One pastor in Iowa has accused the government of “meddling in religious affairs.” Pastor Cary Gordon is concerned that the Iowa Civil Rights Commission brochure on sexual orientation and gender identity defines churches as public accommodations. Thus, all the sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws may apply to his church and any other church.

The brochure has a section titled, “Does this law apply to churches?” The answer that it gives is: “sometimes.” It goes on to explain that churches are only exempt if the qualifications “are related to bona fide religious purpose. Where qualifications are not related to a bona fide religious purpose, churches are still subject to the law’s provisions (e.g., a child care facility operated at a church or a church service open to the public).”

If you think about it, that last sentence opens the door since it describes most of the events a church might hold. The current interpretation would prohibit saying anything in church that would make a person of a particular gender identity uncomfortable.

Pastor Gordon believes the statements in the brochure show a “flagrant disrespect for the First Amendment of the Constitution.” He also adds that: “It’s fundamentally wrong, and I can’t comply with that.”

First Liberty Institute is representing the pastor and his church. The law firm fired off a demand letter to the Iowa Civil Rights Commission calling for them to amend its published policy to clarify that it will not apply Iowa Code 216 against churches. In response to the letter the commission decided to revise the document to clarify that churches are exempt.

All of this brings to mind the famous line by Martin Neirmöller. Few pastors have been willing to defend bakers, florists, and photographers. I guess you could put it this way. First they came for the bakers, then they came for the pastors.

News stories have been filled with statistics about police shootings. Although many of these statistics seem contradictory, they are remarkably consistent when you dig deeper.

Let’s start with facts that everyone can agree on: there is a statistical disparity. African-Americans represent 13 percent of the American population, but 26 percent of the people killed by police are black. Many political candidates and even members of Black Lives Matter often just stop with that statistic, and don’t consider a more relevant baseline.

Heather MacDonald in her new book, The War on Cops, reminded my radio audience that according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks were charged with 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults (in the largest U.S. counties). Another group we should consider is cop-killers. These are men who present a lethal threat to police. According to FBI data, about 43 percent are black. In fact, law enforcement officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are killed by police.

Consider the study done by Dr. Roland Fryer (Harvard professor of economics). As an African-American, he said he was angry after the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and decided to collect data to understand what was happening in the streets of America. He and his research team examined 1,332 shootings.

He found no evidence of racial bias when it came to lethal force. If anything, he found that blacks were slightly less likely to be killed. Roland Fryer admitted that this conclusion “is the most surprising result of my career.”

For example, when looking at the issue of “shoot or don’t shoot,” he found that officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot suspects if the suspect were black. It is worth noting that he did find evidence of bias when it came to nonlethal force.

These latest statistics illustrate that many of the slogans used in protests simply are not true.

Is America great? Was America great? It looks like we will be having a debate about those questions for the next few months. During the Fourth of July weekend, many on the Left used the #AmericaWasNeverGreat hashtag on social media. While most of us were celebrating this nation’s founding, liberals and progressives were making long lists of America’s sins.

Of course these critics have every right to do so. That’s what the First Amendment is all about. And it is worth mentioning that many of the other countries in this world do not grant its citizens the privilege of doing so. Perhaps they should be a little grateful that they could fill social media with every possible criticism of this country and not have to pay any consequences.

The reason for the hashtag is fairly obvious. Donald Trump wants to “Make America Great Again.” And there are many others who not only believe America was great in the past, but is great today. Talk show host Michael Medved starts every program and ends every program with the statement that this is “the greatest nation on God’s green earth.” Given the decline in America, people sometimes ask him if he still thinks it is the greatest nation. He always responds by asking them, can you think of a better nation?

Fortune magazine used 75 criteria to look at a country’s progress in areas such as entrepreneurship, cultural influence, business-friendly policies and economic progress. They concluded that Germany was the best country, with the United States coming in fourth. The United States was first in power but lower in a few other categories. Even if you accept the rating criteria used by Fortune, you can still say that America is one of the greatest countries in the world.

Is America great? Was America ever great? There are lots of people who don’t believe that it was. Let’s have a debate about America’s greatness that involves more than a hashtag of a 140 characters..

One of the themes that seems to run through my radio program and my radio commentaries is the sad realization that our laws seem to apply differently depending on whether you are the elite or just common folks. Earlier this week, I talked about how leaders in the European Union or in the United States are not affected by the laws and policies that influence the rest of us.

We had another example last week when the FBI Director James Comey announced that Hillary Clinton would not be indicted. In the midst of his explanation came this revealing sentence: “This is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences.” He went on to explain that other people (just not Hillary Clinton) would face administrative sanctions.

There you have it. James Comey may not have meant to be so obvious and was probably trying to send a signal that using a personal email server would not be permitted in the future. But he also made it clear that there is one standard for a candidate for president and a second standard for the rest of us.

Some have referred to this as the Clinton standard. Since the 1990s, it seems that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been able to get away with just about anything by denying it and getting cover from the mainstream media. Others would have been tempted to admit their sins and resign.

Consider the evidence the James Comey put forward before announcing that that no indictment would be forthcoming. At least 110 emails were sent or received on the Clinton server that contained classified information. Eight of those were top secret, the highest level of classification. It is also possible that “hostile actors” accessed her account since they accessed others she was in contact with.

Imagine if others were guilty of such actions. James Comey believes they would face charges and sanctions because these people would not be judged by the Clinton standard.

“If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern.” That is the chilling statement from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in his critical dissent. He is troubled that the Supreme Court decided not to hear an important case involving religious freedom of conscience.

The case involved a Christian-owned pharmacy that did not want to dispense abortion-causing drugs such as Plan B. The state of Washington requires that all pharmacies dispense “all lawfully prescribed drugs or devices.” Instead the pharmacists refer customers to other local pharmacies that do carry the drug. According to court documents, there are over 30 pharmacies and drug stores within five miles that can do so. That accommodation was not enough for abortion activists.

A federal court in 2012 struck down the Washington law as unconstitutional. The court ruled that the law was designed to force pharmacists and pharmacies to violate their religious faith. Last year, however, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision. The judges upheld the law mandating that pharmacists dispense these drugs. The Supreme Court decision not to hear the case allows the Ninth Circuit Court’s ruling to stand.

Perhaps you can now see why Justice Alito issued this dire warning. In his dissent he explained the dilemma now facing Christian pharmacists: “Violate your sincerely held religious beliefs or get out of the pharmacy business.”

Of course, this warning applies to more that just pharmacists. Recent laws and court rulings about same-sex weddings, for example, raise questions about whether a dedicated Christian can be a baker, florist, photographer, or country clerk. Each year the list of vocations Christians might avoid gets longer. That is why we should pay attention to what Justice Alito warned in his dissent.

Globalization has benefited most everyone on this planet except for the middle class and especially people in the working class. A chart posted by Timothy Carney shows how the global population has fared economically over the last twenty years. I have included the graph with the transcript of this commentary so you can see it for yourself.

On the far left the poorest of the poor are still as poor as they were. But almost everyone else is doing better economically. This includes the global lower-middle class all the way to the global upper class. But the chart dips down dramatically for one segment that can be identified as the middle class and working class in wealthy countries like the United States.

In the past, the working class and middle class benefited from being born in America. They had access to resources and materials they could exchange in a free market. Also, they were shielded from competition and industries using workers with lower wages. Globalization opened America’s working class to competition from other parts of the global workforce.

This chart has appeared in other articles and has often been referred to as the globalization “elephant chart.” In other words, globalization is often the “elephant in the room” that nobody is talking about. Now, to be fair many politicians have talked about the fact that wages of the middle class have declined. Some have suggested trade barriers and all sorts of political and economic solutions.

The problem in finding solutions can be seen in the graph that shows how well the wealthy have done. The political and economic elite have benefitted greatly from open borders, free trade, and globalization. How motivated do you think they might be to make economic changes that might benefit the working class when it might have a negative impact on their earning potential?

When elites in this country and other wealthy countries are getting richer from globalization, I think they won’t be very motivated to help the working class.

Voters are discovering that the political elites are passing laws and making policies that only affect the common folk. Put another way elites don’t have to live under the laws they pass and policies they make.

The vote last month on Brexit illustrates this. Victor Davis Hanson reminds us in a column that: “Anti-Brexit Elites Aren’t the Ones Who Suffer from Their Policies.” He says that the bureaucratic class that runs Europe from Brussels and Strasbourg will lecture everyone about immigration, climate change, and political correctness. But they are also able to navigate around their own policies.

They receive generous public pay, put their kids in private schools, and live in non-diverse neighborhoods. They are largely unaffected by undemocratic bureaucrats in the European Union. Meanwhile the rest of the population struggles with a flat economy, have their kids in failing schools, and have to deal with liberal immigration laws that change the complexion of their neighborhoods.

In our country, we can see a similar dichotomy. The president and members of Congress enjoy a lifestyle of travel and influence most Americans can’t even imagine. They vote against school choice while placing their children in private prep schools. They lecture Americans about climate change while flying around in Air Force One or on congressional junkets. They call for austerity while enjoying the benefits that come from having White House staff or congressional staff. They talk about the need for economic fairness while collecting personal fortunes from speaking fees or insider information they can use in investing.

It is not surprising that some have called for a 28th amendment to the Constitution that would prevent Congress from making any law that does not apply equally to all the citizens of the United States. The chances of such an amendment passing are slim and would not actually have much impact on changing the lifestyles of the political elite. Actually, there is a better way to make a change. That happens in November.

When Congress returns from a summer break, you have to wonder whether protest politics will once again be on display. Two weeks ago several House Democrats literally sat on the floor of the House of Representatives and demanded a vote on gun control measures that could not be passed in the U.S. Senate. What started with about 40 members grew to more than 170 including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

We have seen this before in other legislative bodies. Remember when union activists took over the Wisconsin legislature a few years ago? Or we can point to the disruption in the Texas Senate by pro-choice activists. Outside the legislative chambers we have seen protest politics in full throat with Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.

Leading the House sit-in was Representative John Lewis (D-GA) who seemed blind to the irony of what he was doing. In the 1960s he staged sit-ins to fight for civil rights. Now he was organizing a sit-in to deny people their civil rights. The goal seemed to be that citizens should lose their Second Amendment right because they would be denied their Fifth Amendment right of due process. And they were using their First Amendment right as justification for disrupting the order of the House.

It is also ironic that Representative Lewis wanted a vote on using a watch list to deny citizens their right to own a firearm. A few years ago John Lewis was erroneously placed on such a list. Even though he had been a member of Congress for more than a quarter century, he couldn’t get his name cleared up quickly.

The bigger issue is whether we have lost all decorum in Congress and other state legislatures. When House Speaker Paul Ryan tried to restore order at three in the morning, pandemonium erupted. His attempts to gavel the session back to regular business were greeted with shouts and protests. Let all hope protest politics do not return to the House of Representatives.