Trump continues to promote a plan to arm teachers in America’s public schools, despite widespread backlash, especially from teachers. Here’s three reasons why it’s an awful idea.

• Simply put: Research shows that more guns = more deaths.

• Armed citizens rarely successfully intervene to stop an active shooter. In fact, an “FBI study of 160 active-shooting incidents from 2000 to 2013 found that only one was stopped by an individual with a valid firearms permit.”

• Even *if* this plan made sense (which it doesn’t), it wouldn’t work logistically. It could cost over $1 billion—and we can’t even provide all our teachers with books and other crucial school materials.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, one of the biggest concerns raised by voters was Trump’s potential conflicts of interest involving his family’s business. More than a year after the election, those worries turned out to be well founded and often times not readily apparent to most Americans. Here’s are five of the most recent instances where Trump is likely violating some of the most basic government ethics rules.

• Last week, Donald Trump Jr. was in India, promoting the Trump Organization. During the trip, ads promised a meeting with Trump Jr. if they invested $38,000 in the Trump Organization. And one panel led by Trump Jr. was entitled, “Reshaping Indo-Pacific Ties: The New Era of Cooperation,” which sounds a bit too close to a government official’s words.

• The Trump Organization claims it donates profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury—but it’s refusing to share any details.

• President Trump’s reelection campaign has launched, and its home is the Trump Tower in Manhattan. The rent is $37,000 a month, and who’s footing the bill? The Republican National Committee.

• One of the leading ethics watchdogs in D.C.—Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)—has charged the Trump administration with accepting gifts from foreign governments, which would be a clear violation of the emoluments clause.

• Some of CREW’s concerns revolve around Trump’s business in Panama, which is now subject to an investigation by Panama’s federal prosecutors.

Black History Fact – Invention: Anti-Gravity Shoes and technically, the moonwalk shoes.

Michael Jackson Yes, Michael Jackson, as in the-guy-who-did-Thriller. August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009

The legendary performer was so committed to his craft that he invented a pair of shoes for the execution of a single dance-move: the smooth-criminal lean. That’s how MJ and his dancers were able to appear as though they were defying gravity when executing the maneuver pictured above. The abstract description on his patent reads: A system for allowing a shoe wearer to lean forwardly beyond his center of gravity by virtue of wearing a specially designed pair of shoes which will engage with a hitch member movably projectable through a stage surface. The shoes have a specially designed heel slot which can be detachably engaged with the hitch member by simply sliding the shoe wearer’s foot forward, thereby engaging with the hitch member. He’s always been considered a musical genius, but who would have thought he also had to chops to cobble a pair of gravity-defying shoes? I guess it’s not surprising; he did invent the moonwalk after all.

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?” In light of recent events…terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.

I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school …. the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said OK. Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.” Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace. Are you laughing? Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they WILL think, of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it… no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

God bless you as you share it with friends. No Nation or people can ever survive or succeed without Jesus Christ.

Today in Black History: February 19 First Pan-African 1919. In the nearly half century between 1900 and 1945 various political leaders and intellectuals from Europe, North America, and Africa met six times to discuss colonial control of Africa and develop strategies for eventual African political liberation. Pan-Africanist ideals emerged in the late nineteenth century in response to European colonization and exploitation of the African continent.

Pan-Africanist philosophy held that slavery and colonialism depended on and encouraged negative, unfounded categorizations of the race, culture, and values of African people. These destructive beliefs in turn gave birth to intensified forms of racism, the likes of which Pan-Africanism sought to eliminate. The initial meeting featured thirty delegates, mainly from England and the West Indies, but attracted only a few Africans and African Americans.

Among them was black America’s leading intellectual, W.E.B. DuBois, who was to become the torchbearer of subsequent Pan-African conferences, or congresses as they later came to be called. Conference participants read papers on a variety of topics, including the social, political, and economic conditions of blacks in the Diaspora; the importance of independent nations governed by people of African descent, such as Ethiopia, Haiti, and Liberia; the legacy of slavery and European imperialism; the role of Africa in world history; and the impact of Christianity on the African continent.

Perhaps of even greater significance was the formation of two committees. One group, chaired by DuBois, drafted an address “To the Nations of the World,” demanding moderate reforms for colonial Africa. http://ow.ly/i/CXrhP