Author: Penna Dexter

Penna Dexter
A rule has been added to the federal register that will make it  nearly impossible for an incoming president to fire certain federal employees.
The Office of Personnel Management issued the new rule which will shield employees appointed by the executive branch from being terminated for opposing the policies and agenda of a president.
The rule is to go into effect next month. It concerns employment protections in place for career civil servants that do not apply to political appointees.
The rule is based upon the idea that career bureaucrats — often lifelong federal employees — should not be subject to termination because they are not classified as policy-making executive branch employees.
But, as past presidents have learned, career civil servants often fill “policy-making and policy-influencing roles.”  They can form part of the deep state that plagues incoming presidents when they try to implement conservative policies.
National Review’s James Lynch explains that, toward the end of his administration, former President Donald Trump issued an executive order creating a new category, “Schedule F,” for policy-making employees. These employees would not be shielded from termination for “perceived disloyalty to the president and his agenda.” The rule states: “Faithful execution of the law requires that the President have appropriate management oversight regarding this select cadre of professionals.”
President Joe Biden repealed the Trump executive order upon entering office.”
According to Family Research Council’s Washington Stand, the new rule protects “those that the Biden administration has entrenched in the federal government from a possible Trump presidency.” FRC’s Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena Gonzalez, says this new rule “undermines the authority of the American people by tying the hands of an elected president.” He says it “undermines presidential elections.”
This issue goes beyond dueling executive orders.
Though employees with experience and expertise are valuable to a federal workforce, their role is not to undermine a president or impede his effectiveness. Any rule that perpetuates a permanent ruling class should be jettisoned.

Penna Dexter
Here’s the story of a young woman who became acutely aware of the relationship between social media and teen mental illness and is doing something important about it.
The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets describe her as a digital-wellness advocate. 
Larissa May, age 29, is Founder and Executive Director of a nonprofit called Half the Story. The organization’s founding concept is: “Social media is only half the story. We only share one part of ourselves on the internet.” This can be destabilizing, and worse.
Social scientist Jonathan Haidt has the data to prove the connection between social media and the rise in teen anxiety and depression.
In his new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness,” he highlights the teen mental health epidemic’s sudden onset. It occurred in 2012, the year Facebook bought Instagram. Instagram was founded in 2010, the same year Apple released the I-phone 4, the first smartphone with a front-facing camera.
Teens worldwide were drawn in, with girls spending hours “trying to perfect their Instagram profiles while scrolling through even-more-perfect profiles of other teens.”
Larissa says, “When I was a sophomore in college, I hit the darkest period of my life.” She says she was spending 10-12 hours per day on social media, ”which is not as uncommon as you might think.” She became depressed, anxious, and even considered suicide. Instead, in her senior year, as a class project, she started Half the Story.
She now educates middle through high schoolers “about the emotional skills that you need to thrive in the digital media.” She tells them, “If you aren’t in touch with your emotions, you’re not going to be able to control your digital habits.”
Larissa has developed a curriculum for educators called Social Media U plus an 8-week course for students. She also advocates for policy changes to limit online dangers.
She’s not waiting for tech companies but is actively shaping the future of the internet.

Penna Dexter
Back in 2017, Ed Stetzer, then a professor, dean and executive director of Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center, published an essay on the website, In All Things, titled “How Can the Christian Church Thrive In a Non-Christian World?” He wrote, “Our society no longer assumes the gospel, which means the Church often stands at odds with the rest of society.”
Seven years later, a U.S president proclaimed that Transgender Day of Visibility will be recognized on March 31, Easter Sunday. Was the president trying to spite Christians? Though Trans Day of Visibility has been around for 10 years, the president’s words in affirmation of “transgender Americans” stand in direct opposition to Christianity. He stated that transgenders “deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves.” He then blasted Americans working to protect society and its children from the fruits of the transgender movement: pornography in schools, mutilating surgeries, violations of basic female privacy, and fairness in athletics.
If this is not hostility to Christianity, it is blindness. Cultural commentator Rod Dreher writes, “The more troubling thing is that Biden’s kind of Christian sees no contradiction between linking Easter with Trans Day.”
He wrote, “In the 1970’s, the gay rights movement adopted the Greek letter lambda as its symbol. This is why the premiere gay rights advocacy organization is called Lambda Legal. What we are living through now is a cosmological struggle within our culture, a fight to the death between the Lamb and the Lambda. The ruling Class — our political leaders, but not only them — is on the side of the Lambda.”
Dr. Stetzer wrote, “the gospel is always clearer in an age when it is not culturally assumed.” We can proclaim a “radically distinct” gospel message. But Rod Dreher wonders: “Can Christian faith be sustained for long without the support of a nurturing Christian culture?”
Lord help us.

Penna Dexter
Last month, more than two decades after the Clinton FDA approved the abortion pill, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that challenges the agency’s progressive easing of restrictions on chemical abortion.
The case is Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine vs. Food and Drug Administration. 
Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit in federal court on behalf of four medical organizations and four doctors seeking to have the drug, mifepristone, removed from the marketplace. Mifepristone is the first in a 2-drug regimen that constitutes a medical, or chemical abortion. Chemical abortion accounts for over 60 percent of abortions done in the U.S.  
A federal judge in Amarillo, Texas ruled that the drug’s initial approval was unlawful.
But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone. Its ruling would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.
In 2000, the FDA approved the 2-drug regimen to be used during the first seven weeks of pregnancy and then, in 2016, extended it to be used up to 10 weeks’ gestation.
Over time, the FDA has also removed the requirement that a woman be examined in person when receiving a prescription for chemical abortion drugs.
According to Mary Szoch, Director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, “the use of the abortion drug is especially egregious, because we know that the abortion drug is four times as dangerous as surgical abortion for the mother.”
Increasingly, medication abortions are prescribed via telemedicine — that means there’s no physical exam, no ultrasound study. Prompt ultrasound evaluation is key in diagnosing ectopic pregnancy, which can prove deadly to the mother if not caught early enough.
The justices seemed to doubt the doctors’ standing. Nonetheless a competent FDA would do its job and reinstate the requirement that existed as recently as 2021, that to get a medication abortion, a woman must first see a medical provider.

Penna Dexter
This true story has a positive ending. But it never should have happened. Dr. Johnson Varkey is a biology teacher, adjunct professor at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas.   
He was fired for stating a fact of human biology: that sex is determined by X and Y chromosomes.  
I learned in 9th grade that females have two X chromosomes in their cells, while males have one X and one Y. For 18 years, Dr. Varkey taught this in his Human Anatomy and Physiology classes at St. Philip’s. But in November 2022, 4 students walked out of Dr. Varkey’s class for presenting this basic scientific concept.
Two months later, St. Philip’s College fired Dr. Varkey, citing “numerous complaints” about his “offensive” speech in the classroom and accusing him of “unacceptable religious preaching.”  First Liberty Institute was asked to help. The firm’s attorneys wrote a letter to the school outlining the illegality of its action in firing Dr. Varkey. First Liberty states it also “filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”
Several members of Congress weighed in. Last month, a full year after Dr. Varkey was fired, St. Philips College and the Alamo Community College District — of which the college is a part — reinstated Dr. Varkey. According to the settlement, Dr. Varkey will be back in the classroom this fall.
In today’s academy, an admired professor gets fired for teaching biology because someone steps up and defines sex differently. Dr. Varkey is a quiet, serious academic. Since he’s known to be a Christian, he’s a target.
Christian professors in these environments are being told to lie. So are Christians in other workplace settings — think pronoun requirements. But people do not have to capitulate to woke policies and regimes contrary to their faith.
Last year, a Supreme Court decision affirmed postal worker Gerald Groff’s right to his reasonable practice of faith. That was First Liberty’s case. Its powerful protections are a game-changer. 

Penna Dexter
Last week Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Minneapolis to visit an abortion clinic. The Washington Post reports that this is ”believed to be the first time an American president or vice president has toured such a facility while in office.” Even pro-abortion administrations have never considered it good campaign strategy to showcase an abortion mill.
Until now.
The trip to Minnesota was the sixth stop on Vice President Harris’s “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour. It took place a week after President Biden’s State of the Union address in which he highlighted his administration’s emphasis on abortion access. It’s interesting — though — that the president never used the word. CNN reports that his written speech “included the word: abortion, but he did not say it when he delivered the speech.” Mr. Biden once held to the Catholic position on the sanctity of human life. Perhaps he retains some lingering cognitive dissonance on the subject.
This White House has made broad abortion access a core campaign strategy aimed at attracting and galvanizing moderate voters. Are we really a country that has devalued motherhood to such a degree that a major party’s campaign would run on making it easier to abort children?
The Washington Stand reports that voters in Ireland recently honored motherhood. They voted down two proposed constitutional amendments: One, the Care Amendment, removed existing references to motherhood and statements regarding the contributions mothers in the home provide. Seventy-four percent of Irish voters rejected this change. And sixty-seven percent of Irish voters turned down an amendment that altered the Constitution’s declaration that the family “is founded” upon marriage, instead stating that the family may be “founded on marriage or on other durable relationships.”
Celebrating these votes, the pro-life, pro-family Irish Freedom Party stated, “The referendum results reveal a huge disconnect between the people of Ireland and the political establishment. They seem to live on a different planet to normal people.”
Hopefully, American voters will also honor motherhood.

Penna Dexter
The nation’s two largest pharmacy chains, CVS and Walgreens, are about to start filling prescriptions for the abortion pill, mifepristone, in states where it is legally allowed. Since restrictions on prescribing the drug through telemedicine have been lifted, the reckless practice of providing abortion drugs through the mail has exploded. The availability of mifepristone at drug stores will increase the ease of getting an abortion with no doctor or nurse present. In excruciating pain, the mother will expel her baby, or pieces of it, into a toilet, or her hand.
Mifepristone cuts off progesterone, which is required to sustain a pregnancy.
The FDA approved the abortion pill in 2000 with strong requirements to mitigate its risk to women receiving it. The stipulation that abortion pills be dispensed by a qualified prescriber at a clinic or hospital or similar health care setting was once deemed crucial. Since non-surgical, or chemical, abortions must be done within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, the gestational age of the unborn baby must be accurate. If a woman misdates her pregnancy, she risks infection from fetal tissue left in the uterus. And not seeing a medical professional often rules out a timely diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy, which can be life-threatening.
Board certified OB-GYN Ingrid Skop, vice president for the Charlette Lozier Institute, says, “This is not health care. This is an ideology that prioritizes destruction of unborn human life and does not care that the women injured by these abortions, whom I see in the ER on a regular basis, are collateral damage.”
In just a few weeks the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether mifepristone should remain available for abortions. At issue is whether the FDA approval of mifepristone, and the agency’s removal of health safeguards in 2016 and 2021, adequately protected women.
Nonetheless, CVS and Walgreens are moving ahead. Depending upon where you live, your corner pharmacy may be about to become an abortion business. 

Penna Dexter
A Christian high school girls’ basketball team forfeited a playoff game last year because a transgender student, a biological boy, was playing on the opposing team. Now the Vermont Principals’ Association says the team will not be allowed to participate in future tournaments.
FOX NEWS reports that “Chris Goodwin, who coaches at Mid-Vermont Christian School, said he was notified of the transgender player on the other team, but it wasn’t until the playoffs last year that his team ended up facing them on the court.” The school is taking legal action against the state to regain the right to participate.
Coach Goodwin told FOX NEWS that “boys just play at a different speed, a different force.” He explained that he and school administrators held discussions with players and parents. He said, “we decided that instead of going against our religious beliefs” regarding the fact that males and females are created differently, just to forfeit that particular game and withdraw from the tournament.
“And at that point,” says the coach, “the state of Vermont Governing body kicked us out of all athletic competitions in the state.”
The coach’s decision was validated by viral footage from another recent girls’ basketball game, this one between Massachusetts Collegiate Charter School of Lowell and KIPP Academy. As two players vied for a rebound, one of them — a large, biological male from the KIPP team — threw a female player from the Charter team to the ground, grabbing the ball from her and causing her to grip her back in pain. The trans-identifying player took out two more Charter players before halftime. Not wanting to lose more players, the Charter team forfeited the game.
It’s unfair that women across America have been losing all sorts of athletic competitions, titles, and scholarships to men identifying as women. And when males play on girls’ teams, it’s downright dangerous. These coaches were right to forfeit. Let’s pray Coach Goodwin and Mid-Vermont School win their lawsuit.

Penna Dexter
Last week thousands of Christians gathered in Nashville for the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. The NRB was formed in the early years of radio broadcasting, when evangelical broadcasters, who were faithfully proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, built radio audiences in the millions. This threatened liberal mainline denominations who wanted a ban on religious broadcasting that was not done by “responsible” religious broadcasters — like themselves.
On Thursday night of the conference, Donald Trump was the speaker. He hit every issue Christians and conservatives care about. He identified himself as a believer. But he focused on his audience — people involved in communicating the gospel and spreading God’s truth. He spent a lot of time on religious liberty, the freedom of Christians to practice our faith. He addressed the growing threats to religious liberty and promised to “protect God in the public square” if he is elected.
But, as I sat in that audience, what impacted me most was President Trump’s words about the good Christians do for the country and the world by using pulpits and the media to tell people about Christ and His principles and by loving people and caring for their needs. It was as if he was speaking, not so much to get our votes, as to encourage us to keep doing what we are doing and step it up.
This was encouraging. But I couldn’t help wondering if the church is doing enough. Is our message clear, or watered down?  Are we worthy of the compliments this former president was articulating.
In his four years in the White House, Donald Trump got a taste of how difficult it is to govern people hostile to faith and biblical principles.
On Friday morning at NRB, Bott Radio Network hosted a breakfast. Leesburg, Virginia pastor, Gary Hamrick told attendees, “The marriage between woke ideology and liberal theology has produced passive pastors.” Faithful pastors — and broadcasters — need their freedom protected. They also need courage.  

Penna Dexter
President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are speaking by phone lately. A major topic of the calls is the clearing out of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, a military necessity in order to dismantle Hamas. President Biden is making demands about hostages and civilian protections.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has publicly criticized “recent talk about forcing a Palestinian state on Israel.” He says this “would be a huge prize for terror, the likes of which we have never seen.”
Hamas must be removed. The Heritage Foundation’s David Harsanyi points out that “no Israeli Prime Minister would act any differently in Gaza. Israeli voters rightly demand it.”
Our dealings with Israel should always occur in light of the existential threat Hamas represents. These threats were fulfilled in the carnage that began October 7th, an event which should not have surprised us.
Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has been meticulously cataloguing Hamas’s threats of ‘total war’ for years. The organization publicized Hamas’s articles and videos advertising its drills preparing for an invasion of Israel.
The threats are incessant. But we must pay attention. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, MEMRI’s president and co-founder Yigal Carmon said “If they publish it many times, it suggests they mean it and you cannot ignore it. You must take it seriously.”
MEMRI documents the terrorists’ competing messages. Hamas politbureau chief Ismail Haniyeh tells the West he wants to end the war and signals that Israel and Hamas can live side by side, But, in a January 9th speech aired on Al Jazeera, he said: “We should hold onto the victory that took place on Oct. 7 and build upon it.” He says “the time has come for the jihad of the swords.”
MEMRI’s Executive Director, Steve Stalinski told the Journal, “We’ve monitored it since the beginning of the jihadis going online, and there have never been so many open threats to the U.S.—explicit threats.”
We must pay attention.

Penna Dexter
Washington state has some of the nation’s most progressive laws regarding teen gender transitions.
This became a problem for Puget Sound therapist Tamara Pietzke. She was employed for six years by MultiCare, one of Washington’s largest hospital systems. In a piece for The Free Press, she expresses her growing concern at being required to “approve all teen gender transitions.”

“I was getting the message from my supervisors that when a young person I was seeing expressed discomfort with their gender—the diagnostic term is gender dysphoria—I should throw out all my training. No matter the patient’s history or other mental health conditions that could be complicating the situation, I was simply to affirm that the patient was transgender, and even approve the start of a medical transition.”

This, she writes, “challenges the very fundamentals of what therapy is supposed to provide.”
Ms. Pietzke goes on to describe three cases that heightened her alarm at this protocol and ultimately resulted in her resignation—a risky move for a single mom of three children under six. Each case involved prior mental health diagnoses, often autism, family dysfunction, and even abuse. One teenaged female patient began identifying as a “wounded male dog.”
In each case, Ms. Pietzke was told she must refer the patient to a gender health clinic to begin hormone treatment which normally continues for life.
When she questioned this, she was accused of “spreading disinformation. She was removed from cases and eventually left her job so she could speak freely. She writes, “Nothing will change unless people like me—who know the risks of medicalizing troubled young people—blow the whistle.”
Last week the American College of Pediatricians released a statement based on its review of over 60 studies of adolescents with gender dysphoria. The authors conclude that these so-called “affirming” interventions destroy healthy bodies but provide no long-term benefit to psychological well-being.
A timely vindication.

Penna Dexter
Members of the medical and psychological communities who advocate gender transition as a treatment for disturbed young people start them on puberty blockers as the first medical step. This sounds drastic — and permanent. But the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) publicly claims the effects of these drugs are “fully reversible.” Some of those folks know better.
In a recent Breakpoint commentary, John Stonestreet and Jared Hayden point out that puberty blocking drugs are often presented as a way “for gender-confused teens to ‘push pause’ on puberty and buy more time to find out who they are.”
It’s naive to believe that taking drugs that stop the development of a young person’s sexual organs is “fully reversible.” Stopping the drugs after a few months or years will not bring back the time that God ordained for that child to grow physically and emotionally.
Heading up the list of physical consequences of puberty blockers is osteoporosis. The Breakpoint hosts point to a recently-leaked video from a 2022 WPATH certification seminar. Dr. Daniel Metzger, a WPATH-certified pediatric endocrinologist told his audience: “Normally puberty is the time of putting the calcium into your piggy bank.” Those bones won’t catch up.
As is often the case when one searches Google about anything medical, the Mayo Clinic shows up near the top. This happened when I searched for “Harms from Puberty Blockers.” But “possible side effects” don’t show up until page 4 and 5 of Mayo’s 6-page document, where it states: the drugs “also might have long-term effects on growth spurts, bone growth, [and] bone density.”
The Mayo document advises: “Yearly bone density and bone-age tests may be advised.” It suggests “calcium and vitamin D supplements.”
The Mayo piece lists one more long-term effect: “Fertility, depending on when the medicine is started.”
A heartbroken grandmother at my church told me she’s praying her grandson will decide not to take this step. These are serious drugs. We must start saying so.

Penna Dexter
There are better ways to encourage literacy among children than exposing them to male transvestites at Drag Queen Story Hours.
Drag Queen Story Hours feature flamboyant drag queens reading stories to children mostly in libraries, schools, bookstores, and sometimes bars.
One parent says these performances expose kids to “beautiful people.” Gender queer academic Harris Kornstein said, “Drag queens can teach kids how to live queerly.” He said Drag Queen Story Hours foster “a queer rationality between adult and child.”
Christopher Rufo dug into what he describes as “the real story behind this bizarre modern ritual” and has produced a short film. Find it at christopherrufo.com.
The film takes us back to the 1969 Stonewall riots, when drag suddenly became political. Two drag queens who participated in the riots formed the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. They created a list of demands, including:

“the right to self-determination over the use of their bodies”
“the right to be gay any time, any place”
“the right to physiological change and modification of sex on demand”

Chris Rufo explains that, after the 60’s, cross-dressers were no longer just engaging in entertainment, but were “revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow the system through sex.”  Drag became a political weapon underpinned by queer theory, a discipline created to deconstruct and disorder human sexuality, liberating the fetishes of transsexuals, sadomasochists, prostitutes, and even pedophiles.
The film introduces lesbian theorist Gayle Ruben who advocated normalizing “the eroticism of those who transgress generational boundaries — in her words ‘boy lovers’.”
Gender studies scholar Judith Butler posited the postmodern idea that man/woman sexuality is a social construct that could be reshaped via performance. Drag queens were the “perfect vehicle.”
 So, in 2015 the Drag Queen Story Hour was created. A Los Angeles-based queer activist organized the formation of chapters across the country.
Chris Rufo warns that these activists have been “remarkably successful.”
Governments and philanthropies who sponsor and promote this should stop: Now. 

Penna Dexter
Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei delivered a warning to business and political leaders gathered last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Through a translator, he told an audience of global elites: “the Western world is in danger,” and he didn’t mean from climate change. He explained that those whose responsibility it is “to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty. “
He said free markets and entrepreneurs, not the state, are the “benefactors” of societies.
This was a courageous message delivered at an annual meeting where global planners favor top-down variants of socialism. But President Milei insists that socialism, wherever it’s tried, is impoverishing.
He pointed to the path his country has taken. Argentina’s economy fell from among the world’s largest at the beginning of the 20th century to one of the world’s worst, largely due to its embrace of socialism.  “We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world — rather they are the root cause.”
President Milei accepted his 11-point victory as a mandate to overhaul Argentina’s economy, including its 211-percent inflation that has devastated citizens’ purchasing power.
This was Javier Milei’s first trip overseas since taking office last month. He said he “came to invite the rest of the countries of the Western world to get back on the path of prosperity.”
He blasted radical feminism, which he says is “ridiculous and anti-natural” and stated that, once communism failed, climate alarmism became the tool global socialists use for control.  He decried their advocacy of “population control mechanisms and the bloody abortion agenda.” Though he lives a libertine lifestyle and calls himself a “radical libertarian,” he insists life begins at conception and abortion is murder.
President Milei must administer “shock therapy” in Argentina. It will hurt. Let’s watch it work.

Penna Dexter
There’s no satisfactory explanation for the recent actions of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in keeping his cancer surgery — and his subsequent, extended hospitalization — secret from his staff and the White House.  The Administration insists this was simply a lapse in judgment, but it’s an unforgivable breach of protocol.
Even more disturbing are the growing recruitment problems in the US military, the institution from which Secretary Austin retired as a 4-star general.
Political and military leaders are alarmed at severe declines in recruitment in all branches except the Marines.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Owen West, Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Trump administration, and Kevin Wallsten, Professor of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach, offer an explanation backed by research. They sum up the  “essential problem,” by stating that, “Young white Democrats have lost faith in their country and are rejecting military service.” They lament that “American patriotism is dissolving.”
Their op-ed cites “one of the oldest and most reliable youth polls, Monitoring the Future,” which, “has for decades shown only small differences in the propensity to serve.”  In 2015, the percentage of white Democrats who wanted to serve stood at 19%, with blacks, Latinos, and white Republicans at 20%.
But, by 2021, the Monitoring the Future poll shows only 3% of young white male Democrats were interested in serving in the military, about one-fourth as many as among black and Latino men, and one-eighth the level of white Republicans. The poll revealed a drop of 45,000 men who wanted to serve.
Young white Republican men are more inclined to join the military, but lately more of their parents don’t want them to. Roughly 80 percent of recruits come from extended military families. With widespread implementation of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion policies which disfavor white, heterosexual males — especially conservative, religious ones — many families are actively discouraging their young people from joining up.
A woke military discourages patriotism and recruitment.

Penna Dexter
In an election year, the economy takes on heightened importance in voters’ thinking. A good question to ask is: are my elected officials wasting my money? Are they using taxpayer dollars responsibly?
David Ditch at The Daily Signal, tries to answer that question at least as it pertains to the current administration’s “4 worst wastes of 2023.”
Waste #1:How can we forget the $1.9-trillion-dollar spending package passed — without a Republican vote – in 2021? It was the third massive stimulus done as “COVID response.” David Ditch writes that $350 billion of it went to state and local governments who spent “much of it on golf courses, tourism, food stamps for the rich, bonuses for government workers, a pickleball complex,” — in other words they didn’t really need it. The unspent funds, tens of billions of dollars, were supposed to expire this year. But the administration quietly issued a rule to give states more time to figure out how to spend this “hoarded” money that was slated to go back into the federal treasury.
Waste #2In June, the administration lost its attempt at the US Supreme Court to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt, which, of course, means taxpayers would have funded it. Mr. Ditch reports that the administration still found ways to “force taxpayers to cover the cost of other people’s degrees” to the tune of $132 billion, “more than $1000 for every household in the country.”
Waste #3This past September, the US Centers for Disease Control ordered 20 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for kids. David Ditch emphasizes the waste: This is “several times larger than the number of pediatric COVID-19 vaccines administered to date.”
Waste #4After Congress nixed a plan for an environmental jobs program called Climate Corps, the administration unilaterally revived 20,000 of those positions.
Thanks to The Daily Signal for alerting us to this waste. Americans should tell their leaders they’re sick of it.

Penna Dexter
As we begin 2024, I want to offer a New Year’s prayer for our country. But frankly, it seems a little presumptuous to ask God’s blessing on this nation.
In boardrooms, in some states, and in the federal government, leaders are enacting rules and laws that force people to treat men as women and women as men.
Other states oppose this.
But, before 2023 even ended we received the disappointing news that prolife Ohio Governor Mike DeWine vetoed a bill that would protect minors from being given gender transition hormones and surgeries. The law would also bar physicians from prescribing cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers for the purpose of gender transition. Advocates of this protocol refer to it as “gender affirming care”.
HB 68, the SAFE Act, would also prevent biological males from competing in women’s sports.
The Daily Signal published strong reactions from leaders in the pro-family movement, including Ryan Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of “When Harry Became Sally,” one of one of the early books warning of the harms of the burgeoning transgender movement. Dr. Anderson said, “DeWine just vetoed an outstanding bill that protected the integrity, fairness, and safety of sports, and protected children from unethical medical attempts at the impossible — ‘affirming’ a sexual ‘identity’ at odds with reality.”
Since, HB 68 passed both houses of Ohio’s General Assembly with supermajorities, lawmakers could override the governor’s veto. Let’s put that in our New Year’s prayer.
We can and should pray for America. I’m going with this:
“O God, the fountain of wisdom whose will is good and gracious and whose law is truth, so guide our Senators and Representatives assembled in the General Assembly of Ohio (or the Legislatures of the other States, or the United States Congress) that they may enact laws pleasing in your sight, to the glory of your name and the welfare of this people. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

Penna Dexter
As 2023 ends, we see less evidence than ever of the Christian consensus that used to exist in the United States. Not that we were a “Christian nation.”  But norms existed — I guess you could call them family values — that, although not practiced by everyone, were at least considered good and true. All of that is waning.
Author and cultural commentator, Rod Dreher points back to another observer of American society, sociologist Philip Reiff. Dr. Reiff, an agnostic Jew, may not have called what he saw happening back in the 60’s a sexual revolution, but he read it as a sign of loss of the Christian influence on the culture. He lamented what Rod Dreher now describes as “the death knell of Christianity as the controlling narrative of the west.”
The sexual revolution, fueled by the availability of “The “Pill,” allowed the sexual act to be separated from childbearing and – to some extent – from marriage The “modern” woman, unconstrained by faith or old-fashioned morality, could still marry. Or not. But women could advance professionally without the burden of caring for children.
Now we’re seeing double-income, no-kids couples boasting online of their carefree life and their wealth. However, this choice can also turn out to be sad, or scary.
Journalist Melissa Persling insisted she didn’t want kids. Now she feels “unbelievably betrayed by feminism.” In a recent post, at Business Insider that went viral, she wrote, ”I’m 38, and I recently realized I want a child. I’m terrified I’ve missed my opportunity.”
Other young adults, including Christians, want marriage and children, but in a society that de-emphasizes marriage, many are missing out.
As faith fades so does human flourishing as people turn from God’s plan that man and woman would marry and produce children. The consequences of our below-replacement birthrate could be disastrous.
And now, the Pope has tied a bow around our arrogant rejection of God’s plan for the family.
Lord, help us. 

Penna Dexter
It’s December: time for another UN climate confab. Global socialists who see a climate emergency in every heat wave are meeting in Dubai for the 28th annual Conference of the Parties. Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot says, “COP 28 is shaping up to be a doubling down on the green agenda despite the massive failure on a grand global scale.”  
These conferences have no effect on climate. They have sparked little significant change in energy consumption. People who have to live with these agendas are starting to push back. Three thousand U.S. auto dealers are asking President Biden to let up on his aggressive electric vehicle push. EV’s are piling up on dealers’ lots. They’re losing money on every EV sold.
Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker observes God’s “wicked sense of humor” in that, on their way to the summit, “members of the planetary emergency rescue elite” ran into the early arrival of winter — a facet of the climate they could not control. They were stranded in Munich, where a snowstorm dumped 17 inches on the ground and forced cancellation of most outbound flights.
The private jets and snowbound adventures of attendees is just the beginning of their hypocrisy.
That so much time and money is spent on these conferences would be laughable if the climate mandates were not so damaging.
The Hill points out that U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has said, “There shouldn’t be any more coal power plants permitted anywhere in the world.” And yet he’s pushing what Gerard Baker describes as “some grand new partnership with China, which ”is becoming one giant coal-fired power station.”
A Bloomberg report predicts that “developed nations will be told to curb their excessive appetite for meat.” A UN report for mayors recommended a limit of three new clothing items per person per year by 2030 to fight climate change.
Apparently, climate bureaucrats are not content with the destruction of the American auto industry. 

Penna Dexter
An article in the online publication — FLI Insider — sent me searching through several years of radio commentaries to find my stories covering the “Christmas Wars.”
I found quite a few.
Here’s one from 12 years ago:  Mayor Tony Court of Ellwood City, Pennsylvania received a threatening letter from the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation about a nativity scene that had been displayed in his town for the previous fifty Christmas seasons. The letter insisted the nativity scene was illegal and had to be taken down. It could remain only if accompanied by an anti-Christmas banner containing a long message, ending with these words: “Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”
“No way,” said Mayor Court. But many city officials are not so bold.
Over the years, the Freedom From Religion and other complainers have launched hundreds of challenges against creches on public property. Often they insist that localities obey something called “The Three Reindeer Rule” which requires that a number of secular trappings of Christmas be placed around the nativity scene.
Jorge Gomez of First Liberty Institute, author of the article that sent me on my search, explains that “the law protects expressions of faith in the public square.” That’s always been true, but many city officials don’t realize it, or they simply don’t want the fight.
Now, thanks to two landmark US Supreme Court victories for religious freedom, the folks at First Liberty want Americans to know “it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.”
The Supreme Court’s momentous decisions protecting Coach Joe Kennedy’s public prayer fand safeguarding the Bladensburg Peace Cross remove “major barriers and precedents against religious freedom.”
According to First Liberty, this “means you can go into your community and begin restoring Nativity scenes, Menorahs and other religious memorials, images, and displays.” First Liberty has launched Restoring Faith In America — RFIA.org — to help folks work with local leaders to seize this wonderful opportunity.