The World and Everything in It: July 6, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. Hi! I'm Jeremy Reed. I work in local government and live in Lancaster, Texas, with my lovely wife and three kids. We hope you enjoy today's program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! The Supreme Court last week handed down a unanimous ruling in favor of a postal worker wanting Sundays off. What does this mean for religious liberty at work?

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Also, the Court’s decision in favor of a Colorado web designer has triggered a variety of falsehoods that need debunking.

AUDIO: It appears this web designer only went into the wedding business for the purpose of provoking a case like this.

Plus, doing life with friends at church for three quarters of a century.

AUDIO: And I've been here my whole life and I don't intend to go anywhere else…I've learned to just live with it. Just live with it. And just keep, keep loving the Lord and keep my friends close.

And Cal Thomas on the failed history of predicting climate change.

BROWN: It’s Thursday, July 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

BUTLER: And I’m Paul Butler. Good morning!

BROWN: Up next, Kristen Flavin with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Swedish PM at White House » President Biden welcomed the Swedish prime minister to the White House on Wednesday in a continued show of support for the Nordic nation’s entry into NATO.

BIDEN: The United State fully, fully, fully supports Sweden’s membership in NATO. And the bottom line is simple: Sweden is going to make our alliance stronger.

The Oval Office meeting comes ahead of a NATO summit next week.

All NATO members have to agree for a new member to join and at the moment, Turkey and Hungary are holdouts.

Turkey still accuses Sweden of being too lenient toward groups that it says pose a security threat.

Sweden’s neighbor Finland applied for membership at the same time and has been admitted.

White House cocaine » Meantime, experts have confirmed that a suspicious package found in the White House on Sunday was filled with cocaine.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre:

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: It is under investigation by the Secret Service. This is in their purview. And we have confidence that the Secret Service will get to the bottom of this.

Authorities found the package in the West Wing in a place staff and guests use to store cell phones.

The president was at Camp David with his family at the time.

Israel » Karine Jean-Pierre also fielded questions about the recent violence in and around the West Bank. She told reporters:

PIERRE: We support certainly Israel’s security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups. It is imperative to take all possible steps to protect civilians from harm.

Israeli troops have withdrawn from the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank after an intense raid to take out members of Iran-backed terror groups.

At least a dozen Palestinians died.

Israeli forces say since last year, militants living in Jenin carried out at least 50 violent attacks on Israel.

Pentagon » The Pentagon has announced plans to tighten up its protections of classified information after a recent leak of sensitive documents. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered the Defense Department  to beef up security around rooms that house classified information.

The Pentagon says the changes are meant to allow leaders to keep a closer eye on what workers are doing while also maintaining the flexibility for sharing information across departments.

The changes follow the arrest last month of an Air National Guardsman for leaking U.S. intelligence secrets online.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher

Gov. injunction on social media contact » A federal judge is reining in the Biden administration’s ability to pressure social media companies to censor certain posts.

The court order stems from a lawsuit accusing the government of leaning on social media platforms to block certain posts, including those raising questions about COVID-19 vaccines.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry brought that lawsuit.

Landry: The amount of information and discovery that we were able to obtain through this particular case should concern all Americans irrespective of their political ideology, their party affiliation.

The Court ruled that the government violated users’ right to free speech.

The judgment restricts more than a dozen federal offices and White House officials from communicating with social media outlets about moderating content.

Philly shooter » The suspect in a deadly mass shooting in Philadelphia faced a judge on Wednesday.

Forty-year-old Kimbrady Carriker is charged with five counts of murder and other charges.

Prosecutor Robert Wainwright praised the police response to the shooting.

WAINWRIGHT: The police work on this case was just absolutely incredible from the very beginning. The fact that they cornered this individual before he could take more lives is absolutely remarkable and showed incredible bravery by the police officers.

Wainwright is accused of shooting people at random in a Philadelphia neighborhood on Monday.

According to prosecutors, the suspect’s roommate said Wainwright acted agitated and wore a tactical vest around his house in the days before the shooting.

I'm Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: The Supreme Court weighs in on religious liberty in the public square. Plus, a seventy-five year-old friendship.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 6th of July, 2023.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. First up, religious liberty at work.

Last week, the Supreme Court handed down its biggest decisions of the term. In rulings on affirmative action, student loan forgiveness, and free speech, the high court was largely split down ideological lines. But in the case of a postal worker denied time off on Sunday, the court ruled unanimously in the letter carrier’s favor.

BROWN: What did the Justices say, and how does it affect the ongoing debate over religious liberty in the public square?

Joining us now to talk about it is WORLD legal reporter Steve West.

Steve, good morning to you.

STEVE WEST: Good morning, Myrna.

BROWN: Can you tell us about the background to Groff’s case?

WEST: Sure. Gerald Groff was for many years a mail carrier working out of a small rural post office in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania---Amish country. He's an evangelical Christian who believes this Sunday is the Christian Sabbath, meaning it's a day only for worship and rest, not work. That really wasn't an issue for Groff until the Postal Service contracted with Amazon to deliver packages for Amazon on Sunday. And even then, Groff's fellow employees trade his shifts with him allowing him to be off on Sunday, but then, at some point in 2019, that wasn't okay. A supervisor wouldn't accommodate him, saying it had a negative impact on other employees and on their morale. Rather than wait to get fired, Groff resigned and then he sued.

BROWN: And after he sued, his case made its way through the lower courts to the Supreme Court where all nine justices ruled that the Postal Service had not properly considered Groff’s religious views. What was their rationale for ruling in Groff’s favor?

WEST: Back in April, when oral arguments were held, it was pretty clear that most of the Justices believed the law needed to be cleared up. At issue was language in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars religious discrimination in the workplace, among other things. The federal law requires most employers to make reasonable accommodations for an employee's religious beliefs unless doing so would cause undue hardship. Because of a 1977 ruling by the court, which spoke of this as a de minimis—or light burden, employers have had the upper hand. What this Court said is that this is not the standard, not even under the facts of that case, that for over 45 years courts had been misreading that decision. They said that for employers to deny an accommodation, they have to show that accommodating the employee would substantially increase the cost of doing business.

BROWN: What kind of signal does the unanimous ruling send to other government agencies and even big businesses about how to handle religious accommodations going forward?

WEST: Right, it doesn't address all the factual situations that will come up, you know, the court left that for employers and other courts to work out. But I think what it does is it tells government and private employers that they have to take seriously any claim by an employee that a workplace requirement will burden their religious beliefs. That could be an exception to a dress code, a Sabbath observance, or even objections to vaccine requirements. Boilerplate denials won't fly. Employers won't always be able to make accommodations—in fact, Groff hasn't won his case quite yet—but their justifications will be more strictly scrutinized under this ruling.

BROWN: Besides the Groff case, you’ve been watching other cases coming up through the lower courts. What are you seeing there as it relates to religious liberty in the public square?

WEST: Well one thing I've been following is a recent federal appeals court decision, a federal appeals court in New Orleans that ruled for a for-profit religious employer, that they're exempt from federal rules that require businesses to hire LGBT employees unwilling to abide by employers’ religious beliefs about sexual conduct. The court in that case addressed what has been an open issue since the Supreme Court ruling three years ago in Bostock v. Clayton County and a related case called Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC. Now, Harris had to do with the discharge of an employee who refused to comply with a Michigan funeral home's dress code, which required employees to dress in a manner sensitive to grieving family members and friends, that the EEOC attempted to force the business to allow a biologically male employee to wear a female uniform while interacting with the public. And there, justice Gorsuch indicated that the sex discrimination barred by Title VIII included sexual orientation and gender identity, and yet he said religious employers may have defenses like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, only in in that particular case, the defense had not been raised. Well, here it was raised in this particular case and the employer prevailed with the court saying that the government's interest in forcing the company to hire someone who could not agree to their standards of conduct was not sufficient to overcome the company's religious liberty interest.

BROWN: Looking at the bigger picture here, Steve, I’d like to hear what you think these cases indicate about the future religious liberty in the public square.

WEST: Well, you know, the whole trajectory of this Supreme Court has been over the last, not just this year, but the last two or three years has been toward prioritizing first amendment rights. There's a solid majority that support, you know, religious liberty and free speech. So that while there will still be challenges in some lower courts, this court is clearly siding with religious liberty and free speech, as it should. You know, what critics should realize is that, you know, this favors all faiths, not just the Christian faith, but all faiths and the right of all individuals to speak and not be forced to speak all kinds of ideas, even the ones that are culturally popular.

BROWN: Steve West is a legal reporter for WORLD.

If you’re interested in reading his coverage of the lower court ruling in Braidwood Management versus EEOC, we’ve included a link in today’s transcript. Steve, thank you for joining us today.

WEST: Happy to be with you, Myrna.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: debunking more falsehoods.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. The opinion in 303 Creative v Elenis said that creative artists cannot be forced to create messages that violate their consciences.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: This is good news for everyone, but not everyone is pleased. Some seek to cast the case itself and the opinion in wrong and misleading ways. For example, here is Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg last week on CNN.

PETE BUTTIGIEG: And I think it's very revealing that there's no evidence that this web designer was ever even approached by anyone asking for a website for a same sex wedding. Matter of fact, it appears this web designer only went into the wedding business for the purpose of provoking a case like this.

That web designer is named Lorie Smith, and the facts of the matter are not what the transportation secretary, along with many others, claim they are.

BUTLER: Yesterday WORLD’s Mary Reichard spoke with ADF President and General Counsel Kristen Waggoner to set the record straight. Waggoner argued the case on behalf of Lori Smith and 303 Creative before the Supreme Court.

REICHARD: Let’s get right to the reaction to the 303 Creative opinion. You’ve been involved in other controversial cases, like the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade. That comes to mind. But this opinion and this aftermath are different. How so?

WAGGONER: I have never seen anything like what we are enduring right now after this decision. The harassment, the threats, the very detailed descriptions of bodily harm. And just the ferociousness, even for the lawyers calling for our disbarment and criminal penalties. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I mean, I don’t know if you saw, like Newsweek published a piece and with absolutely zero evidence, called for the attorneys to be disbarred and face criminal penalties with zero evidence. I just have never seen anything quite like it. Like you said, Pete Buttigieg, but it’s also Lawrence Tribe, Neil Katyal, even Phil Weiser, the attorney general of Colorado, has blatantly misrepresented the facts that his state agreed to.”

REICHARD: Remind us of the majority opinion. It’s pretty straightforward. What does it say, in brief?

WAGGONER: It says that it's wrong for the government to force someone to say something that they don't believe. It's a very simple decision, and we would encourage all Americans to read it.

REICHARD: I want to clarify some things right away. Some mainstream reporters are saying this means that business owners can turn away gay people from goods and services. True or false?

WAGGONER: Absolutely false. The decision is very clear that non-discrimination laws continue to apply just as they always have coexisted with free speech rights under the First Amendment, and that it's wrong for someone to decline to serve a class of people because of a protected characteristic. The court also held, rightly so, that it's wrong for the government to force Americans to say things that they don't believe, to force them essentially to have to give opinions or express custom messages that violate their core convictions.

REICHARD: So a sandwich maker still has to make and serve sandwiches to gay customers.

WAGGONER: Absolutely, and that was never an issue in the case, nor was it something that anyone advocated for in the case.

REICHARD: Another falsehood I see circulating repeatedly on social media is that Lorie Smith made up a story about a gay couple asking her for help creating a gay wedding website. What really happened?

WAGGONER: In terms of Lorie specifically, during the course of her litigation, she had a front row seat to watching Jack Phillips be aggressively prosecuted by Colorado. She wanted to expand her business. She was already designing websites, but wanted to begin to design wedding websites. And she knew that she'd be prosecuted if she declined to promote and tell stories of same-sex weddings. And it turns out she was right because for the next seven years Colorado persistently and aggressively told the courts that she went through in the federal system that she would break the law if she declined to express those messages. In the course of the litigation, one day after she filed her lawsuit, she received through her website a request for same-sex wedding designs. And the request came from a gentleman named Stuart. And it turns out that seven years later, Stuart is now saying he didn't send the request, even though all the IT data and other suggests otherwise. It's really irrelevant to the case and factually, it's very clear looking at the IT data and Lorie's statements that the request did come in from someone. And again, I would just emphasize it's completely unnecessary to the legal ruling in the case and no court relied on it in any event.

REICHARD: Here’s another one: the conservative justices agreed to take up a case that isn’t a legitimate “case or controversy.” I’ve seen this multiple times on social media especially, people angry about the opinion without understanding the legal posture of this case. Kristen, could you explain that?

WAGGONER: I would love to. Pre-enforcement challenges are a staple of civil rights law. And what that means is that a person doesn't have to wait to be put in jail or fined, they don't have to wait until they violate the law and are facing prosecution to challenge an unjust law. Both those on the left and the right have historically used pre-enforcement challenges to be able to get laws struck down that violate the Constitution. And in terms of standing, whether there's a case or a controversy, that is used as lawyers, we talk about it in terms of legal standing, as you know, Mary, and in that you're looking at whether there's a credible threat of enforcement from Colorado, whether they might enforce it against Lorie in terms of if she were to design websites, and and declined to express support for same-sex weddings. And every court that considered this, at the appellate level found that there certainly was a credible threat, again, based on that aggressive enforcement history against Masterpiece Cake Shop and Jack Phillips, as well as the fact that for the seven years of litigation, Colorado never disavowed enforcement of Lorie. In fact, they repeatedly said that she would be breaking the law.

REICHARD: A final question here, Kristen, had the dissenting three justices reasoning prevailed in this case, what would have been the logical extension of that?

WAGGONER: Had the dissent prevailed, for the first time in our nation's history, government would be forcing people to express messages that violate their convictions. That just simply hasn't been true throughout our nation's history, and the majority decision makes that very clear, and that it takes us all the way back many, many years ago, 80 years ago, to a case called Barnett, where the court protected the right of Jehovah's Witnesses not to salute the flag in the midst of what was extremely unpopular in the midst of World War Two. And the court just continued to emphasize in decision after decision, recounting how we have protected speech and how it's made this nation so strong, and again, how it is the key to pluralism and a rich and complex society. So had the dissent prevailed, not only could they compel Lorie's speech, but they could compel an LGBT website designer to express messages that are critical of same-sex marriage or a Democrat speech writer to have to write for Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. There's really no limit to what the government can compel if they can force Lorie to express a message.

REICHARD: Kristen Waggoner represented 303 Creative’s Lorie Smith at the Supreme Court. Kristen, thanks so much!

WAGGONER: Thank you!

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Well, as if smoke from Canadian wildfires wasn’t hard enough on New York City, residents of the Big Apple had to deal with another problem late last week. Audio here from ABC News.

ABC NEWS: Swarms of insects plaguing people in the parks, dining out, and walking the streets.

Social media was buzzing with the phenomenon as people tried to capture the tiny bugs with their cameras, as they filled the air and covered people’s clothes and hair.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Yech, I hate gnats.

BUTLER: Yeah, well they’re not gnats, Myrna. They’re aphids with wings.

BROWN: Seriously?

BUTLER: Yeah, it turns out that this year’s mild winter may have triggered a population boom. The New York City Public Health Department says the little green bugs aren’t harmful to humans, and bug experts say the swarms won’t last long.

BROWN: Still sounds like a plague out of Egypt.

BUTLER: A little early to make that call, but if the Hudson river turns to blood, then we’ll know for sure.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 6th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Paul Butler.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: A lifetime of change.

Times have changed a lot over the last 80 years, from world wars to the invention of the World Wide Web. For many of us, that’s history book stuff. But for three women in Asheville, North Carolina, it was all part of growing up.

BUTLER: These three women still live in the same town they did when Harry Truman was president. Through decades of change, they’ve committed themselves to their church and the faithfulness of God.

WORLD’s reporting producer Lillian Hamman has their story.

LILLIAN HAMMAN, REPORTER: The sun has just crested over the Blue Ridge mountains in Asheville, North Carolina on a June Sunday. At Grace Baptist Church, beams of light fall through vivid stained glass windows depicting scenes from the Bible.

MUSIC: [He Leadeth Me]

Some of the people here in the sanctuary are just visiting for the morning. But anyone who’s been at the church for a little while will recognize three voices coming from a pew in the back.

ELAINE DUNCAN: My name is Elaine Duncan. I'm 81 years old. I'm from Asheville.

BARBARA FELMET: I'm Barbara Felmet, I'm 84 years old. And I was born in Buncombe County.

BARBARA KANIPE: I'm Barbara Kanipe. And I'm 83 years old. And I was born in Asheville…

LILLIAN HAMMAN: And how long have you all been at Grace Baptist?

BARBARA KANIPE: 75 years.

ELAINE DUNCAN: 75 years.

BARBARA FELMET: 75 years.

Elaine and the Barbaras met in Sunday school in 1947. It was Grace Baptist’s founding year. Things have changed a lot in the world since then. But through decades of time and eras of history, the three friends have stayed faithful—to the church, their faith, and each other.

In 1947, America was still recovering from World War Two.

BARBARA KANIPE: I remember that my uncles were coming home and one of them had been in the Battle of the Bulge. I remember that my parents being so happy, and I wasn't quite sure what what they were happy about it. But it was the end of World War Two.

After splitting from another church down the street, Grace Baptist didn’t have a building of its own. The congregation gathered in a variety of buildings at first. That same year, the girls watched their parents and other church members sacrifice everything to buy property for the church.

ELAINE DUNCAN: My mother and daddy, they mortgaged their house to buy bonds to help buy this property.

BARBARA FELMET: A lot of them did.

718 Haywood Road is where Grace Baptist still gathers today.

ELAINE DUNCAN: I've never been to another church so I don’t know my mother and daddy brought me here when I was five years old.

BARBARA FELMET: It's just home. I mean, it's where we grew up. It's way different than it used to be. But it's still our home.

On Saturdays, Elaine and the Barbaras came to the church with their mothers … to mop the linoleum floors and wash the nursery toys for the service the next day. Sometimes, though, the girls went rogue.

BARBARA KANIPE: We came up one Saturday. We drank some of the communion juice. And so... 

BARBARA FELMET: Shame on you.

BARBARA KANIPE: Barbara wasn't there. She was nicer. So we decided that we were probably condemned for life. (laughing)

Around town in West Asheville, or “Best Asheville,” as the girls call it, they went to movies for 9 cents at the theater across the bridge, and got fitted for new pairs of Buster Browns at Meadow’s Dry Goods store.

BARBARA KANIPE: And you put your feet in an x ray machine to see what size shoe you were

BARBARA FELMET: Oh, yeah, you can look down and let's see your bones and everything.

AUDIO: [PORTIA FACES LIFE]

They would listen to radio shows like Portia Faces Life, and watch TVs playing in store windows.

Except on Sundays.

BARBARA KANIPE: We kept the Sabbath very holy.

BARBARA FELMET: You didn't cook on Sunday. You prepared on Saturday. You didn't play anything on Sunday. You didn't go anywhere on Sunday.

Except to Grace Baptist Church. The girls went twice every Sunday, year after year, even as Asheville grew and changed around them.

Growing up, Barbara Felmet remembers only being afraid of a neighbor’s mean dog named Trouble. Now, the city of Asheville’s rate of violent crime is higher than the national average.

Felmet mourns that lost way of life.

BARBARA FELMET: I wish if I had a wish that would come true that we could go back for just a little while just a little. Those were the best days.

But as difficult as it is to watch the good things change, the women all agree there were problems that needed to go.

BARBARA KANIPE: We were segregated in school. But the first time I ever realized about racism, I was getting on the bus. And a woman at our little boy, black woman and a little boy were getting on the bus. And they had to sit at the back.

ELAINE DUNCAN: I can remember they had drinking fountains too. And it said, white and colored. We didn’t have any blacks in the church.

BARBARA FELMET: At one point, the pastor that was here. He tried to meet with another pastor of a black church, and we had meetings and went and had discussions and, you know, we'll, we'll come to each other's churches and maybe sing in the choir or something like that. And it never panned out. I mean, maybe a few came a few times, and then it was right back the same way it was.

Today, Elaine and the Barbaras share the same wooden pews together as they did that first time 75 years ago. Grace Baptist Church looks very different than it did when they were growing up. There’s no longer a choir, six different pastors with different theologies have preached from the pulpit, and they’ve come within a few months of closing their doors with debt. But even through its ups and downs, the women are still committed to this church.

ELAINE DUNCAN: My mother and daddy sacrificed for it. And it means a lot to me. And I just don't want to jump ship.

BARBARA FELMET: Whether I like what's going on, or I don't like what's going on, this is God's house. And I've been here my whole life and I don't intend to go anywhere else. I've learned to just live with it. Just live with it. And just keep, keep loving the Lord and keep my friends close. And we all do fine.

MUSIC: [All I have is Christ] 

They’re committed to the church, but more importantly, they’re committed to the God who never changes.

BARBARA FELMET: I trust in the Lord, and I think Elaine and Barbara would agree, we are passing it on to you who are here.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lillian Hamman in Asheville, North Carolina.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Next up, climate change. Commentator Cal Thomas says bad ideas by politicians today follow an old playbook. Here’s Cal.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: King Charles III has launched a catastrophe countdown clock. It will tick for the next six years, a point that will mark serious consequences if the world doesn’t effectively address climate change.

Honestly, if you can’t trust the king, whom can you trust?

It’s always good to be reminded of predictions like this and whether any of them—even just one—has come true. If not, why would we put our faith in them? One might as well consult a palm reader, a horoscope, or a fortune cookie to get similar results.

The International Energy Agency reports that since 2020 governments around the world have spent $1.34 trillion investing in clean energy. The result has been negligible to nothing in reducing global temperatures. In 2022 global CO2 emissions hit their highest levels ever.

The solutions to “climate change” have regressed from the quasi-serious to the ridiculous. Consider this from a recent article in the respected journal Scientific American: “It takes a lot of water and energy to make negronis, manhattans and margaritas. Could we do with less ice?”

It’s not enough for the climate “experts” to demand governments regulate everything from light bulbs, to meat, to gas stoves and the cars we drive. Now they have gone too far by suggesting governments should regulate our cocktails.

Perhaps we could learn something from the Germans. Their Socialist/Green Party wants to ban fossil fuel furnaces from every home and building in the country by forcing everyone to install heat pumps. The delicious irony is that the Greens haven’t been able to get heat pumps working at their Berlin headquarters. Costs have run into the millions.

It gets better (or worse). Politico reports: “The White House offered measured support for the idea of studying how to block sunlight from hitting Earth’s surface as a way to limit global warming…” If this comes true, we might have to take many more Vitamin D pills. The suntan lotion industry will likely go bankrupt.

Every Chicken Little prediction about the environment – from forecasts by scientific “experts” in the 1970s of a coming Ice Age in which we will all freeze to death, to the current alarmists who have made various wrong predictions about us burning to death – has failed to deter those who want to increase government’s power over our lives.

One of the benefits of being a liberal is never having to admit you were wrong about previous predictions. With the media’s help you can just move on to the next one.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a list of just some of the failed predictions of global Armageddon over the last 50 years.

They would be laughable if they weren’t serious at the time. A personal favorite was a prediction of worldwide famine. Now our main problem, at least in America, seems to be obesity. Again, why would anyone put their faith in such stupidity?

I’m Cal Thomas.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet returns on Culture Friday.

And, the 7th installment of the Mission Impossible franchise hits theaters this weekend, we’ll find out if it lives up to hype. Plus, Ask the Editor. 

That and more tomorrow. I’m Paul Butler.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Matthew 7, verse 13.

Go now in grace and peace.

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