The World and Everything in It: May 1, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Julia Bauer and I am a sophomore at Grove City College where I study marketing. I like to listen to The World and Everything in It when I am getting ready for class or going on my daily run. I hope you enjoy today’s show.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The Supreme Court considers what evidence a jury can hear when cross-examination of an accuser isn’t available.

KANNON SHANMUGAM: If you throw a skunk in the jury box, you can't instruct the jurors not to smell it.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also today the Monday Moneybeat: We’ll talk about the first quarter report on Gross Domestic Product, and talk about whether recession is looming.

Plus, the WORLD History Book: 25 years ago, a life sentence for a domestic terrorist:

AUDIO: The Unabomber's career is over.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, May 1st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Sudan ceasefire/evacuation » Two rival military groups waging a bloody war in Sudan have agreed to extend a temporary truce, even as they accuse each other of violating it.

U.S. State Department Spokesman Vedant Patel:

VEDANT PATEL: The parties agreed to extend the current ceasefire for an additional 72 hours.3.

The U.S. government is seizing the opportunity to get more Americans safely out of the country.

U.S. soldiers in Port Sudan yesterday checked the travel documents for American evacuees  before putting them on a boat for Saudi Arabia.

U.S. unmanned aircraft watched over a bus convoy carrying hundreds of U.S. citizens to Port Sudan.

Biden-Marcos » President Biden is welcoming the leader of a major U.S. ally at the White House today amid growing tensions with China. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines is the first leader of his country to visit the White House in more than decade.

The Chinese navy has harassed Philippine vessels in the South China Sea.

The Philippines this year agreed to give the U-S access to four more bases on the islands as Washington looks to deter Beijing’s aggression.

And this week, the two countries’ air forces will hold their first joint fighter jet training in the Philippines in more than 30 years.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Texas mass shooting suspect still at large » Friends and family in Cleveland, Texas, are mourning five people killed in a mass shooting in which an angry neighbor is the suspect.

Police say Francisco Oropeza attacked his neighbors with a semiautomatic rifle after they asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard. An 8-year-old boy was one of the victims.

San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers says it wasn’t the first time law enforcement had to visit Oropeza’s residence.

SHERIFF CAPERS: We have been to that residence in the past. I cannot sit here and tell you how many times, but yes, there have been a couple of calls there for that type of behavior.

Authorities offered an $80,000 reward for information leading to Oropeza’s capture.

4. Russia/Ukraine » A Ukrainian soloist singing at a Sunday funeral service in the town of Uman in central Ukraine.

Relatives and friends cried next to caskets as they buried children and others killed in a Russian missile attack.

Almost all of the 23 victims died on Friday when two missiles slammed into an apartment building.

Also over the weekend, a massive fire erupted at an oil depot in Russian-occupied Crimea after it two of Ukrainian drones reportedly hit it.

Debt Ceiling » Republicans - and even some Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressing President Biden to come to the negotiating table on the nation’s debt ceiling.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise:

STEVE SCALISE: We just passed a bill though the House, and we’ve been very vocal. It’s been over two months since President Biden has sat down with Speaker McCarthy to have negotiations.

House Republicans passed a bill last week that would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion dollars alongside sweeping spending cuts.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says by insisting on spending cuts in a debt ceiling package, Republicans are playing a dangerous game.

CHUCK SCHUMER: Now we have this extreme wing in the House that is risking default, which will set us back for years.

President Biden has repeatedly said he will not agree to tie spending cuts to raising the debt limit.

Box Office » At the weekend box office, The Mario Bros. just joined an exclusive club.

SOUND: [Super Mario Bros. trailer]

Only 51 movies have ever grossed a billion dollars globally, but you can make that 52  as The Super Mario Bros. crossed that threshold over the weekend.

The animated feature finished in first place at the domestic box office once again with another $40 million in ticket sales.

I'm Kent Covington. Straight ahead: news from the Supreme Court. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat. This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday, May 1st! We’re glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Well, there was a bit of a kerfuffle last week. Chief Justice John Roberts declined an invitation from Senator Dick Durbin to appear before his committee, and speak under oath about ethics and the high court.

The reply is worth a direct quote, and here it is: “Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the chief justice of the United States is exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation-of-powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”

Roberts noted that the only two times a justice did testify before Congress, it was only, as he put it, for “routine matters.”

REICHARD: Context is especially important here. Democrats are frustrated with a bench that is majority conservative.

So they push to change that: Impose term limits! Pack the court! Fund the court next year but only if it adopts an approved ethics code! Or use cooperating journalists to lob false accusations.

That’s behind Senator Durbin’s “invite” to the Chief Justice.

Recently, ProPublica used innuendo in an overlong story that said Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report trips and lodging from a rich friend.

The story on Justice Thomas left the impression he’d been hiding something for decades when he’d done nothing wrong and had broken no rules.

EICHER: Okay well, onto oral arguments.

First, Samia v United States. This one involves a person’s Sixth Amendment guarantee of a right to confront witnesses against him in a criminal case. It’s also known as the Confrontation Clause.

Federal prosecutors accused a man named Adam Samia of having “committed an array of crimes worthy of a James Bond villain.” Samia labored in the service of a transnational criminal organization. The crimes: Murder, kidnapping, drug trafficking, money laundering, “minor warlordism in Africa.” In other words, he was on a team of mercenaries.

Samia didn’t get away with it, though. Eventually he was caught, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.

REICHARD: But Samia says at trial, he was denied his right to confront a witness against him. Here’s what happened: A co-defendant in the case tagged Samia as an accomplice. The jury was presented with that confession, but with Samia’s name blotted out.

He says, as a constitutional matter, that’s not good enough. Listen to his attorney, Kannon Shanmugam:

KANNON SHANMUGAM: Over 50 years ago, in Bruton versus United States, this Court held that the admission of a non testifying defendant's confession that accuses another defendant in a joint trial violates the Confrontation Clause, even in the face of a limiting instruction, in light of the uniquely prejudicial effect that such a confession has on the jury.

The key phrase is “Non Testifying defendant.” What that meant in effect was Samia had no chance to cross-examine that guy, the non-testifying defendant.

A violation of the Sixth Amendment to his way of thinking.

Again, lawyer Shanmugam:

SHANMUGAM: In this case, the prosecution substituted phrases like "the other person" for Petitioner's name, but, having done that, the prosecution used the confession functionally to identify Petitioner. The prosecution's questioning of the agent who took the confession left little doubt that the confessing defendant had named "the other person." Petitioner was the only defendant who plausibly could have been "the other person."

EICHER: Process of elimination, in other words. Jurors are smart enough to do that kind of deductive reasoning on their own.

So Samia’s legal team is asking the justices to set a rule that trial courts have to consider context. Here, that non-testifying co-defendant confessed before trial that he’d been the getaway driver, and he identified the trigger man as Samia, who’d killed someone.

The trial judge didn’t think context mattered. The confession with the name blotted out was good enough, and the appeals court agreed.

That’s when Samia took it up with the Supreme Court.

On the other side for the federal government, assistant to the Solicitor General Carolyn Flynn:

CAROLYN FLYNN: If the jury is instructed not to consider a piece of evidence against a criminal defendant and the jury follows that instruction, then there is no Confrontation Clause problem. Confessions that replace a defendant's name with a natural-sounding noun or pronoun do not give rise to an overwhelming probability of juror disobedience.

REICHARD: The government argued any Confrontation Clause error here is harmless compared to the overwhelming evidence against Samia.

Justice Elena Kagan posed a hypothetical for Flynn. You’ll hear reference to a 1998 opinion called Gray v Maryland. It defined incriminating statements made outside of court as a class of speech that’s not admissible.

JUSTICE KAGAN: John and Mary go out and they rob Bill, and they’re found out, and they’re put on trial, and they’re put on trial together. And John has confessed. Let’s say he said, ‘Mary and I went out and robbed Bill. Now that's obviously inadmissible under Bruton, correct?

FLYNN: Correct.

KAGAN: And then suppose instead there's something that says, ‘redacted and I went out and robbed Bill.’ That's obviously admissible under Gray.

FLYNN: Inadmissible under Gray.

KAGAN: Inadmissible under Gray. So -- but it's neither of those two things. Instead, the confession says, she and I went out and robbed Bill, or it says, the woman and I went out and robbed Bill. What do we do with that?

EICHER: The question of admissibility as evidence.

Flynn answered that if a court has to look outside the corners of the confession itself and look at other evidence to form the inference that might incriminate the defendant … that’s not workable.

Courts would be inundated with miniature trials within the trial sorting all that out.

Much simpler is to say explicit references are incriminating, like names or nicknames, but that’s it. Nothing else.

Lawyer Shanmugam for Samia said constitutional guarantees are what’s paramount.

SHANMUGAM: In the John and Mary hypothetical, the government seems to take the position that "the woman and I robbed Bill" would be admissible. I take it that the government's position would be that if the confession instead said, my girlfriend and I robbed Bill, that that would not be admissible because that would be an identification. What about a confession that says, my friend M. and I robbed Bill, the theory being that John had multiple friends named M. Who knows? …delete….And so the government's rule doesn't have the benefit of clarity that the government suggests.

REICHARD: Shanmugam ended his time with pungency:

SHANMUGAM: If you throw a skunk in the jury box, you can't instruct the jurors not to smell it. And I would submit that this is a case in which the government not only threw a skunk into the jury box but pointed to it repeatedly, and the jury could hardly be expected to ignore it.

That’s vivid lawyering.

Well on now to the second oral argument dealing with company stock.

Back in the day, companies seeking to go public and issue stock did so by making an IPO, an initial public offering. The company would file registration statements that described the company and the new shares. Banks then bought the stocks and in turn offered them for sale to the public.

Five years ago the New York Stock Exchange allowed share owners to sell directly to the public. No banks were involved, and for the most part no registration statement was required.

EICHER: The communication platform Slack started offering shares directly to the public soon after the rule change. Up for sale was a mix of millions of shares both registered and unregistered.

Early on, a man named Fiyyaz Pirani bought 30,000 shares at a price of $38.50 each. Later he bought more than 200,000 shares. Some registered, some not.

But then the share price dropped 35%. Pirani was not happy.

So he brought a class-action suit against Slack, alleging the company misled stock buyers in the registration statements it did file.

REICHARD: This gets complicated with technical aspects of the Securities Act of 1933. The question is how to apply that old law to the new, direct-sale method. Two sections in particular are relevant and you’ll hear the lawyers home in on two of them: Section 11 and Section 12.

This point is also where the difference between registered and unregistered shares come in.

Slack says Pirani must plead and prove he actually bought registered shares. He can’t complain about misleading statements if he bought shares that didn’t even require registration. Slack says Pirani therefore lacks standing to sue.

Listen to the lawyer for Slack, Thomas Hungar:

THOMAS HUNGAR: Respondent can't identify a single case in the 90-year history of the Securities Act imposing Section 11 liability on exempt shares. Congress, despite revisiting the Act numerous times over the years, has been content to leave the law that way.

Justice Clarence Thomas jumped in first with a question.

JUSTICE THOMAS: You mentioned 90-year history, but have we had direct listing before? I mean, that seems to be what's causing the problem.

HUNGAR: We haven't had direct listing before, Your Honor, but, certainly, there are other circumstances, and it's undisputed that there are many other circumstances, in which the tracing requirement, given the modern operation of the security markets, is difficult or sometimes impossible for plaintiffs to satisfy, but that has not led Congress to change the law.

EICHER: For the other side, Pirani argues Congress intended to protect investors by making liability broad. The information investors need is already “out there,” as Lawyer Kevin Russell argues:

KEVIN RUSSELL: What registration statements do is they do not act -- at the level of individual shares. Instead, they act at the level of a public offering of securities, not shares, that is, the planned introduction of a group of fungible shares to the market at a particular time. The function of the registration statement is to provide the market the information it needs to value all of those fungible shares in that public offering.

REICHARD: The eventual outcome here will determine the scope of protection for investors and also affect how companies deal with anticipated litigation.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat!

NICK EICHER, HOST: It's time now to talk business markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David is head of the wealth management firm, the Bahnsen group. He is here now. And David, good morning to you.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Well, good morning, Nick. Good to be with you.

EICHER: All right, let's begin with the big story of the week, the quarterly report on economic growth, gross domestic product for Q1, that would be the first three months of this year. The annualized growth rate on that, just 1.1%. How do you read it, David? What do we need to know?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I mean, it was lower than had been expected. I don't, I think most people in the recession camp that we'll be into a recession within a year, would still say that the fourth quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year are more likely targets for when we'll see that contraction in the economy. And then even within this 1.1%, a fair amount of the ‘mutedness’ of the number came from inventory decline, which is not necessarily going to repeat itself in future quarters, the consumer's contribution to the number was still pretty high. I didn't like the business investment, it continues to be much lower than I want. But I've pretty much been saying that for about 15 years now. So I don't think that there were any surprises in it other than the total number net adding up to something a little lower than had been expected. No matter what camp one's in about the future, it's pretty much indisputable about the present, that we are not in a recession, and that we are not in an economy that is growing very much. It's just a very muted, low, slow, no growth economy.

EICHER: Right. So even if we were to meet that sort of textbook definition of recession, that being two consecutive quarters of contraction or below zero economic growth, and I do realize it's more sophisticated than just that a necessary condition, but not sufficient by itself. But even if we have a recession, you're expecting it to be mild, given the pretty decent labor market?

BAHNSEN: I don't know about that, Nick, because I think that if you do end up getting two quarters of negative GDP growth, let's say Q4, and Q1, that that's unlikely to happen if the employment number stays this strong. So even that, there's sort of a circularity to the argument here. I think unlike a year ago, or a little over a year ago, if you recall, when we had this discussion about whether or not we were in recession, and we clearly weren't, in hindsight, I wrote an article for WORLD at the time about where that two quarter in a row thing really came from. You know, the idea is that to be in a recession, you have to have the symptoms of a recession, of low unemployment, declining corporate profits, declining wages, and we didn't have any of those things. But I think that if we do go into two quarters in a row later, that it will come with those things, declining profits, declining wages, and and declining employment. But I don't think that we know if it will be severe or not. And that's the question that seems to me to be at the heart of the matter, is, I've been alluding a lot for maybe nine months now about this recession, if we have one looking like the 2002 recession that followed after the.com bust, the tech bubble bursting, and then after 9/11, that the confluence of those events led to a very mild recession that most of the country didn't really even know we were in, but that it did it lead to significant job losses in Silicon Valley, and in particular sectors. And it stayed pretty shallow and then rebounded rather quickly. And that could end up being what we have here. And that's a very different economic picture. It's a different ramification for the stock market, than if you have a more traditional recession that permeates all of your economy.

EICHER: Right. So tomorrow, the Fed meets tomorrow and Wednesday for its policy meeting for the month of May. There's always that question about interest rates. But what's important for us, David to keep in mind, as those meetings are going on in the next couple of days.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, they've spent about the last three weeks doing everything they can to make sure people are telegraphed, that they're gonna raise rates another quarter of a point, and the market has priced all that in, there's something like an 84% chance of a quarter point hike this week. And so let's assume that that is going to happen, there's also a significant pickup in the chance that they'll be cutting rates by the end of the year. And so on one hand, the market is pricing in. “Yep, they're gonna raise more,” but on the other hand, they're also saying, “Yep they're gonna end up having to cut because of that.”

And so, you know, it's funny. If you look at the Fed Funds Futures market right now, at the end of 2024, a year and a half from now, they're pricing in Fed funds rate of 3.2%. It's 5.2 now, they're predicting that kind of cuts into next year. That would really imply that we probably had gone into a recession, and the Fed was having to play catch up. And this is very much in a big theme of mine that I've talked about with WORLD listeners for a long time, and I've written about at dividendcafe.com For a long time, that the Fed just seems to only stay in the extremes. They're either too low for too long or too high for too long. And the idea of some sort of moderated monetary policy that avoids these booms and busts just seems to be totally outside of their playbook.

EICHER: Alright, so we've got GDP, we've got the Fed meeting. And before we go, I remember hearing you say last week, David, we're in the thick of earnings season where the big public corporations are reporting profits, and those profit reports should tell us a lot. What are you seeing thus far?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I mean, the Thursday and Friday of last week in the stock market, as we get ready to go into this new week, where there's even more companies releasing earnings. last week, you had the market up 800 points in two days, over 800 points in two days. And that was happening as the newswire was constantly telling you new problems with the banks and the whole First Republic saga and all that stuff, you know, how in the world is the stock market going up with a bad GDP number? You know, challenges in the banking system? And the answer is that the earnings season has gone quite well, quite well. There really has been a lot of surprises to the upside, revenues have not dropped as much as expected, margins have hung in there, earnings are not growing year over year, but they're not shrinking. So again, that decline in corporate profits that you would associate with a recession has not yet happened. And it's led to a pretty healthy earnings season so far. But we really are kind of in the middle of it right now. We've now gotten to about 50%. And so there's still another week or two to go and I'll have a better assessment. But I would say so far, the earnings season has been a positive surprise for the markets.

EICHER: Alright, well, we've come to the end of our time. And you know, I've been promising listener questions, but let me tell you where we are with that - just as happened several months ago, we've had a glitch with this email address that I've given you. And I'm guessing, you might be saying, “I wonder why my question wasn't responded to or considered.” Well, it is because we've had some trouble with that email address, and we're just not confident that we'll be able to recover. So let me give you a new email address. And it's simply this: editor@wng.org, editor@wng.org. And if, let's say over the past three weeks, you've sent something in, would you mind resending to that address? Again, editor@wng.org. We will do our best to get those processed. So I hope we're able to resume listener questions real soon. And let's see if that new email address clears things up. Editor@wng.org.

David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of the Bahnson group. His personal website is bahnsen.com you spell his last name B-A-H-N-S-E-N bahnsen.com. David, thank you, hope you have a great week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much Nick. Great to be with you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, May 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Today a life sentence for the Unabomber. Plus, a come from behind win at the Kentucky Derby. But first, one of literature’s highest honors recognizes a short novel about an old fisherman and a huge fish. Here’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: We begin today on May 4th, 1953. Columbia University awards the Pulitzer Prize for Literature to former journalist turned novelist Ernest Hemingway for his novella: The Old Man and The Sea. Read here by Charlton Heston:

HESTON: He was an old man who fished alone in his skiff in the Gulf Stream, and he'd gone 84 days now without taking a fish.

Hemingway’s story follows an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago who bears the shame of failure, as he’s gone nearly three months without catching a fish. The fisherman decides to try breaking his losing streak by sailing into the gulf stream.

Within a few hours he’s hooked a great fish.

HESTON: Then he felt the gentle touch in the line and he was happy, feeling the gentle pulling and then he felt something hard and unbelievably heavy. It was the weight of the fish.

For the next two days, the old fisherman battles the large fish. When he finally kills it, it’s too big to fit in his boat so Santiago must lash it to the side. It’s not long before the first shark appears. It attacks the fish, ripping away 40 pounds of its flesh. Then two more sharks appear.

HESTON: When he saw the first of the two sharks, ah, he said aloud, there is no translation for this word, and perhaps it is just a noise, such as a man might make involuntarily feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.

Eventually, sharks consume all but the fish’s head and tail.

Many critics believe the book is autobiographical. After ten years without publishing a novel, Hemingway released Across the River and into the Trees in 1950. Like the sharks in his novella, the critics tore it to shreds.

HESTON: In the night, sharks hit the carcasses, as someone might pick up crumbs from the table. The old man paid no attention to them and did not pay any attention to anything except steering.

In 1952 Scribners published Hemingway’s 127-page novella to great acclaim. Life simultaneously published it in its magazine—within two days readers bought hundreds of thousands of copies of the issue, establishing The Old Man and Sea as a modern-classic.

Next, May 5th, 1973. The 99th running of the Kentucky Derby:

RACE AUDIO: [START OF RACE]

More than 134,000 spectators fill the Churchill Downs. 13 horses and riders speed around the mile and a quarter track.

Out of the gate, the early favorite Secretariat begins the race near the back of the pack. But by the first turn, he moves ahead of two horses. Then over the next quarter mile Secretariat gallops into sixth position.

Jockey Ron Turcotte lets the three-year old racehorse run at its own pace. Each quarter mile faster than the previous one.

In the final furlong Secretariat overtakes the leader. An explosive burst of speed leads to a two and a half length victory, and a Kentucky Derby record: one minute, fifty nine point four [1:59.4] seconds. A record that still stands.

And we end today on May 4th, 1998.

ROBERT CLEARY: The Department of Justice has just accepted a plea of guilty for life in prison without the possibility of parole from Theodore Kaczynski. The Unabomber's career is over.

Federal prosecutor Robert Cleary after a federal judge sentences the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski to four life sentences plus 30 years.

Kaczynski had been a mathematics prodigy as a youth. In 1969 he gave up a promising academic career to live off the grid. He developed a strong distrust of technology. Over time his views became more and more radical as he took direct action against perceived threats to his way of life.

Starting in 1978, Kaczynski begins a seventeen year bombing campaign—mostly through the mail—injuring 23 and killing three. Kaczynski targets those he believes are promoting modern technology and the destruction of the environment.

In 1995, Kaczynski demands a major newspaper print his 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto in full. If they do, he promises to stop his bombing campaign. The Washington Post runs it. The FBI offers a $1-million reward.

After publication, Ted Kaczynski’s sister-in-law approaches her husband with her suspicions that his brother is the unabomber. On April 3rd, 1996, FBI agents arrest Kaczynski at his cabin. Agents find bomb components, one live bomb, and an original version of the manifesto.

His lawyers push for an insanity defense, but Kaczynski refuses. He eventually pleads guilty to avoid the death penalty. His brother David Kaczynski addresses the press after the sentencing.

DAVID KACZYNSKI: I'd like to say our reaction today's plea agreement is one of deep relief. We feel this is appropriate, just and civilized resolution to this tragedy and to Ted's diagnosed mental illness.

Today the 80-year old Kaczynski is being held in North Carolina’s Federal Medical Center for undisclosed health reasons. His cabin is on display at the FBI museum in Washington, D.C.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Some states that lowered the bar on drug possession penalties are now considering re-criminalizing some drugs. We’ll find out why. And, World’s Classic Book of the Month for May. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. 

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 Apostle Paul wrote: I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. Romans chapter 16, verses 17 through 19.

Go now in grace and peace.

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