Signed onto this letter asking for the restoration of strong, longstanding pro-life provisions in the Republican platform:

July 12, 2024 

Dear Republican National Convention Delegates: 

For the first time in decades, the Republican Platform retreats on life. Pro-life Americans are rightly outraged and gravely concerned. 

As drafted, the platform removes long-standing Republican promises on life, from prohibiting taxpayer funding for abortion to a Constitutional amendment to specific protections for unborn babies. 

Since 1976, the platform has supported a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution.

Since 1980, the platform has called for ending taxpayer funding for abortion. 

Since 1984, the platform has affirmed that the 14th Amendment already protects unborn children.  Beginning in 1996, the platform condemned partial-birth abortion. 

In 2004, language was added to protect babies born alive following failed abortions. 

In 2012, language was added to protect pain-capable babies. 

In 2016, language was added opposing federal funding for embryo harvesting. Since the Reagan Revolution, the party has spoken with an unambiguous voice – Republicans stand for life. 

Today, that promise has been watered down and ultimately compromised. As you gather in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, the eyes of conservatives across America are upon you. As delegates, ensuring a strong platform is your responsibility. You are the grassroots conservative leaders, entrusted by the conservatives of your states, to represent their values at the national level. 

This is the last opportunity to restore the Republican Party’s strong pro-life platform. You can restore the RNC’s pro-life platform. 

We encourage you to support the Platform Committee’s Minority Report, amendments that strengthen the pro-life resolve of the platform, and to vote down any platform that weakens the party’s pro-life stance.

Sincerely,

[List of signers]

 

 July 9, 2024

Kamala’s way in 

OPINION:

“At Essence, Black Democrats rally behind Biden and talk up Kamala Harris” (web, July 7) quotes Antjuan Seawright, a Black Democratic consultant, as declaring that if President Biden drops out of the race, choosing “anyone other than Kamala would be malpractice — and it would tear the party apart.”

As more and more elected Democrats urge Mr. Biden to withdraw and party leaders convene to plot alternatives, the president retreats into the defiant delusion that marks dementia. Most recently he insisted that only “if the Lord Almighty comes out and tells me” to get out of the race, “I might do that.”

While Mr. Biden debates whether to obey a voice from heaven, rest assured that Vice President Kamala Harris and other party leaders are not waiting for a sign in the sky to scheme Plan B.

Every day that the polls worsen and the election approaches, the appeal of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution becomes more alluring. The amendment provides that “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of [the Cabinet declare] … that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

Leading up to that moment, Ms. Harris and her co-conspirators would begin systematically leaking to the media more and more evidence of Mr. Biden’s cognitive chaos. A parade of party leaders would report that a clearly detached-from-reality Mr. Biden has irrationally rejected their pleas for his withdrawal or resignation.

And then, in collusion with Cabinet members promised a role in her upcoming administration, Ms. Harris would be able to seize by political fiat the office she never could reach through the popular vote and secure for herself the nomination of the party.

Copyright© 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. 

 

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

OPINION:

With South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem now dogged by her own publicized poor judgment (“Noem defends her shooting of chicken-killing dog,” web, May 2), who should rise to the top of Donald Trump‘s vice presidential candidate shortlist? Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo‘s experience, steadiness, faith and conservative principles make him the most qualified and reassuring choice.

Mr. Pompeo‘s resume includes a Harvard Law School degree and tax law experience, a U.S. Army career as a captain, entrepreneurial endeavors, a congressional career and loyal service as the former president’s Central Intelligence Agency director and secretary of state.

The choice of Mr. Pompeo would reassure the pro-life and evangelical communities that Mr. Trump‘s second administration will have a strong voice urging support for the value of human life and protection of religious freedom. Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo can hammer home the fact that Democrats insist on legalizing abortion right up to the point of birth — a position deplored by most Americans and adopted by only a handful of countries, including China, Vietnam and North Korea.

Choosing Mr. Pompeo would prove both principled and pragmatic, as it would solidify and energize the former president’s base while attracting independents who value experience, stability and strength in foreign affairs at a time when our adversaries are advancing.

Mr. Pompeo‘s solid conservative credentials would reassure ideological conservatives that a second Trump term would steer our careening nation back toward limited government, fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense and judicial constitutional restraint.

While coalescing conservatives and the faith community on whom his election depends, choosing Mr. Pompeo would provide Mr. Trump with a Renaissance man upon whom to depend for counsel and support.

JONATHAN IMBODY

Mechanicsville, Virginia

 

March 29, 2024

Clinton abused powers on abortion drug

COMMENTARY

OPINION:

While the Supreme Court analyzes the technical legal standing of pro-life doctors to sue the Food and Drug Administration over the chemical abortion pill mifepristone, the case holds the potential to highlight the health dangers to women posed by the drug and its politically prompted approval (“Supreme Court justices weigh rolling back use of the abortion pill,” Web, March 26).

When I worked with these doctors and pro-life advocates in 2002 to help draft the original “Citizen Petition” complaint against the FDA‘s politically tainted fast-tracking of the drug, we noted that the “FDA's violation of its standards and rules have put women’s health and lives at risk.” We detailed how the FDA waived its own rules in fast-tracking the drug (such as not requiring testing on minors). The FDA also developed a drug regimen inconsistent with clinical trials. Transvaginal ultrasounds that can date a pregnancy and rule out dangerous ectopic pregnancies, for example, while employed in the U.S. clinical trial, were not required under the FDA's regimen.

We also revealed the intense lobbying for the drug by the Clinton administration, first to bring what was then a French abortion pill to the U.S. and then to fast-track its approval by the FDA.

We highlighted the disturbing fact that “President Clinton reportedly wrote to [French abortion pill manufacturer] Hoechst asking the company to file a new drug application with the FDA—an unprecedented situation in the pharmaceutical industry—which Hoechst intransigently refused to do.” Undeterred, the Clinton administration, with Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala leading the campaign, worked feverishly to get the drug’s patent rights transferred to an American company, which then hired a Chinese manufacturer to produce the drug.

Ultimately, the FDA illegitimately and perversely deployed Subpart H—a fast-track mechanism developed for rapid approval of drugs for life-threatening illnesses such as HIV—to approve a life-ending abortion drug.

Whatever the court decides regarding the legal standing of pro-life doctors in this lawsuit, nothing will change the dangers posed by the drug to women or the dangers posed to the American public by a politicized FDA.

JONATHAN IMBODY

Mechanicsville, Virginia

 

Oblivious Biden

Published in The Washington Times, June 18, 2022

By Jonathan Imbody

As polls indicate that roughly only one in three Americans approve of his performance, President Biden has responded incongruously with self-congratulatory rhetoric. The inverse relationship between the president's popularity and pronouncements is striking:

As inflation races past income and families choose between eating or driving, Biden responds blithely, "Look, here’s where we are. We have the fastest growing economy in the world. The world. The world."

Biden, the IRS and true healthcare reform

Op-ed published June 11, 2022 in The Western Journal as "Op-Ed: Pay Attention to What Biden and the IRS Are Conspiring On, Because It's Big"

By Jonathan Imbody

With a split Senate and free-falling poll numbers, President Biden is mucking about the bureaucratic swamp to salvage his leftist agenda.

Biden's latest end run around Congress turns a scandalously compliant IRS into a political tool. An Executive Order and presumed behind-the-scenes White House lobbying have convinced the supposedly apolitical tax agency to issue a statute-defying regulation that creates a new government healthcare subsidies affordability test. The White House unwittingly boasts that the plan could reduce the number of uninsured by 200,000, but CBO and health experts estimate that tiny change would cost taxpayers $225,000 per person.

The administration's goal in expanding federal health insurance subsidies is simple and clear--to get more citizens on the government dole and beholden to the party of wealth redistribution.

The evidence of the elite leftists' domination agenda is everywhere

In her insightful editorial, "Stupidity of Nobel laureates (and the White House)," Kelly Sadler succinctly summarizes the cause of runaway government spending and inflation: $6 trillion in stimulus resulting in "too much money chasing too few goods" and also the solution: cut spending and taxes and deregulate.

In the face of disastrous results, why do Biden and his elite Nobel laureates remain wedded to profligate spending and massive government? Because they want to dominate the rest of us as a ruling elite, as modern philosopher-kings. 

Unable to obtain such dominance as individuals or through persuasion, elitist leftists plot to do so collectively, through coercion--as leaders of a de facto authoritarian government.

The evidence of the elite leftists' domination agenda is everywhere:

Rage over the pending reversal of Roe reveals the coercive character of the left

The abortion battle goes to the heart of a democratic republic and highlights a dark side of human nature.

Abortion activists for nearly half a century have relied upon the Supreme Court to silence the opposition, coerce the country and block all efforts to stanch the bloodshed of 60 million innocents. Their tyrannical rage exploded after a leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson signaled the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision, returning the issue to democratic debate and constitutional federalism.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer immediately invoked biblical language in a scathing statement: "The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade would go down as an abomination…."

The pro-abortion group Ruth Sent Us proclaimed, "We’ll be burning the Eucharist to show our disgust for the abuse Catholic Churches have condoned for centuries."

Biden's Catechetical Dementia

Edited and published in The Federalist, April 27, 2022. Original version is below:

How the administration's abortion ideology-driven assault on faith and conscience threatens care for millions of needy individuals

By Jonathan Imbody[i]

The year is 2024, and the Biden administration's assault on conscience freedoms has taken a tragic toll on the healthcare landscape.

Since the 2022 elimination of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) conscience protections for health professionals, government-sanctioned discrimination has driven out of medicine persons of faith and pro-life convictions, accelerating and exacerbating the long-predicted physician shortage crisis. The shortage leaves millions of patients, especially the poor and marginalized, without the faith-based care on which they had depended.

From medical students to doctors to hospitals and clinics, no one who hews to Hippocratic or Judeo-Christian ethics can survive the administration's ideological purge of healthcare.

Biden, abortion and conscience

Published by The Washington Times, April 20, 2022

If you are a health professional who follows the Hippocratic oath's proscription against abortion, should a government-funded hospital be allowed to coerce you to participate in abortions against your professional ethics and personal conscience?

Nurse Cathy DeCarlo faced just such coercion, despite her agreement with a hospital that she would not participate in abortions, due to her moral and ethical conscience convictions. The fateful day came when hospital supervisors suddenly demanded she participate in an upcoming abortion, threatening her with a charge of insubordination and abandoning her patient if she refused.

“They threatened my job and my nursing license if I did not take part in the murder of that baby. I felt violated and betrayed," Cathy recalls. Forced to count the body parts of the baby torn apart during the abortion, she says, "It was like something out of a horror film."

Fauci and subjective scientists

 

By Jonathan Imbody - - Tuesday, March 22, 2022

OPINION:

By now, many Americans have had it with medical experts, and for good reason.

Too many once-trusted doctors have lied, propagandized and trampled constitutional principles in their pronouncements and mandates.

We now know that the coercive COVID-19 shutdowns and mandates urged by medical experts have had the unintended but predictable consequences of retarding our children’s learning, increasing mental health crises, hamstringing the economy, hampering our military preparedness, dividing the citizenry and much more.

What are core conservative values?

True Republican values - published in The Washington Times

In "What Republicans should stand for: A midterm legislative agenda for all Americans," (Commentary, Tuesday) Robert Tracci aptly details legislative priorities to advance Republican core values. But how many Americans even know what are core Republican values?

Simple, practical, inspirational core values--articulated by tough and winsome candidates--are the key to conservative victories at the ballot box.

An offering of three simple core conservative values to take to the voters:

1. God grants human rights--not the government. The right to life is the most fundamental, followed by the right to practice our faith, speak our mind and pursue good goals in life.

2. You make better decisions for yourself than the government does. The more power the government has, the less power you have to control your own destiny. You should be making your own decisions in healthcare, education and business with the least possible interference from government.

3. Military might is the best path to peace internationally, and the rule of law and a civil society the best path to peace domestically. The purpose of military is to protect us and others by either posing the threat of destruction or by exercising destruction. The purpose of police is to enforce the laws of the people, through the humane and just but unflinching use of force when necessary. But ultimately, domestic peace hinges on a civil society, a people of moral character and values preserved in community.

JONATHAN IMBODY

GLEN ALLEN, VA

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/17/letter-to-the-editor-true-republican-values/

Propaganda from political appointees in government health agencies

In a Washington Times opinion piece ("Ministry of Public Enlightenment and COVID-19 fact-checking" Tuesday), Kelly Sadler quotes a virologist explaining how pandemic propaganda today mirrors Nazi propaganda: "The … leaders come in and say, ‘You have this pain, and I and I alone can solve it for you’…. The data is irrelevant."

Political propagandists--who now unfortunately seem to include political appointees in government health agencies--should not be able to survive in a society with a free press. Yet they do so because many journalists today are no more than activists with press passes, ideologues who pass along propaganda from their own party and stifle opposition from opposing parties.

How to seek truth in an era of journalistic activism

Back in the day when I studied journalism at Penn State, as far as I can recall, journalists were still expected to demonstrate some semblance of objectivity. Journalistic objectivity provided a check on politicians and government power and served the public by providing trustworthy information.

How many of us find the media reliable today? Not many, according to polling.

Over time, journalistic objectivity and fact-focus gave way to "interpreting the news for readers." This newfound power appealed to journalists' egos and sense of elitism: They could reform and advance society themselves, like "Philosopher Kings."

Meanwhile, the introduction of new technologies spurred an increase of and competition between media outlets. The pressure to grab market share accelerated a trend in journalism away from fact and evidence and toward emotion and conflict, which sell better among certain audiences.

 

What these changes leave us with today is no longer journalism but rather ideology wrapped up as news.  And if you don't recognize that fact, you will fall victim to media-fed propaganda.

 

So many journalists today are no more than activists with press passes, ideologues who see the profession not as fulfilling a duty to report the news, but as presenting an opportunity to shape the news in their own image.

 

They use their media platform to spread their ideology by killing stories that contradict their views and by rushing to rile the masses with unconfirmed stories shaped to conform to their own ideology.

 

Of course, facts are stubborn things, and courts or a barrage of undeniable evidence often expose such trumped-up narratives as shameless lies. 

 

But many journalists have no shame, and they have learned to obscure their failures by dangling the latest shiny object in front of their audiences--an emotion-grabbing storyline that stirs up division, conflict, outrage.

 

What to do? Work harder to find the truth. 

 

Instead of depending on media summaries, go to primary sources. 

• For legislative news, read the text of bills at Congress.gov. 
• For political debates, read transcripts or view the original events instead of media-selected excerpts. For public policy debates, watch events on C-SPAN. 
• For health-related news, the CDC and NIH still offer some good information, but they are headed by political appointees who can have an agenda, so check out their many critics as well.

As we do more of our own homework to get to the truth, we can still listen to media; we just have to recognize the agenda behind what we're hearing.

Why parents are revolting against school systems

 A USA article, "Moms for Liberty: An education army builds" focuses on finding funding sources for the group's modest $300,000 budget when the real story is why so many parents are doing so much with so little.

Parents are revolting against heavy-handed, ideologically driven governments that have used schools as social indoctrination vehicles and, during illogical lockdowns, turned their children into Zoom Zombies.

Weighing the interests of mother and baby

Justice Brett Kavanaugh (left) sworn in.

The Supreme Court of the United States held oral arguments on December 1 on a landmark case (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health) that challenges the infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

Mississippi's Attorney General, defending that state's law that bans abortions after 15 weeks, argued that the states and the people--not the nine justices of the Supreme Court--should decide how to handle abortion, given that the US Constitution does not enumerate a right to abortion. The abortion industry and its allies in the Biden administration leaned heavily on the legal doctrine of stare decisis, arguing that women have come to depend on Roe and therefore the precedent cannot be overturned without decimating the Court's legitimacy. Mississippi countered that following the Constitution--and responsibly correcting an error such as Roe in interpreting the Constitution--preserves rather than destroys the Court's integrity.

Want to Win an Election? Protect and Empower the People

A Washington Times article, "Democrats’ struggles in Congress sap enthusiasm for McAuliffe in Virginia," highlights President Biden's and other radical Democrats' predictable unpopularity. A new Quinnipiac poll documents this discontent and also paints a partisan divide on issues.

Republicans worry that porous borders mean drug and human trafficking and MS-13 gang invasions and also that rising prices and drunken-sailor government spending are bankrupting America. Democrats, by contrast, focus on controlling the climate, mandating masks and vaccinations and getting the government to pay for (and thus dictate) your healthcare.

Virginia gubernatorial candidates seek to energize their respective bases by exploiting these issues while sprinkling in a few more. Democrat Terry McAuliffe is pounding on the abortion industry's drum while dissing parents who try to influence their children's education. Republican Glen Youngkin promises to protect children from harm in both abortion clinics and in leftist indoctrination classrooms.

Aside from the voter turnout factor, the winner in this and other competitive races likely will be those candidates who not only energize their base but also unite partisans on existential issues: protecting our nation with a national defense strong enough to prevent China and Russia from taking over the world; protecting personal and community safety through just and fair law enforcement; and protecting the vulnerable among us with compassionate government safety nets combined with the goal of maximum personal independence and responsibility.

Such priorities are perhaps too common-sense for the alarming number of partisans who appear to have lost their senses, but for those remaining rational voters who still have ears to hear, it will prove a formula for electoral victory and effective governance.

Visited a church today but apparently made a wrong turn into a rock concert featuring a stand-up comic.

Visited a church today but apparently made a wrong turn into a rock concert featuring a stand-up comic. It seemed that the people in the warehouse-style, blackened interior building love God and are doing good works. And the church reaches many people, including many who arguably might not attend a traditional church. But in the long run, and considering the universal mission of the Church for every believer, it seems a grave mistake to shed the inheritance of millennia of Christianity and instead adopt a contemporary culture-conforming style that smacks of niche marketing (i.e., to 18-35 y-o casuals raised on videos).

Biden's catechetical dementia on Hyde

President Biden's recently released budget request to Congress reveals the self-professed Catholic's catechetical dementia regarding the sanctity of human life.

Besides squandering our children's inheritance with a reality-detached spending spree, Biden's budget also kills several longstanding life-protecting provisions he previously supported, such as the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of our taxpayer dollars for most elective abortions.

Passed every year since 1976 on a bipartisan basis and backed by a solid majority of Americans, Hyde provides that "None of the funds appropriated in this Act … shall be expended for any abortion." The amendment, long a demilitarized zone in the abortion war, provides for exceptions in the cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother.

Joe Biden's evolution from protecting to killing Hyde illustrates how a lifetime of moral compromise eventually darkens the mind and sears the soul.

Human-animal chimeras and scientists deluded by a god complex

The battle in Congress over human-animal chimera experiments highlights the gulf between communists and Democrats and Republicans on the distinctions and boundaries between humans, animals and God.

A Chinese-led research team injected human stem cells into monkey embryos and let the chimeric creature grow for 19 days before killing it. As avowed atheists, Chinese Communists do not believe that God created each of us human beings in His image, with inestimable worth incomparable to the animals He created, each "after their kind."