An American who recently became a Christian died while fighting ISIS terrorists alongside Kurdish forces in Syria.
The State Department confirmed that Keith Broomfield, 36, was killed fighting with the Kurdish Protection Unit. He is believed to be the first American to die after volunteering to fight against the terrorists.
Keith’s mother, Donna Broomfield, said that Keith found Christ and said that God told him to stop the terrorists.
“He turned his life over to the Lord and he decided this was God’s will and God wanted him to do it,” she said.
Jennifer Broomfield, Keith’s sister, posted on Facebook what she said was the last text message conversation between herself and her brother.
“I’m gonna do what I got to do,” Keith wrote. “Sometimes you got to be a man whether you want to or not. I don’t expect anyone to understand but I don’t need anyone to either. I appreciate your concern and take it as kindness.”
“My brother died to defend my sisters who are being sold, enslaved, raped and murdered. To defend my brothers who are shot beheaded and dumped into piles off trucks,” Jennifer Bloomfield added.
A Kurdish official said that Keith’s body was returned to his family at the Turkish border on Thursday.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas law H.B. 2 is constitutional because the law’s intent is increasing the safety for women who are seeking to end their child’s life via abortion.
“The State truly intends that women only receive an abortion in facilities that can provide the highest quality of care and safety—the stated legitimate purpose of H.B. 2,” the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans wrote. “Plaintiffs bore the burden of proving that H.B. 2 was enacted with an improper purpose. … They failed to proffer competent evidence contradicting the legislature’s statement of a legitimate purpose for H.B. 2.”
The ruling means that abortion clinics in the state must meet the same standards as a surgical center and that doctors at any abortion clinic must have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the decision was a “victory for life and women’s health.”
“H.B. 2 both protects the unborn and ensures Texas women are not subjected to unsafe and unhealthy conditions,” Mr. Paxton said in a statement. “Today’s decision by the Fifth Circuit validates that the people of Texas have authority to establish safe, common-sense standards of care necessary to ensure the health of women.”
Abortion providers and women’s rights groups will try to appeal the decision.
A Senator is challenging the Department of Homeland Security over the DHS quietly changing the definition of “freedom of religion” to “freedom of worship.”
Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, a former youth pastor who helps head the Congressional Prayer Caucus, sent a letter to the head of Homeland Security demanding to know why prospective citizens are asked about “freedom of worship” rather than freedom of religion on civics test study materials.
“We are doing a great disservice to those seeking citizenship in this great country if we distort our history and fail to teach new citizens about the founding and constitutional principles of this nation,” Lankford wrote in the letter. “How can your Department request that Congress create a new United States Citizenship Foundation when your own naturalization materials do not even accurately reflect the constitutional rights of American citizens?”
“Our Constitution is clear— Americans have the freedom of religion. The naturalization tests and its corresponding materials must be equally clear,” Lankford continued. “As such, I ask that you immediately change all documents that are part of the naturalization test, including the study materials, to correctly show that Americans have the right to free exercise of religion.”
DHS made the change in their naturalization materials in 2008. A spokesman for DHS told the Daily Signal the change was made to be “more inclusive.”
Lankford says the change distorts the real meaning in the Constitution of religious freedom.
“The freedom of religion is much more than just the freedom of worship. Worship confines you to a location,” the senator explained. “Freedom of religion is the right to exercise your religious beliefs — it is the ability for Americans to live out their faith or to choose to have no faith.”
The U.S. Army’s official website was taken down Monday by hackers who claim they were the Syrian Electronic Army.
The attack forced the Army to take army.mil offline to protect from further damage.
The hacking comes less than a week after the discovery of Chinese hackers breaking into several important federal government servers that housed the personal information of millions of federal employees.
“Today an element of the Army.mil service provider’s content was compromised,” Army Brig. Gen. Malcolm Frost said in a statement. “After this came to our attention, the Army took appropriate preventive measures to ensure there was no breach of Army data by taking down the website temporarily.”
The Syrian Electronic Army launched in 2011 with a stated goal of attacking the enemies of the Syrian government. They claim to not be officially connected to the Syrian government.
The Army has been the target of hacking in the recent past. Five months ago the website was hit by pro-ISIS hackers who posted messages on the Army’s YouTube and twitter accounts.
The right of U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to list “Israel” as their country of birth on passports has been changed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court ruled on a 6-3 decision that Congress violated the Constitution when it passed a 2002 law telling the State Department any American born in Jerusalem could list Israel as their birthplace.
The new policy has been implemented in an attempt to stay neutral over any nation’s sovereignty over Jerusalem while Palestinians and Israelis negotiate its status.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority that the President has the right to recognize foreign nations and that the ability is his alone; meaning the Congress cannot assign nationality to any foreign land.
“Recognition is a matter on which the nation must speak with one voice. That voice is the president’s,” Kennedy wrote.
US Policy has held that Jerusalem’s city status should be resolved through negotiations between the parties. Congress has for years pushed administrations of both parties to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the Constitution “divides responsibility for foreign affairs between Congress and the president.” He was joined in dissent by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
The ruling ends a 12 year old lawsuit brought by a Jerusalem-born American.
A new study from the Associated Press shows that abortions in the United States have decreased in nearly every state since 2010.
The AP report shows that abortions decreased about 12 percent.
The information came from the health departments of 45 states that compile statistic on abortions on a regular basis. The states that do not track abortion stats are California, Maryland, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Wyoming.
Americans United For Life President Charmaine Yoest praised the survey’s results.
“There’s an entire generation of women who saw a sonogram as their first baby picture,” she said. “There’s an increased awareness of the humanity of the baby before it is born.”
The survey showed increases in two states that are taking steps to make abortion more restrictive: Louisiana and Michigan. The increases in the states appear to be coming from women who travel from other states to avoid abortion restrictions in those states.
One Michigan company that owns a chain of abortion clinics advertises to women in Indiana and Ohio to come to their clinics, mentioning in one ad that it’s “less than 60 miles from Toledo.”
The largest decrease in abortions came in Hawaii, which fell from 3,064 in 2010 to 2,147 in 2014.
A 9-year-old Washington girl believes “everyone should have a place to live.”
For Hailey Ford, it’s more than something she says. It’s something that she lives out every day.
Hailey is building 8 foot by 4 foot wooden structures designed to give one homeless person a place to sleep.
“It just doesn’t seem right that there are homeless people,” Hailey told the King 5 News. “I think everyone should have a place to live.”
But a home is not where Hailey started…it was with a garden.
Hailey met a homeless man named Edward who found himself on the street after losing his job at a grocery store. Hailey’s mother provided Edward with a sandwich on the day they met but Hailey wanted to do more. So she started a garden, Hailey’s Harvest, which donated 128 pounds of produce to feed the homeless in 2014.
Hailey teamed with Together Rising, a non profit who gave Hailey a $3,000 grant toward her project.
“We can’t think of a better example than our Hailey — she’s proof that no person – or act of kindness — is too small to change the world,” Together Rising founder Glennon Doyle Melton said in a statement provided to The Huffington Post.
Hailey says the first completed shelter will go to Edward.
A series of tornadoes swept through Colorado Thursday night destroying three homes and damaging over two dozen others.
Officials say there were no injuries reported in the outbreak.
One of the storms brought so much rain that it caused a sinkhole 15 feet deep that swallowed a police cruiser. The officer inside at the time was able to escape without serious injury.
The homes were destroyed in Berthoud, about 40 miles north of Denver.
“It was probably on the ground two minutes,” Scott Oliver, who lives in northern Boulder County, told The Daily Camera newspaper. “It was just kicking up everything. It was terrible.”
“You just wouldn’t believe how many hailstones we had,” resident Dan Grabosky told NBC. “And the continuous roar of the lightning and thunder. It was just awful.”
“It was just a whirling mass,” he said. “It was coming for my home, and God stopped it.”
One forecaster with the Weather Channel reported he had received reports of hail the size of grapefruit.
The rain continued through the midwest bringing flooding to Kansas City.
As many as four million employees could have their personal information compromised in what some U.S. officials have called “the biggest breach ever of the government’s computer networks.”
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the breach saying that at the beginning of May hackers had violated the systems of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Interior Department.
“Protecting our Federal employee data from malicious cyber incidents is of the highest priority at OPM,” OPM Director Katherine Archuleta said in a statement. “We take very seriously our responsibility to secure the information stored in our systems, and in coordination with our agency partners, our experienced team is constantly identifying opportunities to further protect the data with which we are entrusted.”
Sen. Susan Collins told the Associated Press investigators believe the hack came from China.
Collins called the attack “yet another indication of a foreign power probing successfully and focusing on what appears to be data that would identify people with security clearances.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) intrusion system detected the hack, although many files were copied before the system alerted officials.
“DHS is continuing to monitor federal networks for any suspicious activity and is working aggressively with the affected agencies to conduct investigative analysis to assess the extent of this alleged intrusion,” A DHS statement read.