The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has a new chairman, and for the first time, the position will be held by a Catholic priest.
Jesuit priest Father Thomas Reese was first appointed to a two-year term as a member of the commission by President Barack Obama in 2014, and re-appointed in 2016.
Now he will take over as the chair of the organization, an independent, bipartisan commission that monitors and reviews religious freedom violations around the world, and makes policy recommendations to the Secretary of State, Congress and the president. Continue reading…
Category: USA speak as a dragon
Obama Invites 18.7 Million Immigrants to Avoid Oath of Allegiance, Pledge to Defend America
It’s not only illegal aliens who are escaping enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws.
Under the Obama administration’s expansive interpretation of executive authority, legal immigrants seeking citizenship through the nation’s Naturalization process are now exempt from a key part of the Oath of Allegiance. Continue reading…
Are Christians Looking for a Political ‘Savior’ in a President?
Evangelicals are an important voting block in most elections. However, in the 2016 Presidential race, their vote may be more critical than ever. So, they are being courted – especially by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
One thought up for debate after Trump’s meeting with evangelical leaders this week is whether or not Christians are out of focus when it comes to expecting spiritual leadership from whoever occupies the White House. Continue reading…
The New Censorship
Google, Inc., isn’t just the world’s biggest purveyor of information; it is also the world’s biggest censor.
The company maintains at least nine different blacklists that impact our lives, generally without input or authority from any outside advisory group, industry association or government agency. Google is not the only company suppressing content on the internet. Reddit has frequently been accused of banning postings on specific topics, and a recent report suggests that Facebook has been deleting conservative news stories from its newsfeed, a practice that might have a significant effect on public opinion – even on voting. Google, though, is currently the biggest bully on the block. Continue reading…
Goodbye, password. Banks opt to scan fingers and faces instead
The banking password may be about to expire — forever.
Some of the nation’s largest banks, acknowledging that traditional passwords are either too cumbersome or no longer secure, are increasingly using fingerprints, facial scans and other types of biometrics to safeguard accounts.
Millions of customers at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo routinely use fingerprints to log into their bank accounts through their mobile phones. This feature, which some of the largest banks have introduced in the last few months, is enabling a huge share of American banking customers to verify their identities with biometrics. And millions more are expected to opt in as more phones incorporate fingerprint scans. Continue reading…
New rule lets feds hack your computer anywhere, anytime
A proposal that Washington bureaucrats be given nearly unfettered permission to hack into private computers, which WND reported earlier was being described as the ultimate “Big Brother” move, is drawing strong opposition from privacy activists and members of Congress.
“We’re in the midst right now of one of the biggest battles in the privacy world that we have faced,” said U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, on a website mobilizing opposition. “If we keep down this path, we’re going to wake up in a few years in George Orwell’s 1984. This is why, as we fight for security, any intrusion on privacy needs to be narrowly tailored and aggressively overseen.” Continue reading…
What to Expect When Trump Meets 900 Evangelical Leaders Tuesday
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tosses off his overcoat as he speaks at a campaign event in an airplane hangar in Rome, New York April 12, 2016.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s closed-door meeting Tuesday with 900 top evangelical and social conservative leaders will be a time of questions and answers on issues such as the Supreme Court, sanctity of life and religious freedom, according to an organizer, who said a similar meeting is being discussed also with Trump’s rival Hillary Clinton.
“Of the more than 50,000 questions that came in, many of them focused on those three issues. Others focused on issues related to leadership, national security, and faith,” Johnnie Moore, the spokesperson for My Faith Votes, a non-partisan organization focused on engaging the 25 million Christians who did not vote in 2012 and one of the two groups behind the meeting, told The Christian Post. Continue reading…
Creepy startup will help landlords, employers and online dates strip-mine intimate data from your Facebook page
There’s a scene in the dystopian scifi novel “Ready Player One” in which the protagonist glimpses the dossier of personal information a major tech company has gathered on him. It includes his height and weight, his browser history, his address — even several years of his school transcripts.
We’re still several years away from that vision, thankfully, but a new British startup called Score Assured has taken a big step in that direction: The company wants to, in the words of co-founder Steve Thornhill, “take a deep dive into private social media profiles” and sell what it finds there to everyone from prospective dates to employers and landlords. Continue reading…
NSA surveillance extends to biomedical implants including pacemakers to collect data on unsuspecting Americans
Maybe it’s something in the water at the National Security Agency, but for some reason, officials there just can’t seem to get enough of spying on us by continually expanding their surveillance dragnet.
As reported by The New American, the agency is now looking into possibly stealing data from Internet-connected biomedical devices like pacemakers, according to the NSA’s deputy director, Richard Ledgett. Continue reading…
Bill Clinton: America is most powerful when we work together
The author is the 42nd president of the United States. 
Earlier this week, nearly 1,000 leaders representing businesses, labor unions, foundations, community groups, and government at every level spent three days together in Atlanta, Georgia. Out of their wide variety of priorities and political beliefs they discovered shared interests and initiated projects to drive growth and create good jobs across America.
All of this progress took place at the sixth annual Clinton Global Initiative America meeting. CGI America began with the idea that, for all our interesting differences, we Americans still have much more in common and can accomplish much more for our country by working together than by knocking each other down. Continue reading…