A New Chapter in the Hanukkah Story | ICEJ USA

A New Chapter in the Hanukkah Story | ICEJ USA

Inside the Milky Way - Full Documentary, 720p

For Those Who Need Courage Today.

Psalm 27:14

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

                                                  

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting...................Dinner!

Part III Nesting

Day two, Eggs two. Mother Robin working hard.

Nesting Part II

Bird's eye view.                           

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 A mere mortal's view of Baby Robin's first home.

 

First egg! It's perfect! And it's blue. It must be a boy.

...And the littlest fairy came down to watch over the baby.

Nesting is for the Birds Part I

My wonderful sons bought me the most beautiful flowers for Mother's Day...But there was another Mother who took a fancy to them.

Several days after I put the flowers in larger pots, a Mother Robin found one to her liking and began to make a nest.



Clever, as most mothers are, she built her nest next to the water fountain so as to always have a a fresh supply nearby. We can catch a glimpse of her tail feathers as she labors for the next two days.

Proud as a peacock, having completed her work, she struts her stuff along the deck rail.





She stops for a moment and crooks her neck to see who is taking all those pictures!

"Gross Insult"

AMEN! Black pastors have TWO WORD response to Obama’s trans bathroom order…

Written by Michelle Jesse, Associate Editor on May 14, 2016

Perhaps as stunning as the Obama administration’s iron-fistedness on the issue of transgender bathrooms are the arguments it’s employing in an attempt to justify it. Many of us, of all colors, were taken aback — to say the least — when Attorney General Loretta Lynch compared the trans bathroom issue to Jim Crow laws — drawing a comparison between the struggles of transgender individuals and blacks.

Understandably, many blacks are just plain outraged at the Obama administration’s appropriation of civil rights to further its own ideological agenda — including our own Col. Allen West, who shared his thoughts here earlier today.
A group of black pastors is declaring the Obama administration’s equivalency of transgender and black struggles a “gross insult to all of those who marched with Dr. King and faced fire hoses and hatred in the name of equality.”
The group is calling on “all black Americans to stand up and fight for the sanctity of Martin Luther King’s accomplishments for our race.”

Via Breitbart:
The president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP) says that the Obama administration’s assertion that single-sex bathrooms are discriminating against gender-confused individuals in much the same way that blacks experienced discrimination in the United States is a “gross insult” to all who fought for equality for African-Americans.

U.S. Directs Public Schools to Allow Transgender Access to Restrooms

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and MATT APUZZOMAY 12, 2016

Signs outside a restroom at Santee High School in Los Angeles. Credit Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is planning to issue a sweeping directive telling every public school district in the country to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.

A letter to school districts will go out Friday, adding to a highly charged debate over transgender rights in the middle of the administration’s legal fight with North Carolina over the issue. The declaration — signed by Justice and Education department officials — will describe what schools should do to ensure that none of their students are discriminated against.

It does not have the force of law, but it contains an implicit threat: Schools that do not abide by the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law could face lawsuits or a loss of federal aid.

The move is certain to draw fresh criticism, particularly from Republicans, that the federal government is wading into local matters and imposing its own values on communities across the country that may not agree. It represents the latest example of the Obama administration using a combination of policies, lawsuits and public statements to change the civil rights landscape for gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people.

After supporting the rights of gay people to marry, allowing them to serve openly in the military and prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against them, the administration is wading into the battle over bathrooms and siding with transgender people.

“No student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling unwelcome at school or on a college campus,” John B. King Jr., the secretary of the Department of Education, said in a statement. “We must ensure that our young people know that whoever they are or wherever they come from, they have the opportunity to get a great education in an environment free from discrimination, harassment and violence.”

Courts have not settled the question of whether the nation’s sex discrimination laws apply in matters of gender identity. But administration officials, emboldened by a federal appeals court ruling in Virginia last month, think they have the upper hand. This week, the Justice Department and North Carolina sued each other over a state law that restricts access to bathrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms. The letter to school districts had been in the works for months, Justice Department officials said.

Texas Teacher Rejects Obama’s Transgender Bathroom Letter, Says He’ll Send it to the Paper Shredder

Michael Cantrell   May 13, 2016 12:13 pm

 

President Obama decided to yet again defy the constitutional limits placed on his powers and released a directive stating public schools must allow transgenders to use the bathroom of their choice.
Well, the great state of Texas is saying no thanks and accusing the president of blackmail.
From IJR:

Rodney Cavness, the Superintendent of Port Neches-Groves in Texas, told 12News that he cannot tolerate the mixing of males and females in his schools’ restrooms out of what he believes are safety concerns:
“He ain’t my President and he can’t tell me what to do. That letter is going straight to the paper shredder. I have 5 daughters myself and I have 2,500 girls in my protection. Their moms and dads expect me to protect them. And that is what I am going to do.”
“Now I don’t want them bullied,” Cavness said. “But there are accommodations that can be made short of this. He is destroying the very fiber of this country. He is not a leader. He is a failure.”

Here’s more from Politico:

A top Texas official said the state will not yield to “blackmail” from President Barack Obama, after the administration on Friday released a directive notifying public school officials that transgender students must be allowed to use the restroom and locker room facilities corresponding with their gender identity.
“I believe it is the biggest issue facing families and schools in America since prayer was taken out of public schools,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told reporters.
Obama’s policy “will divide the country not along political lines but along family values and school districts,” Patrick said.
“He says he’s going to withhold funding if schools do not follow the policy,” Patrick said, referring to the risk of schools losing federal funding if they do not adhere to the recommendations. “Well, in Texas, he can keep his 30 pieces of silver. We will not yield to blackmail from the president of the United States.”
Noting that Texas public schools get $10 billion of federal funds over a two-year budget, Patrick said the majority of that is for free breakfast and lunch programs.
“So Barack Obama, if schools don’t knuckle down to force girls showering with boys and force 8-year-old girls to have to endure boys coming into their bathroom, he’s taking money from the poorest of the poor,” Patrick said. “The president of the United States will be ending the free breakfast and free lunch program. That’s what he’s saying.”

 Apparently Obama doesn’t understand that transgender restrooms are a 10th Amendment issue, meaning it’s left up to the states to decide how to handle it and the federal government has no jurisdiction in the matter at all.
The only legitimate powers of the federal government are outlined clearly in the Constitution, and all the rest are reserved for the states.
It’s a simple concept, yet the president seems to relish any opportunity possible to violate this law of the land with sheer glee.
It’s encouraging to see the state of Texas calling on its 10th Amendment rights to stand against the encroachment of the federal government. Hopefully other states will start doing the same and help take back some of the power stolen by those in Washington.

The Closing of the Liberal Mind:

The Closing of the Liberal Mind: 

 How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left 

                                                                                                                                by Kim R. Holmes

April 12, 2016 

                                                                                                              

 A former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Kim R. Holmes surveys the state of liberalism in America today and finds that it is becoming its opposite—illiberalism—abandoning the precepts of open-mindedness and respect for individual rights, liberties, and the rule of law upon which the country was founded, and becoming instead an intolerant, rigidly dogmatic ideology that abhors dissent and stifles free speech. Tracing the new illiberalism historically to the radical Enlightenment, a movement that rejected the classic liberal ideas of the moderate Enlightenment that were prominent in the American Founding, Holmes argues that today’s liberalism has forsaken its American roots, incorporating instead the authoritarian, anti-clerical, and anti-capitalist prejudices of the radical and largely European Left. The result is a closing of the American liberal mind. Where once freedom of speech and expression were sacrosanct, today liberalism employs speech codes, trigger warnings, boycotts, and shaming rituals to stifle freedom of thought, expression, and action. It is no longer appropriate to call it liberalism at all, but illiberalism—a set of ideas in politics, government, and popular culture that increasingly reflects authoritarian and even anti-democratic values, and which is devising new strategies of exclusiveness to eliminate certain ideas and people from the political process. Although illiberalism has always been a temptation for American liberals, lurking in the radical fringes of the Left, it is today the dominant ideology of progressive liberal circles. This makes it a new danger not only to the once venerable tradition of liberalism, but to the American nation itself, which needs a viable liberal tradition that pursues social and economic equality while respecting individual liberties.