LISTEN: Glenn interviews pastor being targeted by the city of Houston

Churches are under attack in Texas, as several faith leaders have had their sermons subpoenaed as part of an ongoing lawsuit over a progressive city ordinance. One pastor, Steve Riggle, joined Glenn on radio to discuss the case on radio today.

Below is a rough transcript of the segment:

GLENN: I want to tell you something about -- that is more concerning to me than Ebola to me in Texas. More concerning than anything that is happening in our country today. And that is the out, the outward attack and hostility and hatred of people of faith. People of faith are under attack. Our churches and our institutions, our pastors, our preachers, our priests, our rabbis are under attack. God forbid you say this mosque has radical Islamic imams preaching hatred. You have a bag of bricks fall on your head. And they immediately shut down everyone from even saying, wait a minute. The bombers came from that mosque. What are they being taught inside that mosque? God forbid the president immediately sends a team of delegates to apologize to that mosque as it happened in Oklahoma.

However, in Texas, in Houston, Texas, there is an ordinance that has been passed by the city, and in this ordinance, it is the most radical thing that you could imagine. And it says: If you are somebody who is even questioning your sexuality. You're a male, but you're not in transition to become a female, you're questioning your maleness. I might be a female. Might be neither. You can use anybody's bathroom. This is madness. Madness.

So here's what's happened: The city has gone hostile on churches because churches tried to overturn an ordinance, and I'm going to let somebody who knows all about tell you in a second. Tried to overturn it. They gathered 55,000 signatures. They only needed 17,000. They gathered 55,000 signatures. After the signatures were there going against the ordinance, they wanted it up on the ballot. They only needed 17,000. The city said, we can't. We can't read all of these. So the ones that weren't legible, they threw out. That brought them down to 31,000 signatures.

Well, this has ended up now in the court because they weren't allowed to have the signatures count to be on the ballot. So now it's ended up in court. What happened? Now, the city is saying, we want all of your sermons, we want the sermons for all of -- everything that was preached, we want anything that was passed out. We want anything that was presented. We want anything that you approved or even saw. This goes against the Constitution. You do not have a right to go into a house of worship and ask them for their policies. For their -- their sermons. They have a right to speak out their mind, unless they are preaching hatred and violence towards others.

Now, that's where they're get you. Because you're against diversity. Steven Riggle, he is the Grace Community church pastor in Houston, Texas. He is one of the guys -- he is one of the main guys leading this, and I'm sorry to say, pastor. I have not been up on this ordinance at all. We haven't paying attention. Nobody has. Tell me exactly the ordinance, and what happened, and now what the city is saying.

RIGGLE: Well, it's an equal rights ordinance from our mayor, who is the openly lesbian of the largest -- she's a lesbian mayor. Of one of the largest cities in the country. This is her final term, so she -- this is her crowning legislation to get this through. We opposed it basically on, first, three terms. Gender identity, gender expression, and public accommodations. Public accommodation means that whether it's a public or private business, if the public is allowed to go there, then that's -- it's defined as that. Secondly, gender expression and gender identity have to do not with how you were born biologically, but whatever you think you are and express yourself to be. So a person could actually -- a man could go into a restaurant. Say, I'm going to go into a lady's restroom. And if he was stopped and said, you can't go in there. He can say, I may look like a man, but I express myself as a woman. He can go in there.

GLENN: He could be a predator, and you can't say anything to him as long as he expresses that he now feels like a woman.

RIGGLE: Exactly right. So we opposed it on that. We also opposed it on the idea that it was an unequal rights ordinance because what it was giving was granting a certain group of people rights that no one else had or giving them rights only because of their lifestyle choice. We are for equal rights. But the -- gay community already has all the rights the rest of us have. We opposed it on that basis. And the mayor already had the city council lined up to vote for it. We had a polling company do a poll in the city. 82 percent came back and said they were opposed to this ordinance. We gave it back to the mayor. Gave it to the council members. They voted it in anyway.

So we did a referendum. We gathered -- we knew we had 31,000. Right? And the city secretary, who is the only one charged by the city charter with verifying signatures, stopped counting at 19,000 because we already passed the threshold way a 93 pass rate. And then the city attorney inserted himself, the city secretary was called to the mayor's office with a meeting with the mayor and the city attorney, and she was asked to attach a paragraph that they had written to her report. Which she did.

And basically the city attorney had inserted himself, which has never happened in the history of the city before, and disqualified more than half of the petition signatures.

GLENN: Why? On what basis?

RIGGLE: Well, on basis like you can't read them. They weren't done right. Blah, blah, blah. One sitting city council member's petition was thrown out. My daughter's petition was thrown out, and a third grader could read her signature. This is over and over and over again.

For people who are listening who think somehow this might be some kind of personal spat with the mayor, absolutely not. What you have here is you have the violation of our first amendment rights. You have the violation of our religious liberty. And, thirdly, you have two people, the mayor and the city attorney, who have single-handedly taken away the voting rights of the fourth largest city in the country.

GLENN: So now they've come to you and they've said, not only you, but everyone, everyone who is in favor of this -- favor the repeal of this ordinance, they're asking for what exactly? Your sermons, but what else?

RIGGLE: Here's what happened. A couple of community people and a couple of pastors together filed a lawsuit against the city to force them to put this on the ballot. The five pastors were issued subpoenas by the city. None of the five of us were party to the lawsuit. And in the original subpoena, they asked for 17 different kinds of -- of -- 17 different areas of communication, including sermons, any emails, text messages, correspondence, anything we communicated to the congregation and included in the subpoena was about the ordinance, about the referendum and about the mayor personally. Anything that had been said about the mayor. So it was very, very broad.

And the mayor and city attorney when challenged on this said, we didn't even know that subpoena was going out. Which, if anyone knows the mayor and the city attorney, they would know -- there's no way that the mayor and the city attorney didn't know that was going out. They just got caught. So the five of us said no way. So we, alliance freedom attorneys came in to defend us, and we have said to the mayor, we don't have any problem with you having all of our sermons. In fact, I've said publicly, if the mayor and the city attorney will agree to listen to all of my sermons, I'll give them 31 years' worth. That's how long I've been in this city. They can have them all. As a matter of fact, they're already on the website. They can go there and get them any day of the week. But what we are opposed to is the state telling us that we have to turn those things over for their inspection.

GLENN: Have you ever seen anything like this?

RIGGLE: Well, I've never seen anything like it, but more than that is that Eric Stanley, the lead counsel with the alliance defending freedom, he was asked that same question, and he said -- and, you know, they do this constitutional law stuff all over the country and religious liberty cases. He said, I've never seen anything remotely like this at all.

GLENN: This is the most dangerous thing I've seen. This is more dangerous to the republic of Texas than Ebola is. This is more dangerous than anything I've ever seen. Everybody who said -- Stu, did you pull up those phrases? I asked Stu about an hour ago. Go find the phrases of people when we said, the next thing we know, if you say yes, this is not about equal rights. It's never about equal rights. This is about shutting people down. As Jeffy said, diversity is great unless it disagrees with my opinion. That's what this has been about. Shutting down the churches and shutting down the people of faith and everyone said, that would never ever happen.

STU: Yeah. Slate. Will churches be forced to conduct gay weddings? Not a chance. That's just a scare tactic conservative groups use to scare voters.

GLENN: It's happening right now. It's happening in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, right now. Two ministers are being threatened with seven years in jail unless they perform a gay wedding. So Slate magazine, liar.

STU: Washington Post. They do allow for outliers here. But they say:

We've be warned nationwide same-sax marriage would bring an unprecedented wave of conflicts between married and same-sex couples and religious traditionalists, who would refuse to provide services in any other way to facilitate the marriages, thus we would finally see clear examples of the harm created by same-sex marriage. These fears have been largely unrealized so far.

GLENN: Have they? How about the people who won't make wedding cakes?

STU: Yeah, and they do say there have been a few celebrated conflicts that they allow for.

GLENN: This is -- a few celebrated? Only because it's the beginning. Only because it's the beginning.

Here's what I would like to do. I'm going to give you the address of the mayor.

Mayor Annise Parker.

Houston City Hall.

901 Bagby Street.

Houston, TX 77002.

I would like to ask all preachers, all pastors, all rabbis, to send her your sermons. In fact, if you're not a preacher, pastor or rabbi, I would like to ask you to do your own homework. Go look some things up from George Whitfield. The first evangelical in America. Go look him up. Go find some of his speeches and some of his sermons on religious liberty. Go find the best sermons you can find on religious liberty and send them to city hall in Houston.

America, we have -- there are not a lot of chances left. We've got to wake up. Our churches must wake up. If you're a pastor, a priest, a rabbi, if you have any -- any flock that you are supposed to be shepherding. You better get your staff out and start leading your flock. Or you'll lose your staff, your flock, and your position. This is the most dangerous thing I've seen. And we are becoming openly hostile to God. It doesn't end well when a nation like ours does that.

Pastor, anything else you want to add to this?

RIGGLE: Just one thing, that the city attorney at a press conference last week just made this comment regarding the outrage that is now happening all over the country. We're getting inundated with people calling and emailing and saying how outraged they are over this. Now, remember this is about first amendment. It's about religious liberty. And it's about voting. The city attorney about all the outrage. I quote his words.

It's ridiculous.

That's a quote. So people better be outraged. And they better lift their voices and they better start screaming.

GLENN: Steve, anything I can do for you, you please contact us. We're in this fight with you. I'll stand with you shoulder to shoulder. And millions of Americans, I hope, will do the same, but anything you need. Thank you so much. God bless. Steve Riggles, the founding senior pastor.

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

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Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: Chart-topping ‘singer’ has no soul at all

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A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

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A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

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Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

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This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.