NCRenegade

https://apnews.com/681a7a4bb8f38e83c3d2e2fb0f7ccf01

“RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Fearing a repeat of the deadly violence that engulfed Charlottesville more than two years ago, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam plans to declare a temporary emergency Wednesday banning all weapons, including guns, from Capitol Square ahead of a massive rally planned next week over gun rights. 

That’s according to two state officials who were briefed on the plans but not authorized to speak publicly about them. The governor, a Democrat, plans to announce the plans at a news conference Wednesday afternoon because of credible threats of potential violence and extremism, one official said.” 

“Northam’s declaration will also ban items like helmets and shields, items that some white nationalists carried in Charlottesville” 

The Freeness of Grace
By John Piper

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4–6) 

The decisive act of God in conversion is that he “made us alive together with Christ” even when “we were dead in our trespasses.” In other words, we were dead to God. We were unresponsive; we had no true spiritual taste or interest; we had no spiritual eyes for the beauties of Christ; we were simply dead to all that ultimately matters.

Then God acted — unconditionally — before we could do anything to be fit vessels of his presence. He made us alive. He sovereignly awakened us from the sleep of spiritual death, to see the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4). The spiritual senses that were dead, miraculously came to life.

Ephesians 2:4 says that this was an act of “mercy.” That is, God saw us in our deadness and pitied us. God saw the terrible wages of sin leading to eternal death and misery. “God, being rich in mercy . . . made us alive.” And the riches of his mercy overflowed to us in our need. But what is so remarkable about this text is that Paul breaks the flow of his own sentence in order to insert, “by grace you have been saved.” “God . . . made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him.”

Paul is going to say this again in verse 8. So why does he break the flow of his own sentence in order to add it here? What’s more, the focus is on God’s mercyresponding to our miserable plight of deadness; so why does Paul go out of his way to say that it is also by grace that we are saved?

I think the answer is that Paul recognizes that here is a perfect opportunity to emphasize the freeness of grace. As he describes our dead condition before conversion, he realizes that dead people can’t meet conditions. If they are to live, there must be a totally unconditional and utterly free act of God to save them. This freedom is the very heart of grace.

What act could be more one-sidedly free and non-negotiated than one person raising another from the dead! This is the meaning of grace.

Text of the Bill Here…

One of the needs for society is to make sure that parents are assuming financial responsibility for their children. The use of surrogates and test tube fertilized eggs should give us all cause to pause.  The desire of those born without genetic endowments as females to have children at the public’s expense should also be questioned.   True paternity needs to be touted not avoided.  Unless a father steps forward in a male/female union to acknowledge paternity for his child, the courts should mandate paternity for all reported births. 

Paternity/Maternity/Parental legal responsibility should be done before any governmental support is awarded.

Surprisingly, the liable party is not always evident as Jerry Springer, Judge Faith and other television pandering shows reveal.   The road to socialism is cluttered with thousands of children whose parents have abandoned their accountability for their progeny feeling it is okay to have as many children as they want whether or not they support them.   The Kardashians, as well as many facets of the sports and entertainment industries with an ample assist from the media, glamorize the lifestyles of the rich and fertile revealing multiple children by many different partners as if this is or should be the norm. This is closely followed by those believing it is the government’s job to support them, their desire to have children, and their children in a lifestyle they wish whether or not they are contributing meaningfully to such. And don’t forget the millions of children in the child sex abuse pipeline peddled and sold for the pleasure of others.

In the domestic courts it is still sickening to see the numbers of men who have abandoned their responsibility to their offspring in neither wanting to give them their name or help feed and care for their children.  Run away dads still remain an epidemic compounded by the lack of due consideration of men in custody hearings.

The rising numbers of mothers desiring to have a child without a partner fails to appreciate the financial burden and physical and mental toil such can cause.  On the other hand are those who don’t want children or who want to control their own fertility thinking abortion as a right should be a no harm no foul situation?  The cause of Reproductive Rights can quickly be diminished by evidence of reproductive wrongs from such undertakings understanding that women alone should not bear the responsibility for continuing the race. 

It is ironic that in a population extolling the fact that black lives matter, reports now point to the fact that there are more black babies aborted than born.  It should also not be lost on people of color that a part of the Bernie Sanders 2020 Environmental Platform is his position that population control must start with the poorest of the poor in other nations and likely here while industrialized nations exploit natural resources, buy extravagant gas guzzlers, dine high on the food chain and increasingly put global welfare at risk.  This and the CRISPr move to designer babies says eugenics here we go again.

The freedom to choose whether or not to have children does not begin at conception but represents a leap to responsible thinking about future choices for self and nations.  The projection of a pending 11 billion person global burden can’t be ignored.  It is past time we quit thinking that children are a right when our biologic clocks quit ticking or blood lines diminish to near family ancestoral extinction. 

It is not okay to spend other people’s money just because we believe we are due a thing out of fairness or it’s our turn to have all the children we want without appreciating the problems being created.

Ada M. Fisher, MD, MPH is a licensed teacher, retired physician, former county school board member, speaker, author of Common Sense Conservative Prescriptions Good for What Ails Us Book 1 (available through Amazon. Com) and is the NC Republican National Committeewoman.

An update on the issue concerning comments on this site.

I have reviewed the settings in the WordPress plugin and they are correct. Comments are still going to the trash folder for no reason but we are checking and restoring them frequently. This morning, I “restored” a trashed comment to be approved and it was deleted.

As with the daily newsfeed where links are replaced with porn site links, this is just another means to marginalize this site. In other words, we must be doing something right.

David DeGerolamo

The Window of the Heart
By John Piper

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.(Hebrews 12:3)

One of the most remarkable capacities of the human mind is the capacity to direct its own attention to something it chooses. We can pause and say to our minds, “Think about this, and not that.” We can focus our attention on an idea or a picture or a problem or a hope.

It is an amazing power. I doubt that animals have it. They are probably not self-reflective, but rather governed by impulse and instinct.

Have you been neglecting this great weapon in the arsenal of your war against sin? The Bible calls us again and again to use this remarkable gift. Let’s take this gift off the shelf, and dust it off, and put it to use.

For example, Paul says in Romans 8:5–6, “Those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace” (my translation).

This is stunning. What you set your mind on determines whether the issue is life or death.

Many of us have become far too passive in our pursuit of change and wholeness and peace. I have the feeling that in our therapeutic age we have fallen into the passive mindset of simply “talking through our problems” or “dealing with our issues” or “discovering the roots of our brokenness in our family of origin.”

But I see a much more aggressive, non-passive approach to change in the New Testament. Namely, set your mind. “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2).

Our emotions are governed in large measure by what we consider — what we dwell on with our minds. For example, Jesus told us to overcome the emotion of anxiety by what we consider: “Consider the ravens. . . . Consider the lilies” (Luke 12:24, 27).

The mind is the window of the heart. If we let our minds constantly dwell on the dark, the heart will feel dark. But if we open the window of our mind to the light, the heart will feel the light.

Above all, this great capacity of our minds to focus and consider is meant for considering Jesus (Hebrews 12:3). So, let’s do this: “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”

None of us has a crystal ball and predicting what is likely to occur in the future is always a crapshoot. When the smoke clears, the lucky ones who got it right can lay claim to “I told you so” prescience. The ones who missed the mark will end up looking like doomsday preachers with bewildered flocks gathered on the hilltop wondering why the skies failed to part and whisk them to their reward. At most, we can assess probabilities, and even those presuppose that’s not being done through the lens of confirmation bias, and that the data being evaluated is reasonably reliant and complete. Those familiar with computer science will recognize the venerable acronym and truism from the 1960s, “GIGO”: Garbage in, garbage out.”

So, what’s going to happen on Monday, January 20, “Lobby Day” at the Virginia State Capitol, when gun owner rights advocates will converge to express their fears, frustrations and concerns to legislators, many of whom are in the throes of the eye-rolling, anti-gun feeding frenzy the new Democrat majority is indulging in? And the question on everyone’s mind: Will it turn into, as some are warning, a “flash point” for a new “shot heard ‘round the world”?

If it does, here’s one prediction you can take to the bank: Those shots will not be initiated by anyone who is there to support the purpose of the day, that is, to lobby. Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) has been conducting such lobby days for years, and that’s never been a problem for “our side.” (By way of full disclosure, in 2015, I was an invited speaker for the event.)

Hindsight being 20/20, it was also predictable that those deciding to attend the event for the first time would demand to repurpose it, and to attack the longtime organizers for their request to leave the long guns at home. It’s not, as some hotheads who have never put a shoulder to the wheel charge, of the organizers being “pussies.”

“Monday, January 20, is Virginia Citizens Defense League’s Lobby Day. It is not VCDL’s Protest Day,” VCDL explains. “There is a distinct difference between the two.”

Please Read the whole Article Here…

By Publius Huldah
From the earliest days of our Republic, 1 some years before our federal Constitution of 1787 was ratified; 2 the Citizens of the States determined the qualifications for voting, and memorialized these qualifications in their State Constitutions. In keeping with this hallowed practice, the Citizens of North Carolina recently amended Article VI of their State Constitution to add to the Qualifications for voting the requirement that persons voting in person present a photo ID.
But lawsuits have been filed in federal court objecting to the photo ID’s; and the judge on one of them, U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs [Mid. Dist. North Carolina], has announced that she will issue a preliminary injunction against the requirement that voters present a photo ID. North Carolina election officials scurried to comply with Judge Biggs’ announcement; and Republican politicians called for an appeal.
The purpose of this paper is to show a better way to proceed – to show how North Carolina can enforce the US Constitution and the qualifications for voting set forth in its State Constitution.
We begin by looking at what our federal Constitution says about qualifications of voters.

1. Our federal Constitution enshrines the pre-existing practice
   where States set the qualifications for voters

In our federal Constitution of 1787, the States expressly retained their pre-existing power to determine the qualifications of voters: Article I, §2, cl. 1, US Constit., says,
“The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.” [italics added]
So! Under our federal Constitution, those who are eligible to vote for Representatives to their State Legislature are, by definition, the ones eligible to vote for Members of the federal House of Representatives.
The 17th Amendment [ratified 1913] provided that those who were eligible to vote for Representatives to the US House would also be eligible to vote for the US Senators.
With four later amendments, the States decided that they would not deny eligibility to vote to Citizens on account of race (15th Amendment), sex (19th Amendment), failure to pay taxes (24th Amendment), and for those 18 years of age or older on account of age (26th Amendment).
So the States have retained their original authority to set whatever qualifications for voting they deem appropriate, subject to their agreement (with each other) that they would not deny suffrage on account of a Citizen’s being in one of those four categories.

1. Voting fraud
   But today, we all know that, due to the federal government’s long continuing refusal 3 to control immigration 4 and protect the States from Invasion,5 illegal aliens are flooding into our Country. In at least 15 States, illegals may get drivers’ licenses; and with California’s “motor voter law”, illegals are automatically registered to vote when they get a drivers’ license! 6
   Furthermore, there are Precincts in this Country where well over 100% of the registered voters turn out to vote! This Georgia Precinct had a 243% voter turnout!
   Our elections are also corrupted by the “ghost voters” described in Deroy Murdock’s article. Murdock shows that throughout the United States, over 3.5 million persons who don’t exist are registered to vote. For North Carolina, Murdock finds 189,721 ghost voters. Virginia has 89,979 ghost voters. But that’s a pittance compared to California which “is a veritable haunted house, teeming with 1,736,556 ghost voters.”
   When you add California’s 1,736,556 ghost voters to the illegal aliens who also vote there (thanks to “Motor Voter”)7 and understand that this problem is nation-wide; who can deny that the States need to man-up and clean up their corrupt voting systems? The federal government has no constitutional authority to clean up the voting rolls; 8 but the States have the inherent and retained duty and power to do so.
   By requiring photo IDs, the Citizens of North Carolina have taken a first step towards getting rid of some of those 189,721 ghosts, plus the illegals, who corrupt elections within their State.
2. The Federal Government has usurped the States’ expressly retained power
   to set qualifications for Voters
   In 1993, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) [link], wherein they unlawfully seized power to dictate voter registration procedures (for federal elections) for the entire Country.
   By dictating the registration procedures each State must use, and by mandating the voter registration form [the “federal form”] each State must use when registering voters; the NVRA stripped the States of their power to determine whether voters in their State meet the qualifications for voting set forth within their State Constitutions. It thus prohibits the States from enforcing the qualifications for voting set forth in their State Constitutions! 9
   This is shown by what happened in Arizona:
   The Constitution of the State of Arizona restricts voting to Citizens. During 2004, the People of Arizona (which had been overrun with illegal aliens) adopted an initiative (Proposition 200) which required those in Arizona who apply to register to vote, to provide documentary proof of citizenship. But a lawsuit was filed in federal court; and the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that since the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 doesn’t require applicants for voter registration to provide documentary proof of citizenship, the States may not require it.
   Thereafter, in Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc. (2013), the US Supreme Court affirmed the Ninth Circuit’s opinion.
   I wrote about the Ninth Circuit’s opinion and the Supreme Court’s opinion . Both opinions are monuments to judicial incompetence – or worse. The assertions made by the Courts in their attempts to justify their unconstitutional judgments are demonstratively false. The majority opinion of the Supreme Court is also logically incoherent.
   But here we are: The Supreme Court has held that since the federally mandated voter registration form doesn’t require that persons registering to vote provide proof of citizenship, the States may not require it. What this means, in practice, is that the States must register anyone who fills out the federal form.
3. So where does this leave North Carolina?
   The federal voter registration form may be seen (in 15 different languages).
   The federal form doesn’t require applicants for registration to provide a photo ID. Therefore, consistent with Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., North Carolina may not require applicants for registration to provide a photo ID.
   May North Carolina require voters to present a photo ID when they show up to vote? The Supreme Court hasn’t directly addressed this; 10 but consider that since the federal government requires the States to register anyone who fills out the federal form, why would the feds permit the States to deny exercise of the suffrage to any name which is “registered”?
   We already know how U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs is going to rule – and her ruling is consistent with the Supreme Court’s lawless holding in Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc.
4. Are There any Men in North Carolina?
   The 7th paragraph of our Declaration of Independence recites how the Colonists opposed with manly firmness the King’s invasions on the rights of the people.

Are there any politicians in North Carolina today who will oppose the federal government’s invasions on the rights of the Citizens of North Carolina to set and enforce requirements for voting within their State?
A State Attorney General with brains and a spine would inform the federal judge that North Carolina won’t participate in the litigation; that she may issue all the Orders and Judgments she wants – North Carolina will ignore them – because (if she obeys the Supreme Court instead of the federal and State Constitutions) her Orders and Judgments will be void as in violation of Article I, §2, clause 1, US Constitution; and as in violation of the Sovereign Rights of North Carolina to enforce their own Constitution respecting voter qualifications.
What could a federal judge do about such a principled response from North Carolina? She has no Army. She has no power to enforce her judgments. She has to depend on the Executive Branch of the Federal government to enforce her judgments.11
So we would find out whether Trump actually means it when he says he wants honest elections, or whether he is just another fake “conservative”. If he is a fake, he will send in the National Guard to enforce the Judge’s unconstitutional judgment. But if Trump lives up to his words about the need for honest elections [link]; then he will refuse to send in the National Guard to enforce the unconstitutional Judgment; and North Carolina will have won the Battle and set a noble example for other States to follow.

1. Conclusion
   The Deep State which controls the federal government doesn’t want elections cleaned up – they need dirty elections to get their henchmen in office. So they have embarked upon a course of action (such as the NVRA) to try to prevent the States from cleaning up elections. So, for Heaven’s Sake! Man up and resist! Our Framers always advised the States to resist unconstitutional acts of the federal government [link] [link]! We will never get honest elections unless the States man up and reclaim their rightful authority over their own voter rolls. Do it before you lose the political power to do it.
   Endnotes:
   1 From 1778 to 1789, we operated under our first federal Constitution, the Articles of Confederation.
   2 Our present federal Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788.
   3 Both political parties have embraced the Globalists’ open borders policy – both parties have failed to secure our Borders.
   4 Art. I, §9, cl. 1, US Constit., delegates to Congress as of January 1, 1808, the power to control immigration.
   5Art. IV, §4, US Constit., requires the federal government to protect each of the States against Invasion.
   6 During 2013, California passed a law which permits illegal aliens to get drivers’ licenses [link]; and during 2015, consistent with the unconstitutional National Voter Registration Act, passed “Motor Voter” providing that when one gets a drivers’ license, one is automatically registered to vote.
   7 So with a “National Popular Vote” for President, or to ratify a new Constitution (if the mode of ratification for the new Constitution is a national referendum), it would be easy to steal the outcome! Illegal aliens and “ghost voters” in California alone would determine the outcome for the entire Country.
   8 President Trump’s Executive Order 13799 of May 11, 2017, which purported to establish a “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity”, is unconstitutional as outside the scope of powers delegated to the federal government.
   9 Justice Thomas understands this: Until the federal government usurped power over this issue, the States always determined their own procedures for registration of those who were, pursuant to their State Constitution, qualified to vote. The function of registration of voters is so that the States may determine whether the qualifications for voting set forth in their State Constitution have been met! Justice Thomas points out in his dissent in Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc. at II. A. 2:
   “This understanding of Article I, §2, is consistent with powers enjoyed by the States at the founding. For instance, ownership of real or personal property was a common prerequisite to voting … To verify that this qualification was satisfied, States might look to proof of tax payments… In other instances, States relied on personal knowledge of fellow citizens to verify voter eligibility. . . States have always had the power to ensure that only those qualified under state law to cast ballots exercised the franchise.
   Perhaps in part because many requirements (such as property ownership or taxpayer status) were independently documented and verifiable, States in 1789 did not generally “register” voters . . . Over time, States replaced their informal systems for determining eligibility, with more formalized pre-voting registration regimes. . . But modern voter registration serves the same basic purpose as the practices used by States in the Colonies and early Federal Republic. The fact that States have liberalized voting qualifications and streamlined the verification process through registration does not alter the basic fact that States possess broad authority to set voter qualifications and to verify that they are met.”
   10 In the Supreme Court’s majority opinion, Scalia mentioned (4th para down from top) that Arizona’s Proposition 200 also required voters “to present identification when they vote on election day”; but he did not grace us with an answer as to whether States may require voters to prove that they are who they say they are when they show up to vote.
   11 As Alexander Hamilton points out in Federalist No. 78, the Judicial Branch is the weakest branch. All they can do is issue orders and judgments – they can’t enforce their orders and judgments. They must rely on the Executive Branch to carry them out:
   “… the judiciary… will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” [caps are Hamilton’s]

The Command That Creates
By John Piper

Anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14)

When Jesus commanded Lazarus to rise from the dead, how did he obey that command? John 11:43 says, “He [Jesus] cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out.’” That was a command to a dead man. The next verse says, “The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips” (John 11:44).

How did Lazarus do that? How does a dead man obey a command to live again? The answer seems to be: The command carries the power to create new life. Obedience to the command means doing what living people do.

This is extremely important. The command of God, “Rise from the dead!” carries in it the power we need to obey it. We do not obey it by creating that life. We obey it by doing what living people do — Lazarus came forth. He rose. He walked out to Jesus. The call of God creates life. We respond in the power of what the call creates.

In Ephesians 5:14, Paul says, “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” How do you obey a command to wake up from sleep? If your house has poisonous carbon monoxide in it, and someone cries out, “Wake up! Save yourself! Get out!” you don’t obey by waking yourself up. The loud, powerful command itself wakes you up. You obey by doing what wakeful people do in the face of danger. You get up and leave the house. The call creates the waking. You respond in the power of what the call created — wakefulness.

I believe this is the explanation for why the Bible says paradoxical things about new birth; namely, that we must get ourselves new hearts, but that it is God who creates the new heart. For example:

Deuteronomy 10:16: “Circumcise your heart!”
Deuteronomy 30:6: “The Lord will circumcise your heart.”

Ezekiel 18:31: “Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!”
Ezekiel 36:26: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.”

John 3:7: “You must be born again.”
1 Peter 1:3: “God caused us to be born again.”

The way to obey the command to be born is to first experience the divine gift of life and breath, and then to do what living, breathing people do: cry out to God in faith and gratitude and love. When the command of God comes with the creating, converting power of the Holy Spirit, it gives life. And we believe and rejoice and obey.