Republican Sen. Susan Collins said Thursday afternoon she will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, all but guaranteeing that President Trump’s selection to replace retired justice and swing vote Anthony Kennedy will be confirmed. Moments later, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) also announced his support. 

The Senate is scheduled to vote Saturday. 

With the announced support of Collins, Manchin and that of Republican Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) earlier Thursday, the Republicans now have exactly 51 pledged votes – enough to confirm Kavanaugh. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voted against Kavanaugh in a procedural hurdle Friday morning and is expected to vote no.

Collins (Maine) announced her support in a 45-minute speech on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, saying she carefully read the FBI report on sexual allegations against Kavanaugh. 

“I understand both viewpoints,” Collins said. “ … But certain fundamental legal principles, about due process, the presumption of innocence, and fairness do bear on my thinking, and I cannot abandon them.” 

The four witnesses that accuser Christine Blasey Ford said were at the party where she was attacked “could not corroborate” any of Ford’s testimony, said Collins, who added that she found Ford’s testimony compelling and believed she had experienced a sexual assault at some point in…

A Toronto woman videoed a man who was harassing pro-life protesters at an annual event in Toronto on Sunday. When the man saw the phone in her hand, he briefly argued with her before delivering a roundhouse kick to her shoulder.

Marie-Claire Bissonette, who serves as Youth Coordinator for Campaign Life Coalition, told her story in a post for LifeSite News. She explained that the assault happened at an annual event called Life Chain, which brings together thousands of pro-life advocates who stand on street corners across Canada in silent protest. Their signs only display messages, including numbers for the local pregnancy help center, but do not contain “abortion victim photography.” 

Bissonnette was in charge of a street corner where 76 people stood holding signs when a man, now identified as Jordan Hunt, walked up and started frantically scribbling on people’s signs with red and blue markers. When they realized what he was doing, the protesters held their signs out of reach and he wrote on their clothing instead. 

The video began with him talking to one pro-choice protester who stood on the corner holding a sign which read, “My body, my choice, my right.” She disagreed with his tactics and told him to “kill them with kindness.” 

As Bissonnette approached him, she told him that he was destroying private property. He responded by asking her, “If somebody gets…

Abortion may be legal nationwide, but voters in three states – Alabama, West Virginia and Oregon — will decide in November whether to curtail the right to end an unborn baby’s life.

Alabama citizens will vote on Amendment 2, which would change the state constitution to “recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.” The goal is to ensure abortion cannot be legalized in Alabama if Roe v. Wade is overturned. 

“We want to make sure that at a state level, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, that the Alabama Constitution cannot be used as a mechanism by which to claim that there is a right to abortion,” Alabama Republican state Rep. Matt Fridy said earlier this year. 

In West Virginia, voters will consider Amendment 1, which has a similar goal and would add language to the state constitution stating that “nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of abortion.” The amendment, if passed, also would overturn a state Supreme Court ruling that allowed state funding of abortion.

Finally, Oregon citizens will vote on Measure 106, which would amend the state constitution so that public money cannot be used for abortions. 

Pro-lifers in Oregon are making sure voters in the left-leaning state understand the measure’s intent.

“This isn’t going to…

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed written by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. 

In the op-ed, Kavanaugh apologizes for some of his responses during last Thursday’s hearing which was set up to look into sexual assault accusations made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford against the judge. Kavanaugh wrote, “I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said.”

The judge then goes on to urge people to remember that he is human, and that he was there not only to defend himself, but also to defend his family. He wrote, “I hope everyone can understand that I was there as a son, husband and dad. I testified with five people foremost in my mind: my mom, my dad, my wife, and most of all my daughters.”

Kavanaugh also reiterated that he is an impartial, independent judge and plans to maintain that status. Judges he said, “make decisions because the law and the Constitution compel the result.”

“Over the past 12 years, I have ruled sometimes for the prosecution and sometimes for criminal defendants, sometimes for workers and sometimes for businesses, sometimes for environmentalists and sometimes for coal miners,” he continued. 

“In each case, I have followed the law. I do not decide cases based…

JUBA, South Sudan (Morning Star News) – In a surprise move, Sudan has released shipments of Bibles long held in port, including one detained nearly six years ago, according to the head of the Bible Society in Sudan.

 

The Rev. Ismail Abdurahman Kenani, Khartoum-based director of the Bible Society in Sudan, said port authorities had been delaying several shipments of Bibles in Port Sudan, on the Red Sea. Besides the shipment detained after Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir began a crack-down on Christian institutions in 2012, another one detained a little over three years ago was among those released in early August, Kenani said.

The estimated 2 million Christians in Sudan have endured a critical shortage of Arabic-language Bibles, he said.

 

“We are even planning to put an order for another shipment, because the need is still great here for the Bibles,” Kenani told Morning Star News.

 

Port authorities have long given no official explanation for detaining the shipments, though one official told the Bible Society they were held up because they exceeded the limit of one container at a time. Intentional bureaucratic barriers also seem to have been erected.

 

“We came to learn that proper documents for the shipments were intentionally misplaced by one of the officers of the port authority,” Kenani said.

 

The church leader told Morning Star News that…