Friday, March 24th, in the year of our Lord 2017
By Kevin Swanson
President Trump and Paul Ryan Call for Vote on Republican Version of Obamacare
Pencils down, time’s up. President Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are calling for a vote on the Republican version of Obamacare today.
CNN says there are 26 Republicans ready to defect on the vote, and the Republicans can only afford to lose 21. Trump is promising Republicans who oppose this vote that they’ll lose their seats in the next election.
Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office is now only projecting a $150 billion savings over ten years instead of the originally projected $337 billion savings, after the Republicans made a few tweaks to the legislation.
The current version also includes a measure requiring the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
Arsonist in Laos Burns Down Pastor’s House
The house of a church leader in Laos was burned down by an arsonist in January, according to a report from persecution.org. Pastor Yeng lost everything in the blaze including his motorbike and his supply of rice.
ISIS Claims Responsibility for London Terror Attack
A fourth person, an American citizen, died in that London terror attack, and six more remain in critical condition. Kirk Cochran was a Mormon from Utah. Plus, the Islamic State has now accepted responsibility for this attack on innocent citizens.
Increased Deaths from Drugs and Suicide Among Middle-Aged Americans
Deaths from drugs, alcohol, and suicide have increased for middle-aged white Americans.
A Princeton economist who conducted the study calls these “despair deaths”, affecting 45 to 54-year-olds. Suicides were up 62% for this middle-aged group. The reports shows that the overall rate increase of deaths for this age group was 12% since 1998, while most European nations improved during the same time frame.
Wisdom speaks in Proverbs 8: “For whoever finds Me finds life, and obtains favor from the Lord; But he who sins against Me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate Me love death.”
New Power Rangers Movie Features Lesbian Character
Television’s Power Rangers series has entertained 7 to 12-year-old children for decades. Now, the new major motion picture release will present one of its teen-aged Power Rangers as a lesbian.
Director Dean Israelite says he hopes this new twist will “resonate with a younger audience” according to the New York Post.
Meanwhile, Malaysia has agreed to release both “Beauty and the Beast” and the “Power Ranger” movies without cutting the scenes depicting homosexuality.
Two More Planned Parenthood Offices Close Down in Pennsylvania
Planned Parenthood is shuttering two more offices in Pennsylvania, after closing down three towards the end of last year.
Reports on Lifesite News attributed it to a decrease in federal funding and increased state regulations on abortion mills after the Kermit Gosnell story broke in 2010.
Iowa Legislature Considers 20-Week Abortion Ban
Another pro-life bill banning abortions exceeding 20 weeks of pregnancy is working its way through Iowa’s legislature. If the bill is approved, it would join 16 other states with 20-week abortion bans.
Gorsuch Responds to Questions on Roe v. Wade: “I Accept the Law of the Land”
Psalm 2:10-11 says, “Now therefore, be wise, O kings; be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear!”
In more confirmation hearings yesterday, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, explained to Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that the Supreme Court of the United States has held in Roe v. Wade that a fetus is not a person for purposes of the 14th Amendment.
When Durbin asked him if he accepts that, Gorsuch responded, “I accept the law of the land, senator, yes.”
Stay tuned. Immediately following The World View newscast today, you can hear a Special Report featuring the analysis of the Gorsuch hearings by Allan Parker, a pro-life attorney who represented both Norma McCorvey a.k.a. “Jane Roe” and Sandra Cano a.k.a. “Mary Doe” before the Supreme Court — both of whom hoped in their latter years that the court would overturn the pro-abortion decisions bearing their fictitious names.
New Zealand Grants Human Rights to the Whanganui River
New Zealand has provided human rights to. . . a river . . .of all things.
The Maori people group has claimed the Whanganui River as their ancestor, and the post-Christian government of New Zealand is accommodating (according to a Guardian report).
Romans 1:25 says, “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!”
Paul Washer Expected to Come Home from the Hospital this Weekend
And, thanks be to God, Christian evangelist Paul Washer should be coming home from the hospital over the weekend, after suffering a heart attack on Wednesday.
Special Report on Gorsuch Hearings
Now, as promised, a “Special Report” on Judge Neil Gorsuch’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.
Allan Parker, President of the Justice Foundation, based in San Antonio, Texas, brings true gravitas to the conversation.
“I represented both Norma McCorvey, who died recently, and Sandra Cano, who died two years ago; they were the Roe and Doe. Both of those ladies did everything in their power to go to the Supreme Court, put it on record that they wanted their cases reversed.”
Parker took issue with Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein’s conclusion that Roe v. Wade is some kind of “super precedent.”
“First of all, Senator Feinstein is completely wrong! There is no such thing as a ‘super precedent’ in the law at all. Every decision of the Supreme Court is a settled decision and is thus the law of the land until it’s overturned by the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court has overturned over 200 of its own constitutional cases. So, a judge should not overturn a case lightly. But Neil Gorsuch left the case open for overturning Roe v. Wade in a case that justified overturning it such as new facts or circumstances that were not known in 1973, such as scientific evidence of humanity, new evidence of the harm to women, the fact that it has remained unworkable, or the fact that it has not been accepted generally by the American people. It’s still the most massively controversial case in American history. All of those are proper grounds for overturning a Supreme Court precedent. So, he simply meant it should be treated as precedent until it’s overturned by the Supreme Court.”
Parker cited perhaps the most well known Supreme Court reversal out of 200 reversals. In 1954, in the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. That decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored public school segregation.
“If Dianne Feinstein had her way, we’d still have segregated schools because Plessy v. Ferguson – separate but equal — was the law of the land for 58 years. And lots of people didn’t want to change. But the Supreme Court did the right thing — reversed its own error — which is its duty to do.”
Parker believes that Judge Gorsuch, in his carefully crafted answers, did not indicate a propensity to uphold or overturn Roe v. Wade.
“I feel that Judge Gorsuch kept an open mind on whether or not Roe v. Wade should be overturned without forecasting whether he would do so or would not do so. He left the door open to overturn Roe v. Wade in an appropriate case. But until it is overturned by the Supreme Court, he simply acknowledged that it is a binding precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Despite the fact that 60 pro-life groups have endorsed Gorsuch for the Supreme Court including the Family Research Council, National Right to Life, Operation Rescue, Priests for Life, Concerned Women for America, and the American Life League, Parker could not definitively say that Gorsuch is pro-life.
“Is Gorsuch pro-life? My answer is ‘I do not know at this point.’ And I have not endorsed Neil Gorsuch, but I have not opposed him either. I think he very likely could be pro-life now or he could be pro-life when an appropriate case with a massive amount of evidence comes to him and he evaluates it on the merits. But it has concerned me that the church he attends is a very liberal Episcopal church that embraces the LGBTQ agenda.”
However, Parker admits that the U.S. Senate’s rejection of President Reagan’s nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court might have led Gorsuch to play the role of “stealth” candidate during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings this week.
“His reticence to get into the weeds and sort of go as a stealth candidate was sort of learned from the Bork experience.”
Allan Parker is quick to add that he is encouraged by Judge Gorsuch’s undisputed respect for every human life.
“He has expressed respect for every human life in his books on assisted suicide and why there’s no constitutional right to assisted suicide. The Supreme Court has actually adopted that very same position. So he does express a high degree of respect for human life. That’s the essential issue in Roe v. Wade. So it would give one hope that he would respect that life when presented with new scientific evidence that life begins at the moment of conception.”
Parker believes that God providentially intervened to assure Trump’s victory.
“I believe that God acted in human history by intervening in this election to see that Donald Trump was elected president. I believe he is going to get two or three more justices. And I believe the cumulated effect of that we’ll see the overturning of Roe v. Wade.”
And finally, Parker hopes that next time there is an opening on the Supreme Court that President Donald Trump will not flinch from selecting a judge who has already expressed on the record the hope of overturning Roe v. Wade.
“I think that the next nominee should be someone like Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals who has written that the Supreme Court should reconsider Roe v. Wade in light of new evidence.”
This has been another “Special Report” on the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Neil Gorsuch.
And that’s the World View in Five Minutes.