A Florida man who once spent Christmas without power is literally paying it forward by paying off the power bills for 36 families with accounts that were past due.

Mike Esmond said he never forgot the Christmas he spent with his daughter in 1983 in Pensacola, back when he did not have heat or power because he could not pay his bill, the Associated Press reported.

Esmond, 73, recalled it was one of the coldest days on record in the area at 9 degrees, and remembered seeing icicles hanging from the windows.

The 73-year-old small business owner went to the city of Gulf Breeze this month, requested a list of all utility accounts past due and at risk of having their power shut off, and paid off all 36 accounts on that list.

The grand total of the accounts paid off amounted to $4,600.

The Pensacola News Journal reported that instead of sending out notices that their utilities would be shut off, the city sent out cards notifying them of Esmond’s gesture.

“It is our honor and privilege to inform you that your past due utility bill has been paid by Gulf Breeze Pools and Spas,” the card read. “You can rest easier this holiday season knowing you have one less bill to pay.”

Resident Angela Cascio said she was stunned by Esmond’s act of kindness.

“Without (Gulf Breeze Pools) paying that bill, my kids’ Christmases would have greatly suffered,” Cascio told the News Journal on Monday. “Angels absolutely walk among us, and they are the epitome of kindness and what ‘paying it forward’ means to me.

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Eighty-six of Virginia’s 95 counties have declared themselves to be Second Amendment Sanctuaries.

The Washington Examiner reports that “15 towns and cities” in Virginia have also made the declaration. This bring the total number of Second Amendment Sanctuaries to more than 100.

Early Tuesday Breitbart News reported that Virginia was hovering around 100 Second Amendment Sanctuary declarations. That night, Stafford County adopted a Second Amendment Sanctuary declaration, taking the state across the 100-resolution threshold.

Stafford County is now a sanctuary! That’s the last for tonight and number 101!

— Phil Van Cleave VCDL (@VCDL_ORG) December 18, 2019

On December 12, Breitbart News reported Gov. Ralph Northam vowing “consequences” for counties that refuse to enforce gun control. During the same time-frame, Rep. Donald McEachin (D-VA) suggested Northam may want to send in the National Guard to compel compliance with various laws.

The Washington Examiner quoted McEachin saying, “I’m not the governor, but the governor may have to nationalize the National Guard to enforce the law. That’s his call, because I don’t know how serious these counties are and how severe the violations of law will be. But that’s obviously an option he has.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

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American taxpayers are once again being forced to subsidize border security measures in the Middle East as part of the latest government spending bill.

While construction for barriers at the United States-Mexico border receives explicitly less than $1.4 billion in federal funds for Fiscal Year 2020, foreign countries are again sweeping up billions more in U.S. taxpayer money to strengthen their borders.

The spending bill, which is set to pass the Senate, provides Jordan with more than $7.3 billion to be used to help the country “enhance the ability of the armed forces … to increase or sustain security along its borders.” An additional $500 million is allocated to help “security along [Jordan’s] borders.”

Another nearly $1.2 billion is available until September 2021 to “enhance the border security of nations” such as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Tunisia.

This is at least the third conservative year that American taxpayers have been forced to pay for border security enhancement in foreign countries in the Middle East, as Breitbart News has chronicled.

Meanwhile, U.S. Border Patrol caught more than 851,500 border crossers crossing illegally into the nation in Fiscal Year 2019 — a 115 percent increase in illegal immigration compared to the year before. Federal immigration officials estimate that only about half of all border crossers are caught, indicating that potentially an additional 851,500 illegal aliens successfully entered the U.S. this past year, undetected by Border Patrol.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

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On Wednesday, the Supreme Court decided it would consider two cases involving religious schools’ right to control which teacher it chooses to teach its religion classes.

In both cases, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and St. James Catholic School v. Biel, the schools involved are Catholic schools and are being defended by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against both schools, prompting Becket to appeal to the Supreme Court.

EdWeek noted that a linchpin of the case for the schools is the 2012 decision Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a case which Becket was also involved in. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled church and religious school employers are exempt from anti-discrimination laws for employees regarded as ministers of the school’s faith.

In Biel, a former teacher said she was fired after she told the school she would have to take time off for surgery and chemotherapy for her breast cancer, according to EdWeek, which added that the principal informed her that she was not being renewed because she was not strict enough with her class. When Biel sued, the school asked for summary judgment based on the ministerial exception recognized by the court in Hosanna-Tabor.

In Morrissey-Berru, the teacher’s contract was not renewed because the school said she could not keep order in the classroom. The teacher sued, claiming age bias.

Becket Law wrote, “In Hosanna-Tabor, a similar Becket case in 2012, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the ‘ministerial exception’ for a church school, a First Amendment right that allows religious schools to choose their own religion teachers. The ministerial exception protects all religious groups’ freedom to choose ‘ministerial’ employees without interference from bureaucrats or courts.”

Other religious groups joined the Catholic schools in fighting for the right to choose their own religious teachers; in a brief filed by the Church of God in Christ and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the petitioners write,

The Court should step in now to resolve this split of authority that subjects religious groups to different rules depending on the accident of geography. The Ninth Circuit’s elevation of formalities such as title over substantive duties invites judges to make inappropriate determinations about the affairs of religious organizations and leads to arbitrary and discriminatory results … The Ninth Circuit’s subordination of religious function to other, often more superficial considerations upends the historical and constitutional tradition embodied in Hosanna-Taborand swings open the door to judicial meddling with religious doctrine. To further minimize the risk of judicial interference in internal religious affairs, courts should defer to religious institutions’ good-faith understanding that duties are religiously important rather than crediting plaintiffs’ characterizations.

Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, summed up, “Do we really want judges, juries, or bureaucrats deciding who ought to teach Catholicism at a parish school, or Judaism at a Jewish day school? Of course not. Religion teachers play a vital role in the ecosystem of faith. We are confident that the Supreme Court will recognize that under our Constitution government officials cannot control who teaches kids what to believe.”

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“It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” – James Madison, The Federalist No. 62

In the year 2019, nine years after the constitutionalist and populist Tea Party wave midterm election of 2010, how many Republicans in Congress actually agree with James Madison?

While all the eyes of political media this week remain fixated upon the dueling melodramas of expected House impeachment later today and the next Democratic Party presidential primary debate tomorrow evening, Congress is gearing up to pass yet another year-end budget betrayal. To be sure, we already knew that fiscal conservatism was dead and that Republicans themselves killed it. But it seems that Republicans’ insatiable desire for fiscal profligacy will not be quenched until they can also spit upon fiscal conservatism’s proverbial corpse.

Daniel Horowitz of Blaze Media has a devastating breakdown of the nature of the latest boondoggle — a boondoggle rearing its ugly head, lest we forget, less than two years after President Donald Trump himself vowed to “never sign a bill like this again.” Over 2,400 pages of legislation. Nearly one and a half trillion dollars of additional spending. Increased funding for the EPA, but no increased funding for ICE. MS-13 trafficking and amnesty loopholes galore. More backdoor amnesty for Liberian nationals. Incentivizing illegal aliens to attempt to enter the federal workforce. Re-authorization of the corporate welfare- and crony capitalism-abetting Export-Import Bank. Raising the national tobacco purchasing age to 21. Tens of millions of dollars toward “gun violence research.” Zero attention paid to the neo-Confederate nationwide plague of sanctuary city lawlessness. Zero attention paid to the fact that murderous transnational criminal cartels still effectively control large swaths of our southern border. Zero attention paid to our nationwide crisis of revanchist and power-hungry judicial supremacism.

And so forth. It’s enough to make one wonder why we elect Republicans into office, in the first instance. Is there anyone on the Republican side of the aisle who still cares about the forgotten American?

Over the past few years, there has been an ongoing and roiling dialogue over the intellectual meaning and political future of American conservatism. It is undoubtedly an important and healthy discussion for us conservatives to air out among ourselves. My own take is that there will be no going back to the pre-Trump “dead consensus,” with the only open question being the proper path forward.

But as every card-carrying conservative knows, “Republican” and “conservative” are hardly synonymous terms. And while the debate over what it means to be a conservative rages on, it is an entirely distinct question to ask what exactly it is that contemporary elected Republicans claim to actually stand for. After all, it certainly does not seem to be fiscal restraint. It certainly does not seem to be cultural traditionalism. It certainly does not seem to be national sovereignty.

Instead, the least common denominator that unifies seemingly all elected Republicans, in the year 2019, seems to be a shared hatred of the Left — or “triggering the libs,” as my colleague Michael Knowles aptly phrased it yesterday. Indeed, there is actually some historical precedent for this: The sole unifying factor among all three “legs” of the traditional post-William F. Buckley Jr./Reagan-era conservative “stool” — fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, and national security hawkishness — was opposition to the existential threat of Soviet-era communism.

The modern, post-Kavanagh fiasco Left is indeed a vicious and malicious political foe. The Left’s reckless radicalization and trend toward full-on totalitarian socialism is one of the three factors that fortifies my confidence in voting for Donald Trump next November. But surely it is not too much to ask Republicans to actually stand for something beyond mere hatred of the dreaded enemy.

Or is it?

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As Lanell McGee James and her husband, Lamar, were driving to Dallas following the death of Lamar’s brother, they were pulled over by a Texas state trooper.

What happened next brought tears to their eyes and is now encouraging thousands of people across social media.

James and her husband were travelling from their home north of Houston on Sunday when Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Ross Bates pulled them over near Madisonville for a non-speeding violation, according to her Facebook post.

Bates asked the couple where they travelling to, and James responded that they were driving to Dallas due to a “death in the family.”

When James told Bates that her husband’s brother had died, the trooper didn’t skip a beat.

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“[Bates] said oh I’m sorry to hear that, do you know where he is?” James wrote on the now-viral post.

“My husband answered ‘yes at the morgue’ and the office responded ‘no he is now in his heavenly home.’”

The divinely timed answer brought tears to the grieving couple’s eyes.

“At this point my husband and I are both moved to tears because his brothers death was very unexpected,” James wrote.

James said the trooper then went back to his vehicle, wrote a warning instead of a ticket and gave it to the couple.

The warning wasn’t the only blessing the officer gave, however.

Bates, who had recently been ordained as a Christian deacon, asked James and her husband if he could pray over them.

“He removed his hat asked to hold our hands and he prayed with us,” she wrote. “I have NEVER had this happen before but it was everything that we needed in that moment.”

James said Bates’ actions were particularly meaningful amid such high tensions between police officers and the black community, so she felt compelled to document the moment with a photo.

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“There’s just so much in the news with the negativity and the police killings and the racial tension — it’s a lot,” she told KHOU.

Bates said in a statement to the outlet that he was humbled by James’ “kind words.”

“While I was on patrol on Sunday, I met a family in need,” he said.

“They were mourning the unexpected loss of a loved one, and I am humbled that my actions had a positive impact on their lives during this difficult time.

“As a State Trooper, I’ve met many people who have shared their stories with me. Often, I don’t hear about the impact I’ve had on them. I am truly humbled by the kind words of Mrs. James, and I will always be grateful that our brief interaction had a positive impact on their family.”

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Once the Democrats took control of Virginia’s state legislature in November’s elections, it was only a matter of time before industrial-strength gun control legislation got passed. The new legislature isn’t seated until Jan. 6, but everybody had a good idea what the legislation would entail: a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” red-flag provisions that would allow guns to be taken without any due process and universal background checks.

A number of counties had begun declaring themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” meaning law enforcement there wouldn’t act on any state laws they believed abrogated the Second Amendment. Virginia Democrats, including governor and blackface aficionado Ralph Northam, have threatened pretty dire consequences if the counties didn’t fall into line, with one suggesting the National Guard would be called out.

That is tough talk. The problem with tough talk is that it won’t accomplish a tough task: Fully 79 percent of Virginia’s counties have become, with all due rapidity, Second Amendment sanctuaries, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Out of Virginia’s 95 counties, 75 have voted to become Second Amendment sanctuaries, a whopping 79 percent. Another 18 legally independent cities have also adopted the designation.

On Thursday alone, eight locales joined the sanctuary club.

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Last Tuesday, Northam threatened Second Amendment sanctuaries with potential “consequences” if they didn’t enforce whatever laws get passed when the legislature convenes.

“There’s not going to be retaliation. That’s not what I’m about. I’m about making Virginia safer,” Northam said, according to WTKR.

“If we have constitutional laws on the books and law enforcement officers are not enforcing those laws on the books, then there are going to be consequences, but I’ll cross that bridge if and when we get to it.”

So no consequences but consequences. Gotcha. Northam has also gone with a carrot-and-stick approach, promising a grandfather clause to banned firearms as a carrot.

Do you think the National Guard will be called out in Virginia to confiscate guns?

0% (0 Votes)

0% (0 Votes)

In terms of consequences, it may be the Democrats who end up facing them. For instance, take Fauquier County in the northeast part of the state. This was the line to get into the Second Amendment sanctuary hearing on Thursday:

The Free Beacon described “several thousand people adorned with ‘Guns Save Lives’ stickers” outside the meeting in the town of Warrenton.

“Any erosion of our constitutional rights is just the beginning,” Gary Gray, who showed up with a sticker that said “The British are Coming,” said.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg on what they ultimately want, which is complete gun confiscation across the whole United States. These United States were founded with firearms. All the other rights we have are only guaranteed because of this right.”

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Meanwhile, Gary’s 18-year-old daughter Kaitlyn — who was wearing a “Shall Not Be Infringed” sticker — said “[i]t’s scary that this is happening.”

“I don’t think anyone should have the right to infringe on our Constitution,” she said. “We shouldn’t even have to discuss a grandfather clause. I don’t think that should be even on the table. I don’t think we should have to worry about anyone taking our guns away at all.”

At least in this situation, they probably won’t be. The Democrats have already backed away from their most radical proposal, which would have involved banning the possession of guns like the AR-15. You also don’t hear statements like those made by Democratic Virginia Rep. Donald McEachin last week.

You may remember McEachin, who said that Second Amendment sanctuaries “certainly risk funding because if the sheriff’s department is not going to enforce the law, they’re going to lose money. The counties’ attorney’s offices are not going to have the money to prosecute because their prosecutions are going to go down.

“And ultimately, I’m not the governor, but the governor may have to nationalize the National Guard to enforce the law,” McEachin added. “That’s his call, because I don’t know how serious these counties are and how severe the violations of law will be. But that’s obviously an option he has.”

The Virginia National Guard didn’t seem entirely on board with this assessment.

“We have received multiple questions regarding proposed legislation for the 2020 General Assembly session and the authority of the Governor of Virginia to employ the Virginia National Guard in a law enforcement role. We understand and respect the passion people feel for the U.S. Constitution and 2nd Amendment rights,” a statement from Maj. Gen. Timothy P. Williams, the adjutant general of Virginia, read.

We understand and respect the passion people feel for the U.S. Constitution and 2nd Amendment rights. We will not speculate about the possible use of the Virginia National Guard.

— Va. National Guard (@VaNationalGuard) December 13, 2019

“I encourage everyone to be patient while we allow our elected officials to work through the legislative process. We have not received any requests from the Governor, or anyone on his staff, about serving in a law enforcement role related to any proposed legislation.”

I encourage everyone to be patient while we allow our elected officials to work through the legislative process. We have not received any requests from the Governor, or anyone on his staff, about serving in a law enforcement role related to any proposed legislation.

— Va. National Guard (@VaNationalGuard) December 13, 2019

Nor will they, I imagine. Virginia may be trending blueish, but it’s still a torn state. There are heavily concentrated pockets of blue and wide swaths of red. When those in the pockets try to attenuate the rights of those in the swaths, there’s a tendency for things to work out this way.

If the new Democrat majority in Virginia is going to pass stringent gun control, what it is facing is, at best, a logistical and public relations nightmare. Twenty percent of the state isn’t going to disarm 80 percent of the state, and it’s going to be difficult for a governor terminally poxed by scandals involving blackface and abortion to mete out “consequences” in any serious form.

Meanwhile, if this is the delicacy with which Virginia Democrats plan on handling the rest of their agenda, good luck with holding onto that majority.

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Is it too much to ask for an ounce of chill in this process?

Just an ounce. In reaching for something to prove your Trumpist loyalty, there are a million ways you could fill out the mad lib “Trump’s impeachment is less just than _______________” without proceeding directly to “the execution]]>

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This week, the Supreme Court effectively mandated continued legal tolerance for homelessness across major cities on the West Coast of the United States.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that Americans have a right to sleep on the streets, and that it amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Constitution to levy fines based on such behavior.

That court—a repository of stupidity and radicalism, the Mos Eisley of our nation’s federal bench—decided that writing a $25 ticket to people “camping” on the sidewalk is precisely the sort of brutality the Founding Fathers sought to prohibit in stopping torture under the Eighth Amendment.

That ruling was so patently insane that even liberal politicians such as Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas joined the appeal attempt. “Letting the current law stand handicaps cities and counties from acting nimbly to aid those perishing on the streets, exacerbating unsafe and unhealthy conditions that negatively affect our most vulnerable residents,” he explained.

But the 9th Circuit ruling will stand. That ruling followed a separate 2006 ruling from the same court, which found that cities could not ban people from sleeping in public places. In this case, Judge Marsha Berzon, in language so twisted it would make yoga pioneer Bikram Choudhury jealous, wrote that “the state may not criminalize the state of being ‘homeless in public places’” and thus could not criminalize the “consequence” of being homeless.

It is worth noting that being homeless is not a “state” of being. It is not an immutable characteristic. It is an activity and can certainly be regulated.

That doesn’t mean the best solution is prosecution of those living on the street—a huge swath of homeless people are mentally ill or addicted to drugs and would benefit from better laws concerning involuntary commitment or mandatory drug rehabilitation. But to suggest that cities cannot do anything to effectively police those sleeping on the streets is to damn those cities to the spread of disease, the degradation of public spaces, and an increase in street crime.

Hilariously, Berzon contended that this 9th Circuit ruling would not mandate cities to provide full housing to the homeless; it would just prohibit them from moving or arresting the homeless for living on the streets. Which is somewhat like Tom Hagen telling Jack Woltz that while he doesn’t have to cast Johnny Fontane in his new war film, he can’t stop the Corleones from rearranging the family stable.

But here’s the problem: Cities that have attempted to provide increased housing for the homeless, despite some early successes, have seen their problems return.

Cities like Seattle and Los Angeles have attempted to build new housing. It’s been an expensive failure. It turns out that the carrot of housing must be accompanied by the stick of law enforcement. If you cannot compel drug addicts to enter treatment, or paranoid schizophrenics to take their medication, or those who refuse to live indoors to do so, homelessness will not abate.

As it is, the Supreme Court has damned America’s major cities to the continuation of the festering problem of homelessness. And that problem won’t be solved by judges who attempt to force social policy through deliberately misreading the Constitution, or who believe they are championing “freedom” for tens of thousands of Americans who are seriously mentally ill or addicted to drugs.

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