What Does the Rising Generation Need to Know?

Families, communities, and nations are stronger when the rising generation are reared to accept personal responsibility for their words and actions and obedience to laws. The scenes on university campuses show out-of-control youths who are rioting because they are not getting what they want. Temper tantrums should be corrected while children are still little.

According to Andrew Chapados at The Blaze, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) (D-N.Y.) criticized the police for holding rioting students at Columbia University accountable for their words and actions. She claimed that the police made a “horrific” choice when they enforced the law against the students. She responded to the deployment of counterterrorism units to the Columbia University campus to disperse pro-Palestinian protesters. 

“Not only did Columbia make the horrific decision to mobilize NYPD on their own students, but the units called in have some of the most violent reputations on the force. NYPD had promised the city they wouldn’t deploy [Special Response Groups] to protests. So why are these counterterror units here?” she posted on X.

Chief John Chell, the NYPD’s chief of patrol, did not like what AOC wrote on X and responded with a sarcastic tone.

“Truly amazing! Columbia decided to hold its students accountable to the laws of the school. They are seeing the consequences of their actions. Something these kids were most likely never taught. Good SAT scores and self-entitlement do not supersede the law. I am sure you would agree that we have to teach them these valuable life skills,” he said, referencing Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks.

“Secondly, I was with those ‘units’ last Thursday that you describe as having, ‘the most violent reputations.’ These ‘units’ removed students with great care and professionalism, not a single incident was reported,” the chief continued.

The chief then made remarks about “anti-Semitic speech” and “vile language” toward police officers. He then asked whether AOC agreed that “any hateful speech is unacceptable.”

Chell went on to say that “hate has no place in our society.”

AOC did not like the response of the police chief and mocked it: “‘Laws of the school?’ That’s not a thing.” She continued:

“The inaccuracy of what constitutes a law in your statement is highly concerning, considering it is law enforcement putting their hands on kids. NYPD promised to not call counterterror SRG units on protests. It’s time to keep your word,” she added.

Mocking the police response was not all that AOC did. On the next day, she visited the protesters on Columbia’s campus. Reports are that she praised the leadership of the pro-Palestinian camp.

“The leadership you have is so fantastic,” AOC said, according to reporter Danny De Urbina. The reporter alleged that one of the protest leaders has been shown on camera calling for the deaths of “Zionists,” equating them to “fascists” and “Nazis.”

Ocasio-Cortez also supported Speaker of the House Mike Johnson getting booed at Columbia, saying that it was “good” that the speaker was being booed because “he’s trying to take all their reproductive rights away.”

“Why would I ever listen to a man that thinks he should have more say over my body than I do? NEXT,” she added.

The rising generation needs to be taught about personal responsibility in their parental home – before they can come under the control of radicals like AOC and liberal college professors.

When parents teach correct principles, it is more difficult for other people to take over. Parents and children with strong principles help to build strong families, and strong families strengthen communities and nations.

Why Are Former Prosecutors Negative about Trump’s New York Trial?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns political prosecution and persecution in defense of “protecting democracy.” Katelynn Richardson published an article in The Daily Signal about Donald Trump’s hush money trial. She reminded her readers that prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office did not tell Trump which crime he had committed. 

One year after the indictment and in the courtroom on Tuesday, Bragg’s office finally told Trump the crime with he was charged: “a violation of state election law.” Richardson shared information given by former federal prosecutors.

Former federal prosecutors told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Bragg’s lack of clarity is unfair to the defense, which can’t prepare to argue against a charge they don’t know, and unlike what they’ve seen before.

“I don’t recall ever having a trial where the defense didn’t know what the government was trying to prove,” former federal prosecutor Jonathan Fahey told the Daily Caller News Foundation, likening Bragg’s approach to a “trial by ambush.”

Richardson then summarized the charges against Trump and the situation before the trial. Last April, Bragg “charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records allegedly related to $130,000 paid to keep porn star Stormy Daniels from telling her story of an alleged affair ahead of the election.” The charges are misdemeanors, but Bragg raised “the eight-year-old misdemeanor offenses as a felony” by arguing that Trump was trying to “commit or conceal another crime” that he never specified until Tuesday. Richardson reported as follows.

That is, until Tuesday, when it came out after defense attorneys objected to prosecutor Joshua Steinglass’ line of questioning that they were claiming Trump violated New York Election Law § 17-152. The statute makes it a misdemeanor for any two or more people to “conspire” to influence an election using “unlawful means.”

During opening statements Monday, Matthew Colangelo, senior counsel for the district attorney and a former top official in the Biden Department of Justice, argued that the records Trump allegedly falsified in relation to Daniels’ payment are part of a broader “conspiracy” to influence the 2016 election involving Trump, his former attorney Michael Cohen, and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.

Prosecutors are seeking to demonstrate that conspiracy – which they clarified is rooted in the election statute, though it is not named in the indictment – through witness testimony.

According to Richardson, “former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky said the theory put forward by Bragg under the statute is ‘bizarre.’” Cherkasky continued, “The misdemeanor statute of limitations is expired on this offense, just as it is expired on the underlying offense, raising a significant legal question about the propriety of this approach.”

Cherkasky’s statement continued: “One of the biggest issues in this case is that the prosecution has essentially withheld this theory until trial has started. The defense has complained about this the entire time, but the judge has refused to require identification of the felony escalator at an earlier stage. This amounts to another form of ‘trial by fire,’ which isn’t how the American criminal justice system is supposed to work.”

Richardson spoke to another “expert witness,” John Malcolm, vice president for The Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. Malcolm said he, as a former prosecutor, found “three things about the revelation that ‘amaze’ him.

“First, that Alvin Bragg’s office did not provide advanced notice of the precise allegations in order to enable former President [Donald] Trump’s legal team to prepare an adequate defense,” he said. “Second, that the statutory code section cited by the lead prosecutor (New York Penal Code Section 17-152) prohibits a conspiracy ‘to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means…,’ but Bragg has still not divulged what those ‘unlawful means’ were.”

“And third, and most shockingly, that penal code section is a misdemeanor, which means that Alvin Bragg is claiming that committing a misdemeanor (making a false business entry) in order to conceal the commission of another misdemeanor (conspiring to promote someone’s candidacy in an unlawful manner) can – like magic – be converted into 34 felony offenses,” he continued.

According to Fahey, everything about the case “stinks to high heaven.” He said what lots of other people think, “If this was anyone other than Donald Trump, this would be laughed out of court.”

When liberals, who have never supported Donald Trump, are discussing how bad the case, it must be really bad!

What Do Law Professionals Say About New York Case?

We are now in the second week of the New York vs. Donald Trump legal battle. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is determined to put Trump in jail for a crime that has not yet been named. Numerous law professors have questioned Bragg’s motive and actions.

Chris Enloe at The Blaze reported about the latest legal professional to call out Bragg’s effort. According to Enloe, Jed Handelsman Shugerman, a law professor at Boston University, considers the prosecution of Donald Trump to be a “historic mistake.” 

Shugerman made that conclusion after witnessing opening arguments on Monday in which prosecutors alleged Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.”

In short, prosecutors claim Trump falsified business records to interfere in the 2016 election.

The problems with their thesis, Shugerman wrote in the New York Times, are obvious: an “unprecedented use of state law” and a “persistent avoidance of specifying an election crime or a valid theory of fraud.”

“As a reality check, it is legal for a candidate to pay for a nondisclosure agreement. Hush money is unseemly, but it is legal,” Shugerman wrote.

He continued:

“In Monday’s opening argument, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo still evaded specifics about what was illegal about influencing an election, but then he claimed, ‘It was election fraud, pure and simple.’ None of the relevant state or federal statutes refer to filing violations as fraud. Calling it ‘election fraud’ is a legal and strategic mistake, exaggerating the case and setting up the jury with high expectations that the prosecutors cannot meet.”

According to Shugerman, there are “three red flags raising concerns about selective prosecution” in the case, all three of which concern the novel legal theory prosecutors are using against Trump for which there is no precedent.

“Eight years after the alleged crime itself, it is reasonable to ask if this is more about Manhattan politics than New York law,” Shugerman wrote. “This case should serve as a cautionary tale about broader prosecutorial abuses in America.”

He added, “This case is still an embarrassment of prosecutorial ethics and apparent selective prosecution.”

Still, Shugerman said the legal process should play itself out – but predicted Trump may ultimately win.

“If Monday’s opening is a preview of exaggerated allegations, imprecise legal theories, and persistently unaddressed problems, the prosecutors might not win a conviction at all,” he said.

George Washington Law School professor Jonathan Turley has similar ideas about the case. I have heard Turley’s comments on numerous programs, and he always says that there is legal basis for the case. Enloe reported that Turley said on Monday that “he is left in ‘utter disbelief’ that Bragg chose to prosecute the case … an embarrassment.”

When Is Surrogacy An Evil Act?

There are many couples who long for a family but learn that one or both of them are infertile. A large number of infertile couples attempt other means to have a family, such as invitro treatment, adoptions, or surrogacy. When the action is blessed and a healthy child is the result, the happy couple and all their family and friends rejoice.

In most cases, the child is also blessed to be in a loving family. However, there are some cases where the child is abused, and some where the abuse is planned long before the child is born. Emma Waters reported on such a case in her article published in The Daily Signal. 

In a recent sting operation, the FBI arrested and charged a Chicago man for knowingly distributing material on child sexual assault and boasting about sexually abusing his young nieces and nephews.

The man’s arrest came less than a week before he and another man identified as his husband were set to collect their newborn son from a commercial surrogate in California.

Commercial surrogacy is a contractual agreement where someone pays a woman to gestate and birth an unrelated child for a fee. In the United States, it’s an underregulated and unaccountable practice. Unlike adoption, the intended parents are not required to undergo a background check or home visit.

Male same-sex couples or single men, who lack a womb in their fruitless arrangements, make up a large percentage of this industry’s clients. Morally, the inclusion of a third person in the package deal of marriage, sex, and procreation violates God’s “one flesh” vision.

Proponents tend to frame surrogacy as a beautiful experience in which a woman helps someone complete a chosen family. This overlooks serious concerns. Critics point out that surrogacy is effectively a form of baby-selling that exploits women who need financial assistance. Moreover, the practice flourishes when loose laws allow bad actors to create children.

Unfortunately, as the recent FBI arrest shows, these aren’t hypothetical concerns. Here are the all-too real details:

Adam Stafford King, a well-known Chicago veterinarian and dog breeder, was intercepted by the FBI when agents seized another pedophile’s phone and gained access to his messaging accounts on Telegram and Scruff.

King openly discussed how he preferred boys in the “single digits” and planned to sexually abuse his surrogate-born son. King sent photos of his son’s sonogram and newborn outfit in anticipation of the sexual abuse.

King’s husband and extended family claim they had no knowledge of this. The surrogate-born son, who may not be related to either man, was born around March 29. Unless a court intervened, King’s husband planned to collect the newborn child and raise him at his parents’ house for the time being.

If King and his husband were a one-time experience, it would be bad enough. However, there are other times that “men with a history of sexual abuse or pedophilic behavior” gained control of a child through surrogacy. Waters told of another couple:

A few months ago, the well-known You Tuber Shane Dawson and his partner created twin boys through a surrogacy contract. Dawson has admitted to masturbating to pictures of minors and googling child pornography. Such behavior made it unlikely that Dawson and his partner could pass an adoption screening, yet a surrogacy contract was no problem.

As children’s rights activist Katy Faust details, there is a growing list of men who have a history of child sexual abuse or intend to abuse their own child gained through surrogacy. And these are just the ones we know about.

Waters shared “one final, haunting question: What about the children?” No one seems to care about “what is best for the child?” Some problems include the following: 

1) The child is likely to never know his biological mother as such cases involve “an anonymous egg donor selected from a catalog.” The baby recognizes his gestational mother’s voice, disposition, and body but is handed to someone that is unrelated. 

2) Children who are reared by male partners are “at least 11 times more likely to suffer sexual or physical abuse as unrelated men frequent the home.” 

3) The child will eventually understand that he came from the process of in vitro fertilization, where parents can “eugenically select the kind of child they want,” including the sex of the embryo. 

4) The child will be forced with realization that “he was not conceived in a loving union but purchased through a highly lucrative contract” – not much different than purchasing a child after birth.

Michigan and Minnesota are two states that have made commercial surrogacy easier. Instead of legalizing “the buying and selling of children,” state and national laws “should encourage, whenever possible, married mothers and fathers to raise their children.” The laws should not legalize ways to abuse children.

Who Is Liz Truss?

My VIP for this week is Liz Truss, former British Prime Minister. She spoke today at The Heritage Foundation about challenges faced by both the United States and the United Kingdom from the Global Left, their extremist activists, and the power they hold. In her speech, she “warned that conservatives must create a stronger infrastructure to take on the Left – which is well-funded, activist, and has many friends in high places – by recruiting more conservative activists and candidates who can fight in the trenches in the ideological war that we now face.” Some of the excerpts from her remarks are as follows as published in The Daily Signal. 

Why am I launching “Ten Years to Save the West” in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom? Well, I like to think of the United States of America as Britain’s greatest invention, albeit a slightly inadvertent invention. And if you look at our history, from Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights to the American Constitution, we have developed and perfected representative democracy.

And if you look at what is going on in our societies, first of all, the Brexit vote back in 2016 and then the election of President Donald Trump later that year, you can see the same desires of our people for change and the same desires for those conservative values and that sovereignty.

And if you look at the battle for conservatism now and the frequency with which we get new prime ministers in the United Kingdom and the frequency with which you get new speakers of the House here in the United States, we can see again that there is a battle for the heart and soul of conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic. And I think that battle is very important. Because, let’s be honest, we have not been winning against the global Left.

If you look at the history since the turn of the millennium, the Left have had the upper hand. And it’s not the old-fashioned Left who used to argue about the means of production and economic inequality. It’s the new Left who have insidious ideas that challenge our very way of life.

Whether it’s about climate extremism that doesn’t believe in economic growth, whether it’s about challenging the very idea of a man and a woman and biological sex, whether it’s about the human rights culture that’s been bedded into so much of our society that makes us unable to deal with illegal immigration – those new ideas have been promulgated by the global Left and they have been successful in infiltrating quite a large proportion of society and a large part of our institutions.

Truss then discussed the state of economics, the immigration and human rights culture, wokery, the fluidity of gender, the non-reality of biological sex, and biological boys in girls dressing rooms. She discussed the stopping of coal-fired power stations in the U.S., discouragement of [liquefied natural gas] terminals being built, and the stopping of fracking in the United Kingdom. She continued with the imposition of electric vehicles, air-source heat pumps, extra taxes on the public, and coal-fired power stations being built in China.

Truss spoke about other reasons why the West is in trouble and why conservatives should learn better ways of defending the Constitution and the American way of life. She concluded with the following message.

But my final message is that winning in 2025 or winning in 2024 and going into government in 2025 is not enough. It’s not enough just to win. It’s not enough just to have those conservative policies. That there will be huge resistance from the administrative state and from a Left in politics that has never been more extremist or more virulent.

And that is why it will need all the resources of the American conservative movement, think tanks like Heritage, and hopefully your allies in the United Kingdom to succeed. But you must succeed because the free world needs you.

 

Why Should America Come First for U.S. Congress?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns the concept that Americans politicians should put America first. According to Simon Hankinson in an article published in The Daily Signal, a recent poll shows that 11 percent of swing-state voters believe that the funding Ukraine is more important than securing the American borders. Congress approved a bill last week to send more money to Ukraine even though we have already spent up to $113 billion.

The United States is experiencing “an unprecedented surge in illegal immigration” – more than 11 million migrants have crossed illegally into the United States during the Biden administration. Yet, the current administration continues to spend more money on Ukraine than on securing our own border.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas asked for fewer Border Patrol agents, fentanyl-detecting equipment, and detention beds than he previously argued were needed. To make matters worse, he wants a $4.7 billion “Southwest Border Contingency” slush fund that experience tells us he will spend in as many more illegal aliens as possible while he still can.

At the same time of the Mayorkas’ requests, Congress was passing a “huge supplemental foreign-aid package comprising individual funding bills for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine, plus a fourth bill with sanctions against Iran and Russia.”

Congressional leaders continue to promise legislation to close the border, but the borders are still open. The promises are empty promises. Congress and President Biden are failing America and American citizens while they are giving away the country to foreigners.

Unlike the empty promises of Congress and Biden, Donald Trump promises to put “America First.” We can believe Trump because he put America first for four years, and we had peace and prosperity – unlike the wars and rumors of war, economic damage, and foreign policy embarrassment of the Biden administration.

The Trump administration and the Biden administration show us two types of leadership. One leader put America first, and one put everyone else first. If you can see the truthfulness in this statement, I hope that you will have the fortitude to vote for Trump.

Does God Prepare the Way Before You?

 My Come Follow Me studies for this week took me to an interesting section of the Book of Mormon. The section is only eight pages long, but those eight pages cover one-third of the Book of Mormon time period, 476 years out of 1,021 years. This lesson is titled “He Worketh in Me to Do According to His Will” (Enos through Words of Mormon). It was introduced with the following information.

Although Enos went to the forest to hunt beasts to satisfy physical hunger, he ended up staying there all day and into the night because his “soul hungered.” This hunger led Enos to “raise [his] voice high that it reached the heavens.” He described this experience as a wrestle before God (see Enos 1:2-4). From Enos we learn that prayer is a sincere effort to draw near to God and seek to know His will. When you pray with this intent, you are more likely to discover, as Enos did, that God hears you and truly cares about you, your loved ones, and even your enemies (see Enos 1:4-17). When you know His will, you are better able to do His will. Like Mormon, you may “not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things …; wherefore, he worketh in [you] to do according to his will” (Words of Mormon 1:7).

Enos is the first of numerous writers for this portion of the Book of Mormon, and Mormon is the final writer of it. The principle that I feel prompted to discuss comes from Words of Mormon 1:1-8: “God will work through me as I follow His guidance.”

Mormon was in the process of abridging hundreds of years of ancient history when he came upon a few pages now known as the Small Plates of Nephi. These plates contain the material found in the current Book of Mormon books of First Nephi, Second Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Jarom, Omni, and Words of Mormon.

Mormon took the Small Plates of Nephi and placed them behind his abridgment from the Large Plates of Nephi of the same period of time. Here is the story in Mormon’s own words (Words of Mormon 1:3-7:

3 And now, I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written; for after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this king Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi.

4 And the things which are upon these plates pleasing me, because of the prophecies of the coming of Christ; and my fathers knowing that many of them have bene fulfilled; yea, and I also know that as many things as have been prophesied concerning us down to this day have been fulfilled, and as many as go beyond this day must surely come to pass—

5 Wherefore, I chose these things, to finish my record upon them, which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi; and I cannot write the hundredth part of the things of my people.

6 But behold, I shall take these plates, which contain these prophesyings and revelations, and put them with the remainder of my record, for they are choice unto me; and I know they will be choice unto my brethren.

7 And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, he worketh in me to do according to his will.

One reason the Lord inspired Mormon to include the small plates of Nephi in the Book of Mormon was because He knew that the first 116 translated pages would be lost (see Doctrine and Covenants 10; Saints, volume 1, chapter 5). Without Mormon’s obedience to the prompting to include the Small Plates, the Book of Mormon would be missing its first 144 pages.

Heavenly Father knows what happened in the past, what happens in the present day, and what will happen in the future. He prepared the way for us to have the rich lessons of Lehi, Nephi, and Jacob as well as strong testimonies of other writers. God knew that we would need those lessons and acted to protect them.

God has the power to use either good people or evil people to bring about His will. In this case, He worked through His prophet. Have you seen the hand of God working through you or someone that you know?