Will gun control reduce violence against school-children?  We were all horrified by shootings in Connecticut that left 26 dead.  We were indignant when the President of the United States used this tragedy to promote his own leftist political agenda.  And we are fearful of the violence that will descend upon all of us if Pres. Obama and his friends overturn the 2nd Amendment.

Of course, the people who work hardest to take away our right of self-protection (Hollywood leftists, politicians, etc.) are the people who live in gated communities and surround themselves with armed guards.  They don’t have to worry about home invasions.  What do they care about common folk like us?

A few facts to consider:

1. Chicago criminals, protected by some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, shot 458 school-age children in 2012, killing 62 of them (source).  Another report says that 250 school-children have been killed in Chicago in 3 years (source).
2. Anders Behring Breivik killed 69 people in a single 2011 incident in Norway, which has very restrictive gun laws.  Nobody present was able to shoot back.
3. When selecting the target for his shooting rampage in Aurora, Colorado, gunman James Holmes selected the Cinemark theatre complex because it was the only one that banned guns.  Nobody present was able to shoot back (source).  One nearby theatre boasted “Colorado’s largest auditorium,” certainly a draw for a crazy man trying to kill as many people as he could, but they allowed permitted concealed handguns.
4. People in Russia can tell you what gun control has done to them.  They say “Never give up your guns.“

Never give up your guns.

Debbie Picarello

When talking wasn’t enough, abortion pictures did more than talk.  They saved a baby’s life.  Denise was born just a few weeks ago, but pictures saved her life back in May!

Although grieving a previous abortion, her mother Vicki still planned to abort her child.  Fortunately, CBR volunteer Debbie Picarello (who also volunteers with Deeper Still, a post-abortion recovery ministry) was able to show abortion pictures to Vicki online.  Recalling the conversation, Debbie said it was clear that “talking wasn’t enough.”  With your help, CBR had trained Debbie to use abortion pictures … when “talking wasn’t enough.”

Donna Hebert’s dopted 8-year-old offers passerby a pro-life tract.

They say you can tell a lot about people by the company they keep … and the enemies they make.  Actually, Jesus said it before “they” did.  He said

Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.  (Matthew 5:11-12)

Kudos to CBR Maine Director Leslie Sneddon for passing this test with flying colors.  Story here.  Leslie and other pro-lifers are a regular presence outside a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Portland, Maine.  As a result, a neighboring restaurant owner is in a panic.

This story clearly demonstrates that abortion photos and other pro-life activities can disrupt business-as-usual and thus are an effective tool for anathematizing abortion clinics and any commercial businesses who support baby-killing.

Interesting item from Byron York at the Washington Examiner.  It seems that even left-wing kooks like Al Franken, Richard Durbin and Charles Schumer understand that the 2.3% tax on medical devices, scheduled to take effect on January 1, is a “job-killing” tax.

If that’s true, then aren’t all the other tax increases being enacted by the Dems also “job-killing” taxes?

We’ve always known that ObamaCare is a fiscal scam that will cost much, much more than they admit.  We know it will cost jobs.  Furthermore, it’s part of a burgeoning debt problem that will possibly devastate our children’s financial futures (if not worse).

I’m not sure which is worse, stealing from poor people by destroying their jobs, or stealing from our children by loading them up with ruinous debt.

By the way, the level of detail presented above is really inside baseball.  We understand it, but it is completely lost on the low-information voter.  When we talk to the low-information voter, we need to keep it simple.  Like this:

One political party is trying to get and keep political power by convincing us that there is this large group of people who are entitled — entitled, mind you — to a long list of free stuff.  Every election cycle, that group has to get larger and the list of free stuff has to get longer.  It’s all going to be paid for by this ever-smaller, ever more despised — despised, mind you —  group of producers.  How long do you think that will work?

Repeat that explanation every chance you get.

This is a critical point, because the Dems appeal to our natural compassion by pointing out needs … and our neighbors have many, many heart-breaking needs that cry out for intervention.  Some of their problems are self-inflicted; some are beyond their control.  But bloated Government is not about meeting needs; it’s about getting and keeping political power.  The more of your money they get, the more powerful they are.  They get your money by growing the dependency class.  In the long run, it simply won’t work.

Just Say NO to ObamaCare Rally, Wednesday, Dec 5, 12:00 Noon, Tennessee State Captiol

Your help is needed to stop an ObamaCare State Exchange in TN.  From the Nashville Tea Party:

Governor Haslam must make a decision by December 14, and reports indicate he is still undecided.  Please Join Nashville Tea Party and many other groups to raise our voices together and petition the Governor to Just Say NO to an ObamaCare State Exchange.  We will have a petition for you to sign at the Rally.  Please join us.  Here is a map link.  We will rally on the east side of the Tennessee State Capitol Building at 12:oo Noon on Wednesday, December 5.

When ObamaCare becomes the debacle that we believe is inevitable, we cannot allow ourselves to be in the position of taking the blame.  If Republicans become the face of ObamaCare in Tennessee, we will be blamed.  We cannot allow that to happen.  Please do the following:

1. Call Governor Haslam’s office: (615) 741-2001
2. Contact Governor Haslam through his website: http://www.tn.gov/help/.  Under “Choose a Topic”, select “MESSAGE TO GOV. HASLAM,” then type your message.
3. E-mail Governor Haslam at bill.haslam@tn.gov.
4. Attend this rally on December 5.

More from the Cato Institute:

1. ObamaCare is Still Vulnerable
2. ObamaCare: The Road to Repeal Starts in the States
3. No ObamaCare Exchanges

Brooke McGowan will be leading pro-life projects across the Southeast, particularly in the Carolinas.  In part because her mother chose life despite dire personal circumstances, Brooke has long been devoted to pro-life activism as a protester, sidewalk counselor, and prayer warrior. 

The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), Southeast Region Operations, is pleased to announce the appointment of Brooke McGowan of Charlotte, North Carolina, as our newest Project Director, primarily responsible for projects in North and South Carolina!

Brooke is a recent graduate of New Life Theological Seminary in Charlotte, where she majored in urban ministry, with a concentration in Christian counseling.

As a child of a teenage mother who chose life for Brooke, despite a failed first marriage, she understands how easily she could have been another abortion statistic.  Raised by her mother and stepfather to always protect those who cannot protect themselves, she sensed a calling to devote herself to pro-life work in response to God’s command, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones.  For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven … In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” (Matthew 18:10,14)

Brooke has been an active protester, sidewalk counselor, and prayer warrior in Charlotte.  She even ministered to visiting attendees of the Democratic National Convention in September. She is already seeing fruit in the responses of those to whom she has ministered in the past several months alone.

Originally from Choctaw, Oklahoma (near Oklahoma City), Brooke has lived in Charlotte for 8 years.  Before joining CBR, she was a clinic director for an infectious disease medical practice and an assistant real estate acquisitions manager.  She is the mother to two girls, Shelby and Savannah.  Brooke’s husband Sean is an accomplished author, schoolteacher, and chaplain.

Welcome aboard, Brooke!  We’re expecting GREAT!

In a new low for perversion, Planned Parenthood tells teens that it’s OK to swallow, as long as ” you’re OK with it.”

Direct quote from PP website (link):

Is it okay if u swallow semen?

Whether or not it’s “okay” to swallow semen depends on whether or not you’re okay with it. There’s nothing unhealthy, wrong, or dirty about swallowing semen, as long as you’re comfortable with it.

It’s not possible to get pregnant from oral sex, whether or not you swallow. (That’s because your mouth isn’t connected to your reproductive organs.) But having unprotected oral sex (again, whether or not you swallow) can put both partners at risk for a number of STDs, including gonorrhea, hepatitis B, herpes, and humanpapilloma virus (HPV). For safer oral sex, use a condom to cover the penis, or a dental dam to cover the vulva.

Just what you would tell your teenager, right?  Translated:

It’s OK to risk contracting a deadly STD, as long as “you’re okay with it.”   There’s “nothing unhealthy, wrong, or dirty” about it.  Might be deadly, but if “you’re okay with it,” then go for it.

Here’s what God had to say about it (Romans 1:18-32):

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.  Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.  Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.  They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.  They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.  They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.  Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

The photo that told the story of slavery “to the eye”

I’ve shown this photo to thousands of people … in homes and churches and meeting rooms.  But I didn’t know the story behind the photo until I read it today.  The piece was written by Frank H. Goodyear, III, assistant curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery.  The man in the photo was identified as Gordon … only as Gordon … with no last name.  Excerpts:

[Photography] also played an influential role in broadening the national debate about slavery. As this famous photograph suggests, photography was capable of communicating powerful ideas about the so-called “peculiar institution”—ideas that ultimately undermined the prevailing notion that slavery was a benign tradition.  (emphasis added)

***

Recognized as a searing indictment of slavery, Gordon’s portrait was presented as the latest evidence in the abolitionist campaign. An unidentified writer for the New York Independent wrote: “This Card Photograph should be multiplied by 100,000, and scattered over the States. It tells the story in a way that even Mrs. [Harriet Beecher] Stowe [author of the 1852 book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin] can not approach, because it tells the story to the eye.”  (emphasis added)

Link to entire story here.

Westmont College students Aaron Singer, Ryan Hall, and Seth Gruber.

Here’s a story in World Magazine about CBR’s very own Seth Gruber at Westmont College.  Seth is a student at Westmont College and an intern at CBR.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees the activists the right to set up the [Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) abortion photo] billboards at public schools. But almost every private Christian college has turned them down.
***
Gruber’s had more conversations about abortion in the last 10 days than he had in the last two and a half years. And more people have offered to stand with him.

Related stories:

• FAB: Student defies “Christian” college, shows abortion
• Seth’s Blog: A Reflection of the First Display on Campus
• Seth’s Blog: Men and the Abortion Issue
• Christianity Today: Westmont College Tussles With Pro-Life Student
• FAB: Liberty University GAP/RCC – Day 1
• CBR’s Open Letter to Liberty University
• World Magazine: Link here to subscribe

Centerfold photo in The Sunday Times of London reached a circulation of more than 1 million readers in the UK.  (Click on photo for a better view.)

Great photo in The Sunday Times of London!  This photo of aborted babies was visible to more than 1 million readers!

Link here to article We Will Shock You.  (You will need to pay a subscription fee to see the entire article.)

Notable quotations from the article:

The pictures are stomach-turningly gruesome, the dismembered figure clearly human — tiny fingers and toes visible in a mess of blood.
***
By far the most radical group in this country is Abort67, who I joined in Reading. They formed at the start of the year with guidance and resources from one of the loudest and most controversial voices on the American pro-life scene: the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR).
***
The group’s founder, Gregg Cunningham, 65, has been involved in the pro-life movement in America for most of his adult life. In the last four years, Cunningham and the CBR have started to spread their reach abroad. This summer he was in Britain supporting Abort67 and giving talks in churches — his fourth visit to the UK this year.
The CBR does not fund Abort67, but it is providing thegroup’s activists with resources, graphic images and a great deal of guidance. Since the start of the year, the group has recruited around 50 volunteers who regularly protest outside clinics in Brighton, Reading, Taunton and London. They claim they have several thousand supporters and counting.
Their protests are having the most dramatic effect in liberal Brighton.
***
The most serious impact has been on the women attending the clinic. One 21-year-old sports coach, who has asked to withhold her name for fear of repercussions, goes there for weekly post-abortion counselling.
“Sometimes it’s just one person with a banner; sometimes there are 20 of them with their children,” she says. “I’ve seen people burst into tears and say they don’t want to go through with it,” she says.
***
[CBR-UK Director Andy] Stephenson is a father of three and, like most of Abort67, a committed evangelical Christian. He is slight, with a dark beard, earnest eyes and an apologetic air; an unlikely crusader, perhaps, but an unrepentant one. “The atmosphere in the UK is changing,” he says. “The abortion lobby has had it easy for too long with no accountability, no consequences and very little meaningful opposition — but there is a new generation of pro-lifers emerging and disillusioned, battle-weary pro-lifers being reinvigorated because theyhave seen the fruits of what groups like ours are achieving with very little resources.”

The article closed with this threat of violence from pro-aborts who are apparently not used to seeing effective pro-life activism:

Brighton Pro-Choice met the week after the trial to plan more radical action against Abort67. One member warned: “If the police won’t stop them, we will have to.”

Gregg Cunningham

A message from Gregg Cunningham, Executive Director of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR):

CBR is an educational organization whose principal purpose is to discourage and ultimately ban elective abortion.  We pursue that goal by exposing the horror abortion represents.  Our duty is prophetic, so the public’s acceptance or rejection of our message neither heightens nor diminishes our duty to discharge that responsibility.

Speaking as an individual, by the narrowest of margins, roughly half the 2012 electorate has chosen evil over good and America’s planned decline will now accelerate.  If the leadership in the current House of Representatives caves on the “fiscal cliff” confrontation, our economy will be further weakened by extreme tax-and-spend socialism — see California and Europe to understand just how weakened.  Still more Americans will be disabled by reliance on unsustainable social welfare programs — see California and Europe to understand how just unsustainable.

Because of this defeat, our military will be dangerously compromised by the funding cuts necessitated by exploding national debt.  America’s influence in the world will continue to be dismantled as the intended purpose of Barack Obama’s foreign policy.  ObamaCare’s abortion mandates are now a central feature of American socialized medicine.  Supposedly “pro-life Democrat” Rep. Bart Stupak betrayed us to pass Obamacare.  Supposedly “constitutional conservative” Chief Justice John Roberts betrayed us to declare ObamaCare constitutional.  Supposedly “pro-life” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie betrayed us to essentially endorse Barack Obama and contribute to his reelection.  He reportedly turned on Mitt Romney because Romney dumped him as his vice presidential pick.  ObamaCare will now be impossible to repeal.

Unless our majority remains resolute in the U.S. House of Representatives, open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens will turn swing states so blue that pro-life candidates will become as unelectable there as they now are in California.  But doomed prolife candidates may not matter much because our federal courts will become so heavily packed with Barack Obama’s pro-abortion judges (confirmed by his Democrat Senate) that any significant attempt to restrict abortion will be struck down, and the reversal of Roe v. Wade is unlikely to occur during the lifetimes of even our movement’s youngest activists.

Despite the disaster which now awaits our country, CBR’s responsibility to expose the horror of abortion remains unchanged.  We have great people and great projects and our Key States Initiative (KSI) left America a far more pro-life nation today than it was six months ago.  Literally as I write this note, a CBR web survey arrived from a sixteen-year-old Pennsylvania girl who wrote to explain how our work has changed her life:  “I did support legal abortion but after seeing that video of the baby getting taken out I am against it. It is terrible!  How could someone kill something so small and helpless?”  She speaks for the many Americans who saw our imagery in battleground states this year and also changed their minds about abortion.  Our strategy and tactics are demonstrably effective.  Disturbing pictures are the history of social reform and the future of pro-life activism.

I intend no disrespect toward Governor Romney but I believe we could have won this narrowly decided election had we nominated a stronger candidate with a more effective campaign.  Governor Romney had liabilities which Barack Obama’s Chicago campaign skillfully exploited.  And Governor Romney’s campaign missed many opportunities to take the fight to the president.  Barack Obama emphasized abortion to single women (who now outnumber married women for the first time in American history) but their vote might have been overcome by a more convincing pitch to independents and greater appeal to our conservative base.  I remain confident that our strong field of reform-minded conservative governors and senators (as well as Rep. Paul Ryan) will produce a stronger ticket in 2016.  The tragic state of country after eight years of Barack Obama and Joe Biden should leave even this closely divided nation ready for a new course.

God is about to teach the Obama electorate a painful lesson in response to their intransigence, a lesson Greece is just beginning to learn.  We will all have to suffer this chastening but I thank God for all you did to educate voters over the last six months.  I assure you that your work was not in vain.  God will honor it in the fullness of time.  Remember that in the late eighteenth century, fully three-quarters of the world’s population was in bondage to some form of forced labor.  The abolition of slavery seemed unthinkable.  By God’s grace, a hand-full of reformers changed everything.  Now we must refresh ourselves and continue to follow their indomitable example.

A Psalm of David

1 Do not fret because of evil men
or be envious of those who do wrong;
2 for like the grass they will soon wither,
like green plants they will soon die away.

3 Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
4 Delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

5 Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
6 He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.

7 Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when men succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.

8 Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret—it leads only to evil.
9 For evil men will be cut off,
but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

10 A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
though you look for them, they will not be found.
11 But the meek will inherit the land
and enjoy great peace.

12 The wicked plot against the righteous
and gnash their teeth at them;
13 but the Lord laughs at the wicked,
for he knows their day is coming.

14 The wicked draw the sword
and bend the bow
to bring down the poor and needy,
to slay those whose ways are upright.
15 But their swords will pierce their own hearts,
and their bows will be broken.

16 Better the little that the righteous have
than the wealth of many wicked;
17 for the power of the wicked will be broken,
but the Lord upholds the righteous.

18 The days of the blameless are known to the Lord,
and their inheritance will endure forever.
19 In times of disaster they will not wither;
in days of famine they will enjoy plenty.

20 But the wicked will perish:
The Lord’s enemies will be like the beauty of the fields,
they will vanish—vanish like smoke.

21 The wicked borrow and do not repay,
but the righteous give generously;
22 those the Lord blesses will inherit the land,
but those he curses will be cut off.

23 If the Lord delights in a man’s way,
he makes his steps firm;
24 though he stumble, he will not fall,
for the Lord upholds him with his hand.

25 I was young and now I am old,
yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken
or their children begging bread.
26 They are always generous and lend freely;
their children will be blessed.

27 Turn from evil and do good;
then you will dwell in the land forever.
28 For the Lord loves the just
and will not forsake his faithful ones.

They will be protected forever,
but the offspring of the wicked will be cut off;
29 the righteous will inherit the land
and dwell in it forever.

30 The mouth of the righteous man utters wisdom,
and his tongue speaks what is just.
31 The law of his God is in his heart;
his feet do not slip.

32 The wicked lie in wait for the righteous,
seeking their very lives;
33 but the Lord will not leave them in their power
or let them be condemned when brought to trial.

34 Wait for the Lord
and keep his way.
He will exalt you to inherit the land;
when the wicked are cut off, you will see it.

35 I have seen a wicked and ruthless man
flourishing like a green tree in its native soil,
36 but he soon passed away and was no more;
though I looked for him, he could not be found.

37 Consider the blameless, observe the upright;
there is a future for the man of peace.
38 But all sinners will be destroyed;
the future of the wicked will be cut off.

39 The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord;
he is their stronghold in time of trouble.
40 The Lord helps them and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.

Great video.  Already seen by >0.6 million viewers.

Please share this video with your friends!

A Time for Choosing
by Ronald Wilson Reagan
October 27, 1964

As timely today as it was 48 years ago.

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
***
But beyond that, “the full power of centralized government”—this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.
***
For three decades, we’ve sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.
***
Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.
***
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments’ programs, once launched, never disappear.  Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.
***
Now it doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the—or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.
***
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.  We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

Bill Whittle: Falling on Principle.

This video speaks to those considering a vote for a 3rd-party candidate or a vote for nobody at all.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPjBXufufUU