A Year After Ferguson Rioters Damaged Her Shop, Woman Rebuilding With Tea Party’s Help Is Robbed Again

This week, on the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death, a familiar image came out of Ferguson, Mo., as protesters faced off against police in the city just as they did 12 months ago.

For one business owner, a night of rioting and looting disrupted a year of rebuilding not just her business, but a community.

Over the course of last year, Dellena Jones, owner of 911 Hair Salon on West Florissant Avenue, found an ally eager to help her rebuild: the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition.

But on Sunday, a group of young men shattered the left window of her beauty salon as protests flared once again in the St. Louis suburb.

Jones’ shop is located in the epicenter of where the protests occurred last year in Ferguson after Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, was killed by former police officer Darren Wilson.

The looters, who robbed the store after police shot and injured a young black man who allegedly fired several shots at officers, took beauty supplies such as scissors and curling irons and flipped over one of Jones’s hair dryers. It will likely cost hundreds of dollars to purchase a new hair dryer.

“I was hoping for the best and believing for the best,” Jones said in an interview with The Daily Signal of her expectations for the anniversary of Brown’s death. “We were expecting for things to be good, and if it weren’t, not [this] bad.”

For Jones, who worked for more than a decade at the salon before taking over as owner in 2012, the burglary came after a year of struggling to get her business back on its feet.

“It’s been very challenging,” Jones said. “I’ve been trying to keep up the bills here and at home. It’s proven to be very difficult and challenging and almost impossible.”

One year ago, as the nation turned to watch Ferguson following Brown’s death, Jones became a victim of the riots and looting that took place in its wake. Her store was one of more than 30 businesses looted and damaged. One business, a QuikTrip convenience store, was burned to the ground.

Jones estimated that in the last 12 months, the protests have caused her to lose roughly $75,000—a combination of lost revenue from a decrease in foot traffic along West Florissant Avenue and the cost of repairing her shop.

“You have all of these different protesters. They don’t pop into your business and say, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ or ‘Hey, are you all OK?’” Jones said. “It just seems like with the protests, it seems very selfish.”

After last year’s protests, the St. Louis Tea Party Coalitionrallied volunteers to participate in “buycotts” of Ferguson businesses to show people that yes, the stores in the town were open for business, and yes, it’s safe to shop in the city.

And over the last few months, the group has also been helping Jones put her store back together.

Via: Daily Signal

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[VIDEO] Why Chris Christie Wants to Defund Sanctuary Cities

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says the next president of the United States should make sure federal dollars don’t flow to sanctuary cities.

“Withdraw federal funding from cities that don’t or are unwilling to enforce the federal immigration law,” Christie told The Daily Signal at the RedState Gathering this weekend in Atlanta.

The issue of sanctuary cities came up at last week’s GOP debate. Specifically, whether candidates would support mandatory five-year prison sentences for illegals that are deported and then come back to the United States.

There’s also been plenty of discussion about the need to defund sanctuary cities. Christie believes stopping the flow of money is important but he also raises the larger issue of actual law enforcement, something some sanctuary city officials clearly don’t get.

“They need to understand our laws that our federal government makes are not optional. They’re not based upon your personal preference. They are about the laws made by the people we elect to make them.”

Christie made clear that he’d love to get rid of certain laws he doesn’t like but can’t. As for President Obama, he thinks he’s playing games.

“I don’t get to pick and choose. This president picks and chooses and we should not permit that to happen.”

Via: Daily Signal

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3 Historical Developments That Explain Our Current Religious Liberty Battles

In recent political memory, religious liberty was a value that brought together conservatives, libertarians, and progressives. As recently as 1993, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed by a nearly unanimous Congress and signed by a Democratic president. Today, the same value is a political liability. Bakers, photographers, and florists are being ruined, adoption agencies shuttered, schools threatened with loss of accreditation and nonprofit status. So what happened? Why is religious liberty now losing so much ground?

As I explain in my just-released book, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, three historical developments explain our current predicament: a change in the scope of our government, a change in our sexual values, and a change in our political leaders’ vision of religious liberty. An adequate response will need to address each of these changes.

First, government has changed. The progressive movement gave us the administrative state. Limited government and the rule of law were replaced by the nearly unlimited reach of technocrats in governmental agencies. As government assumes responsibility for more areas of life, the likelihood of its infringing on religious liberty increases. Why should government be telling bakers and florists which weddings to serve in the first place? Why should it tell charities and religious schools how to operate and which values to teach? Only a swollen sense of unaccountable government authority can explain these changes.

Second, sexual values have changed. At the time of the American Revolution, religion and liberty were so closely linked that Thomas Jefferson could affirm, “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.” Meanwhile, his French contemporary Denis Diderot, expressing sentiments that would culminate in a very different revolution, declared that man “will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” In our own time, however, the sexual revolution has shattered the American synthesis of faith and freedom, setting religion at odds with “liberty”—or more accurately, license. Now bakers, florists, adoption agencies, and schools that uphold what Americans have always believed about marriage find themselves at odds with the law.

Third, religious liberty has changed. Our Constitution protects the natural right to the free exercise of religion. But some liberals are trying to drastically narrow that right by redefining it as the mere “freedom of worship.” If they succeed, the robust religious freedom that made American civil society the envy of the world will be reduced to Sunday-morning piety confined within the four walls of a chapel. They have even gone so far as to rewrite the U.S. immigration exam to say that the First Amendment protects “freedom of worship” rather than the “free exercise of religion.”True religious liberty entails the freedom to live consistently with one’s beliefs seven days a week—in the chapel, in the marketplace, and in the public square.

These three changes represent a rejection of the American Founding. Progressive politics and a radical view of human sexuality are combining to coerce compliance at the expense of a bedrock human right. And of course much of this has been enabled by judicial activism, as in Obergefell.

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o how do we fight against this onslaught? We start by fighting for courts to interpret and apply our laws fairly. Without a sound judiciary, no amount of public debate can ensure sound policy on issues like marriage and religious liberty, for the courts will always be able to refashion or discard what the people (through their representatives) have achieved. This is why the work of groups such as the Federalist Society, which opposes such judicial activism, is so important.

Outside the courtroom, our best strategy for fighting governmental overreach is to fight for more limited government. The less power government has, the less room there is for abuses of power. The alliance between social and economic conservatives is not just a marriage of convenience. They share important principles, and they face a common enemy—the expansion of government beyond its proper scope. This is why the work of an organization such as the Heritage Foundation, which opposes ever-expanding government, is so important.

Limited government and religious liberty are best served when human laws reflect the “laws of nature and of nature’s God,” as the Declaration of Independence puts it. All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with a right to life. Mankind is created male and female, and marriage, by nature, is the union of man and woman. Only by redefining these concepts according to desire rather than nature is it possible to concoct a “right to choose” that extends even to the killing of an unborn child or an endlessly malleable concept of “marriage.”

Restoring a sound understanding of human nature and the laws of nature will be the work of the many organizations and groups—churches and synagogues, primary schools and universities, for example—that constitute civil society. Among these groups, public interest law firms such as the Alliance Defending Freedom have an important role. We need groups like this to push back on the sexual revolution and remind people of the law written on their hearts—a law that points the way to true, ordered liberty, not license, when it comes to human sexuality and the family.

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oth the Bible’s moral principles and reason require us to conform our desires to transcendent moral truths grounded in our nature as human beings, rational animals. The followers of postmodernism seek to re-create nature in accord with their desires, while the followers of progressivism use the power of government to make everyone else con- form to the desires of elites, who know best. These ideologies promote the satisfaction of desire even while trampling true natural rights and liberties like the free exercise of religion. And that’s where the work of groups like the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty proves so crucial. They insist against limiting religion to worship, and they defend its free exercise against encroachment in the name of untrammeled desire.

So the three steps that have undone core elements of the American Founding—progressive government and the administrative state, the sexual revolution’s elevation of desire, and the whittling of religious free exercise down to the freedom to worship—all need to be countered. Political organizations, religious and civic organizations, and legal organizations will have to play their roles in empowering the citizenry to reclaim their government and culture. I offer a roadmap for these groups to follow in Truth Overruled.

Without a return to the principles of the American Founding— ordered liberty based on faith and reason, natural rights and morality, limited government and civil society—Americans will continue to face serious and perplexing challenges. The dilemmas faced by bakers and florists and charities and schools are only the beginning.

Ryan T. Anderson is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and author of the just-released book, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, from which this essay is adapted. Follow him on Twitter @RyanTAnd.

Via: Daily Signal

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Here Are 21 Policy Highlights From the First 2016 Republican Debate

The 2016 primaries are in full momentum following months of build-up, officially kicking off on Thursday night in prime-time as the ten leading Republican candidates squared off for the first time.

The 10 highest-polling candidates in the Republican 2016 presidential field took the stage tonight at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, for the first debate of the election.

The candidates participating in the forum were: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, businessman Donald Trump and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

The candidates addressed a number of policy issues such as the Iran deal, illegal immigration and the economy, which remains one of the most important issues among American voters.

Here’s what the 10 GOP presidential candidates had to say on the issues:

ISIS

Paul: “ISIS rides around in a billion dollars worth of U.S. Humvees … We didn’t create ISIS—ISIS created themselves, but we will stop them, and one of the ways we stop them is by not funding them, and not arming them.”

Cruz: “We need a commander-in-chief that speaks the truth. We will not defeat radical Islamic terrorism so long as we have a president unwilling the utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ … If you join ISIS, if you wage jihad on America, then you are signing your death warrant.”

Criminal Justice

Kasich: “I had an opportunity to bring resources [from Medicaid] back to Ohio to do what? To treat the mentally ill. Ten thousand of them sit in our prisons. It costs $22,500 a year to keep them in prison. I’d rather get them their medication so they can lead a decent life. Secondly, we are rehabbing the drug addicted. Eighty percent of the people in our prisons have addictions or problems. We now treat them in the prisons, release them in the community and the recidivism rate is 10 percent and everybody across this country knows that the tsunami of drugs is threatening their very families.”

Illegal Immigration

Bush: “I believe the people coming here illegally have no other option. They want to provide for their family, but we need to control our border. … There’s much to do, and I think rather than talking about this as a wedge issue … the next president will fix this once and for all so we can turn this into a driver for high-sustained economic growth. … There should be a path to earned legal status for those who are here, not amnesty.”

Trump: “We need to build a wall, and it has to be built quickly. And I don’t mind having a big, beautiful door in that wall so that people to come into this country legally.”

Rubio: “This is the most generous country in the world when it comes to immigration. There are a million people a year who legally immigrate to the United States, and people feel like we’re being taken advantage of. … Let me tell you who never gets talked about in these debates—the people that call my office who have been waiting for 15 years to come to the United States, and they’ve paid their fees, and they’ve hired a lawyer and they can’t get in. They’re wondering if they should come illegally.”

Obamacare

Trump: “[A single-payer system] works in Canada, it works incredibly well in Scotland. It could’ve worked in a different age… What I’d like to see is a private system without the artificial lines around every state.”

Common Core

Rubio: “The Department of Education, like every agency, will never be satisfied. They will not stop with it being a suggestion. They will turn it into a mandate.”

Bush: “I don’t think the government should be involved in the creation of standards directly or indirectly, the creation of curriculum or content. … If we are going to compete in the world we’re in today, there’s no possible way we can do it with lowering expectations and dumbing down everything.”

Economy

Kasich: “Economic growth is the key. Economic growth is the key to everything. But once you have economic growth, it’s important we reach out to people who live in the shadows. It means reaching out to people who don’t feel they have a fair deal. … America is a miracle country and we have to restore the sense that the miracle will apply to you.”

Christie: “If we don’t deal with [entitlement reform], it will bankrupt our country or lead to massive tax increases—neither one that we want in this country.”

Huckabee: “If Congress wants to mess with the retirement program, why don’t we let them start by changing their retirement program and not have one, instead of talking about getting rid of Social Security and Medicare that was robbed $700 billion to pay for Obamacare.”

Bush: “I think we need to lift our spirits and have high, lofty expectations for this great country of ours. … The new normal of 2 percent that the left is saying you can’t do anything about is so dangerous for our country. There are 6 million people living in poverty today … We’ve created rules and taxes on top of every aspiration of people, and the net result is we’re not growing fast. Income is not growing.”

Iran Nuclear Deal

Walker: “This is not just bad with Iran, this is bad with ISIS. It is tied together, and once and for all, we need a leader who’s gonna stand up and do something about it.”

Paul: “I would’ve never released the sanctions before there was consistent evidence of compliance.”

Abortion

Rubio: “Future generations will look back at this history of our country and call us barbarians for murdering millions of babies who we never gave the chance to live.”

Walker: “I’ve always been pro-life. I’ve got a position that’s consistent with many Americans out there, in that I believe that that is an unborn child that’s in need of protection out there, and I’ve said many times that that unborn child can be protected, and there are many other alternatives that would protect the life of the mother. That’s been consistently proven.”

Gay Marriage

Kasich: “If one of my daughters happened to be that [gay] then of course I would love them and accept them because you know what? That’s what we were taught when we have strong faith. … We need to give everybody a chance, treat everybody with respect, and let them share in this great American dream that we have.”

Paul: “I don’t want my marriage or my guns registered in Washington. If people have an opinion, it’s a religious opinion that is heartly felt, obviously they should be allowed to practice that, and no government should be allowed to interfere with that. … When the government tries to invade the church to enforce its own opinion on marriage, that’s when it’s time to resist.”

Via: Daily Signal

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Would Women Be OK Without Planned Parenthood?

Will women have access to the health services they need if the government defunds Planned Parenthood?

That depends on whom you ask.

“Absolutely,” said Jay Hobbs, communications director for Heartbeat International, a pro-life organization that assists with pregnancies.

“If Planned Parenthood were gone tomorrow, the nation’s 2,500 pregnancy help centers, medical clinics, maternity homes and non-profit adoption agencies would continue to offer true choice, true empowerment to every mother who is facing an unexpected pregnancy.

Kathleen Eaton Bravo, founder of a pro-life network of medical clinics calledObria Foundation, has a different response.

“No,” she said bluntly.

Are we ready in the pro-life community to meet the needs of those women? No. I’m sorry to say, after 40 years, no.

Two decades ago, Bravo quit her job as a successful businesswoman to challenge organizations like Planned Parenthood in California, where in 2011, more than 1 million abortions were performed.

She has since opened five pro-life clinics and one mobile unit, which have helped save “thousands” of babies from being aborted. (Bravo said her organization has a “conversion rate” of about 80 percent, saving more than 6,000 babies.)

But if Congress defunds Planned Parenthood, Bravo believes that the pro-life community isn’t ready to handle the number of women they would need to serve.

“We are reactive in the pro-life movement. We are not proactive,” Bravo said. “The issue is, if we defund Planned Parenthood … we don’t have a competitive medical model under a branded name to compete.”

Out With the Old, In With the New

Planned Parenthood Federation for America President Cecile Richards has said stripping the organization of its federal funding would restrict “millions” of women from access to fundamental health care services.

Besides providing abortions, the organization offers breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment and well-woman exams.

Planned Parenthood claims that millions of low- and middle-income women across the country rely on these services.

Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on health care policy, believes that these services are not exclusive to Planned Parenthood. If the organization were defunded tomorrow, she said, “women would still have access to services.”

Via: Daily SIgnal

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[VIDEO] Why Congress Could Face a Government Shutdown This Fall

The House and Senate are set to leave Washington, D.C., for a month-long summer break. But they are leaving behind unfinished business.

When lawmakers return in September, they will have little time to tackle legislative priorities like the Iran nuclear deal, transportation funding and the debt ceiling.

However, the major fight could be over Planned Parenthood’s federal funding—possibly leading to another government shutdown.

Watch the video above to learn more why these 11th-hour issues will test the ability of congressional leaders to avoid a government shutdown.

Via: Daily Signal

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[VIDEO] Ben Carson: ‘I Used to Be a Flaming Liberal’

I had the chance to speak with Dr. Ben Carson recently about the Planned Parenthood scandal, his views on America’s growing debt and something I’ve always wanted to ask a brain surgeon…how do you explain the liberal brain?

You can watch the full video or jump to specific topics via the time codes below:

0:05 – Carson discusses how he hopes the current scandal surrounding Planned Parenthood will cause the black community to explore the organization’s history.

1:02 – As a doctor, Carson is well-known for his views opposing Obamacare, but I asked him what he believes are the other most pressing issues facing the country.

1:56 – How does Carson, a neurosurgeon, explain the liberal brain? He begins his answer by explaining he used to have one.

3:39 – Carson explains that most of what he talks about are not really “Republican” or “Democrat” things, but instead are American things—and he goes on to explain his view on American exceptionalism.

Via: Daily Signal

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Vending Machines Must Post Calorie Counts and Other 2014 New Regulations

If we were to design a regulatory framework from scratch, for any sector of a modern economy, it would make no sense to ignore regulatory costs and benefits.

It would make even less sense to implement new rules and regulations and then worry about their impact.

But that’s pretty much what we do in the U.S., where we allow politics to trump common sense.

The 2008 financial crisis is the perfect example. For decades the industry has been as regulated as any on the planet, and some of these rules clearly contributed to the crisis.

But we still allowed politicians to blame the crisis on the free market and then institute more of the same regulations that led to the meltdown. The overall reach of federal regulators goes well beyond the financial sector, though, and nobody should be surprised that the economy is just muddling along.

How bad is the regulatory environment?

The ninth annual Red Tape Rising report gives a great overview; it tracks the volume and, to the extent possible, the cost of federal regulations.

(Two of my colleagues, James Gattuso and Diane Katz hosted a Heritage Foundation event to introduce the report. Anyone can watch online.)

Believe it or not, the federal government doesn’t officially track regulatory costs as it does with things like taxes and spending.

But executive branch agencies that promulgate “major rules”—defined as those expected to cost the economy $100 million or more annually—provide some cost estimates for the rules they issue. These agencies estimated that their major rules from 2014 will cost the economy approximately $80 billion per year.

These are the regulators’ cost figures, though, so they probably underestimate the true cost. Estimates from various independent sources put these costs from hundreds of billions of dollars to over $2 trillion annually.

Via: The Daily Signal

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