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.

Jimmy Meeks has been a retired police officer for 35 years and a minister for over 44. He has served as a Hostage Negotiator, School Resource Officer, Detective, and Crime Prevention Officer. In May of 2009 he began to host church safety seminars, and since then he has conducted almost 100 such seminars across the United States. He and his wife were married at the First Baptist Church in Daingerfield, Texas, the sight of the 1980 first church massacre, wherein 15 worshipers were shot - 5 killed. Jimmy served as a production assistant in the award-winning docudrama about the Dangerfield, Texas shooting: Faith Under Fire. In his seminars Jimmy has attempted to make churches aware of the ever growing problem of violence at churches and faith based property. He and his wife of 40 years, Julie, have 5 daughters and one son.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has granted a request for an administrative stay to the NFL Players Association on behalf of Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott.

The decision means Elliott's six-game suspension is on hold once again and he is preparing to play Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs. The 2nd Circuit said its brief order does not constitute a resolution on the merits of the court case.

A panel of federal judges will convene next week to hear Elliott's request for an injunction that overturns Judge Katherine Polk Failla's ruling from Monday.

Elliott could still start serving the suspension as early as next week if the ruling is not in his favor.

(CNN)The man accused of killing eight people after driving a truck onto a New York bike path is a "soldier of the caliphate," the ISIS terror group said without providing evidence to back up its claim.

"One of the Islamic State soldiers in America attacked on Tuesday a number of crusaders on a street in New York City," the group's weekly al-Naba newspaper reported Thursday.

ISIS provided no evidence it had knowledge ahead of Tuesday's attack in Lower Manhattan or was involved in planning. ISIS did not claim direct responsibility, and the article did not give a name for the attacker.

Responding to the claim Friday morning in a series of tweets, President Donald Trump called the New York terrorism suspect a "Degenerate Animal" and said the US military had attacked ISIS "much harder" over the past two days.

"ISIS just claimed the Degenerate Animal who killed, and so badly wounded, the wonderful people on the West Side, was 'their soldier,' " he tweeted.

Though barely a drop in the budgetary bucket, it’s one of the best pro-life policies the government maintains.

Adoption is hard. If you’ve adopted a child, you know. If your close friends or family members have adopted a child, you know. The most marvelous result — an orphaned, abandoned, or abused child finding a home — is typically preceded by years of uncertainty, red tape, and staggering expense.

You can work through bureaucracies for months, only to have a judge change his mind at the last instant. You can patiently and faithfully care for a birth mother, and she can exercise her proper and unquestioned right to keep the baby. You can work through foreign countries only to have a nation change its laws and slam the door in your face. To meet an adoptive family is to meet a family with a story — one that often involves prevailing in the face of adversity and almost always involves financial strains that few other families understand.

This much is certain: Neither of them is in good health.

For all the obvious reasons, the Republican party gets most of the attention these days. For starters, it controls the White House, the Senate, and the House, and the party in power always warrants more scrutiny, even when it’s operating smoothly. Of course, that’s not happening.

The GOP is running as smoothly as a dry Slip ’N Slide made from sandpaper. That the party is as dysfunctional as the human-resources department at the Weinstein Company stems from a host of ideological, political, and structural problems that are only compounded by the fact that the president grabs the public’s attention like a spider monkey running through a church with a lit stick of dynamite.