Now that the violent left-wing group Antifa is getting needed attention in the media, we face a labeling problem. Some conservative commentators have called them a domestic terrorist group. We now know from an article that appeared in Politico that the Obama administration through the Department of Homeland Security concluded that Antifa engaged in “domestic terrorist violence.”

Jonah Goldberg rightly explains that we should not call this group of street thugs a terrorist group. They are violent, but they aren’t terrorists. He laments that defenders of Antifa say that it is a group of activists who are simply anti-fascists “and that fighting fascism is some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for lawlessness.” It is not. Even if you granted such an outrageous proposition, you would still have to point to the fact that Antifa reserves the right to attack anyone whether they are fascist or not. That includes conservative campus speakers, defenders of free speech, and even Republicans.

The mayor of Berkeley canceled “Free Speech Week” for fear or violence. Politicians in Portland canceled their annual Rose Parade because Antifa threatened violence because the Multnomah County Republican Party was scheduled to march in the parade.

Rachel Alexander describes the beating Patriot Prayer organizer Joey Gibson received from Antifa. He was slapped on the head and had “someone gash him with something in his ribs.” Joey was dragged backwards by his shirt, hit on the head with a flagpole, and blasted with bear spray and pepper spray. He and his friend (Tiny) retreated over barriers while bottles were being thrown at them. They finally made it to the Alameda County police line. “No arrests are made. Except for Joey and Tiny, who are cuffed.”

Antifa may not be a terrorist organization, but it is a violent gang.

Liberal U.S. Senators keep asking religious questions of nominees that come before their committee. Article VI of the Constitution prohibits religious tests for public office but that hasn’t stopped some of these senators.

Three months ago Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Van Hollen questioned a nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. You might have thought they would have asked Russell Vought about fiscal and budgetary issues. Instead they focused their questioning on a post in which he defended a decision made by the administration of Wheaton College.

Earlier this month Senators Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein asked Notre Dame Law School Professor Amy Barrett about her religious views. Senator Durbin first asked her if she considered herself an orthodox Catholic. He then explained that he felt such questions about her faith were important to ask because they would likely influence her judicial rulings on a circuit court of appeals.

Senator Feinstein expressed concern about her religious views and said that “the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for, for years in this country.” It’s worth mentioning that fourteen years ago, Senators Durbin and Feinstein along with Senator Chuck Schumer also expressed their concerns over the Catholic faith of William Pryor.

The irony of all of this is the fact that five of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic and many of the members of Congress (including Dick Durbin) are Catholic. The issue isn’t whether they are Catholic but whether they believe orthodox Catholic teaching. You know, the stuff that Senator Feinstein calls dogma. You can be a Catholic or have Christian convictions as long as they line up with liberal and progressive dogma. Otherwise, you are in for a fight in a Senate committee.

Will orthodox, Bible-believing Christians find it harder and harder to buy and sell in America? If you asked that question a few decades ago, people would think you lost all rationality. But that is a question Rod Dreher rightly asks in a recent editorial.

He points to the decision by Vanco Payment Solutions to cut off services to a Christian ministry because it is listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map.” The Ruth Center is a Catholic nonprofit located in Louisiana that was flagged because the service company believed it promoted “hate, violence, harassment, and/or abuse.”

You can go to the ministry’s website and see that it does not even come close to promoting anything like that. People in the ministry believe what the Roman Catholic Church teaches about homosexuality. And because they support traditional marriage and biblical sexuality, the SPLC tagged then as a hate group.

The Washington Free Beacon has been looking into the SPLC and found that it has become a fundraising powerhouse by expanding its list of domestic hate groups. It recorded more than $50 million in contributions and $328 million in net assets. The group also has “financial interests” in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Island, and Bermuda.

An article in Politico says that you might imagine the SPLC as “a handful of scrappy lawyers in a dingy office suite somewhere. In fact, it boasts 250 staffers and offices in four states” and its main office “is the most architecturally striking structure in downtown Montgomery.”

At one time the SPLC provided a necessary function of identifying true hate groups. Today it slaps the label indiscriminately on ministries and organizations like the Ruth Center that do not deserve it. This, in turn, makes them a target and they lose vital services.

Last week, some Texas churches and a synagogue devastated by Hurricane Harvey floodwaters sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They did so because they believed they should have access to disaster relief funds.

Their argument is fairly simple. Other non-profit organizations are eligible for these federal funds, but are denied to religious groups. They believe they should have equal access to these disaster relief grants.

This lawsuit follows the 7-2 ruling by the Supreme Court in the Trinity Lutheran case that was decided this year. You might remember this case since I did two commentaries on it earlier this year.

Trinity Lutheran Church in Missouri applied to a state grant program to resurface its playground with recycled rubber. Although the application ranked high in the list of applicants, the state turned them down merely because the applicant was religious. The Supreme Court rightly ruled that once a state created a neutral program for public benefit, it could not exclude a church from the program.

The lawsuit by these Texas religious groups is different but could be decided by the courts using a similar argument. Hurricanes and tornadoes destroy both secular and religious non-profit organizations, but only secular ones can apply for FEMA grants that help make structural repairs. As one lawyer put it, “Hurricane Harvey didn’t cherry-pick its victims; FEMA shouldn’t cherry-pick who it helps.”

The government often uses churches and other houses of worship to provide shelter, to distribute meals, and to provide medical care. However, those same churches and other houses of worship aren’t eligible to receive FEMA grants because they are religious. They provide comfort and relief for victims, so the federal government should not deny the same relief to them in terms of funding merely because they are religious groups.

So often when the threat of North Korea is discussed we are presented with a false choice. Either we go to war or we do nothing. The latter option has been the hallmark of American inaction for too long. A military strike should be the last resort, but there are other things we can and should do.

An acronym used by the National Strategy for Combatting Terrorism is: DIMEFIL. A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal fleshed out what could be done with North Korea.

D stands for “diplomatic.” Much more pressure can be put on countries to restrict their ties with North Korea.

I stands for “information.” Defectors are already sending information into North Korea about the outside world. This might encourage some leaders to defect or stage a coup.

M stands for “military.” Building up a missile defense might diminish North Korea’s threat of nuclear blackmail. Deploying tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea would make the threat to retaliate against their aggression more credible.

E stands for “economic.” President Trump is considering sanctions against anyone who does business with North Korea. Applying sanctions to some of the networks used by North Korea could curtail their trade.

F stands for “financial.” The U.S. can cut off North Korea’s access to financial intermediaries that conduct such transactions. Such sanctions were already applied to a Chinese bank.

I stands for “intelligence.” Under President Bush, the administration intercepted North Korea’s weapons exports.

L stands for “legal.” Human rights abuses are rampant in North Korea. It is time to take the nation to the International Criminal Court.

Currently North Korea is vulnerable to pressure because of a severe drought. These and other pressure points can be a way to bring down this evil regime.

The Hill is considered the top U.S. political website read by the White House and more lawmakers than any other site. A recent op-ed in it had the arresting title: “US Courts: Can’t pray at work, can’t pray at home.” Kelly Shackelford and James Ho were the authors. They make their case by citing two appeals court decisions.

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals told Mary Anne Sause, a public housing resident, “that two officers could force her to stop praying in her living room, for no reason whatsoever.” When the officers threated to arrest her, she asked for permission to pray. After receiving permission, another officer mocked her and commanded her to “get up” and “stop praying.”

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that a school district in Washington State could fire Coach Joe Kennedy because he went by himself to the fifty-yard line after the football game was over to pray for less than a minute. The court ruled that a public school teacher or a coach has no right to engage in such expression if the speech or conduct is “in the presence of students and spectators.”

Perhaps now you can see why the authors of this op-ed wrote what they did. If these legal precedents get any traction, religious people in general (and Christians in particular) won’t be able to pray at work or pray at home. They wonder if a school in the future could force a teacher to remove a cross or remove her hijab before entering a classroom. Would even offering a short prayer before a meal be justification for disciplinary action?

As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, the idea of religious liberty is already being redefined. Some politicians and commentators no longer talk about the freedom of religion but instead talk about freedom of worship. This moves our religious rights from the public arena to our private lives. But if you can’t pray at work, and you can’t pray at home, it seems to me we have lost our religious liberty.

Even a devastating hurricane can provide some positive lessons. News outlets and commentators have been pointing to so many great “feel good” stories of people who stepped up to save people from the floodwaters and to provide for them once they were rescued.

At least for a short period of time, the racial divisions were set aside as people from different ethnic backgrounds stepped up to help people of various ethnic backgrounds. We didn’t know if the people doing the rescuing or the people being rescued voted for or against Donald Trump. We didn’t know if they were Republican, Democrat, or Independent. We saw a better side of a divided country.

We also saw in this hurricane and flood that some of the politically correct ideas flew right out the window. Ben Shapiro reminded us in one column that in a crisis, “men are no longer toxic, women protect children, and children are innocent.” He used one of the iconic pictures from the flood to illustrate his point. It was a picture of a man in a baseball cap carrying a woman through the water. The woman, in turn, is holding a baby curled up on her chest.

Feminists argue that manhood is toxic and that manhood no longer has meaning. Women don’t need protectors, they say. Well, when the floods came, I am sure many women were glad that men were willing to step up, to be strong, and to be masculine.

In the crisis, women were guarding their children. But we are told by our culture that women should be out in the workplace and not define themselves as mothers and homemakers. The mother in the picture was protecting her child, as she was supposed to do.

Finally, we are told that children cannot be innocent but must become sophisticated enough to make major decisions. They should be able to decide their standards of education, their standards of morality, and even their sexual standards. In fact, they should be able to decide their own sex.

I think that Hurricane Harvey helped clarify some of the false cultural teachings of society.

Members of Congress are debating fiscal issues, but unfortunately they often are debating the wrong issues. On the table are two issues: the debt limit debate and the tax reform debate. As important as they are, they pale in comparison to a bigger issue.

Justin Bogie and Chase Flowers say, “America is Heading Straight into Its Most Avoidable Crisis Ever.” In fact, they compare it to the familiar story of the sinking of the Titanic. The crew of the Titanic chose to ignore warnings of icebergs. Congress can fall into the same trap instead of avoiding a crisis that is preventable.

Already the federal debt has reached $20 trillion and is growing at an unsustainable rate. According to the long-term projections of the Congressional Budget Office, “the federal debt is projected to increase from $20 trillion to $92 trillion in the next 30 years.” The only areas of spending that are expected to increase as a percentage of GDP are Social Security, major health care programs, and interest on the debt. These are the three areas that will be driving the national debt.

What will be the impact? First, interest rates could rise sharply because creditors want more protection or because the government is attempting to sell more bonds than people are willing to buy at current rates. Second, these higher rates will mean that the cost of the federal debt will be greater. This will force the government to either tax more or borrow more. Third, this increased federal debt will restrict the government’s ability to use tax and spend policies to response to a financial crisis or even an economic downturn.

Of course the younger generations in America are the ones who will bear the brunt of these dire economic trends. Unless members of Congress reduce spending and reign in entitlements, higher taxes and lower wages are what await these younger members of society in the future.