Louisiana judge blocked nationwide COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers; Justice Barrett may have tipped SCOTUS hand

William F. Maddock

Conservative Brief reports that Justice Amy Coney Barrett might have tipped the Supreme Court’s hand in asking a question during the oral argument portion of the Dobbs v. Jackson case.

Conservative Brief reports that the Justice stated, in part, “Ms. [Senior Director of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Julie] Rickelman, I have a question about the Safe Haven laws. Petitioner points out that in all 50 states, you can terminate parental rights by relinquishing a child after abortion. And I think the shortest period might have been 48 hours if I’m remembering the data correctly. So it seems to me, seen in that light, both Roe and Casey emphasize the burdens of parenting and insofar as you and many of your amici focus on the ways in which the forced parenting, forced motherhood would hinder women’s access to the workplace and to equal opportunities, it’s also focused on the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy. Why don’t the Safe Haven laws take care of that problem? It seems to me that it focuses the burden much more narrowly. There is without question an infringement on bodily autonomy, which we have in other contexts like vaccines. However, it doesn’t seem to me to follow that pregnancy and then parenthood are all part of the same burden. And so it seems to me that the choice for focus would be between, say, the ability to get an abortion at 23 weeks or the state requiring the woman to go 15, 16 weeks more and then terminate parental rights at the conclusion. Why don’t you address the safe haven laws and why don’t they matter?”

Conservative Brief reports “Days ago, a federal judge blocked Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for health care workers, issuing a nationwide injunction on the president’s order.

“‘Louisiana Western District U.S. Judge Terry Doughty’s decision follows an identical ruling Monday from Missouri U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp, but Schelp’s decision only covered 10 states,’ The Daily Advertiser reported.”

The Daily Advertiser article, though, is dated November 30, 2021, and last updated December 1, 2021.

In its article, written by Greg Hilburn, the Daily Advertiser quoted Louisiana Western District U.S. Judge Terry Doughty as writing, in issuing a nationwide injunction against Joseph Biden’s healthcare worker vaccine mandate, “If the executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the legislative branch to make laws, two of the three powers conferred by our Constitution would be in the same hands. If human nature and history teach anything, it is that civil liberties face grave risks when governments proclaim indefinite states of emergency. During a pandemic such as this one, it is even more important to safeguard the separation of powers set forth in our Constitution to avoid erosion of our liberties. [This case] will ultimately be decided by a higher court than this one. However, it is important to preserve the status quo in this case. The liberty interests of the unvaccinated [require] nothing less.”

Some might question the bodily autonomy issue, here (whether it requires abortion to be a viable option), but in my opinion that is a false premise. Pregnancy is not an invasion of bodily autonomy by a wholly outside force, but is a consequence of prior actions engaged in by the host. Even in the case of forced action the baby is the result and not the miscreant and does not deserve the death penalty for something it did not do.

Arrogance Personified

The Idiots' Crusade of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

We've all witnessed it, the arrogant presumption of a wet-behind-the-ears new comer acting like she is in control. Heck, she's even said, "I'm the boss, OK?"

She wants our nation to spend 93 trillion dollars to fix something that isn't even a problem.

She's even threatening to unseat any Democrats who vote with the Republicans on procedural issues.

Well, now there are people in her own district in New York, who are considering mounting an effort for a recall election—and she hasn't even been in Congress 100 days.

I hope they do. I really hope they do. Arrogance needs to meet its comeuppance.

March 2017 Issue of the St. Louis Amigan: I Sing for Him!

Keeping in mind that I have no independent witnesses, that I know of, I feel that there is something that the Lord has shared with me, telling me, perhaps, of victory. Being, as yet, without independent witnesses, I am loath to share any details of this, but wish only to give true hope where I may.

It behooves us to be open to the voice of God within our souls, but we are also commanded to test the spirits to be certain that they are of God. The Scriptures also tell us that the testimony of two or three witnesses (in other words, not just one witness) will prove any case.¹ Since, as far as I know, I have only my own witness to go on, this, then, must be treated as not a proven case.

I have been told—and increasingly so in recent times—that I have a fine singing voice. It is not my place to agree or disagree, but so I have been told, and I do appreciate the votes of confidence when they come.

Some years ago (this is not the event I write about above) The Lord interrupted my drive to church one Sunday morning, telling me, “I want you to sing.” I was so stunned by it that I sat in the church parking lot for quite some time before going inside. Finally, teary eyed, I acquiesced and told Him, “Set it up!” It was then that I went in.

One might think that my following days should have been filled with lessons and singing, perhaps even concerts. But God is not restricted to doing things as we would do them. In following days, at first, nothing seemed to happen.

Then I became homeless.

Things seemed to go in exactly the opposite direction to what He had told me. Then I came here.

God does not do things as we expect. He does things in the manner that will most glorify His name.

He told me that He wanted me to sing. I told Him to set it up. He, then, proceeded in tearing my entire life limb from limb until all that could interfere with His will for my life was well and completely gone.

See, I had gotten to the point of convincing myself that God could not let me be homeless because I could not do my work for Him without somewhere to do it. I thought I could not serve Him without a home.

What a fool I was.

And what a fool are you when you treat the homeless as useless. There is such a treasure buried in those souls! It is the light of Heaven you miss when you disregard them and cast them aside as so much refuse and trash.

Jesus told us a story of a man who dug and found a treasure, and gave all he had to buy the place where he found it. What did he do, though, with the treasure he found? Did he remove it and reject everything he didn’t see as valuable? No. Instead, he bought the whole place, lock, stock, and barrel—the treasure included. He invested in what he thought was not valuable in order to gain that which he thought was valuable.

He didn’t separate the two, but took them all together, as a whole. He didn’t throw the rocks and weeds out when he found the treasure. He bought them all—all of it, as a whole—and he gave up all he had, to do it.

I would say that this was a wise man. This was a man that recognized treasure in his own eyes, yes, but also recognized that there might be treasure that he knows nothing about.

He bought the whole place.

He didn’t just dig up what he wanted and cast the rest aside as so much junk to be thrown in the garbage.

He bought the whole place.

Those who dig up the treasure and leave the rest behind are thieves, not honorable people. Those who move into someone else’s home, then demand those others leave are thieves. They are not righteous, they are not righteous at all. They are those who overbear and they are those who fall.

When you move to put people out on the street and take their home you are a thief, and you will fall.

Your character is told by the trash you allow to stand and the treasure you command to fall. When filth and debauchery is welcomed and good is cast aside you show that you will fall.

When wickedness and evil is your calf, you bow to Ba’al. You bow to Satan’s demons when you tell good to fall.

Go ahead and comfort yourself that it’s all according the “the law!” But laws written by wicked men are wicked laws, and these things, too, will fall.

You cannot see good except you first see evil because you cannot see the good in others until you first see and recognize the evil within yourself. The things you see as treasures are things God sees as filth and wickedness and evil—things that will drag you down into the very bowels of the eternal furies of Hell.

I would have you steer a different course.²

You see, Jesus taught us that the ones that wicked people see as trash and filth and worthy only of being trampled under foot are the very ones who bear the image of God.

When you see someone living on the street and don’t invite them into your home, you are doing that to God. When you see someone hungry or thirsty and refuse to give them food and water, you are refusing the same to God Himself, who died on the cross and rose again to take away your sinful rebellion and filth. You are rejecting rescue from Hell.³

As I wrote earlier, God does not do things as we expect or as we wish; He does things as they will glorify His Holy name.

When I told God to go ahead and set up what He had for me to do, I certainly did not expect my whole life to be ripped to shreds as part of the deal, but that’s OK. The deal is in God’s hands, not mine. My hand is not holy, and it is the Holy Hand to which I cling.

So many things have happened that I would not have done, but where there is no battle, the battle is not won. Without war there can be no victory, and though my feet be quaking I know I’m Heaven’s son, so, when you find me singing, my victory is won.

You have to trust God through everything, not just the easy stuff. There will be trials where you can’t imagine the answer, but those trials can be won. You might even win them just by worrying that you failed.

There was, the other evening, a man waiting in the lobby to spend the night in the men’s shelter. There is always food, of some variety or other, in the lobby, so this man was not going to go hungry. I, being a little hungry myself, went into a restricted room to get something to eat. The door had not even had time to hit me on my way out when this guy started bothering me to give him what I had retrieved for myself. This man wasn’t going hungry. He was not in need of food. There was food easily available to him, right across the lobby. He had simply decided to harass me for what I had found. In other words, he was being greedy.

As politely as I could I told him no, that this food was for me—but I worried over it much of the night, until God reminded me that all that guy had to do was get up and get some food for himself.

God does not do things the way you expect.

I said earlier that God told me that He wanted me to sing, and that I was totally and completely unprepared for how He would set that up. I became homeless. I lost everything I had—except that which would allow me to continue my work for Him. All else is gone—even those that I thought to be friends.

But you know what? I’m singing—and every time I sing, I sing for Him. I’m not singing for fame.

I sing for Him!

¹-Deuteronomy 19:15;  ²-Mark 1:15;  ³-Matthew 25:31-46

For the PDF version, go here.

When Evil Roars

When you are elected to a public office people are trusting you to hold them in your hands. They are trusting you to not do them harm. They are trusting you to not commit wickedness while representing them.

Scripture tells us that you have been put in place by God, and that you are, therefore, in the place of God, representing Him. Before you are representing people to people, you are representing God to men. It matters not your personal intention; it matters who truly put you there. The Scriptures tell us who that was. It is God who has put you into a position of power.¹

When representing God you should be doing Godly things. You should not be doing things that allow, encourage, or endorse doing wickedness while you are representing God.

When you are representing God you should be doing things that allow, encourage, or endorse people doing Godly things. The wickedness of the world is not people doing Godly things. Rather, it is people doing the wickedness of the world.

When you are in the position of representing God, but do, or allow, or encourage, or endorse wicked things, you are like a walking dead man, as though a neutron bomb has detonated in your soul—the body still stands, the structures are still there, but genuine life is gone.

God has given everyone—even unbelievers—a true witness in their soul. There are certain things that everyone innately knows are wrong and evil and wicked. Those that do them anyway have died within their soul. They are walking dead men, the neutron bomb of hell having detonated within their souls.

Albert Einstein is said to have once proved the existence of God, using evil as an argument in favor of the existence of God, asking his adversary (who attempted to use the existence of evil as an argument against the existence of God) whether dark existed. His adversary affirmed that it does. Albert replied that, actually, dark, in and of itself, has no existence; that what we call dark is actually the absence of light. He then asked his adversary if cold exists. Again his adversary affirmed that cold does exist. Albert then replied that cold, like dark, has no existence by itself, that what we call cold is really just the absence of heat. He then concluded by arguing that evil is like dark and cold, having no existence in reality; that what we call evil is really the absence of God’s love in a person’s heart.

The neutron bomb of hell is present in every person’s heart, but where God is present and active, that bomb cannot go off. It is disarmed, dismantled, and undone by the saving presence of the love of God within one’s soul.

Here in St. Louis we are being represented by wicked people who have not the love of God within their souls. They are more interested in the size of their bank accounts and the breadth of their perceived power than they would ever be in the needs of the little people that they have been charged with holding in their hands.

These people need to change, and if they will not change then we need to change them. We need to move them out and others in if they will not represent us all, rather than just a privileged very, very few.

The power of this land was designed to be the power of the ballot, not the power of the dollar. Too few, though, have exercised the power in their hands to offset those who are wicked enough to be beholden to the monetary might of the privileged very, very few. Whether they are too busy chasing the monetary might of others, or have given up hope, or just don’t care, they are no more righteous than those who hold the power at this time, and they have no one to blame but themselves.

When God has said to march they have hidden in their hovels; when God has said to shout they have muzzled themselves; and when God has said to do, they have, instead, remained as still as dead men.

The neutron bomb of hell is ticking,
there, within their souls;
and while they claim to Jesus,
there is no light they hold.
They love and hold their comfort
and will not lend a hand
unless the time should cometh
when they should need a hand.

The night they love, and darkness
they bring upon the land,
for they will not extract it,
nor swat it from the land.
But Christ the Lord is judging
and shall extend His hand
and bring upon them judgment,
or mercy, if they stand.

And that, my friends, is the point: mercy can be had. You, though, must recognize your need of it. Those who think themselves well do not seek out a physician, but only those who recognize that they have a need of one, and that there is one available to them. You don’t go to a gas station when you think your tank is full, but only when you know that it is running low, or even nearly empty, and that fuel is available to you.

What happens, though, with someone who refuses to read their gas gage?

People like that are, inevitably, in for a rude surprise: every vehicle runs out of gas if you don’t fill it up.

Every person ends up in hell if they don’t repent.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”² “The wages of sin is death.”³ Everyone sins, and the consequence of sin is death. We are not talking just about physical death; we are talking about a complete and eternal separation from the source of life. The Scriptures tell us who that is: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.”⁴ Those are the words of Jesus Christ to His disciples, after they pleaded with Him that since they didn’t know where He was going, they couldn’t know the way. He was correcting them, telling them that He is the way.

He also said that He is the life; in other words, that He is the source of all life. When you separate from Him, you separate from the source of all that life was ever intended to be, which is goodness and light in fellowship with the Creator.

When you separate from Him you’re left with darkness and evil in enmity with the Creator. In other words, hearkening back to the incident with Albert Einstein, you are, in truth, left with nothing but only absences—absences of love and light and God.

You will have no sympathy, no empathy, no fellowship, no health, no wisdom, no knowledge and no truth. Even death will not deliver you from your self-imposed hell. You will have no one and nothing with you but your own conscience, undeceived and unsilenceable, and its reminders of every time that you failed God.

The most despicable thing a person can do is to wage war on the helpless and the powerless. It is also the most cowardly thing a person can do. The despicable presented as righteousness needs to be spoken against.

In the last week, the Board of Aldermen of the City of St. Louis has sought to make the murder of the helpless and powerless a protected class under the Civil Rights Act. The passing of Board Bill 203CS is a strike at the very heart of Holy Scripture.

It is commanding the people of God to disobey God, to muzzle themselves when God says to shout and to hide themselves when God says to march and to be as still as dead men when God says to do. It brings to point the exception that Godly logic provides to Romans Chapter 13.

The logic is this: you must obey those who are superior to you and you must most obey the one that is most superior to you.

The most superior to you is God, not men. What God commands you must obey whether men like it or not.

Most people do not have the courage to obey this logic, but then, most people have not really given themselves over to God, no matter the fervent nature of their claims to the contrary. Those who are servants of God do not forever reject or ignore or avoid what God commands them to do. They might be unclear or confused, or even fearful and needing repentance, but they are not in rebellion against God. Neither do they rebel against what He has preserved in His Word.

I do not advocate for the anarchistic behavior of those who protest every time a member of our new government seeks to draw a breath. Such behavior is both childish and unproductive. You must, however, speak truth to power. If you do not, then power will never learn, and having never learned, will continue on their wicked way. God, though, will require their blood from you, for it will be on your hands.⁵

Make no mistake about this. Board Bill 203 is spittle and a middle finger in the face of God. It is the same in the face of His people. The gauntlet is thrown down. God will take it up. For God, through His people will respond when evil roars.

¹-Romans 13:1
²-Romans 3:23
³-Romans 6:23
⁴-John 14:6
⁵-Ezekiel 33:6-8

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Heaven's Promised Land

Nine years ago a new man was preparing to enter the White House as President of the United States. I was one who began calling him out as not being natural-born in the United States.

The argument was that he was using a fake birth certificate. I backed off when I saw that his was awfully similar to my own, and knew that my own was not fake, but genuine. I, therefore, gave him the benefit of the doubt in that matter.

As the years went by, though, it became more and more clear that this man would go down in history as the worst President in the history of this republic. No other President has been so hard-hearted and dead-set against American citizens being allowed to exercise their own religion.

These last eight years have been a disaster for the American Experiment and for the world at large, as this man has marched 179.9995° away from the clear and plain meaning of the Constitution of the United States of America.

No other President has been as unmitigated a disaster as this man has turned out to be.

There have been any number of others that could have been chosen, of the same race, of the same creedal stances as this man. But this man is the one America chose, and this man is the one America has suffered through.

A moral turpitude and insanity had gripped this nation, to have had this man be chosen in the first place, and has shaken this nation to the core for its choice. Great men of faith could have been chosen, but were ridiculed and turned away. Christians in mainland China have been praying for such a time to strike the Church in this land, and strike it has. Their prayers are answered.

What, though, has been the fruit of those prayers? God has been listening to them, and, agreeing with them, has brought persecution to bear upon the Church in the United States of America. The pruning is at hand. The winnowing fork has stabbed the wheat, and the chaff will fly as the grain falls into the Maker’s hand. What grain, though, shall there be?

Cowards never stay where there is trouble. Many are the claimed “Christians” who have been cowed by the merest whimper of the Satanic minions. The slightest twitch of their baby finger sets these slack livers reeling and swaying in their brief-soiling terror.

I have no kinder words for those who would send their own children into the depths of drug-war zones—so long as those zones are across the borders of other nations. Point out the danger zones in their own areas, though, and watch as their pretzel-bent excuses spring forth! They who have no problem with the front lines, so long as the front lines are a thousand miles away are no friend to the King!

They are cowards and they know no love, for in love there is no fear.¹ If I surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I hold nothing!² Claim your faith without works; I, though, by my works, will show you my faith.³ Faith without works is dead.⁴ Dead faith gets you no where but Hell.

One of the fruits of those Chinese prayers has, ironically, been prayer itself. Never before have so many, all at the same time, prayed so fervently for the fate of a nation not their own. Having witnessed the catastrophic fall of this once great nation, facing down the very real possibility of yet another four years of the same antichrist policies being foisted off as compassionate and loving edicts, the world collapsed into fervent prayer, begging God for the fate of this nation, that it should be rescued from the brink upon which it finds itself teetering, playing with fate as a child would play with his toys.

What happened? Why, what happened, indeed, but that God showed Himself the possessor of true might and the wielder of genuine compassion and love, bestowing miraculous grace while at the same time withholding much deserved condemnation from this nation.

Why is it so impossible for the people of this world to clearly understand that the reason God allows there to be poor is multivalent, being, at once, to teach the rich generosity, and to show them the contrast between their own lives and lives of genuine love? Is it really so horrifically terrifying for them to take a close, clear look in the philosophical mirror? Is Narcissus really alive and what passes their twisted minds as well?

Oh, woe to us if such should be the case!

But I have seen hope!

I have seen it in the sudden, surprise reversal of what the globalist elitists took so much as a foregone conclusion that, in reaction, they would openly threaten the very freedoms that have allowed them to take so much unadulterated licentiousness into the bedrooms of their lives that they would think themselves free to force their ungodliness on those seeking after and following the one true and living God.

I have seen hope!

I have seen it in the great and desperate humility by which the fallen have taken up new lives of freedom and love and mercy and grace and peace and fellowship and service, having willingly done so.

I have seen hope!

I have seen it in the way that so many in so much grave danger themselves would cast aside care to gather in prayer for people they have never met and, this side of Heaven, never will.

Oh, yes! I have seen hope!

I have seen that hope in the way that the downtrodden faithful have risen up to tell their oppressors what they can go do with themselves and have risen up and shouted out, “No more! As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord!”⁵

The Spirit of God is on the rise within this land and Hell’s foul days are numbered!

Yes! I have seen hope!

Normandy has happened and the beaches are being held! You can tell the level of panic by the out-sized over-reactions of the profligate left-wing extreme to seeing that the halcyon days of their imagined Utopic dreams are nothing but a vapor in their own deluded minds.

Heaven is victorious, as ever it shall be, and those who follow Satan shall have their eyes ripped open to see the glory of the Lord our God enthroned for all to see.

I have seen hope, as those who follow God on high have risen up to see that demon hordes shall not hold sway from sea to shining sea. The people of the Lord awake and seek the glory seat, that it would be as ever has: fully, the mercy seat!

I tell you this: that even as the night might seem its darkest, it leads inexorably to dawn, and now the light is rising, the battle moving on. The darkened skies are clearing as Heaven shines its light, and Yahweh shows His glory to bring an end to night!

Years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. told his listeners that he had seen the promised land and that he might not get there with them.

I say the same to you, and urge you, that whatever happens, to go there, hand in hand, and let nothing distract you from Heaven’s promised land.

1-1 John 4:18
2-1 Corinthians 13:3
3-James 2:18
4-James 2:17
5-Joshua 24:15

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New Hymn, "Lord of Everything!"

The hymn for today is a hymn of praise to the maker and creator of all things.

Play it on #MuseScore for a limited time.

New Hymn, "Praises to Thee!"

The hymn for today is a hymn of praise to the creator and sustainer of all things.

Play it on #MuseScore for a limited time.