The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Why Does God Permit Natural Disasters?
by Judge Andrew Napolitano
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Insiders Confirm State Dept's Benghazi Cover-up
by National Security Desk: Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions (TAES) security contractors Brad Owens and Jerry Torres (company CEO) told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson of their dealings with liar-Hillary Clinton’s State Department both before and after the deadly 2012 Benghazi attack. By these two men’s account, safety protocols were botched from the get-go. Moreover, Fox News reports, “Asked if there was a specific effort by a senior State Department contracting officer to silence them, Torres said, ‘Absolutely, absolutely.’”
Some background: In 2012, TAES was among the groups vying for the State Department’s security contract in Benghazi, but the contract was initially given to The Blue Mountain Group due to its more appealing operating costs. According to Owens, “Blue Mountain U.K. is a teeny, tiny, little security company registered in Wales that had never had a diplomatic security contract, had never done any high threat contracts anywhere else in the world that we’ve been able to find, much less in high threat areas for the U.S. government. They had a few guys on the ground.” Moreover, Fox News reports, “The Blue Mountain Group hired guards through another company who were not armed.” What could possibly go wrong?
It didn’t take long to figure out. The terrorist threats escalated shortly thereafter. The State D
epartment was warned by Ambassador Chris Stevens that the compound lacked the resources needed to fend off a coordinated attack, and in late August 2012, the State Department came back to TAES requesting its security services. Unfortunately, by then it was too late. According to Fox, “Torres emphasized that time was against them, saying it would have taken two-to-three weeks to get set up. Twelve days later, the ambassador was killed. Torres learned of the attacks by watching television. He called the circumstances leading up to the tragedy ‘bad decision-making from top to bottom.’”
Subsequently, Torres says he was ordered by a State Department official to “not speak to the media” and “not speak to any officials with respect to the Benghazi program.” Torres added that this official stated, “Guards should not be armed at U.S. embassies. She just made that blanket statement. … And she said that they weren’t required in Benghazi. So I was kind of confused about that. And she said that she would like my support in saying that if that came up. And I looked at her. I just didn’t respond.”
This is yet more demonstrable proof that the liar-nObama administration was more than just callous. It was resolutely deceptive about Benghazi. This was always a cover-up ahead of the 2012 election and, from our perspective, it was the biggest factor of Barack liar-nObama’s re-election. Now a couple of insiders are confirming the State Department’s gag order. Yet you won’t hear liar-Hillary Clinton blaming the Benghazi debacle for last year’s electoral loss. ~The Patriot Post https://patriotpost.us/articles/51269
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Rep Steve King – Trump Must Reverse
Amnesty Course Or GOP Done In 2018, 2020
by rickwells.us
{rickwells.us} ~ Alisyn Camerota opens the conversation with Rep Steve King (R-IA) by asking, “What did you just hear the President say?... King replies that “You have to interpret what you hear him say, and wanting a big or a large or a massive border security deal that doesn’t address domestic enforcement. It doesn’t really even tell us what the border security might be. “And if we don’t build a wall all the way through, then the rest of it is subject to prosecutorial discretion. His, as it was under Barack liar-nObama or the next President. So, I think something’s going to have to be reversed here with this President’s policy or it’ll just blow up his base. I mean this was a straight up promise all the way through his campaign.”... https://rickwells.us/king-trump-reverse-amnesty/.
Move Over, Mooch — Mike Pence
Brings The Power Stance To Florida
by FORD SPRINGER
{dailycaller.com} ~ It’s time to forget about “The Mooch” because Mike Pence is rocking the power stance now... Pence stood alongside President Trump as he addressed reporters just after Air Force One arrived in Fort Meyers, Florida Thursday morning, and the vice president looked ready to get down to business. As Trump addressed the media in the airport hangar, Pence rocked a power stance that rivals that of former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci... http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/14/move-over-mooch-mike-pence-brings-the-power-stance-to-florida/?utm_medium=email.
Who Pays for the Arms Trade Treaty? You Do
by Ted Bromund
{dailysignal.com} ~ The nations that ratified a global Arms Trade Treaty are gathering for their third annual conference this week in Geneva, Switzerland. As always, this conference features many nations declaring unwavering commitment and support for the treaty... which purports to require nations to regulate the conventional arms trade. What the Arms Trade Treaty actually does is give left-wing activists a platform to mount campaigns against U.S. and British arms sales, while ignoring Iran, Russia, China, Syria, and all the other dictatorships. And how many of those nations meeting in Geneva are willing to put their money where their mouth is? Not many, it turns out... http://dailysignal.com/2017/09/14/pays-arms-trade-treaty/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CapitolBell&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWmpSa05UaGxaR0l6WkRFMiIsInQiOiIydlB4R09JTFFtZG1USGZicjlaVTJ6ckMzMHdNM3M0Zmk0alhqZUZZRzFwdW9OaDl0eWMrZWlXK0cxSWdGRFZRQklVcnlpdkdXcllQUzFZRU83UUtIdVVFN0MrbmIrMDV3MXMxSklMRXh4SllQWGF2dWtnTUVmXC9BeDdMMWQyazUifQ%3D%3D.
North Korea fires missile from Pyongyang, US confirms
by foxnews.com
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VIDEOS.
A Nun With a Chainsaw Helping With Irma Cleanup.
How Single-Payer Healthcare Failed Across the World.
Contractors Claim liar-Hillary’s State Dept. Pressured Them To Keep Quiet About Benghazi.
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer: James Comey May Have Violated A Secrecy Oath.
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Why Does God Permit Natural Disasters?
by Judge Andrew Napolitano
{townhall.com} ~ Like many Americans during the past three weeks, I've been bombarded by news about the destructive power of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida. The stories are of misery, death, and destruction.
The misery, death, and destruction are acutely difficult to accept because they have been visited upon innocents. I say that knowledgeable of the ancient argument that our personal and collective sinfulness has merited our pain. Yet that raises this question: Does anyone really deserve personal ruination because of personal sin, particularly from a God whose Son said He came to call sinners and not the just?
Stated differently, why does an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God permit innocents to suffer in natural disasters?
This question has occupied philosophers for millennia. The natural order of things has revealed that we all have free will, and we know from our experiences that we can easily abuse that free will. The individual will is so free that we can use it to do magnificent things or horrific things.
But a natural disaster is not the handiwork of anyone's free will. Could it really be the handiwork of an angry God impatient with the manner in which we have abused free will? This argument is not a logical extension of Christian teaching unless God is terribly inconsistent with His impatience over human failures and errors and has somehow overlooked and not yet grown impatient with the world's worst monsters.
Why the natural disasters? We know from the exercise of our reason that the curvature of the Earth and its continuous movement through space set in motion a series of forces. These forces protect the Earth and its inhabitants from the harmful rays of the sun and permit the intrusion of the beneficial rays. All this comes at a price. The movement of the Earth actually produces friction, and that friction, in turn, ignites energy, and that energy often is drawn by the Earth's gravity and finds an outlet in destructive forces on the planet.
Though these forces -- the linchpin of which is the Earth's gravity -- can be avoided through the exercise of creative reason we can build shelters from them, they are often, as with Harvey and Irma, beyond our ability to harness or control. All this is a thumbnail sketch of basic astrophysics, largely acquired through human reason and beyond serious dispute.
But the disputable philosophical questions remain. What force set all this in motion? What caused the big bang in the first place? What caused the Earth's gravity? What tipped over the first domino that billions of years later triggered the explosions of energy that eventually became Harvey and Irma?
We know from reason that every effect had a cause. You plant grass seed and water it, and the effect is blades of grass. The cause was the interaction of the seeds and earth and rain and sun brought together by the free will of the person who did the planting. There are infinite examples of this. Yet is there any cause that was uncaused? Yes. That is the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving uncaused cause, whom most of us call God the Father.
Now back to the question posed earlier. If God the Father created us and loves us, why does He permit natural forces that He set in motion to harm and even to devour us? A similar question was actually addressed by our Lord Himself when He was approached by biblical scholars who asked about a young man who was blind from birth. The question they put to Jesus was: Whose sinning caused this man to be born blind? Was it the man himself or his parents?
The question may have been an attempted trap. Yet Jesus answered by saying essentially that no one's sins caused the blindness. Rather, he was born blind so that the works of God could be made manifest in him. In other words, he was born blind so that Jesus could cure his blindness publicly -- as He did -- and thereby enhance the faith and understanding of all who learned of this and believed it.
Of course, not all who learned of the cure of the blind man believed in Jesus' divinity. Some thought He was a charlatan performing tricks, and some thought the young man was never really blind. Their skepticism and doubts caused G. K. Chesterton to remark that "the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."
Chesterton recognized that we are free to believe or to reject belief. To those who believe in the all-loving God, we know that from time to time, He manifests Himself to give us a need to embrace Him, just as He did with the man born blind. That embrace is the test of faith. It was manifested in countless unseen acts of generosity and selflessness -- from believing stranger to believing stranger -- in Texas and in Florida.
I can hear the prayer of the faithful in pain. "O Lord, I prayed that the hurricane would not destroy my home, yet it did. I still love you, Lord, because my family was spared. I love you more now because I need you more now. I don't reject the truth. I embrace it, no matter the cost -- because the truth will keep my free will set upon you."
As pope, St. John Paul II called this rational belief. It is the essence of understanding. It is faith tempered by human reason and human reason informed by faith. Faith without reason and reason without faith lead to fanaticism. Only their informed juxtaposition will guide our free wills to do the right things and to have understanding when bad things happen.
{townhall.com} ~ Like many Americans during the past three weeks, I've been bombarded by news about the destructive power of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida. The stories are of misery, death, and destruction.
The misery, death, and destruction are acutely difficult to accept because they have been visited upon innocents. I say that knowledgeable of the ancient argument that our personal and collective sinfulness has merited our pain. Yet that raises this question: Does anyone really deserve personal ruination because of personal sin, particularly from a God whose Son said He came to call sinners and not the just?
Stated differently, why does an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God permit innocents to suffer in natural disasters?
This question has occupied philosophers for millennia. The natural order of things has revealed that we all have free will, and we know from our experiences that we can easily abuse that free will. The individual will is so free that we can use it to do magnificent things or horrific things.
But a natural disaster is not the handiwork of anyone's free will. Could it really be the handiwork of an angry God impatient with the manner in which we have abused free will? This argument is not a logical extension of Christian teaching unless God is terribly inconsistent with His impatience over human failures and errors and has somehow overlooked and not yet grown impatient with the world's worst monsters.
Why the natural disasters? We know from the exercise of our reason that the curvature of the Earth and its continuous movement through space set in motion a series of forces. These forces protect the Earth and its inhabitants from the harmful rays of the sun and permit the intrusion of the beneficial rays. All this comes at a price. The movement of the Earth actually produces friction, and that friction, in turn, ignites energy, and that energy often is drawn by the Earth's gravity and finds an outlet in destructive forces on the planet.
Though these forces -- the linchpin of which is the Earth's gravity -- can be avoided through the exercise of creative reason we can build shelters from them, they are often, as with Harvey and Irma, beyond our ability to harness or control. All this is a thumbnail sketch of basic astrophysics, largely acquired through human reason and beyond serious dispute.
But the disputable philosophical questions remain. What force set all this in motion? What caused the big bang in the first place? What caused the Earth's gravity? What tipped over the first domino that billions of years later triggered the explosions of energy that eventually became Harvey and Irma?
We know from reason that every effect had a cause. You plant grass seed and water it, and the effect is blades of grass. The cause was the interaction of the seeds and earth and rain and sun brought together by the free will of the person who did the planting. There are infinite examples of this. Yet is there any cause that was uncaused? Yes. That is the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving uncaused cause, whom most of us call God the Father.
Now back to the question posed earlier. If God the Father created us and loves us, why does He permit natural forces that He set in motion to harm and even to devour us? A similar question was actually addressed by our Lord Himself when He was approached by biblical scholars who asked about a young man who was blind from birth. The question they put to Jesus was: Whose sinning caused this man to be born blind? Was it the man himself or his parents?
The question may have been an attempted trap. Yet Jesus answered by saying essentially that no one's sins caused the blindness. Rather, he was born blind so that the works of God could be made manifest in him. In other words, he was born blind so that Jesus could cure his blindness publicly -- as He did -- and thereby enhance the faith and understanding of all who learned of this and believed it.
Of course, not all who learned of the cure of the blind man believed in Jesus' divinity. Some thought He was a charlatan performing tricks, and some thought the young man was never really blind. Their skepticism and doubts caused G. K. Chesterton to remark that "the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."
Chesterton recognized that we are free to believe or to reject belief. To those who believe in the all-loving God, we know that from time to time, He manifests Himself to give us a need to embrace Him, just as He did with the man born blind. That embrace is the test of faith. It was manifested in countless unseen acts of generosity and selflessness -- from believing stranger to believing stranger -- in Texas and in Florida.
I can hear the prayer of the faithful in pain. "O Lord, I prayed that the hurricane would not destroy my home, yet it did. I still love you, Lord, because my family was spared. I love you more now because I need you more now. I don't reject the truth. I embrace it, no matter the cost -- because the truth will keep my free will set upon you."
As pope, St. John Paul II called this rational belief. It is the essence of understanding. It is faith tempered by human reason and human reason informed by faith. Faith without reason and reason without faith lead to fanaticism. Only their informed juxtaposition will guide our free wills to do the right things and to have understanding when bad things happen.
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