Good Reads 02/24/18

What I’ve Been Reading, Listening to, and Watching this Week

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

What Jonathan Edwards says: “O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. … The wrath of the great King of kings, is as much more terrible than [kings of this world], as his majesty is greater. “And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that, have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom you shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell: yea, I say unto you, Fear him. (Luke 12:4-5)”

My Take: I’ve always wanted to listen to this, the most famous sermon delivered in North America by the greatest North American theologian. I was able to do so this week. All I can say is that I am very grateful for the grace of God through the saving work of Jesus Christ.

More Voter Fraud Arrests in South Texas

What Erin Anderson (Empower Texans) Says: “South Texas authorities arrested four people Tuesday for illegally voting in elections in 2016. Robert Caples, commander of Starr County’s Special Crimes Unit, said Rigoberto Vela, Oscar Ivan Peña, Reynaldo Moreno, and Rogelio Garcia are accused of casting ballots while on felony probation. All four were charged with illegal voting, a second-degree felony. … The arrests are part of a broader voter fraud investigation that is ongoing in Starr County, initiated by District Attorney Omar Escobar.”

My Take: Most people don’t pay too much attention to voter fraud. But it is far more widespread and affects the outcomes of far many more elections than people imagine. As the fraudulent investigation of President Trump shows, even the FBI and Department of Justice are willing to go to great ends to overturn the will of the voters–at least when the voters reject liberalism. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that progressives in Texas are seeking to commit voter fraud.

Legality of Electoral College process challenged in San Antonio, elsewhere

What Guillermo Contreras and Allie Morris (San Antonio Express-News) Say: “In a rare move, the constitutionality of the country’s Electoral College process is being challenged in lawsuits filed Wednesday in four states, including Texas. … The suits challenge the winner-take-all method that states use to allocate their Electoral College votes. The Texas suit was filed in federal court in San Antonio. If successful, the suits could change the way the country selects its president. ‘By magnifying the impact of some votes and disregarding others, the winner-take-all system is not only undemocratic, but it also violates the Constitutional rights of free association, political expression, and equal protection under the law,’ LULAC and Boies said in a joint statement. ‘These suits aim to restore those rights nationwide.’”

My Take: One of the main problems with this country is that judges and justices all of a sudden discover that something we’ve been doing for 100, 150, 200 years or more is unconstitutional. Despite the fact that the Founders of our country and generations of judges and justices before them looked at the same constitution and couldn’t find anything wrong. Or the opposite case, when judges find some right in the constitution that no one ever saw before; Roe v. Wade, etc. Christians should ask God that if it is His will that He would make the United States of America into a God-fearing nation by bringing repentance into the hearts of judges, justices, politicians, and all Americans. For without this, we have no hope. Only faith in the One True Living God will save this nation.

A Total Failure of the State

What Mark Steyn Says: “During Wednesday’s horrible fiasco of a “Town Hall”, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel spelled it out: “What I’m asking the law makers to give police all over this country is more power.” I was sufficiently struck by the above to write it down – because it was clear even then that Sheriff Israel is an incompetent deployer of the power he already has. The scale of his department’s appalling failure in the Parkland massacre gets worse almost hourly. I was on air with Tucker Carlson when I heard that Stoneman Douglas High’s on-site “school resource officer” – Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson, uniformed, trained and armed – had declined to enter the building and had stayed safely outside until Nikolas Cruz had finished killing everybody. After a day on suspension without pay, Deputy Peterson has now ‘retired’, which assuredly comes with pay. But, as I said, it gets worse. Three of his fellow deputies, from Sheriff Israel’s department, then showed up at the school and also decided not to enter the building but to remain crouched behind their vehicles until the shooting had stopped.”

My Take: There has always been a tension in police work between protecting the public and protecting police officers. Given the nature of the job the scales should tilt to the side of protecting the public. However, in recent years, the scales seem to be tilting the other way. This is especially apparent when it comes to SWAT teams. In previous times, when a criminal was in a building committing a crime, patrolmen typically went in to stop them. Now, they tend to wait until the SWAT team arrives with overwhelming force. SWAT teams are also being used in non-crime situations; for instance, to serve search warrants on unarmed single women in bed and families with children. Certainly, the police are safer in such situations. But often the public is not. Sheriff Scott Israel has said that there was “no policy violation apparent” in the Florida shooting. Which means that the four deputies who showed up and didn’t enter the building were following their training. So it could be that police today, at least in Broward County, are being trained in such a way to make the citizens they are supposed to protect more likely to die.