1) is known.

The church today accepts 1 and 3, but denies 2. I call this “fideism” or “blind faith”. Ironically, activist atheists, (the New Atheists), also believe that faith is blind. The postmodern “emergent church” denies 1 and 2. A person could accept 1 and 2 but deny 3 by not re-prioritizing their life based on what they know to be true.

How do beliefs form, according to Christian philosophers?

I am going to reference a portion of chapter 3 of J.P. Moreland’s “Love Your God With All Your Mind” (i.e. – LYGWYM).

J.P. Moreland explains how beliefs form and how you can change them.

  1. Today, people are inclined to think that the sincerity and fervency of one’s beliefs are more important than the content… Nothing could be further from the truth… As far as reality is concerned, what matters is not whether I like a belief or how sincere I am in believing it but whether or not the belief is true. I am responsible for what I believe and, I might add, for what I refuse to believe because the content of what I do or do not believe makes a tremendous difference to what I become and how I act.
  2. A belief’s strength is the degree to which you are convinced the belief is true. As you gain ,evidence and support for a belief, its strength grows for you… The more certain you are of a belief… the more you rely on it as a basis for action.

But the most important point of the article is that your beliefs are not under the control of your will.

…Scripture holds us responsible for our beliefs since it commands us to embrace certain beliefs and warns us of the consequences of accepting other beliefs. On the other hand, experience teaches us that we cannot choose or change our beliefs by direct effort.

For example, if someone offered you $10,000 to believe right now that a pink elephant was sitting next to you, you could not really choose to believe this… If I want to change my beliefs about something, I can embark on a course of study in which I choose to think regularly about certain things, read certain pieces of evidence and argument, and try to find problems with evidence raised against the belief in question.

…by choosing to undertake a course of study… I can put myself in a position to undergo a change in… my beliefs… And… my character and behavior… will be transformed by these belief changes.

The article goes on to make some very informative comments on the relationship between apologetics and belief.