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Ontario government seizes foster kids from Christian couple over Santa Claus and Easter bunny

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Canada Election 2015: Socialists in red, Communists in Orange, Conservatives in blue
Canada Election 2015: Socialists in red, Communists in Orange, Conservatives in blue

In Canada, Christian couples are qualified to pay mandatory taxes to the secular government, but they’re not qualified raise children. That’s the government’s job, apparently.

Check out this story from the Toronto Sun.

Excerpt:

‘Twas a few days before Christmas when all through a Hamilton courtroom of the hallowed Superior Court of Ontario, the lawyers were arguing about – Santa Claus.

And the Easter bunny as well.

To his credit, Justice Andrew Goodman kept a straight face throughout the hearing as the lawyer for the Hamilton CAS struggled to explain why the agency suddenly yanked two little girls from their happy foster home just because their devout Christian foster parents wouldn’t lie and tell them Santa and the Easter Bunny were real.

The children — aged four and three at the time — faced the imminent danger that the “magic” of the holidays might be destroyed if they were left with Derek and Frances Baars, argued lawyer Jim Wood.

“They’re entitled to believe that while they’re sleeping, Santa Claus is coming to put the presents under the tree,” he insisted. “The risk is there. The children needed to be removed.”

The Baars were upfront when they signed on: They don’t celebrate Halloween and, as their glowing SAFE Homestudy Report clearly states, they “do not endorse Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny as they do not wish to lie to children.”

They were approved as foster parents in December 2015 and the sisters moved into their home a week before Christmas.

The Baars bought them gifts and celebrated the holiday — but carefully avoided the Santa question. Their birth mother even sent a note thanking them for giving her girls such a nice Christmas.

[…]Their CAS worker was hopping mad by their hearsay, told them it was an essential part of Canadian culture and issued an ultimatum: Tell the girls the Easter Bunny was real or their foster home would be closed.

And so it was. They were abruptly fired as foster parents and the mystified little girls were pulled from their home the next day.

It was an emergency! The children needed to be removed from the home right away by the benevolent taxpayer-funded social workers.

More:

Despite the dire shortage of foster parents in the region, the Baars were no longer acceptable to the Hamilton CAS. They’d even offered to care only for infants or kids for whom Santa and the Easter Bunny weren’t important, but were turned down.

The children need to be removed, because the parents are obviously dangerous. It’s dangerous to tell children that Santa Claus isn’t real, because it’s better to lie to them, and then have that mistrust poison the relationship between child and parents.

My personal view on this is exactly what the Christian couple decided. Make Christmas and Easter fun days, but focus on the theological issues involved in each day: the Incarnation and the Resurrection. You don’t want to get into a situation where you poison the relationship with your children by lying to them – telling them lies that make them feel good, and then having them find out later from their same-age peers the truth. It undermines you, and elevates their peers as trustworthy truth-tellers.

I just have to point out one more fact about this province of Ontario in Canada, and their views on raising children. Remember that the Deputy Minister of Education in Ontario designed a sex-education curriculum that was mandatory for all the children in Ontario. He was later convicted of child pornography. And Ontario also passed a law allowing the state to seize children from parents who disagree with the province’s LGBT agenda. So clearly, this is not the place to get married and have children, if you expect to raise your children according to a sensible Judeo-Christian worldview.

Maybe voting in a big secular government isn’t such a great thing. I know that when I give money to private sector businesses in free exchanges of value, they would not come to my house looking for children to seize. They just take their money, and I get something useful that I wanted that matches MY values. When you grow government, you end up paying them regardless of how they perform, and then when they are big enough, they turn around and starting pushing you around. You’ll never have that problem when you keep government focused on its Constitutional responsibilities. Unfortunately, the people of Canada have apparently forgotten all about how to organize a government so that it respects liberty.

News

Trump defeated ISIS: Islamic State has now lost 98% of their territory

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Islamic State operates in the red areas now, green = retreats
Islamic State retreats: light and dark green = previous ISIS areas, red = current ISIS areas

(Source: U.S. State Department via Business Insider)

I spent some time during my winter vacation reading through a whole bunch of military history books… “Lone Survivor”, “13 Hours” and “Red Platoon”.

In Thirteen Hours, I found out how the embassy in Benghazi was attacked, and then defended by security personnel at a nearby CIA outpost. The security personnel requested assistance over and over, and explained carefully that this was a planned terrorist attack, with pre-sighted indirect fire from mortars. All the requests for support were ignored by the Obama administration. Later on, Obama’s friend Susan Rice came out to assure us that the Obama administration had not failed to protect the ambassador, because the planned terrorist attack was just some minor protest violence caused by a YouTube video.

In Red Platoon, I found out about how U.S. forces were attacked in Eastern Afghanistan, near Pakistan, but no reinforcements were available because the entire army and air force was off looking for Private Beau Bergdahl, the deserter who Obama traded five Taliban commanders to get back. Is trading five experienced Taliban commanders for one deserter with the rank of Private a good deal? I don’t think so. Bergdahl was later convicted of desertion, by the way. At the time of the swap, Obama’s friend Susan Rice assured us that Bergdahl served honorably and was worth the five Taliban commanders.

In Lone Survivor, I found out about how how a 4-man team of Navy SEALs were discovered by Afghanistan civilians while conducting surveillance on a Taliban commander. Because they were afraid of the progressive mainstream media, and limited by the Obama administration’s pro-terrorist rules of engagement, they had to release the civilians. In gratitude for their lives, the civilians then immediately reported them to a nearby Taliban base. As a result, 3 of the 4 Navy SEALs were killed in action, and the fourth grievously wounded. He is very careful in the book to explain the costs of the mainstream media’s pro-terrorist bias, and the damaging effects of the Obama administration’s pro-terrorist rules of engagement (ROE).

Elsewhere, the pro-LGBT Obama administration gave convicted traitor Private Bradley Manning a free taxpayer-funded sex change, and then pardoned him for giving away our most important military secrets to WikiLeaks. Then Team Obama gave Iran a big boost in their development of nuclear weapons, including $400 million in untraceable cash. This is the same Iran that was killing our soldiers via IEDs in Iraq.

This is a snapshot of how the Obama administration handled foreign policy and national security during their eight-year reign of error. This is not even to mention the disasters in Syria, Egypt and Libya. It was the worst foreign policy presidency ever. And remember, Obama inherited a victory in Iraq, after George W. Bush’s successful surge. Obama turned that victory into a defeat by retreating prematurely instead of winning the peace. ISIS was created by Obama’s withdrawal from the battlefield.

Things have changed now that Donald Trump took over. He immediately gave the military more autonomy to go after our enemies, and now after one year, we have the results.

Fox News reports:

ISIS has lost 98 percent of the territory it once held — with half of that terror group’s so-called “caliphate” having been recaptured since President Trump took office less than a year ago, U.S. military officials said Tuesday.

The massive gains come after years of “onerous” rules, when critics say the Obama administration “micromanaged” the war and shunned a more intensive air strategy that could have ended the conflict much sooner.

“The rules of engagement under the Obama administration were onerous. I mean what are we doing having individual target determination being conducted in the White House, which in some cases adds weeks and weeks,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, the former head of U.S. Air Force intelligence. “The limitations that were put on actually resulted in greater civilian casualties.”

[…]The latest American intelligence assessment says fewer than 1,000 ISIS fighters now remain in Iraq and Syria, down from a peak of nearly 45,000 just two years ago. U.S. officials credit nearly 30,000 U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and regional partners on the ground for killing more than 70,000 jihadists. Meanwhile, only a few thousand have returned home.

The remaining ISIS strongholds are concentrated in a small area along the border of Syria and Iraq. ISIS, at one point, controlled an area the size of Ohio.

During the Obama administration, a lot of evil things were happening at the hands of evil men in the Middle East. I would like the American people to vote with their minds instead of with their feelings. Foreign policy and national security should be important, and they are certainly too important to be trusted to the radical left. We can do better than blame-America-first Democrats.

News

Diane Black is running for governor of Tennessee

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Heritage Action Scorecards show most conservative legislators
Heritage Action Scorecards show most conservative legislators

Exciting news in Tennessee!

Previously, I blogged about how my favorite Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn had entered the Tennessee Senate race for the seat being vacated by squishy moderate Bob Corker. I have blogged about Marsha Blackburn’s activities many times on this blog, going back for many years. Although Marsha Blackburn is a wonderful candidate for the Senate, Tennessee still needs a conservative governor.

Here is the latest news from Fox News, authored by Diane Black – another Congresswoman I admire.

Excerpt:

I became chairman of the House Budget Committee one year ago and have been proud to serve in that role along with our new president. He has pushed an agenda of action – responsible budgeting, repealing ObamaCare’s worst mandates, and aggressive tax-cutting to get our economy going. This has been exactly the kind of work I came to Congress to do and we have done it.

But my heart has always been at home. This why today I’m announcing that I will now step down as chairman of the House Budget Committee, while continuing to serve in Congress, to devote more attention to my next challenge: seeking the governorship of Tennessee.

When I was elected to Congress in 2010, I had three main goals: repeal ObamaCare, reform the tax code and start attacking the growing federal debt and deficits. In just one year, the Budget Committee has taken significant steps to achieve all of these goals.

She’s the current Chair of the House Budget Committee and probably had a lot to do with the splendid House version of that tax cut bill that I liked so much. But she’s not only good on fiscal issues, she’s also a member of the House pro-life caucus, and was involved in the Select Investigative Panel on Planned Parenthood – an investigation of the selling of unborn baby body parts. Marsha Blackburn chaired the panel.

The Washington Examiner says that she has a few rivals – but none of them were recognizable to me:

The gubernatorial race is slated for Nov. 6, 2018, the same day as the midterm elections in Congress. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam, the incumbent, is prohibited by Tennessee law from running for a third term. Black joins a field of other Republicans who have announced their candidacies, including former state Sen. Mae Beavers; Randy Boyd, former commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development under Haslam; Rep. Beth Harwell, speaker of the Tennessee House; businessman Bill Lee; and realtor Kay White.

Black will continue to work on the Ways and Means Committee. Before being elected to Congress, she was a Tennessee state representative and senator.

In a statement from the House Budget Committee’s office, Black urged her colleagues to address “unsustainable mandatory programs.”

“Without question, it is critical that lawmakers take real action to reverse the trajectory of our nation’s growing debt,” she said.

I always support the candidates with the best record of achieving conservative results in the teeth of opposition. That’s why I liked Scott Walker and Ted Cruz in the GOP primary. It’s good to see Marsha Blackburn and Diane Black running for Senate and Governor, respectively. They also both have experience fighting for conservative principles and achieving results in the teeth of opposition. I am very happy to see people with records of achieving results running for higher office. I noticed that Diane Black has a degree in nursing, and a private sector career as a nurse, prior to entering politics. I think gives her a practical, evidence-based background, which so many non-STEM politicians lack.