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Blog

West Point Cadet Tom Surdyke: Duty and Honor
Even Unto Death

July 6, 2016 by TMLC

West Point Cadet Tom Surdyke Duty and Honor Even Unto Death
As I read the recent inspiring story about the life and death of Cadet Tom Surdyke in the Wall Street Journal, I was again reminded of the inspiring character of the young men and women attending the Military Academy at West Point.
West Point Cadet Tom Surdyke, born on July Fourth nineteen years ago, was laid to rest on July 4, 2016 at West Point’s cemetery alongside his brothers in the long gray line.
Tom and two friends were swimming in Southampton, enjoying their short summer break, when a rip current pulled in Tom and one of his friends. Though Tom succeeded in keeping his friend afloat, he took in too much seawater and died a few days later. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13).
The author of the article, William McGurn, rightfully pointed out that the purpose of West Point is much higher than just producing legendary generals. He wrote, “The promise West Point makes to the American people is this: When the Army sends your child into harm’s way he will be led by officers of character and ability.”  Cadet Surdyke exemplified those qualities unto death.
My heart goes out to Tom’s family in their time of grief. Please pray for them. I urge you to read the article about Cadet Tom Surdyke and his commitment unto death to fulfill West Point’s motto: Duty, Honor, Country. He joins his brothers in the long gray line:
Grip hands – though it be from the shadows –
While we swear, as you did of yore,
Living, or dying, to honor
The corps, and the corps, and the corps.

Filed Under: Blog

TMLC Staff Show Off Their Pro-Life T-Shirts on National Pro-Life T-Shirt Day

April 22, 2016 by TMLC

TMLC staff members show their Pro-life colors in celebration of National Pro-Life T-Shirt Day by wearing their Pro-life T- shirts, designed by them, to work. They will be wearing their T-shirts throughout the day in the huge Dominos Farms Office Complex.

TMLC lawyer, Kate Oliveri, who has a Pro-life T-Shirt as well, is not shown in the photo.  She is in a Portland, Maine court today defending Pro-life Christian street minister Brian Ingalls.  Kate is wearing her T-Shirt under her business suit.

TMLC, as a co-sponsor of the event, has pledged to defend any student who is punished for participating in Pro-life T-Shirt Day.

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Filed Under: Blog

Saudi Arabia has threatened the United States. America’s Response Should Be: “Go to Hell”

April 18, 2016 by TMLC

Saudi Arabia has threatened the United States that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars worth of American assets if Congress passes a bill that would allow families of the 9/11 victims to hold Saudi Arabia legally  responsible for their role in the 9/11 attacks.

Saudi Arabia has threatened the United States. America’s Response Should Be: “Go to Hell”

The Saudi threat is economic extortion.

Our response should be swift and clear — “Go to Hell.”

Instead, the Obama administration is lobbying Congress to block passage of the bill.

It’s time that the American people know the full story of Saudi Arabia’s complicity in the 9/ 11 attacks – the most horrendous surprise attack in American history.

It’s time that the American people know exactly what our government did to protect Saudi officials residing in America from FBI investigations.  The families of the 9/11 victims have a right to know.  See New York Times article here.

It’s time the American people know how our own government intentionally covered up Saudi Arabia’s role in the 9/11 attack.  See New York Post article.

Joint Terrorism Task forces say virtually every road leads back to the Saudi Embassy in Washington as well as the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.

Yet, time and again terrorism investigators were called off.

As a first step the American government should declassify the 28 pages of the 838-page congressional report on the 9/11 attacks.

According to recent news articles, some leaked information reveals:

  • A flurry of pre-9/11 phone calls between one of the hijacker’s Saudi handlers in San Diego and the Saudi Embassy.
  • The transfer of $130,000 from Prince Bandar, the then Saudi ambassador’s, family checking account to another hijacker’s Saudi handlers in San Diego.
  • Days after 9/11, the FBI evacuated dozens of Saudi officials from multiple cities, including at least one of Osama bin Laden’s family members who was on the terror watch list.
  • According to FBI agent Mark Rossini, “The FBI was thwarted from interviewing the Saudis we wanted to interview by the White House.”

For more on the U.S. cover-up of the Saudi role in 9/11 and the threats, read:
New York Post article                                            New York Times article.  

Filed Under: Blog

We Join the Nation in Mourning the Passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

February 15, 2016 by TMLC

February 15, 2016

The Thomas More Law Center joins the nation in mourning the loss of a great American, defender of our Constitution and a devout Christian — Antonin Scalia. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Maureen, and his family. May he rest in peace. 

In a speech to the Knights of Columbus several years ago he said:

“If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.”

“God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools … and he has not been disappointed.”

Justice Scalia stayed true to his sworn duty to uphold the Constitution despite the political winds of the moment.  On many occasions he did so with provocatively expressed legal arguments which earned him the respect of political conservatives and the enmity of the liberal legal establishment.  

One of his greatest dissents was in the recent 2015 Supreme Court opinion, Obergfell v. Hodges, making same–sex marriages a constitutional right.

  • “I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy.”
 
  • “Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.”
 
  • “This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”
 
  • “This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. 
 
  • “A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.”
 
  • “[T]o allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.”
 
  • “[W]hat really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch.”
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Filed Under: Blog

A MUST READ: Dominance and Submission in Cologne and the Persian Gulf

January 27, 2016 by TMLC

A must read.  Recent events have shown us that Islam is anything but a “religion of peace.” But, it is the willingness of US politicians and world leaders to submit (grovel) to Islam in the name of political correctness that is truly galling. Our own Secretary of State thanked the Iranians for humiliating American sailors by forcing them to submit to Islamic codes. 

Below is Professor William Kilpatrick’s insightful view of the recent events between Iran and the US, as well as the events in Cologne, France. The article carefully explains how our submission to political correctness is allowing Islam to take over.

From Crisis Magazine:

Dominance and Submission in Cologne and the Persian Gulf

WILLIAM KILPATRICK

Under the Islamic dhimmi system, when Christians paid the jizya tax, they were often required to kneel before the local Muslim dignitary as a sign of submission. Sometimes the tax collector would deliver a slap to the face as an added humiliation. This was in accordance with the Koranic injunction that non-Muslims must not only pay the tax, but also “feel themselves subdued” in the process (9:29).

What is the meaning of the word “Islam” again? “Peace?” Er, no. That was what the vast majority of Americans thought it meant circa 2001. But since then, most of us, with the exception of a couple of presidents and Secretaries of State, have discovered that it actually means “submission.”

Islam is a very tolerant religion. It doesn’t require that you convert to it as long as you submit to it. All they are asking for is a little groveling. Thus, if you are a Christian living in the Ottoman Empire you kneel while you pay the eighty-percent tax, and if you’re a sailor in the U.S. Navy whose boat mysteriously falls into Iranian hands you kneel and then offer apologies for your behavior while thanking your captors for their “fantastic” hospitality. Oh, and if you’re a female sailor, all you have to do is don a hijab as a sign of respect for, and submission to, the codes of Islam.

In the meantime, be assured that your Secretary of State will back you up by offering his own profound appreciation for “the quick and appropriate response of the Iranian authorities.” At the same time, your president can be relied on not to mention the incident at all, he having made some sort of gentleman’s agreement with the Iranians which requires him to pretend that everything they do is both fantastic and appropriate.
About two weeks prior to the naval incident, the German nation was subject to another form of humiliation. On New Year’s Eve, a group of 1,000 North African and Arab men sexually assaulted women outside the main train station in Cologne. The total number of victims who were either robbed or sexually assaulted was about six hundred. Many of the women were forced to run through a gauntlet of their tormentors. Similar occurrences took place in about 17 other major European cities that night.

In a sense, this was the logical conclusion to Europe’s inability to resist other Islamic advances. European leaders had opened their borders, their welfare coffers, and their public housing to well over a million Muslim immigrants (seventy percent of whom were male) in less than a year. Coming from cultures where yielding is a proof of weakness, the Muslim invaders concluded that they could take what they wanted—both the welfare and the women.

A large part of the West’s difficulty in dealing with Islamic aggression can be traced to a massive identity crisis. Having traded its traditional identity markers for multicultural ones, the West no longer knows how to act when it is threatened. Being multicultural means being tolerant of every diversity. But if you’re tolerant of everything, the end result is that you stand for nothing.

More and more, it seems that Westerners will stand for just about any humiliation. While Muslims in madrassas are learning that they have the superior culture and the superior religion, Western students learn that no Western value is worth defending—including the traditional notion that women should be protected from rampaging males. At one time, both men and women acknowledged that there are differences between the sexes, that one of those differences is physical strength, and that, as a consequence, there are circumstances where male protection is desirable. Having dispensed with that “quaint” notion, Western societies seem to have fallen back on the notion that, given the right multicultural conditions, people will naturally behave in harmonious ways. When you put that assumption into practice, what you get, of course, is smaller, more multiculturally sensitive police forces.

According to one report, police in Cologne were unable to control events because they were “overwhelmed.” In other words, they lacked the manpower to be of much help that winter’s night. “Manpower.” It’s a curious word. Even today it would seem odd to say that a police force lacked “womanpower,” although men-only police forces are a thing of the past. Women do have various kinds of power, but it’s still understood that “manpower” and “womanpower” are not quite the same thing.

In any event, the Cologne police lacked manpower in both senses of the word. They were lacking in numbers that particular night, but even when in full force they seem to lack the instinctive masculine response that was once expected of civilized males. As I have written elsewhere, “the multiculturalist code is essentially an emasculating code. It has the effect of paralyzing the normal masculine response of coming to the protection of those in danger.”

In the case of the Cologne police and other state authorities, this lack of response would include not having the foresight to anticipate that German women would be at heightened risk once a million-man army newly arrived from misogynist cultures made its appearance. The problem is that European authorities are more committed to protecting multicultural pieties than to protecting ordinary citizens from Islamists gone wild. Thus, the initial police report of the evening’s events read: “A mood of exuberance—largely peaceful celebrations.” That’s “largely peaceful” if you don’t count the thousand marauding Muslims outside the train station and the cathedral. Anyone who follows the goings-on in Europe knows that the authorities’ top priority is to protect the sensitivities of the newcomers from the outrage of “Islamophobia.” As for the common folk, they are expected to do their best to understand the other culture and adjust to it. If they protest, the penalties can be severe. In the UK, when Tommy Robinson, the leader of the counterjihad movement in England, was jailed, it was for the horrific crime of having exaggerated his income on a mortgage application. When he arrived in prison, he was thrown into a cell containing several Muslims who brutally beat him—as the prison warders knew they would.

No doubt there are some tough fellows in the Cologne police force, but their toughness has been enlisted in the service of political correctness. When, a week after the New Year’s Eve assaults, the anti-immigration group, PEGIDA, rallied to protest the attacks, a massive force of Cologne police wearing riot gear broke up the demonstration using water cannons and pepper spray. The PEGIDA people have become used to that sort of treatment. They have been repeatedly attacked by German politicians and the German press as “extremists,” “xenophobes,” “racists,” and “Nazis.” And German police have on several occasions left them to the mercy of the brutal and usually much larger leftist or “anti-fascist” gangs.

The police and the politicians can be quite tough in enforcing multicultural codes, but their toughness is in the cause of cultural soft-headedness. That’s because multiculturalism is basically the process by which a culturally confused society surrenders itself to a more confident and aggressive culture. You can call the current conflict between Islam and the West a “clash of civilizations,” but that’s rather like describing the encounter between a sadist and a masochist as a clash. As I wrote a few years ago:

It’s difficult to conceive of a more disastrous combination of events than the simultaneous emergence on the world stage of a fiercely passionate ideology dedicated to conquering the West, and of another, dangerously naïve ideology, eager to dismantle it from within.

What the West sees as signs of tolerance and sensitivity are seen by Muslims as signs of submission and also as a validation of their belief that theirs is indeed the superior culture. Western appeasement will not garner more respect from the Muslim world, but it will bolster the jihadi recruitment campaign. After the navy crew surrendered in the Persian Gulf, an Iranian commander remarked:

I saw the weakness, cowardice, and fear of American soldiers myself… American forces receive the best training and have the most advanced weapons in the world, but they did not have the power to confront the Guard due to weakness of faith and belief.

Gestures of compliance do not convince Islamists that we are an admirable people, it only convinces them that they have the winning hand. Unless Western leaders get a better grip on the realities of Islamic culture, they will continue to set up their own citizens for one humiliation after another. The only consolation is that after a while, they may learn to adjust to their dhimmi status. When they kneel to pay the jizya, it may well be with expressions of gratitude for the “fantastic” and “appropriate” behavior of their masters.
 

Filed Under: Blog

These Young Pro-Life Christians Stranded for Hours on the Pennsylvania Turnpike Did Something Amazing

January 25, 2016 by TMLC

Friday marked the 43rd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade. Despite threats of a massive blizzard, thousands of young people participated in the March for Life in Washington D.C. 

 

On the way back home they could not escape the massive blizzard that brought traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to a standstill for over  24 hours.  Students from Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, and other Midwestern states were all stranded on their separate buses with a highway full of people in a major snow storm. 

They knew they were stuck in the storm and help was hours away. Undaunted, these young Christians gave witness for their Faith.  They “Seized the Moment” and made something beautiful and inspiring happen—A Mass on the Turnpike.   

According to news and social media reports:

The students used the opportunity to minister to others, they welcomed strangers onto their buses – travelers who were stranded or who had run out of gas and needed warmth or food. The students offered people water and a place to sleep. They helped clean off strangers’ cars.

And then: they prayed.


Saturday morning, as the snow continued to fall, and the snowplows were still hours away, they did something extraordinary. A group of kids poured out of the buses and began gathering the snow and ice outside.

They made an altar. Out of snow. Then they took tree branches and made a cross. They set up a sound system to play music, and then priests pulled on their vestments. Chaperons opened umbrellas to shelter them, and they stood on a hill along the side of the turnpike, the wind howling and the snow still falling, and there they all celebrated Mass together – hundreds of them, in parkas and scarves and snow boots, joined together.

Anyone who saw that gathering of young people saw something beautiful.
Anyone who worries about the future need only to see these young people proclaiming their faith and living it out loud.

H/T Deacon Greg Kandra 

Filed Under: Blog

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