Oliver North is a combat decorated U.S. Marine, a #1 NYT best-selling author, founder of a small business and holder of three U.S. patents. For seventeen years he was the award-winning Host of “War Stories” on FOX News Channel. In May 2018, he retired from FOX News to serve as the 66th president of the NRA.

Mr. Shackelford is a constitutional scholar who has argued before the United States Supreme Court, testified before the U.S. House and Senate on constitutional issues, and has won three state landmark First Amendment and religious liberty cases in the past few years alone. He was recently named one of the 25 greatest Texas lawyers of the past quarter-century by Texas Lawyer, and is the recipient of the prestigious William Bentley Ball Award for Life and Religious Freedom Defense for his leadership and pioneering work protecting religious freedom.

Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, a research-based, public policy “think tank.” He is a health policy expert and weekly contributor at Forbes.com. He also serves as Vice Chairman of the Texas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Dr. Matthews is a past president of the Health Economics Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics, the largest trade association of business economists. Dr. Matthews also served for 10 years as the medical ethicist for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board for Human Experimentation, and has contributed chapters to several books, including Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate and The 21st Century Health Care Leader and, in 2009, Stop Paying the Crooks (on Medicare fraud).

He has been published in numerous journals and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Barron’s, USA Today, Forbes magazine and the Washington Times. He was an award-winning political analyst for the USA Radio Network.

Dr. Matthews received his Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Texas.

As the 2020 presidential elections rapidly approach, many pastors are asking, “what are my rights when it comes to addressing political issues?”

Many believe that political issues and the pulpit may never converge. In a four-minute video, Kelly Shackelford, First Liberty President and CEO, explains why this is simply not the case.

“There are a lot of misconceptions that pastors have about what their rights and freedoms really are,” Shackelford says, adding that many fear legal ramifications if they mention or participate in politics.

“That fear is not coming because of the law, it’s coming from other sources that would try to silence you,” Kelly continues.

By: Lacey McNiel - firstliberty.org - February 10, 2020 Today, First Liberty Institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court of the United States to protect the right of religious schools to decide who teaches ...

On Thursday, Indiana governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) into law, and some celebrities, politicians, and journalists--including Miley Cyrus, Ashton Kutcher, and Hillary Clinton, just to name a few--are absolutely outraged. They ...

By: Merrill Matthews - ipi.org - February 11, 2020 President Donald Trump has released his budget proposal for 2021, and we have managed to come up with two, somewhat lukewarm cheers. First cheer. The budget at ...

By: Merrill Matthews - ipi.org - February 5, 2020 If you want another striking example of the Democratic presidential candidates’ blatant hypocrisy, look no further than their use of private jets. I have no problem ...

By: Victor Davis Hanson - townhall.com - February 13, 2020 All political parties and candidates have bad days. But the new progressive Democratic Party had four of its worst days in recent memory in a single week ...

By: William Marshall - townhall.com - February 13, 2020 Here is my 2020 election prediction: Donald Trump will defeat any of the dystopian-minded candidates proffered by the Democratic Party as their nominee in the 2020 presidential election ...