Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson The battle over every Supreme Court nominee illustrates how the court has become more powerful and influential than the framers ever envisioned. Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist Papers, concluded that the judiciary would probably be the least dangerous branch of government. His reasons were simple. The court lacked “the power of the executive branch and the political passions of the legislature.” The high court has much more power and is deciding more cases than the framers would…

Kerby Anderson A week ago on radio we started talking about an article that is accurately described as a regulatory game changer. In the article, Kimberley Strassel described a meeting many attorneys had with Todd Gaziano, who is a senior fellow in constitutional law at the Pacific Legal Foundation. In the meeting, he explained to the lawyers how they (and the current president) could use a bill known as the Congressional Review Act. This law can be used to roll…

Penna Dexter Ever since Ronald Reagan was in the White House, every newly-inaugurated president takes a look and decides what to do regarding something called the Mexico City Policy. President Reagan initiated the policy in 1984 at a United Nations conference in Mexico City. It prevents federal funds from going to foreign NGO’s(Non-Governmental Organizations) that perform abortions overseas. The last administration did away with the policy. In one of his early actions as President, Donald Trump reinstated it. Pro-life presidents…

Kerby Anderson As you may have heard, the Cub Scouts have been under pressure for refusing to allow an eight-year-old girl, who identifies as a boy, to join Cub Scout Pack 87 in New Jersey. This latest controversy illustrates how LGBT activists have been successful in picking off various groups and institutions. Jodi Maldonado now goes by the name Joe Maldonado and wants to be in the Cub Scouts in order to go on camping trips and be with the…

Kerby Anderson Nearly two-dozen horror films are coming out this year, and many of them involve witches. Although these films are fiction, there is unfortunately lots of information in our kid’s textbooks that are presented as fact even though they are fiction. Rodney Stark in his book, The Triumph of Christianity, says: “no historical statistics have been so outrageously inflated as the numbers of those executed as witches during the craze that took place in Europe from about 1450 to…

Kerby Anderson As the congressional debate about repealing Obamacare moves along, there will certainly be a debate about some of the facts surrounding its effectiveness and implementation. Writing for The Daily Signal, Alyene Senger lists 8 Reasons Why Obamacare Should be Repealed.  Some of the facts she cites should be part of the congressional debate. Cost is a significant concern. “According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, average family premiums for employer-sponsored plans have increased almost 32 percent from 2010-2016.” When…

Kerby Anderson Donald Trump has made some rather unorthodox picks for his cabinet. Perhaps that is to be expected in light of what he said on the campaign trail. But I still was not prepared for his decision to tap Dr. Ben Carson as his next secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Months ago I suggested to my radio audience that if Donald Trump was elected president, he would likely pick Ben Carson as Surgeon General or…

Kerby Anderson Hate crime laws have been in the news quite a bit lately. That is why it might be wise to evaluate how effective they have really been in dealing with crime. Dylan Roof was given the death penalty by jurors in the South Carolina courtroom. They would certainly have given him the same verdict even if he had not been convicted a month earlier of federal hate crime laws. Four African-American youths have already been charged for hate…

Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. These days, when a president makes an important speech, you can expect to read her insights on it in her column in the Wall Street Journal. She may offer praise or critique. But what I really look for is her discernment of the speaker’s motivations and her knack for explaining why this particular president said what he said. As President Trump delivered his inaugural address, I kept thinking that it sounded…

Kerby Anderson Children spend an enormous amount of their day with electronic media. That is what a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation was able to document. When you add together time spent with television, cell phones, video games, and computers; it essentially becomes a full-time job of more than 53 hours. Needless to say, this is a dramatic increase from over a decade ago. And nearly twice as many now say that they do at least two of…

Kerby Anderson One of the campaign promises Donald Trump made was to remove the Johnson Amendment that has limited the free speech of pastors from their pulpits. A little history is in order. When Senator Lyndon Johnson was running for reelection in 1954, he wanted to prevent outside groups from interfering in his campaign. The amendment he added back then prevents any 501(c)(3) organization from participating in any political campaign. His goal wasn’t to muzzle pastors, but this amendment has…