A year ago I wrote about how the government could be using various programs to prevent businesses that sell firearms from functioning. A recent story by Kelsey Harkness illustrates how that may be happening. She tells the story of Luke Lichterman, owner of Hunting and Defense in North Carolina.

He was denied access to a bank merely because he sells firearms. He blamed a little-known program called Operation Choke Point, which was launched a few years ago by the Department of Justice in an effort to fight fraud. It does so by choking off access to various bank services. Critics have said that the program not only hurts illegal businesses, but has also been used against legal industries (like gun sellers) that this administration doesn’t like.

Back in March, HomeTrust Bank told Lichterman that they would not allow him to open an automatic clearinghouse payment service for his online gun and tactical store. This was a surprise to him since he has personal account at HomeTrust Bank. It wasn’t until a banker discovered that he sold guns that they refused to offer him the services he needed for his business.

Lichterman was suspicious of why he was denied services and asked if the banker could provide an example of another industry that HomeTrust Bank wouldn’t do business with. The banker responded, “Pornography.” Lichterman tried to explain to the banker that he was not a pornographer but actually dealing with constitutionally protected goods.

By the way, the banker wasn’t kidding. If you look at the guidelines for Operation Choke Point, there is a list of categories of merchants that the agency considers high risk. The list includes words like “firearms” and “ammunition” and “pornography.”

Because of the publicity in this case, the bank did provide Lichterman with the services he requested. The story does illustrate why some members of Congress want to end Operation Choke Point and other similar initiatives. This story shows why the program could be a threat to the Second Amendment.

A few months ago, the leadership at Ft. Riley invited Lt. General Jerry Boykin to speak at their D-Day anniversary event. Earlier this month they decided to cancel the prayer breakfast dues to “scheduling conflicts.” One official made it clear that General Boykin would not be invited back as a speaker.

If you are not familiar with General Boykin, all your really need to know is that he was a founding member of the Delta Force and a 36-year veteran who now serves as the Executive Vice President of the Family Research Council. I am sure the soldiers at the Big Red One would love to hear his testimony and message, but that will never happen.

Mikey Weinstein is the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and follows Christian speakers like General Boykin around in order to demand that the military leadership in various venues cancel any Christian event like this. Fort Riley denies that this complaint was the reason for cancelling the event saying that it was merely a “coincidence of unfortunate timing.” Maybe, but the facts seem to contradict that explanation.

General Boykin has been on my radio program and says that this is “just another reminder of the incredible discrimination against Christians in our armed forces.” In the past, I have talked about how it is becoming more difficult for chaplains and anyone of Christian faith to function within the U.S. military.

This is not the first time that military leaders seem frightened by anti-Christian activists and thus deny Christian soldiers an opportunity to hear from one of the Army’s most decorated heroes. If these leaders balk at a threat from one individual how can we expect them to respond to the real threats from around the world?

General Boykin understands the pressure that was put on Fort Riley. He says they are “caught between radical secularists and the Commander in Chief who seeks to impose a politically correct culture on the military.” In other words, some of the problems in the military go all the way to the top.

Late last year I wrote a commentary that made the case for impeachment of the current IRS director. There is even more evidence now that the IRS has been forced to provide a list of 426 conservative groups that were singled out for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. I might also mention that this list does not include 40 groups that opted out of the lawsuit that was brought. So the actually number of groups targeted by the IRS was 466.

While I am talking about numbers, it is worth mentioning that the original number used by the Treasury Inspector was 298 groups. The IRS hasn’t explained why the latest number is much larger. One theory is that when the IRS came under fire, they started adding names of liberal groups in order to hide what they were doing.

In my October commentary I made the case for impeachment of the IRS director. He can be impeached for dereliction of duty because he failed to disclose the disappearance of the IRS emails germane to the congressional investigation. He can be impeached for failure to comply because he and his agency have not complied with the investigation. He can also be impeached for breach of trust because of his refusal to testify accurately before Congress and due to his failure to keep his promises to Congress.

Representative Jason Chaffetz is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He says the IRS has “lied to Congress” and “destroyed documents under subpoena.” He has accused the IRS chairman of “lies, obfuscation, and deceit.”

This latest revelation that the IRS targeted 466 groups and attempted to delay their ability to receive tax-exempt status should seal the deal. In fact, it took a three-year lawsuit from these tea party groups and it took a ruling from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals just to get the names of the groups that were mistreated. It is time for Congress to act.

There are lots of movies and television shows about zombies. They are engaged in all sorts of activities in fiction. It turns out that in real life, they do something else: they vote. Recent investigations in Southern California have uncovered lots of zombie voters.

John Cenkner died in 2003, according to Social Security records. Nevertheless, John apparently voted in the 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2010 elections. His daughter told the local TV station she was astounded that this took place.

Julita Abutin died in 2006. But she voted in 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014. The county even has “signed vote-by-mail envelopes” from someone pretending to be her.

The latest investigation turned up hundreds of deceased people who voted in Southern California. More than two hundred of them voted in Los Angeles County. One woman who died in 1988 has been voting for 26 years, most recently in the 2014 election.

It is worth mentioning that much of this voter fraud is taking place in the area where massive voter fraud took place 20 years ago. Representative Bob Dornan was defeated in a contested election. Loretta Sanchez won the election even though there was evidence of significant voter fraud through illegal ballots and questionable absentee ballots.

As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, critics dismiss these allegations of voter fraud as nonexistent and merely an attempt at voter suppression. The latest investigation out of Southern California should illustrate that this is a bigger problem than many would like to admit.

In the last few decades, we have had some very close elections at the federal, state, and local levels. Voter fraud may be electing people to office who do not deserve to be put in office.

When President Obama decided to take an economic victory lap in Elkhart, Indiana recently, I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised. Every outgoing president wants to make the case that his presidency helped build the economy. But to hear the president speak, you would think that the economy is booming and the federal debt is dropping. That is not the case.

The May jobs report showed that only 38,000 jobs were added to the economy. But that probably will be revised downward. The Brookings Institute argues that 4,000 jobs were actually lost last month. Even more disturbing is word from the head of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellin, that they may consider imposing negative interest rates in an effort to get the economy growing again.

Central to the president’s message was the claim that “some cable news stations and right-wing radio” aren’t giving a true picture and are the reason so many people believe the economy is in bad shape. First, it is hard to accept that the entire nation is being brainwashed by conservative media when the great majority of Americans get their news from major networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC and left-leaning newspapers and social media.

Second, economic facts are stubborn things. The truth is that incomes have fallen significantly during the president’s seven-plus years in office. The national debt has doubled. During his time in office, America’s national debt had increased by $10 trillion. That is more than all his predecessors combined.

Third, the unemployment rate that the president quoted isn’t really telling the whole story. If you finally give up and stop looking for work over a four-week period, the Department of Labor no longer counts you as unemployed. More than 90 million Americans are out of the workforce.

There is a reason why more Americans tell Gallup they think the economy is in poor shape. They see and feel the consequences of the policies of this president.

For more than 200 years, candidates have been running for election in districts that were gerrymandered. The term comes from the name of the governor in Massachusetts. In 1812, Governor Gerry signed a bill that changed the district lines for candidates. One of those contorted districts in the Boston area resembled the shape of a salamander. Thus the term “gerrymander’ was born.

Recently I learned that gerrymandering goes all the way back to the first congressional elections and involved two of the founders. One of them was James Madison, architect of the Constitution. The other was James Monroe. Both went on to become the fourth and fifth presidents of the United States.

In the summer of 1788, Virginia became the 11th state to ratify the Constitution. Governor Patrick Henry called for elections, and worked to prevent James Madison from serving in the Senate or the House of Representatives. First, he worked with members of the Virginia legislature to deny Madison a Senate seat. Back in those days, the legislature selected the U.S. Senators.

Next he worked to deny Madison a seat in the House of Representatives. Patrick Henry convinced the Virginia Legislature to draw the Fifth District lines so they included both Madison’s home and Monroe’s home. The two friends were forced to compete against each other.

During the election they traveled together and debated each other at various gatherings. Through hard and smart campaigning, Madison managed to defeat Monroe and then served in Congress.

There is a bright side to all of this. During the debates with Monroe, Madison realized how important a Bill of Rights would be. Some of the voters wanted such protections. So he made a campaign promise that he would support a Bill of Rights when elected to Congress. This is one campaign promise that was kept. Within six months, Madison pushed through the Bill of Rights, which were later ratified.

I suppose you can say that good things sometimes do come from districts that have been gerrymandered.

Last month, Nicholas Kristof stirred the political waters when we wrote an op-ed with the title, “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance.” The response to his piece led to a second one with the title “The Liberal Blind Spot.”

He began his first piece by acknowledging that: “We progressives believe in diversity, and want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — so long as they aren’t conservatives.” He concludes that liberals are fine with people who don’t look like them as long as the think like them.

He quotes from Professor George Yancey, who is a sociologist who is a black evangelical. Yancey, who has been on my radio program, says that he faced some problems as a black outside of academia but faced many more problems inside academia because he was a Christian.

Nicholas Kristof seems appalled at the response to his first op-ed, hence the reason for his second commentary. Liberals have written that: “Much of the conservative worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false.” Another asks facetiously: “How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots.”

Although he gives good examples of outstanding people in various fields that are evangelicals, his liberal friends will have none of it. That is why he is calling on his readers to begin to tackle their liberal blind spot. He cites a survey that shows that a majority of academics in some fields would discriminate against a job seeker that was an evangelical. He says that feels like bigotry.

Part of the problem may be that liberals are isolated and don’t know any evangelicals. He reminds us of surveys that show that Americans have negative views of Muslims when they don’t know any. He says that he suspects that “many liberals disdain evangelicals in part because they don’t have any evangelical friends.”

I applaud Nicholas Kristof for his observations. Sadly, I doubt it will have much of an impact on the millions of closed-minded liberals.

A third of all young adults are single, broke, and living in their parent’s home. That’s how some are describing the latest results from the Pew Research Center study of the millennial generation.

More young adults are now living with their parents than with a spouse or a partner. This is a tipping point for the first time in modern history. About 32 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are living in their parents’ homes compared with 31 percent who are married or living with a partner in their own household. The remaining 36 percent live alone, are single parents, or live in dorms or with other relatives.

One researcher explained that this was a much different transition from previous generations. In the past, setting up new families was more typical than what we find today. In many ways this shows a postponement of marriage. This is likely due to both lifestyle choices and economics. It is worth noting that some of these trends where taking place before the economic downturn eight years ago.

But economics is another obvious reason for more young people living at home. They face a difficult labor market and therefore are unable to living independently. That is why fewer and fewer of them are married or even living with someone.

These economic realities are even worse for men without a college degree and for people of color. The highest percentage (36%) of men living with parents is black and Hispanic men. The lowest percentage (19%) is men with college degrees. Wages for all men have stagnated over the last few decades, and the labor participation rate his dropped significantly.

None of this is helping improve the housing market or other aspects of the economy. If you don’t own a home, you aren’t likely to be spending money on appliances, furniture, or other household items.

All of this merely demonstrates that the image of a millennial living in his or her parents’ home isn’t just a stereotype: it’s reality.