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Christian Conservatives Slam Sarah Palin’s ‘Baptism By Waterboarding’ Speech As ‘Blasphemous’

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Sarah Palin over the weekend delivered a rambling speech at the NRA convention that included the promise that if she were president, America’s enemies “would know that waterboarding is how we’d baptize terrorists.” Palin came under attack almost immediately — from her base of Christian conservatives who repeatedly are using the word “blasphemous” and “sacrilegious” to describe it. 

In case you missed it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7vdAlzh-jo

Christian conservatives, in fact, are furious. So what does Palin do? Reveal again she does not understand the First Amendment, as she attacks MSNBC on her Facebook page:

Actions to stop terrorists who’d utterly annihilate America and delight in massacring our innocent children? Darn right I’d do whatever it takes to foil their murderous jihadist plots – including waterboarding. Whatever one thinks of my one-liner at the NRA rally about treating evil terrorists the way they deserve to be treated to prevent the death of innocent people, it’s utterly absurd for MSNBC to suggest that I could put our beloved troops in harm’s way, but we’ve come to expect the absurd from that failing network.

If some overly sensitive wusses took offense, remember the First Amendment doesn’t give you a right not to be offended. Perhaps hypocritical folks who only want Freedom of Speech to apply to those who agree with their liberal agenda might want to consider that the evil terrorists who were the brunt of my one-liner would be the first to strip away ALL our rights if given the chance. That’s why we do whatever we can to prevent them from killing innocent people. And for that, we should NEVER apologize. Good Lord, critics… buck up or stay in the truck. And if you love freedom, thank our troops!

But she’s ignoring these condemnations at her peril:

In, “No, Sarah Palin, Baptism Isn’t A Good Punchline For A Terrorist Joke,” Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist calls Palin’s comment “blasphemous ” and writes that water boarding “doesn’t hold a candle to the power of the Christian baptism, as historically understood. Does it deliver those who are subjected to it from the devil, as Christian baptism does? Does it give them eternal life, as Christian baptism does? Is it voluntary, as Christian baptism is? It is none of these things.”

Hemingway adds:

Mary Moerbe, a diaconal writer at the Cranach Institute, notes, “Sarah Palin’s brash words portray herself to be a great and powerful baptizer, not bringing faith or the forgiveness of Jesus—or even the sympathy implicit in secular uses of ‘baptism by fire’—but crossing the line into government aggression, specifically against those already subdued and captive. She merged government with religion in one of the worst possible ways: by making herself judge and arbiter.”

Well-known religion writer Rod Dreher at The American Conservative:

Hey world, Sarah Palin believes those “good plans” that God has for us, that holy “destiny,” can include torturing other human beings. And she’s not apologizing for it. At the very best, torture might be a tragic necessity — I don’t think so, but I’m trying to think about it from the other side — but Palin and her audience don’t think so. They laugh at it and cheer for it. This is decadence.

There’s Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition:

For anyone to confess Christ as their savior and to compare one of the means of God’s grace to a reprehensible act of torture is reprehensible. I hope members of Gov. Palin’s local church will explain to her why her remarks denigrate the Christian faith. Such remarks bring shame on the Body of Christ and to our witness in the world. Even more shameful, however, is the fact that so many Christians would cheer her support of torture (and yes, waterboarding is torture).

Gov. Palin was attempting to appeal to the basest political populism (nothing in her remarks could be construed as genuinely conservative) by claiming that current U.S. counterterrorism policy is overly-tolerant and empathetic toward our enemies. She contends that proper policies would “put the fear of God into our enemies.”

Unfortunately, what Palin is proposing is a mixture of pagan ethics and civil deistic religion.

And Hollis Phelps at Religion Dispatches writes that the “equation of torture and baptism manages to come off as offensive to Christians, as well. As a sacrament to many Christians, baptism signifies regeneration, the rebirth of the individual as ‘a new creature’ in Christ.”

Sarah Palin has lost her Christian conservative base. Her “baptism by waterboarding” speech is almost as damaging (more?) than her “blood libel” video that ended any chance of America seeing a President Palin.

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Stephen Miller Melts Down on Live TV: ‘I Will Be as Excited as I Want to Be!’

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White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller repeatedly had to be asked to “calm down” during a wide-ranging CNN interview on Tuesday that has set the internet on fire.

“This president, for the first time in history, is committed to restoring accountability at every level of the federal government,” Miller declared. “You may assert there’s no waste in the Pentagon. You may assert there is no waste in Treasury. You may assert there’s no waste in HHS.”

CNN’s Brianna Keilar made clear no one is asserting there is no waste.

READ MORE: ‘Ridiculous’: Federal Judge Scorches Trump DOJ Lawyer Over Military ‘Pronoun Use’

“Then why are you not celebrating these cuts if you agree there is waste, if you agree there is abuse, if you agree there is corruption, why are you not celebrating the cuts, the reforms that are being instituted?” Miller, shouting, asked.

“Every day that no action is taken —” Miller, still yelling, continued.

“Stephen, let’s calm down,” Keilar insisted.

“The entire salaries of American workers that are taxed disappear forever —”

“Stephen, let’s calm down,” Keilar again asked. “We’re not having a debate.”

“Well you are clearly trying to debate me,” Miller claimed. “And I will be as excited as I want to be about the fact that we are saving Americans billions of dollars, that we are ending the theft and waste and grift and corruption, that we are stopping American taxpayer dollars from subsidizing a rogue federal bureaucracy that has been relentlessly weaponized against the American people.”

Many have questioned the Trump administration’s assertions.

That exchange led veteran journalist John Harwood to declare, “Stephen Miller is bat— crazy.”

READ MORE: ‘Bloodbath by Design’: Trump’s Russia Negotiators Criticized for ‘Almost No Experience’

In another exchange, Miller condescendingly told Keilar, “The way that Article II” of the Constitution “works is a president wins an election, and then he appoints staff.”

CNN’s Ana Navarro-Cárdenas, a co-host on ABC’s “The View,” responded to a clip of Miller. She wrote: “Insane? Hysterical? Deranged? Off his meds?”

Miller, whose “ideology” is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “Anti-Immigrant,” is the architect of President Donald Trump’s family separation policies during his first administration. Over one thousand children have yet to be reunited.

“From March 4, 2015, to June 27, 2016, Miller,” the SPLC reported, “sent over 900 emails to Breitbart News editors.”

“Throughout the emails, Miller promotes literature, conspiracy theories, and policies supported by white nationalist and anti-immigrant hate groups,” according to the SPLC.

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Sociopathic’: USAID Worker Sues Alleging State Dept. Medevac Refusal for Pregnant Wife

 

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‘Ridiculous’: Federal Judge Scorches Trump DOJ Lawyer Over Military ‘Pronoun Use’

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A federal judge sharply criticized an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice over Pentagon policy asserting that the U.S. Armed Forces could somehow be compromised simply by requiring service members to use a colleague’s preferred pronoun.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, appeared skeptical of both the President’s and the Department of Justice’s stance on transgender service members during Tuesday’s hearing.

Reyes “asserted flatly that the idea that the greatest fighting force in the history of the world would be adversely effected by the need to use specific pronouns for a few thousand members of the military is, ‘Ridiculous,'” Fox News producer Jake Gibson reported.

READ MORE: ‘Bloodbath by Design’: Trump’s Russia Negotiators Criticized for ‘Almost No Experience’

According to Politico’s Kyle Cheney, this is how the exchange went:

“REYES: Can we agree that the greatest fighting force… is not going to be impacted in any way by less than 1 percent of the soldiers using a different pronoun than others might want to call them?

DOJ ATTORNEY: I can’t agree with that here.

REYES: Would you agree with me that if our military is negatively impacted in any kind of way that matters… We all have a lot bigger problems than pronoun use. We have a military that is incompetent. Any common sense rational human being knows that it doesn’t. It is pretext. It is frankly ridiculous. If you want to get me an officer of the U.S. military who is willing to get on the stand and say that because of pronoun usage the U.S. military is less prepared because of pronoun usage. I will be the first to give you a box of cigars.”

An estimated 15,000 service members are transgender.

In another striking exchange, Judge Reyes also called Trump’s executive order on transgender service members “unadulterated animus.”

Currently, the Pentagon has ordered service branches to stop accepting new transgender recruits into the military, and to pause any gender-affirming medical care for transgender troops.

READ MORE: ‘Sociopathic’: USAID Worker Sues Alleging State Dept. Medevac Refusal for Pregnant Wife

“One of the plaintiffs,” in the case, WUSA9‘s Jordan Fischer reports, “Koda Nature, a 23-year-old transgender man from Texas, said he had been working with a recruiter to join the U.S. Marine Corps when he was informed last month he would no longer be able to enlist. Nature said joining the military had been his dream since he was 5 years old – a dream to follow in the footsteps of 17 generations of his family.”

President Donald Trump has signed at least four executive orders restricting the civil rights of transgender people in the United States, including one that could be used to ban open service by transgender troops, under the guise of prioritizing military excellence, readiness, and “unit cohesion” — tropes that for decades were also used to try to prevent lesbian, gay, and bisexual troops from serving openly in America’s armed forces.

“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” Trump’s January 27 executive order reads. Trump also alleged that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”

That order specifically targeted the use of preferred pronouns, which he called, “invented and identification-based pronoun usage.”

“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity. This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”

READ MORE: ‘Unconstitutional Threat’: Trump Border Czar Under Fire Over AOC DOJ Request

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‘Bloodbath by Design’: Trump’s Russia Negotiators Criticized for ‘Almost No Experience’

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After a week of disastrous messaging by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, resulting in a 180-degree turn and leaving European leaders and some Americans wondering what U.S. foreign policy is, the Trump administration is once again under fire as critics charge the team he has assembled to start discussions with Russia over its illegal war against Ukraine does not match the “heavyweights” Russia is sending.

The U.S. is already in the hot seat as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who has made clear his country will accept no peace deal if they are not part of the negotiations — appears to have been frozen out of the initial talks, which were held Tuesday in Saudi Arabia.

European officials attending the Munich Security Conference last week, “stressed the need for Ukraine to be part of peace talks to end the war. Vice President JD Vance met with Zelenskyy in Munich Friday, telling him the U.S. wants a ‘durable, lasting peace,’ while Zelensky asked for ‘security guarantees,'” CBS News reported.

“Zelenskyy told the conference of world leaders that Ukraine would not accept a deal made ‘behind our backs without our involvement,’ and called for the creation of ‘armed forces of Europe’ amid the possibility of a changing relationship between Europe and the U.S.”

READ MORE: ‘Sociopathic’: USAID Worker Sues Alleging State Dept. Medevac Refusal for Pregnant Wife

Early Tuesday afternoon the Associated Press, calling it “an extraordinary about-face in U.S. foreign policy,” reported: “Russia and US agree to work toward ending Ukraine war in a remarkable diplomatic shift.”

CNN reported that the “United States and Russia agreed on four principles following talks that lasted more than four hours in Saudi Arabia, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday, including appointing a high-level team to help ‘negotiate and work through the end of the conflict in Ukraine’ in a way that’s ‘acceptable to all the parties engaged.’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was not invited to the talks, said Ukraine will not ‘give in to Russia’s ultimatums’ and earlier said he would refuse to sign any agreement negotiated without Kyiv’s involvement.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who reportedly was part of Tuesday’s talks, described them as “useful.”

The talks are expected to continue after this initial meeting. Trump administration officials at the talks in Saudi Arabia included U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Foreign policy expert and historian Sławomir Dębski, a former Russia foreign policy analyst, over the weekend described Russia’s team.

He named, “Yury Ushakov, the Kremlin’s chief foreign policy adviser, who has worked in diplomacy for over half a century,” “Sergey Naryshkin, Ushakov’s top spy, who served alongside Putin in the Soviet KGB,” and “Kirill Dmitriev, a financier educated at Stanford and Harvard, who has ties to the Kremlin chief’s family and, according to the publication, could play a key role as an unofficial ‘backchannel’ to Trump’s negotiators.”

“A rumour says that Vladymir Medinsky is to join the Russian team in Riyadh,” Dębski added. “He is a former Minister of Culture. Now he is Putin’s key adviser on ideological aspects of Russian aggression on Ukraine.”

Bloomberg News on Friday reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is assembling a heavyweight team with decades of experience in high-stakes negotiations to face off against US President Donald Trump’s representatives for a deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

“That Putin is opting to rely mostly on highly skilled and experienced negotiators to represent Russia in any talks is hardly a surprise,” Bloomberg added. “The personnel choices underscore just how determined the Russian leader is to secure a favorable outcome in any negotiations and potentially how little his demands in relation to Ukraine have changed in the three years since he ordered the full-scale invasion.”

READ MORE: ‘Unconstitutional Threat’: Trump Border Czar Under Fire Over AOC DOJ Request

Yale University Professor Timothy Snyder, a historian and expert on the Soviet Union and the Holocaust, is the author of the popular bestseller, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.”

Responding to Dębski’s post, Snyder warned: “The American team has almost no experience in high-level international negotiation, no regional expertise on Ukraine and Russia, and no relevant foreign language knowledge. Not true of the Russians, to put it mildly. Looks like a bloodbath by design.”

Brad Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, blasted the Trump administration.

“It was a mistake for the Trump administration to negotiate with the Taliban without the Afghan government at the table. It is a mistake to negotiate with Putin without including Kyiv,” he wrote. “When the topic is the future of Ukraine, Kyiv has a right to be at the table, especially in light of the sacrifice and bravery of Ukrainians in defending their homes against Putin’s unprovoked invasion. Putin understands that the United States and Europe are more powerful together. That’s why he wants to divide us. We should not help him.”

READ MORE: Federal Judge ‘Skeptical’ of DOGE: Report

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