The World and Everything in It - October 7, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

You’ll soon be hearing about non-fungible tokens, NFTs. What are they?

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Also a website designer is the latest to get tangled up in confusion over LGBT rights and first freedoms.

Plus, WORLD’s Jenny Lind Schmitt attended last month’s March for Life in Berlin. She brings a report.

And commentator Cal Thomas reminds us that tax evasion isn’t the problem so much as the government’s spending problem.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, October 7th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Time now for the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Senate leaders strike a deal on temporary debt ceiling extension » Party leaders in the Senate appear to have struck a deal to temporarily lift the debt ceiling.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday said he would allow an emergency debt limit extension into December.

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman explained Republicans would allow a vote without voting “yes.”

PORTMAN: The proposals that he’s making do require Democrats to provide the 50 votes plus one, plus the vice president breaking the tie. So even though Republicans would allow Democrats to get onto that kind of a bill, the actual debt limit votes would be provided by Democrats and any Republicans that were interested.

That, at least for now, likely ends a perilous standoff that threatened to see the country default on its debts.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had planned another ill-fated vote on a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling. Republicans had vowed to vote “no.” Schumer called off the vote after McConnell’s offer.

Republican lawmakers say Democrats can lift the debt ceiling on their own. And because Democrats plan to pass trillions in new spending without a single GOP vote, Republicans have maintained that they should also raise the debt ceiling on their own.

GOP governors tour southern border amid migrant crisis » Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hosted 10 fellow Republican governors at the southern border on Wednesday.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte was among the governors to get a firsthand look at the border crisis. He noted that illegal drugs like fentanyl continue to pour over the border.

GIANFORTE: Those drugs are making it to Montana, and because of that, every state is a border state when it comes to the drugs in our communities.

Gov. Abbott thanked the governors, many of whom sent resources to Texas to help with the state’s efforts to support the Border Patrol in securing the border. Abbott has deployed the National Guard and state troopers to the border.

During a news conference, the governor once again said President Biden’s border policies are responsible for a humanitarian crisis.

He and other GOP governors called on the president to reverse course on border policies, including the Trump-era “remain in Mexico” policy, which Biden rescinded.

ABBOTT: All Americans saw exactly what happened in Del Rio, Texas, just last month. And we know that that chaos will be repeated unless and until President Biden takes action.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has conceded that officials are seeing a—quote—“unprecedented number” of migrants at the southern border. But he insists the current administration’s policies are not the cause.

Administration expands student loan forgiveness program » The Biden administration is temporarily relaxing the rules for a student loan forgiveness program.

Congress created the program in 2007 to steer more college graduates into public service. As long as participants made 10 years of payments on their federal student loans, the program promised to erase the remainder.

Roughly 5,500 borrowers have used the program to erase their loans.

But more than 90 percent of applications have received letters informing them they were denied. After making a decade of payments, many borrowers have found that they have the wrong type of federal loan or repayment plan and are not eligible.

The temporary changes would make many of those borrowers eligible.

New HUD rule to prevent public housing evictions » The Biden administration is moving to prevent evictions from public housing for nonpayment of rent. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the move Thursday. Under the new rule, tenants in HUD-subsidized public housing cannot be evicted for nonpayment without providing them 30 days' notice and information about available federal emergency rental assistance.

Technically, the rule will take effect in 30 days, but a senior HUD official told The Associated Press that HUD expects public housing authorities nationwide to comply immediately.

The official said the rule change was due to significant concern about a looming wave of evictions as pandemic eviction moratoriums come to an end.

Besides public housing residents, the rule change will apply to those living in project-based rental assistance properties. All told, HUD estimates that the change will cover 4.1 million people.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Ship's anchor may have caused massive California oil spill » A ship’s anchor may have caused the recent oil spill off the coast of Southern California.

The anchor may have hooked, dragged and torn an underwater pipeline that spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the ocean. That according to federal investigators on Wednesday.

Authorities also found that the pipeline owner didn’t quickly shut down operations after a safety system alerted to a possible spill.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer…

SPITZER: We know that the oil company lied. They had a pressure drop at 2:30 in the morning. They didn’t shut down the pipeline until 6 o’clock in the morning and didn’t notify federal regulators and emergency response until 10 o’clock Pacific Standard Time.

But CEO of Amplify Energy Corp. Martyn Willsher insisted that the company wasn't aware of the spill until it saw a sheen on the water shortly after 8:00 a.m.

When the company was aware of the spill will be key in determining the company’s culpability. Amplify Energy’s spill-response plan calls for the immediate notification of a spill. Authorities have filed charges in the past when a company took too long to notify officials of a spill.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: the latest trend in digital art.

Plus, what the Pandora Papers reveal about the rest of us.

This is The World and Everything in It.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: It’s Thursday the 7th of October, 2021.

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

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up: special editions.

This past spring, a piece of art sold for $69 million.

That piece of art is a digital collage. It lives somewhere behind a computer screen and that’s where it’ll stay.

BUTLER: WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown explains what and why this particular piece of art is making news.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: Joseph Todaro has been creating digital content for years. But he’d never made digital art before. Not until this spring, anyway. That’s when he started seeing people post on Twitter advertising their digital artwork for sale.

TODARO: I was really intrigued by that, because I thought, okay, it's digital, it's an image that anyone can go download, right? So what does it mean, to own it?

Todaro decided to try his hand at creating a piece of digital art: A series of three-dimensional metallic shapes.

TODARO: And then all of a sudden, it sort of expands into this much crazier shape than the shape it started out as and it sort of just transforms back and forth. So it's this infinite loop of like this breathing piece of metal.

Todaro posted those pieces online and they sold within days. Total sales came out to around $2,700. They’re not physical pieces of art. They’re six-second video loops displayed on a screen. They kind of look like something you'd find on a laptop screen saver. So why was Todaro able to sell them for thousands of dollars?

Because of a thing called a non-fungible token or NFT.

An NFT is a little piece of data stored on the blockchain, the same place you can track bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Owen Cyclops is an illustrator and artist who started tying his work to NFTs recently. He compares the blockchain to an omnipresent public ledger.

CYCLOPS: And all these equations and bits of information are getting locked in there and cemented and they can't be changed. That matters for digital money. Because the problem before was if I sent you, you know, a file, that's digital money, couldn't you just copy and paste it and make a million digital dollars or something? Right? So it never worked, until we had this public record that is cemented over time called the blockchain.

That’s why cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin work.

CYCLOPS: If I send you one bitcoin, you can't just copy and paste it into another one, because it's locked into this larger chain of information.

NFTs take that one step farther, with the concept of fungibility.

Fungible just means exchangeable. Dollar bills are like this: Any one bill is as good as another.

Something that is non-fungible, then, means unique...one of a kind. You can’t swap it out with something else. You can’t copy it. It’s recorded in the blockchain for everyone to see.

Michael Sutton manages a cryptocurrency hedge fund. He compares an NFT to a certificate of authenticity, like what you’d get if you bought a signed baseball at the World Series.

SUTTON: So what artists are doing is they're taking a picture, which Yes, you can download yourself anytime. So it's digital. And they're matching it with this certificate, this NFT token and saying, yes, this unique serialized token, of which there's only one, I'm attesting belongs to my piece of artwork. And that can be then proven and shown digitally online to anyone else.

That’s how you can “own” a digital image. Other people can copy it, but they can’t copy the NFT. So only you have the original. Like owning the Mona Lisa instead of owning a printed poster of it.

SUTTON: The original work is what has the, the draw the power to it. And that's what NFT gives you. NFT gives you that authenticity.

NFTs first hit the stage back in 2017. But it wasn’t until this spring that they really took off. People were still in pandemic mode, doing more and more online. NFT sales exploded: On May 3rd, over $100 million changed hands in NFT transactions.

And then things started to drop. Sales plummeted by 90 percent in June before ticking up a bit over the rest of the summer. But overall, people just aren’t buying as many NFTs.

One reason? Joseph Todaro says the pool of interested buyers is small, partly because you have to be a bit of a nerd to get into it. All NFT transactions happen via cryptocurrency. You can’t buy one with dollars.

TODARO: You have to set up a crypto wallet where you can store a crypto currency, right, to buy these non fungible tokens. So what you have is a regular person saying wait a minute, I need cryptocurrency I don't have cryptocurrency, how do I get cryptocurrency?

Another hurdle: The fees. Every time you create something on the blockchain, like an NFT, it’s being processed by somebody’s computer. And that takes electricity.

TODARO: And someone has to pay for the electricity. So there's a fee associated with every single transaction that takes place on the blockchain.

So those pieces of artwork Todaro sold?

TODARO: On that first sale that ended up being equivalent to I believe, around $260, only 60 of that $260 was, you know, in my pocket, right? $200 went toward fees.

But NFTs aren’t just tied to art. They can be linked to physical things, like a bottle of wine or a Gucci handbag. Or they can be linked to a business document, a property deed, a license.

Owen Cyclops says the applications are endless.

CYCLOPS: You print out a ticket for a concert from your computer, but couldn't your friend just photocopy that ticket? They could, right? And then one of you gets there, one ticket’s fake, one ticket’s real. But if that ticket was tied to a notch in this big public ledger, that's an NFT. That would solve that problem.

Merav Ozair is a data scientist and blockchain expert at Rutgers University.

OZAIR: The business use case are boundless because the power of NFTs is there is in the authentication. And every transaction that you have in the economy starts with authentication. You authenticate the asset, you authenticate the person, you authenticate the process every step of the way, you have to authenticate.

So even though the popularity of NFTs in digital art is a little unpredictable right now, Ozair says the technology isn’t going anywhere.

OZAIR: Yeah, we’ll have maybe still the art and other applications. But eventually, the business use cases, the economic use case will evolve and come to the front.

She predicts it will be like the internet: At first, a crazy idea that only a handful of uber nerds used. Now, such a part of life most of us couldn’t survive without it.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

PAUL BULTER, HOST: Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the right not to create.

Lorie Smith is a Christian web designer in Colorado. She founded her company, 303 Creative, a decade ago. She plans to begin offering wedding design services online, but has not done so yet.

She’s among the latest to find that surrendering her First Amendment rights may be the cost of doing business in Colorado.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Under the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act, Smith would be required to offer her services for both heterosexual and same-sex weddings despite her Biblical beliefs about marriage.

Joining us now with the latest on this case is Steve West. He’s an attorney and writes about religious liberty issues for WORLD Digital. 

Good morning, Steve!

STEVE WEST, GUEST: Good morning, Mary.

REICHARD: Take us back to the beginning of this case. Lorie Smith right now only plans to offer wedding website services. She doesn’t offer that service yet. So how did this dispute arise? Did she think she needed to ask the state to honor her religious convictions?

WEST: Because of other cases, Lorie Smith knew that she would be entering into an area fraught with difficulty if she chose to offer wedding services. After all, she lives in the same state with Jack Phillips, the Masterpiece Cakeshop baker, who has been in the news for years. So, while she does web design for LGBT clients, she has avoided entering the area of wedding services. She has not violated the law, as the state alleged Jack Phillips did when he declined to create a custom cake. This is a pre-enforcement challenge that Smith is doing. She’s testing the waters, if you will.

REICHARD: Well, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case as here also involved Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act conflicting with First Amendment liberties. Steve, what is it about the wording of that act that creates all these conflicts?

WEST: Numerous municipalities and states have laws like Colorado’s. First, it has a broad definition of a public accommodation—meaning any business or any place that offers anything to the public—unless what you primarily offer is a religious service. Secondly, it says you can’t refuse to offer your good or service to an individual or group because of their sexual orientation—among other things. And there’s the problem: the lower courts said that if Lorie Smith offered website design services for weddings, she could not refuse to offer them on behalf of same-sex couples as well.

REICHARD: Here’s the thing: the court in Colorado actually acknowledged that the state’s law infringed on Smith’s First Amendment rights and still ruled against her.

WEST: That’s what makes this such an offensive case. The court found that the creation of a wedding website is pure speech—words—and was also compelled speech—meaning Smith had no choice about it. They were saying that this law requires you to communicate this message of approval to same-sex marriage, even though it violates your religious convictions.

REICHARD: So, we know that if a law compels speech, that law must survive the highest level of judicial scrutiny.

WEST: That’s right. And that makes sense. The court must take a very hard look at it. It asks: Is the state’s interest compelling? It didn’t have any difficulty there. It said that “protecting both the dignity interests of members of marginalized groups and their material interests in accessing the commercial marketplace” was compelling. But then it also has to ask: Is the law narrowly tailored to meet that interest? And that’s where you can detect that something is afoot here, that, like the dissenting judge here said, there is some legal gerrymandering going on. The court could have said this is not narrowly tailored because a same-sex couple could go to one of many other web designers who would be able to assist them. But it didn’t do that. It said that Lorie Smith’s services were unique, that she was essentially a monopoly of one, and that since same-sex couples could not get her unique services anywhere else, then this law was narrowly tailored. That sounds like legal positivism—in other words, you decide the result you want, and then create the rationale to justify the result.

REICHARD: Alright, so what’s next? As I understand it, Smith appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court?

WEST: That’s right. As with any appeal, the likelihood is not great, and yet the free speech issue in the case is so clear, so stark, that the court may just take it. And there may be a glimmer of hope in that regard. Earlier in the summer, the court declined to review a case involving Baronelle Stutzman, who’s a Christian florist in Washington state. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys who represented Stutzman have asked the court for a rehearing, arguing that the court should take Lorie Smith’s case and resolve these cases together. The court on Monday declined to hear several cases—well, maybe a 100 or so—but did not address Stutzman’s motion, which is a positive thing. Instead, the court relisted it, meaning that it is on the agenda to be discussed at the court’s next conference, which is coming up this Friday. That gives me some hope that both Stutzman and Smith may yet get their day in the Supreme Court.

REICHARD: The court’s calendar lists this Friday as the next conference. Steve West writes about religious liberties for WORLD Digital. You can read his work at WNG.org. You can also subscribe to his free weekly newsletter on First Amendment issues, Liberties. Steve, always good to have you on. Thank you!

WEST: Always a pleasure, Mary.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today, an apparent case of stealer’s remorse.

A crook, caught on a security camera in Melbourne, Australia at a hardware store. But his face wasn’t quite visible.

Footage showed the man striding through the lumber yard and then back again with one item under his arm.

The next day, the staff called the police, appealed to the public, and hung posters around town.

To the store’s owners, what the thief took was not just valuable, but priceless. He stole the store’s sulfur-crested cockatoo, Jacko.

Jacko’s owners were distraught, obviously. And also their customers, as they told 9-News.

AUDIO: Mate, he’s a Drysdale legend. He’s part of the family up here. We all say good day to him every time we come in and out. He’s been here a long time. He’s sort of part of the fabric down here, I think.

Happy ending, you’ll be relieved to hear. Two days later, a woman walked in with a box and inside was Jacko, alive and well!

AUDIO: [Bird sound]

She said the thief handed her the bird and asked her to return him. She said the thief was very sorry.

What’s not known is whether the thief couldn’t bear the guilt, or whether the bird just wouldn’t stop talking.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 7th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Coming up next: the March for Life.

In the U.S., the march to promote human dignity and demonstrate against abortion takes place in January around the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision.

But in Germany, marchers assemble in Berlin in September. This year is the 17th year of the event.

REICHARD: Just like in the States, counter-protestors are always present. But with this year’s march held just ahead of German elections, tensions were especially high. 

WORLD European Correspondent Jenny Lind Schmitt attended the march in Berlin.

JENNY LIND SCHMITT, CORRESPONDENT: It’s 1 p.m. on a blustery September Saturday in Berlin. Pro-life activists gather in front of Brandenburg Gate in the heart of the city. They’re listening to speeches and preparing to march through downtown streets carrying pro-life signs.

On the other side of the gate, angry counter protesters are shouting and banging drums, trying to disrupt the event. Police in riot gear block off the pedestrian passage through the Gate.

LINDER: Yes, the atmosphere concerning the other side is very aggressive.

Alexandra Linder is the leader of the Bundesverband Lebensrecht. It organizes the March for Life every year.

LINDER: We have so-called Antifa groups from the extreme left who are very aggressive who try to attack our people.

She says the police presence is especially strong this year because of serious threats from pro-abortion activists.

LINDER: So the police is going to separate and control people coming that they have no weapons. Not our people! Our people is completely peaceful and polite. We always thank the police for what they do.

In the square where the Berlin Wall once stood, Christian journalist Helmut Matthies reminds protestors that the injustices of communist Germany once also seemed insurmountable. He says fighting the injustice of abortion is worth it. ,

Through the years of the Cold War, athiest East Germany promoted abortion as “family planning.” Nearly half of unborn children were killed. In West Germany abortion was illegal except for cases of severe fetal abnormalities. After reunification, parliament compromised: Abortion is technically illegal but not punished in the first trimester if the mother gets counseling. Older leaders recall the bitter debate around that decision. But they also see hope in a new generation who are reopening the discussion.

LINDER: Yes, because in Germany there was a big aggressive discussion several years ago, the new generation doesn’t know anything of that. They are just putting [forth] questions. It’s a human? It’s a person? Why are we allowed to kill them? These are the right questions.

One such person is Lisa Hiesch from Nuremberg. She’s a first year university student who made the six-hour car trip to march.

HIESCH: I am convinced that every life is precious and that it should be saved . And that they get a chance to live the life that we have...

The marchers are a mix of parents with strollers, nuns and priests, retirees, pastors with youth groups, and families pushing siblings in wheelchairs. In the crowd of 4,500, about a third are under age 25.

AUDIO: [RALLY AND PROTESTORS]

Police line the avenue south of Brandenburg Gate and the procession begins. Marchers carry signs against abortion and euthanasia and celebrating life. Nineteen-year-old Samuel Weiss from Augsburg carries a sign that says “Kindergeld für Ungeborene.”

WEISS: In Germany we have Kindergeld. It’s money for the children who are in the family. But normally it’s for living childs. But my sign says that it should also be there for unborn childs. If they would have more money then I think the need for abortion would be really less.

AUDIO: [PROTESTORS]

Just in front of the Jewish Holocaust Memorial, counter protesters shout and make obscene gestures at those walking by. It doesn’t bother Weiss.

WEISS: Actually I like it. Because it gives me the feeling that I know it’s worth it that I fight. I stand for something that not all people stand for, so it’s good that I’m here.

As the march moves through downtown, Saturday shoppers look on curiously. Weiss says that’s important. It makes people think about the issue. That’s also a focus of the Right to Life for All Campaign. It supports mothers in unplanned pregnancies and provides post-abortive counseling. The campaign is also bringing the topic of protecting life back into the public square. Cornelia Kaminski is director.

KAMINSKI: We are very eager to get pro life education done. We go into schools. We go to universities. We accompany students who do workshops and seminars on life issues. Another thing is just publicity. Bringing it out into the streets. That’s what we do here right now...

AUDIO: [MARCH]

Both Linder and Kaminski say it’s energizing that the pro-life movement in Germany is attracting more and more young people. They’re also encouraged by the heartbeat bills passed recently in the United States. They watch the American movement closely and work for the same legislative developments.

KAMINSKI: It inspires us and it gives us hope. We think that in the U.S. you planted the seed. Maybe 20 years ago, maybe 30. And that plant is growing now, and you get the fruits. So that’s wonderful.

SONG: [SO GROSS IST DER HERR]

Back at Brandenburg Gate, marchers gather for a worship service to close the day. There were only a few verbal confrontations with counter protestors along the march route.

The German parliamentary elections were to be held the week after the march, so pro-life leaders urged marchers to contact their representatives.

The more liberal-leaning Socialist party won the September 26 elections, which is a setback. But as Linder says,

LINDER: If we get a left-sided government it will be a little bit more difficult for us, but not forever. [laughs]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt in Berlin, Germany.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 7th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

Quick note here to please send us a preroll! You know, the introduction at the start of every program, “The World and Everything in It is brought to you by listeners like me...”

REICHARD: Yeah, the preroll! We got word that our stash is running low. So, if you haven’t recorded one or want to record another one, now’s the time! For instructions on how to do it, visit wng.org/preroll. That’s wng.org/preroll.

BUTLER: And have fun with it! Alright then.

Well, commentator Cal Thomas now on the connection between tax evasion and government spending.

AUDIO: from the Broadway musical “Carnival!”
“The rich put cream on their berries,
The rich drive shiny black cars”

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: The Pandora Papers could not have come at a better time for congressional “progressives” who are seeking to win over enough Democrats to pass the $3.5 trillion Biden-Pelosi spending bill. It’s loaded with enough pork to infect the nation with financial trichinosis.

Reporting by a consortium of journalists is not exactly equivalent to the Pentagon Papers. They revealed how the U.S. government lied to the public about the Vietnam War. But the Pandora Papers might serve the political ends of the left.

They reveal—wait for it—that rich people have managed to avoid paying taxes by hiding their wealth in foreign countries, such as the Cayman Islands. Who knew?

What I like best about this “revelation” is the double standard it again reveals about wealthy politicians. They have been critics of tax avoiders, while avoiding taxes themselves.

One of many examples: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The journalists who published the Pandora Papers this week found that Blair and his wife, Cherie, avoided paying tax on a high-priced London office they purchased. Cherie Blair, who is a lawyer, was quoted in the UK Daily Mail as saying the transaction and tax avoidance was perfectly legal.

To paraphrase the writer Michael Kinsley, the real scandal is not what’s illegal, but what’s legal.

“The rich go here, the rich go there
It’s close to the truth but far from fair”

In that lyric lies the basic argument by the left when it comes to fairness. Politicians have a vested interest in demonizing the rich because envy of the successful helps solidify their careers in Washington, where they also can become rich. Ask yourself how so many Members of Congress arrive as “thousand-aires,” with salaries of $174,000 a year, and leave as millionaires. It isn’t because they know how to play the stock market.

By focusing on “fairness” and other buzzwords like “equity” and “equality,” these same politicians manage to distract the public from the real problem. To put it succinctly, as Ronald Reagan often did, we have a debt, not because the American people are taxed too little, but because their government spends too much.

If you favor punishing the wealthy with higher taxes, how does that improve your financial situation? It might make you feel better, but envy produces no positive outcome.

The best way to retrieve offshore money from tax avoiders would be for the United States to lower taxes. That’s what Donald Trump did for American companies that had moved overseas to escape a higher tax burden. Some of those companies returned and began paying taxes at a lower rate to the U.S. Treasury.

The U.S. government receives plenty of money. The problem is it refuses to live within its means.

I’m Cal Thomas.

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

And, we’ll bring you resources to help the young ones in your family discover the rich history of the church.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Paul Butler.

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 Bible says: Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.

Go now in grace and peace.

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