Wednesday, February 17th, in the year of our Lord, 2016.
By Jonathan Clark
With the recent death of Justice Antonin Scalia, uncertainty looms ahead for key cases before the Supreme Court this year. The outcome of upcoming cases will have an impact on voting rights, affirmative action, labor unions, abortion, contraception, and President Obama’s health care and immigration policies, reported Christian Headlines. Until the Supreme Court vacancy is filled, the court is evenly divided between liberals and conservatives, with any tie votes automatically upholding the decision of the lower court. Only the immigration and abortion cases were ruled in conservatives’ favor by lower courts. The World View spoke to Timothy Goeglin, vice president of Focus on the Family external relations and a personal friend of Justice Scalia, about his death: “He was an extraordinary person, and I think, of all the people who have ever served on the Supreme Court, that Justice Antonin Scalia will be remembered as a colossus. He came to the court in the mid-1980s. He came in service to something he called ‘originalism,’ which was that he believed that the United States Constitution had a fixed meaning—that it did not change over time, that the law did not change over time, that the law should not be adjudicated based on fashion or fads or styles. He specifically did not think that nine unelected lawyers on the Supreme Court should be deciding major cultural, social, and moral questions. And this was considered bad manners when he came to the Supreme Court. Well, the great thing is that over the proceeding 30 years, he had an amazing impact on the Supreme Court, an amazing impact on the United States, and we are much lesser having lost this man of his caliber. Justice Scalia was the great champion of marriage, family, parenting, human life, religious liberties, and the rights of conscience. And, in my view, it is the single biggest loss for those of us who believe in the sanctity and dignity of every human life, for those of us who believe that marriage is an institution that is a gift from God. And we believe that religious liberty and the rights of conscience do not come to us as rights from the government, but they come to us as gifts from God, secured in the Constitution. Justice Scalia was not confused about this very important distinction, and so, the death of this great man, I think, begs the question, ‘Who will come after him?’ He was so great in my opinion that he cannot be replaced. He can be succeeded, but he cannot be replaced.”
Although an important defender of liberty has died, let us never forget there is another Judge in heaven Who never dies. “For the LORD is our Judge, the LORD is our Lawgiver, the LORD is our King; He will save us” (Isaiah 33:22).
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell stated Saturday that the Senate won’t be taking a vote on a replacement for Justice Scalia until after the next president is sworn into office. However, even if a vote was taken before then, Ted Cruz said in an interview with George Stephanopoulos that he would absolutely filibuster any Supreme Court Justice nominee made by President Obama, according to Life News.
In an interview with CNN, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration, said that Hillary Clinton should drop out of the presidential race as the FBI investigates her use of a private email server to make official government communications, reported the Christian Post.
During Saturday’s heated Republican debate, Donald Trump said that Planned Parenthood does “wonderful things having to do with women’s health . . . But not when it comes to abortion.” Senator Ted Cruz didn’t agree and accused Trump of supporting taxpayer dollars going to the abortion mills by speaking out against the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan, the defense minister of Iran, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Tuesday in order to acquire Russia’s most advanced tank and fighter jets in defiance of the UN’s ban on conventional arms sales for Iran, reported Fox News. The UN resolution clearly prohibits Iran from purchasing “battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, [and] warships . . .” without permission from the United Nations.
Since her escape from ISIS, former ISIS sex slave Nadia Murad has been speaking out for the past couple of months against the genocide of the Yazidi people by the Islamic State. Murad was orphaned by ISIS back in 2014 when she was captured, along with over 5,000 other Yazidi women, from Sinjar in Northern Iraq. According to Christian Today, Murad said, “At this moment, there are still 3,400 women in the hands of ISIS. All we are asking is that our women are freed.”
Police in Texas issued a disorderly conduct citation to a pastor, saying that he had offended students from the University of Texas at Austin by speaking out against sexually transmitted diseases. According to Christian Headlines, Jed Smock, head of Campus Ministry USA, said police dropped the citation after receiving a call from a lawyer on behalf of the pastor.
God has a word for the students of the University of Texas: “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Hebrews 13:4).
BBC Breakfast presenter Bill Turnbull has expressed his disappointment with the British people being embarrassed for their faith. He said in a Radio Times interview, “I always say I have faith . . . But we are embarrassed in Britain about [saying that]. When we lived in America it was the exception not to go to church . . . But here there’s something about our culture that makes people feel as if they have to apologize for having faith.”
And that’s the World View in Five Minutes.