Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

Photo by Tamirlan Maratov on Unsplash

On a normal day, Joseph Hackett would be seeing clients in his chiropractic clinic. On a normal day, he might stop for groceries on the way home from work, mow the lawn or relax with his wife, Deena and their eleven-year-old daughter in their Sarasota, Florida home. But today is not a normal day. They will have to do without his income. They will have to mow the lawn and fetch the groceries without his help.

Nothing has been normal for them since May 28 when a swarm of FBI agents descended on their home. Joe was whisked to a courtroom in Tampa. His wife and child were kept out of the house while the FBI rifled through their belongings for hours. 

In Tampa, Joe was denied bail and passed from lockup to lockup until on June 28, he landed in Washington D.C. There he sits in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. This is not normal. Federal law requires that bail be set, except for two narrow conditions: 1) flight risk; 2) danger to the community. It is extremely difficult to see how Joe’s case meets either criterion.

Court documents allege that Hackett was in the U.S. Capitol rotunda from 2:45pm on January 6 until 2:54pm. Whether this is true or not can await a proper trial. My concern today is the injustice of denying bail and the inhumane conditions of his detention. 

Likely, I would know none of this if fellow pastors from across the nation had not asked me to inquire if any of at least 61 others similarly situated are receiving their constitutional rights to pastoral care. After more than a month of searching, I still do not know the answer. 

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO)

Last week, Missouri Congresswoman, Vicky Hartzler, formally asked Attorney General Merrick Garland for an answer to this and seven other questions. He ignored her July 28 deadline. Nor can we know how many have been denied bail since the Department of Justice’s database neither provides the information for every arrestee nor does it even list Joseph Hackett. How many others are detained but not listed?

Especially in a highly charged political climate, it is vital for America that we maintain the formalities of justice. These people are, in fact, “innocent until proven guilty.” The government may, in the course of time, prove them guilty of crimes connected with January 6. But, until that time comes, every American should expect that they be treated as innocent people, because they are.

Joseph & Dr. Deena Hackett
and daughter

The reason for this bedrock principle is evident. Punishment—whether fines, incarceration, or death—cannot be undone. Should Hackett be given bail today, or exonerated tomorrow, still his chiropractic business is destroyed. The hours robbed from raising his daughter are irretrievable. Lost months with his wife cannot be returned. Nor will there be any just compensation for income denied. The trauma of solitary confinement—acknowledged as torture by the U.N.—cannot be erased.

On the very day that Congresswoman Hartzler sent her letter to Merrick Garland, a judge in Hong Kong denied bail to four reporters from the Apple Daily. The Chinese Communist Party found that “there was not enough evidence to show that the defendants will not commit further acts endangering national security.” That is essentially the same reason given for denial of bail to Hackett and the others. We expect that of Communists, but not of the American justice system.

In the heat of this political moment, Marxist Critical Theorists are trying to divide us and pit us against one another. Race-baiting is only part of the story. They are also working to create an unbridgeable divide between Democrats and Republicans, Christians and secularists, Wyoming hicks and Wyoming woke. Then, having cast people into arbitrary groups, they ignore individual circumstances and particular facts and find guilt by association.

Such is also the case here. Three-score individual lives are being subsumed in a narrative. Instead of treating the cases of Joe Hackett, Ron Mele, Sgt. Kenneth Harrelson, Scott Fairlamb, Couy Griffin, Derek Kinneson, Erik Warner, and dozens more as distinct cases with unique circumstances, you are told that they are “insurrectionists,” “domestic terrorists,” “Oath-Keepers,” “Three-percenters” or some other impersonal group label.

Do not fall for it. The core of justice is equal treatment under law. Membership in some group should neither privilege or penalize a person. It is the government’s burden to prove guilt from facts and evidence—not to advance group narratives for political gain. The former is justice, the latter is not. 

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” wrote Martin Luther King from the Birmingham jail. It is the duty of Americans everywhere to learn the facts and to stand for individual rights anywhere they are threatened.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, July 30, 2021, and in the Cowboy State Daily on August 5, 2021.

T is for Tragedy

Abigail Shrier, independent journalist
Author of “Irreversible Damage”

Humans have known about testosterone for millennia. They castrated male slaves not only to make them sterile, but to alter body shape and psychology. Byzantium choirs used to castrate children for the unique vocal effects—a barbaric practice not fully outlawed until 1870.

The drug responsible for these effects was named and began artificial production in the late 1930s. The effects of testosterone deprivation were long known. So, scientists began to experiment with elevating testosterone levels. High doses produced impressive results, but not without serious threats to health. In short order, fair sporting practices banned the drug.

The Controlled Substance Act lists testosterone among “Schedule III” drugs. These have legitimate medicinal value—like treating hypogonadism in men, and certain forms of breast cancer in women. But they also have “a potential for abuse” that “may lead to moderate or low physical dependence or high psychological dependence.” 

Testosterone is produced naturally by both sexes, but males have seven to eight times more than females. Another difference is that testosterone deprivation leads to sterility in men but for women it is the opposite. A woman given male levels of the hormone will be rendered sterile over time. This fact, combined with its addictive power, make “T” a potentially tragic drug for young women. Lured by peer pressure and captured by its addicting quality, children can significantly harm their capacity to have children before they are even old enough to vote.

Mack Beggs, girls state wrestling champion

Worse, the Affordable Care Act of 2009 contained a little-known provision that forced insurance companies to cover testosterone use in minors. The prohibitively expensive drug used exclusively to treat adults was suddenly cheap and accessible to kids. Fueled by an aggressive lobbying campaign, the use of “T” among teen girls spiked overnight. 

Exact numbers are hard to come by. Those that are available are staggering. A Swedish study, for instance, documented that in the past decade the percentage of girls between 13-17 who self-identify as “trans” has increased by a factor of 15. For many of these young girls, “T” has become a Rite of Passage.

The sudden spike in young females using testosterone off-label has many physicians, psychologists and parents deeply concerned. Since it is such a recent phenomenon, large-sample, longitudinal studies are not yet available, but early indications are not encouraging. 

The health risks of teenage girls taking “T” are significant and the damage is permanent. They include deformation of sexual organs, endometriosis, and cardiovascular issues. Compounding the problem, a person’s cerebral cortex is not fully developed until age 25. Thus, even at the legal age of consent, a person’s ability to make a full and rational risk-assessment is impaired.

Despite these contraindications, Britain’s National Health Service’s Tavistock clinic lowered(!) the age of consent from 16 to 12 in 2011. By 2014 it dropped age requirements altogether. In the following decade, it gave puberty blockers (often followed by “T”) to over a thousand children, some as young as ten. 

Kiera Bell, Tavistock plaintiff

But last December, Britain’s highest court ruled in favor of a 23-year-old woman who sued Tavistock over its treatment of her mind and body. She pointed out that the clinic should have known that she was incapable of legally informed consent before the age of 18. Her doctors and psychologists had the responsibility to protect her from self-harm, not to encourage her toward it. The court agreed and effectively reversed Tavistock’s age of consent rollbacks. American activists should have followed Britain’s wisdom. Instead, they doubled down. 

“Irreversible Damage,” a powerful new book by Abigail Shrier, can fill you in on the myriad details that we cannot cover here. For a quick primer, you can also watch “Trans Mission: What’s the rush to reassign gender?” This film, produced by the Center for Bioethics and Culture is free and available on YouTube.

Every parent, teacher, librarian and lobbyist who cares about children should study these resources. A tsunami is coming. Myriad women will soon reach their mid-twenties, only to discover that the treatments they consented to in their early teens were not what they wanted, at all.

For their sake, policy makers need to be asking questions. Why the rush to lower the age of consent? Why the rush to strip parents of the right to protect their children from self-harm? All of the lobbyists that push “T” on children are adults. Most are not even trans. Big Pharma is raking in billions from the government’s subsidy of “T” and related drugs. As with opioids, it profits from an epidemic of its own making.

This should outrage you. It raises serious questions about why taxpayer funded schools, libraries and insurance are being used to promote a drug abuse that is sterilizing our children. When they mature enough to understand the tragedy, they will ask: How could you let them do that?

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, July 23, 2021.

Can Cheney give Americans what they justly deserve?

Hours after Representative Cheney (R-WY) broke from her 190 fellow Republicans to establish a “House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” she wasted no time in accepting an appointment to it. This move gave Pelosi’s Committee a façade of bi-partisanship and pre-emptively undercut Republican threats to boycott its committee appointments.

On June 30th, Cheney issued a press release stating, “This investigation can only succeed if it is sober, professional, and non-partisan. The threat to our democracy is far too grave for grandstanding or political maneuvering. The Committee should issue and enforce subpoenas promptly, hire skilled counsel, and do its job thoroughly and expeditiously. The American people need and deserve a full accounting. We must ensure that what happened on January 6, 2021 never happens again.”

Indeed. On this point everyone is agreed. The substantial questions are: What really did happen on January 6, and can this committee conduct a “sober, professional, and non-partisan investigation? After two embarrassing impeachments, and three years of peddling the fraudulent “Steele Dossier,” American’s may rightly be skeptical.

“The American people need and deserve a full accounting.” That is true. The committee’s subpoena power and legal resources must be employed to examine aspects of January 6 that have, so far, been withheld from the American public. If congress wants to rehabilitate its public credibility, here are some things that should be investigated thoroughly and transparently.

The investigation should begin with the days leading up to January 6th. What did congressional leaders know, and when did they know it? All communications from the Intelligence Community, D.C. Police, and Capitol Police should be subpoenaed. Leadership from both parties should be placed under oath—beginning with Cheney—in order to determine why multiple security requests were denied.

Next, the Committee should subpoena the 14,000 hours of CCTV captured by cameras around the Capitol and owned by the American people. This evidence should be made public. For six months, the Department of Justice has used highly edited snippets to prosecute over 500 citizens. But it has denied access to defense attorneys, claiming that the tapes are state secrets. 

More than an hour before anybody entered the Capitol, video shows  troops in riot gear shooting stun grenades and pepper spray without warning at law-abiding citizens. The attack appeared unprovoked. The group, including small children and the elderly, had crossed no barriers nor were they threatening to do so. Were the unidentified troops federal agents? Or were they agent provocateurs?

The American people deserve to know the full extent of what was done to peaceful protesters. Were they reacting to a speech happening over a mile away? Or were they reacting to a more immediate threat? Releasing all the video footage from that day would provide necessary transparency.

Third, every death should be vigorously investigated. Before the first door was breached into the Capitol, a man died of a reported heart attack. Soon, a second died from a reported stroke. Then, a third was trampled. What accounts for this? Did chemicals, munitions or police procedures contribute to these tragedies? Were federal officers following crowd safety protocols.

The only shot fired on January 6th was aimed at the throat of Ashli Babbitt. The Capitol Police officer who killed the unarmed woman still has not been formally identified. This most violent event of the entire day ought to receive the fullest and the most painstaking investigation. Who was the shooter? What were his rules of engagement? What training did he receive? What was his service record?

The next day, Officer Brian Sicknick died of a stroke. For months it was falsely reported that he had been struck by a fire extinguisher. Who planted this false information? And why did it take more than 100 days to release the autopsy that disproved it? 

Days later two other officers died in apparent suicides. Who investigated their deaths? What evidence is conclusive that they died of suicide linked to January 6th? Who made the decision to connect their deaths to the Capitol? Before these questions were addressed, Cheney claimed that they “made the ultimate sacrifice as a result of what happened that day.” 

Also, before the smoke had cleared from January 6th, Cheney began the narrative that the crowd acted “to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes.” How could she know either the motives of 500 individuals, or whether they were acting in coordination? 

This is irresponsible behavior for a public official. Worse, it is extremely prejudicial to the investigation she now wishes to lead. “The American people need and deserve a full accounting.” Will they get it? Or, will they only get more “grandstanding [and] political maneuvering”?

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, July 9, 2021, and in the Cowboy State Daily on July 21, 2021.

The Court-Sanctioned Persecution Of Jack Phillips Shows How ‘Hate Crime’ Laws End Everyone’s Freedom Of Speech

 

The goal of lawfare against people like Phillips is to destroy free speech, not by winning discrete battles, but by winning a war of attrition.

Jack Phillips, a smiling grandfather from the Denver suburbs, is about to face the tenth year of unceasing high-stakes lawfare against his religious convictions. His only ambition was to combine his visual and culinary artistic talents in a business that serves Jesus, the Master. Masterpiece Cakeshop, with its artist’s palette logo, makes this clear.

But on July 19, 2012, a couple walked into his shop who would unleash the opening salvo of nine years of belligerent litigation. 

Continue reading on The Federalist.

Wyoming Right to Life informs and inspires

Nearly 100 of Wyoming’s finest citizens gathered last Saturday, in Riverton, to celebrate a culture of life, to connect with one another, and to learn better how to serve their neighbors. It was the first statewide conference of Wyoming Right to Life (WRTL) in more than a decade. President Marti Halverson, former state representative, organized a day of awards, discussion, and informative presentations.

First, a panel of ten lawmakers discussed last winter’s legislative session in Cheyenne. Veterans and freshmen legislators from both the house and senate, expressed profound gratitude for having the opportunity to protect human life in an elected capacity. Several noted the pivotal work of senate president, Dan Dockstader, who himself sat on the panel.

After the discussion, three panelists were singled out for their achievements on behalf of life at every stage from conception to death. Representatives Chuck Gray, Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, and Pepper Ottman all received a Platinum level award.

Gray, Pepper and Rodriguez-Williams

After lunch Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC) gave a spell-binding presentation on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). Her story began with the 1978 birth of Louise Brown, the first “test tube,” [actually, in vitro fertilization (IVF)] baby. At that time, legal precedents were set that excluded leftover embryos from the protections afforded to every child. Instead, they were subsumed under property-law. This grave injustice has never been corrected.

Today there are an estimated one million people frozen in the embryonic state. But the injustices surrounding IVF do not begin with them. Prior to that, poor women are exploited for their eggs. Lahl discussed the commodification of women in her first, award-winning documentary “Eggsploitation” (available from Amazon Prime.)

Well to do women are not lining up to donate their eggs. However, it is common for IVF clinics to recruit on university campuses and in third-world countries. These recruits are graded by I.Q., beauty, and body metrics. Thus cataloged, their eggs are painfully extracted without regard to proper health and safety concerns. They are sold on the open market to the highest bidder. Where this unethical practice has been outlawed, its victims are simply flown to countries with “friendlier” laws.

Dangling tens of thousands of dollars before relatively poor women can be a temptation too great to resist. This is especially true when the unregulated “Big Fertility” industry withholds information of the many risks. Women have suffered strokes, loss of ovaries, and breast cancer because of such exploitative practices. 

In comparison to the extremely invasive and injurious procedures necessary to harvest a woman’s eggs, getting sperm for the IVF procedure is child’s play. But even this has downsides that hardly anyone will discuss. Thus, the CBC produced a second documentary called “Anonymous Father’s Day.”

It tells the heartbreaking stories of the children of sperm “donors.” Consider the life-long injury that a person endures when a fundamental human right, the right to know one’s own father, is denied by law. While no orphan would ever vote to create another orphan, people who know their own fathers regularly vote in laws that deny the same right to those unlucky enough to be born through anonymous sperm.

As if such injustices were not enough, Big Fertility has also entices healthy young women to rent their bodies through gestational agreements. The CBC tells this story in the provocatively titled documentary: “Breeders: A subclass of women?”

Women are lured into gestational agreements with the promise of “helping others.” The pot is further sweetened by tens of thousands of dollars that may be paid out as compensation for “wear and tear” [on the body]--as Representative Zwonitzer (R-Cheyenne) indelicately put it during a committee meeting. The fact that surrogacy greatly multiplies the risk of pregnancy complications, is not mentioned. Nor are unanticipated emotional traumas ever discussed.

Rep. Dan Zwonitzer

The exploitation of women through surrogacy and egg harvesting is so horrific that most European nations, India, and even China have outlawed the practice. Feminist Gloria Steinem has partnered with the CBC to oppose these indignities, as well. 

Unfortunately for the women of Wyoming, a new law went into effect yesterday, July 1, that brings Big Fertility and its exploitative practices here. HB 73 “Birth certificates-gestational agreements” sailed through the legislature and was signed by the governor in April. Few were aware of the many hidden harms of Big Fertility before voting in favor of this legislation. 

Those who care about the women and children of Wyoming learned the great need to keep informed on reproductive ethics. Big Fertility has huge financial incentives to cut ethical corners but it has virtually no meaningful restrictions that check its ability to exploit women. Therefore, the responsibility falls to every good citizen to speak for the powerless. You can start by educating yourself at: CBC-network.org.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, July 2, 2021.