The IRS scandal has two parts. The first is the obviously deliberate and targeted abuse, harassment and attempted suppression of conservative groups. The second is the auditing of the taxes of political activists…

The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration…

Franklin Graham, son of Billy, told Politico he believes his father was targeted. A conservative Catholic academic who has written for these pages faced questions about her meager freelance writing income. Many of these stories will come out, but not as many as there are. People are not only afraid of being audited, they’re afraid of saying they were audited.

If these reports are true, the IRS has used its auditing powers to punish opponents of the Obama administration. To add insult to injury, the allegations include the suppression not only of certain political speech, but also of religious speech. It’s not just free speech that the IRS attacked, but in some cases they targeted religious liberty is as well.

I’m no fan of independent counsels, but I agree with Noonan’s conclusion that we need one in this case. The stakes really are that high. She writes:

What happened at the IRS is the government’s essential business. The IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that position’s powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be cleaned. Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don’t, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn’t stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.

Read the rest here.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY is being redefined in America, or at least many would like it to be. Our secular establishment wants to reduce the autonomy of religious institutions and limit the influence of faith in the public square. The reason is not hard to grasp. In America, “religion” largely means Christianity, and today our secular culture views orthodox Christian churches as troublesome, retrograde, and reactionary forces. They’re seen as anti-science, anti-gay, and anti-women—which is to say anti-progress as the Left defines progress. Not surprisingly, then, the Left believes society will be best served if Christians are limited in their influence on public life. And in the short run this view is likely to succeed. There will be many arguments urging Christians to keep their religion strictly religious rather than “political.” And there won’t just be arguments; there will be laws as well. We’re in the midst of climate change—one that’s getting colder and colder toward religion.

A big hat-tip to Patrick Schreiner for highlighting this article. Highly recommended.

R. R. Reno, “Religion and Public Life in America,” Imprimis 42.4 (April 2013): 1–8.

The song selection includes classic hymns and old gospel songs. His duet with Ricky Skaggs on “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” may be the best track on the record. But probably my favorites are his fresh acoustic renditions of some of his early work. And by “early work,” I mean material that he recorded about 25 years ago—songs like “Hiding Place,” “His Eyes,” and my all-time favorite “My Redeemer Is Faithful and True.”

Whether you’re a new fan or someone who has followed Chapman for the span of his career, you will love what he has done on this album. For me, anyway, this album has quickly become a favorite among all that he has ever produced.

StevenCurtisChapman.com has made clips of each of these songs available, and I have embedded them below so that you can take a listen. When you’re finished sampling, you can download the rest of the record here.

DEEP ROOTS

1. ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus

2. How Great Thou Art (feat. Jillian Edwards Chapman)

3. What a Friend We Have in Jesus (feat. Ricky Skaggs)

4. Blessed Assurance

5. Life is Like a Mountain Railroad (Life’s Railway to Heaven) [feat. Herb Chapman Sr. & Herb Chapman Jr.]

6. He Touched Me (feat. Herb Chapman Sr. & Herb Chapman Jr.)

7. Hiding Place

8. Rock of Ages

9. Be Still and Know (feat. Caleb Chapman)

10. His Eyes

11. My Redeemer is Faithful and True

12. Cinderella

Can anyone really claim surprise that this was going one? Pro-abortion activists long ago took the position that granting human rights to survivors of abortion would present a threat to the regime of Roe v. Wade. Their position has not been a secret. That’s why a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood recently argued against a bill that would protect the live-born infants from being left to die. That’s why our own President Obama—when he was an Illinois state senator—voted four times against legislation that would have protected babies in the same situation as the ones in Gosnell’s clinic. This was all well-known when President Obama was a candidate, and Americans seemed to be indifferent about it as they elected him twice to be their chief executive. The bottom line is this. The culture of death is mainstream. People are accustomed to the fact that killing unborn babies is legal. What’s the difference if some of them are killed right after they pass from their mother’s body?

Gosnell did not act alone. He had many who assisted him. I’m thinking about those clinic workers. How did they sleep at night when day after day, week after week, year after year they went to work and “ensured the fetal demise” of human babies? No matter how you euphemize it, it is what it is—cold-blooded murder. What kind of culture produces a clinic full of workers who went along with this atrocity for so long? I’ll tell you what kind of culture it is. It’s the culture of sexual revolutionaries and radical feminists who sold our country a bill of goods—that a woman’s right to be free from the consequences of her fertility is sacrosanct, even if it means that human infants have to die. It’s a culture that won’t speak about what abortion really is but that euphemizes murder with bromides about “reproductive rights” and “access to healthcare.” It’s the culture of death.

In this context, what is the real significance of the Gosnell trial? The Gosnell trial exposes the abortion license for what it is. It forces Americans to look square in the face at what they usually cover up in euphemism and indifference. Gosnell killed human beings. He regularly killed them inside the womb, and he regularly killed them outside the womb. Gosnell forces us to ask the questions that the pro-abortion activists desperately try to keep us from asking. Why was it legal to kill the one and not the other? Why is it normal and right to kill a baby in the birth canal but appalling and repugnant to kill that same baby moments later outside the womb? Gosnell exposes the farce that a baby’s location should determine his right to life.

At this point, what else can be said about the Gosnell verdict? Isn’t the point of it all as plain as the nose on one’s face? For me it is. Yet I am still astonished that for so many it isn’t. Planned Parenthood and NARAL both lauded Gosnell’s conviction as reminder of the importance of providing “safe” abortions for women. Neither group acknowledged the sanctity and the worth of the human babies who were killed at Gosnell’s hands. After all the pictures of murdered human babies and after all the testimony from witnesses who watched as these children were ruthlessly killed, how can Planned Parenthood and NARAL be so cold-hearted? Will we as a culture follow pro-abortion absolutists into moral bankruptcy? Will we follow the darkened logic that says that there are no lessons to be learned about the morality of abortion from all of this?

Wisdom cries aloud in the streets (Prov. 1:20-23). Will anyone hear her voice? God help us if we don’t.

Abortion provider Kermit Gosnell was convicted Monday of three counts of first-degree murder for severing the spinal cords of infants born during abortions at his West Philadelphia clinic.

Gosnell also was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of 41-year-old Virginia woman Karnamaya Mongar, who died from an overdose of drugs while undergoing an abortion at the clinic. Prosecutors described the clinic as a “house of horrors” because of the unsanitary conditions and unsafe practices that defined it.

The trial now moves into a sentencing phase to decide whether Gosnell should receive the death penalty or face life in prison on the capital murders counts.

The New York Times coverage is still referring to the murdered babies as “fetuses.” Jon Hurdle writes:

The verdict came after a five-week trial in which the prosecution and the defense battled over whether the fetuses Dr. Gosnell was charged with killing were alive when they were removed from their mothers.

They’ve done this before, but you’d think that after his conviction the Times might refer to them as babies.

All of this is still developing. More later.

The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age—and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm…

A growing number of evangelicals are rethinking the issue of birth control—and facing the hard questions posed by reproductive technologies. Several developments contributed to this reconsideration, but the most important of these is the abortion revolution. The early evangelical response to legalized abortion was woefully inadequate. Some of the largest evangelical denominations at first accepted at least some version of abortion on demand.

This issue also includes the print version of John Piper‘s “Clarifying Words on Wife Abuse.” Jeremy Pierre has an extremely helpful piece exhorting churches to use church discipline to protect women from predatory men. Also, don’t miss the inimitable Mark Coppenger and his review of Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen’s A Sword between the Sexes?. There are many other fine articles and reviews in the current issue that you will want to read. I will include the full table of contents below.

I should also mention one other important announcement. CBMW’s website was hacked about a year or so ago, and since then access to many of our online resources has been lost. Under Owen Strachan’s leadership, we have a new website up and running, and it is already being filled with really helpful new content. We are also working on restoring old resources that were lost. As of today, one of the big things that has been added back are the archives of previous issues of the Journal. You can now access issues of JBMW going back to the very beginning in 1995. I encourage you to check out our archives pages here.

• Editorial, pp. 2-3.
• Odds & Ends, pp. 4-6.
• R. Albert Mohler, “Can Christians Use Birth Control,” pp. 7-9.
• John Piper, “Clarifying Words on Wife Abuse,” pp. 10-11.
• Jeremy Pierre, “An Overlooked Help: Church Discipline and the Protection of Women,” pp. 12-15.
• Mitchell Chase, “God’s Judgment on His Blessing: How Genesis 1:28 Informs the Punishments on Adam and Eve,” pp. 16-21.
• Liz Lockwood, “A Review of Claire Smith, God’s Good Design: What the Bible Really Says about Men and Women,” pp. 22-23.
• Mark T. Coppenger, “A Review of Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, A Sword between the Sexes? C.S> Lewis and the Gender Debates,” pp. 24-29.
• Todd Miles, “A Review of Ronald W. Pierce, Partners in Marriage and Ministry,” pp. 30-33.
• Courtney Reissig, “A Review of Jim Henderson, The Resignation of Eve: What if Adam’s Rib Is No Longer Willing to Be the Church’s Backbone?” pp.34-35.
• Heath Lambert, “A Review of William and Aida Spencer and Steve and Celestia Tracy, Marriage at the Crossroads: Couples in Conversation about Discipleschip, Gender Roles, Decisions Making and Intimacy,” pp. 36-38.
• Jeremy Pierre, “A Review of Paul David Tripp, What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage,” pp. 39.

The administration’s behavior before and during the attack in Benghazi, in which four Americans died, was unworthy of the greatest power on earth.

After his Libyan intervention, President Obama knew he was sending diplomats and their protectors into a country that was no longer a country, a land rife with fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Yet in this hottest of hot spots, the State Department’s minimum security requirements were not met, requests for more security were rejected, and contingency plans were not drawn up, despite the portentous date of 9/11 and cascading warnings from the C.I.A., which had more personnel in Benghazi than State did and vetted the feckless Libyan Praetorian Guard. When the Pentagon called an elite Special Forces team three hours into the attack, it was training in Croatia — decidedly not a hot spot.

Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Chris Stevens were rushing to make the flimsy Benghazi post permanent as a sign of good faith with Libyans, even as it sat ringed by enemies.

The hierarchies at State and Defense had a plodding response, failing to make any superhuman effort as the siege waxed and waned over eight hours.

In an emotional Senate hearing on Wednesday, Stevens’s second-in-command, Gregory Hicks, who was frantically trying to help from 600 miles away in Tripoli, described how his pleas were denied by military brass, who said they could not scramble planes and who gave a “stand-down” order to four Special Forces officers in Tripoli who were eager to race to Benghazi.

There is much more to this critique, and it is worth the time to read the whole thing.

The administration’s behavior before and during the attack in Benghazi, in which four Americans died, was unworthy of the greatest power on earth.

After his Libyan intervention, President Obama knew he was sending diplomats and their protectors into a country that was no longer a country, a land rife with fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Yet in this hottest of hot spots, the State Department’s minimum security requirements were not met, requests for more security were rejected, and contingency plans were not drawn up, despite the portentous date of 9/11 and cascading warnings from the C.I.A., which had more personnel in Benghazi than State did and vetted the feckless Libyan Praetorian Guard. When the Pentagon called an elite Special Forces team three hours into the attack, it was training in Croatia — decidedly not a hot spot.

Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Chris Stevens were rushing to make the flimsy Benghazi post permanent as a sign of good faith with Libyans, even as it sat ringed by enemies.

The hierarchies at State and Defense had a plodding response, failing to make any superhuman effort as the siege waxed and waned over eight hours.

In an emotional Senate hearing on Wednesday, Stevens’s second-in-command, Gregory Hicks, who was frantically trying to help from 600 miles away in Tripoli, described how his pleas were denied by military brass, who said they could not scramble planes and who gave a “stand-down” order to four Special Forces officers in Tripoli who were eager to race to Benghazi.

There is much more to this critique, and it is worth the time to read the whole thing.

The President may succeed in stonewalling Congress and the media past Election Day. But the issue will return, perhaps with a vengeance, in an Obama second term. The episode reflects directly on his competence and honesty as Commander in Chief. If his Administration is found to have dissembled, careers will be ended and his Presidency will be severely damaged—all the more so because he refused to deal candidly with the issue before the election.

The issue has indeed returned with a vengeance, and we now know that the administration did indeed “dissemble.” The President’s involvement or lack thereof remains to be seen.

What is clear is that Benghazi is not going away. The media appear to be interested now, which is better late than never.

For Mother’s Day, here’s a “yo mama” battle like you’ve never seen before. No insults here, only compliments. And they’re hilarious. Thanks, Rhett and Link! (HT: 22words)