Apr 09

HHS contraceptive mandate threatens more than religious freedom

Society No Comments »

It’s an assault on sensibilities. Worse, it’s perpetuating the real ‘war on women’ along with the myths about a phony one. Because the drugs being claimed under the umbrella of ‘women’s preventive health services’ are actually dangerous for women’s health. Who’s talking about that?

Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, for one. She’s president and co-founder of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute and one of the nation’s leading authorities on the causes of breast cancer and reasons for the soaring incidence of it over the past several decades. Her interest in investigating the abortion-breast cancer link started when she began seeing younger and younger women in her office with breast cancer and discovered abortion was a common denominator. Through seminars and reports and anything else she can disseminate, Dr. Lanfranchi has been trying to point people to this link as a warning, with science and scientific studies proving its cause and effect. Resources on that are available on the BCPI website.

So is the latest information on the risks of birth control drugs to women’s health. Video of Dr. Lanfranchi’s presentation at ‘The Pill Kills National Symposium’ and the Q&A followup are found here, along with a concise brochure making the most important points clear and punctuated. It’s called ‘The Pill Kills: The Life Threatening Medical Consequences of Oral Contraceptives’ and answers basics like ‘What is the “Pill”? and lists ‘The 4 Ways The Pill Kills’ among other essentials. And with about 82 percent of American women taking these drugs, they are essentials.

 I talked with her Monday, in light of the ruling last Friday by a federal judge requiring the government to make the morning-after pill available over the counter to women and girls of all ages without a prescription.

Dr. Lanfranchi said in the time since the FDA approved the birth control pill over 50 years ago, we’ve learned a lot about it’s effects and “we’re only beginning to understand the impact” it has had on women’s health. “A lot of people know something is wrong,” she said. “But they’re not being told by their doctors.”

By contrast, look back to 2002, she said, when ‘hormone replacement therapy’ was proven – and reported – to cause a 26 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer. “At the time, there were 30 million women on hormone replacement therapy,” she told me. “After this news came out, about 15 million of them stopped abruptly.” And a follow up report in 2007 showed a markedly lower incidence of breast cancer.

So why the silence on the risks of ‘The Pill’? “It’s a group 1 carcinogen,” Dr. Lanfranchi said emphatically. “It can cause blood clots that can be lethal. Women are fertile only about 100 hours a month, but they’re putting this molotov cocktail in their bodies the other three weeks and nobody is talking about the dangers.”

She is, and her voice has been added to amicus briefs in lawsuits filed by Hobby Lobby and others against the federal HHS mandate requiring employers provide access to contraceptive drugs including the morning-after pill, which threatens not only the religious freedom and conscience rights of employers, but the health of the women taking these drugs. The BCPI newsletter has more information on that action in its current issue, found online at their site.

This needs more coverage. Women are finding out the hard way, and trying to warn others because it seems no one else will. Help them. At least check out the information, even if you’re skeptical. Some people are paying a terrible price now for the deception and coverup of these facts. Countless others will, down the road. That need not happen.

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Mar 07

Obama’s drone attack power meets resistance

Law, Media, Politics, Society No Comments »

This president and his administration are not used to pushback, and haven’t had to answer to much of it anyway, thanks to a largely complicit media and a discombobulated Congress mostly unable to directly engage him. And then came Rand Paul.

He played a key role in the Benghazi investigation on the panel Hillary Clinton faced and mostly dominated, though Paul stood his ground demanding answers the administration continues to withhold. Now the revelation of Obama’s drone attack powers has Paul mounting a crusade to expose what other politicians and the media just won’t. It’s a good thing someone is willing to show what ‘the power of one’ can be, when one refuses to give up or give in or be silenced, unless by necessity.

The story started to bubble up early this week, though most big media failed to report it.

President Barack Obama has the legal authority to unleash deadly force—such as drone strikes—against Americans on U.S. soil without first putting them on trial, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote in a letter released Tuesday.

But Holder, writing to Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, underlined that Obama “has no intention” of targeting his fellow citizens with unmanned aerial vehicles and would do so only if facing “an extraordinary circumstance.”

That is far too non-committal and elastic, especially for an administration that says one thing and does another (see background on the president’s Notre Dame speech, HHS mandate, National Prayer Breakfast talk, HHS mandate…)

Paul had asked the Obama administration on Feb. 20 whether the president “has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil and without trial.” On Tuesday, he denounced Holder’s response as “frightening” and “an affront to the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans.”

This is an administration that denies due process or any constitutional rights whatsoever to infants born alive after an attempted abortion, because doing so would threaten abortion laws and confer constitutional rights on those infants.

“The U.S. government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so,” Holder assured Paul in the March 4, 2013 letter. The attorney general also underlined that “we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat.”

Holder added: “The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no President will ever have to confront.”

That is not at all conclusive, accountable or even reassuring.

But “it is possible, I suppose to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” Holder said.

And that was revealing.

Paul, whose office released the letter, denounced the attorney general’s comments.

“The U.S. Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening—it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans,” the senator said in a statement.

The exchange came as the White House agreed to give Senate Intelligence Committee members access to all of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opinions justifying Obama’s expanded campaign of targeted assassination of suspected terrorists overseas, including American citizens. Some lawmakers had warned they would try to block top Obama counterterrorism adviser John Brennan’s nomination to head the CIA unless they were able to see the memos.

And that proceeded to happen on Wednesday morning, for as long as Sen. Rand Paul and co. could keep it going. Which extended to the very last hour of the day Wednesday night. Their cause was larger than one confirmation hearing, which they knew ultimately they could not stop.

Forcing the question of civil liberties and U.S. drone policy into the spotlight, what began as a one-man stand increasingly gained steam – and supporters – both in the Senate chamber and in social media throughout the day.

Paul’s traditional or “talking” filibuster…continued into the wee hours as the Kentucky lawmaker pressed his case against the administration’s policy on drone strikes on American soil…

The senator was joined on the floor throughout the day and night by other lawmakers, who stepped in to help continue the filibuster by asking lengthy questions on the Senate floor. His colleagues’ contributions also included statements of support, the reading of tweets supporting Paul’s efforts and the quoting of rap lyrics, Shakespearean prose and classic Hollywood films.

In a sign that Paul’s cause had moved beyond just the most conservative wing of the party, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – Paul’s fellow Kentuckian who is facing re-election in 2014 – joined in close to midnight to offer support for Paul’s “tenacity and conviction” and to announce that he will oppose CIA nominee John Brennan’s confirmation.

This filibuster grew through social networking media into a new cause and movement. Because dispirited people will only remain silent until someone reminds them they have a voice, and not only deserve but need to speak.

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Feb 11

HHS ‘compromise’: “80 pages of nothing new”

Abortion, Culture, Law, Politics No Comments »

The basic mandate that employers with religious objections to the HHS contraceptive coverage still have to comply or pay punitive fines still stands. The latest fig leaf changes little, but it took a few days to wade through the dense and convoluted legalese the government issued to essentially say ‘we’re not willing to budge, more than an inch.’

There is nothing new about the administration deciding who gets exemptions and who doesn’t, and that’s the main point.

After nearly a year, the Obama administration released, on February 1, its latest version of a “compromise” with the employers who object, on religious grounds, to the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that their health plans cover no-cost access to sterilization services and contraceptives, including those that can act as abortifacients, destroying the early-stage embryo.

As many observers have already remarked, there is nothing substantively new in the administration’s proposal, which only formalizes and fills in details of a proposal it first floated last March, and continues to be based on the same dubious science.

Now facing more than forty lawsuits initiated by colleges, charities, and other religious nonprofits, as well as by for-profit companies whose owners have religiously informed moral objections, the Obama administration may hope that its latest gambit will persuade some credulous judges to toss some of the litigants’ cases.

But in truth, it has only revealed its own blinkered and tyrannical understanding of religious freedom, which it would sacrifice to a goal of “gender equality” that is at best only tenuously related to its free-contraception-for-all policy. And, if the judges attend closely to its arguments, it may even have severely weakened its case.

Well that’s interesting.

Matt Franck makes a good presentation there at Public Discourse on what this alleged compromise actually does. And he wraps it up with a challenge to the reader to do this thought exercise:

Given its stated hostility to any serious understanding of our first freedom, the right not just to worship but to live one’s faith in all one’s daily work, on what understanding of our remaining constitutional freedoms can the administration assure us that any of these other liberties still stands on a firm foundation?

Good question.

Also at Public Discourse was this well-reasoned and extraordinarily well presented analysis.

With last Friday’s rules, the government is claiming that after a year of a mostly losing record of religious freedom lawsuits, it has struck the perfect balance between two urgent goals: getting contraception into the hands of as many American women and girls as possible, and protecting Americans’ religious freedom.

The truth of the matter is quite different.

There are myriad problems inherent in the new rules. They still fail to protect the legally guaranteed religious freedom of religious institutions, for-profit employers, insurers, non-religious non-profit organizations, and individuals. Religious liberty is protected not only by the First Amendment of our Constitution, but also by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

They fail to understand the full nature of the free exercise of religion—that religion, whether practiced individually or by a group, requires being able to integrate one’s actions with one’s religious beliefs, especially when these don’t attack but advance the common good—here, the health and well-being of women and girls.

They trample on parents’ constitutionally-protected right to direct the upbringing of their daughters. And they reveal, still, an irrational zeal for a narrow category of drugs and devices, thus evincing a narrow and harmful understanding of women’s freedom as coincident with sexual expression.

Moreover, while the government tries to make us think that the new rules are hospitable to religious freedom, we shouldn’t overlook its continued failure to admit the bankruptcy of the mandate’s grounding “medical” claim: that unintended pregnancy is a kind of health crisis properly resolved with free contraception and early abortions.

Thank you, Helen Alvare, for such a sound argument.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the US bishops conference, said this latest attempt for cover is still unacceptable.

The Administration’s proposal maintains its inaccurate distinction among religious ministries. It appears to offer second-class status to our first-class institutions in Catholic health care, Catholic education, and Catholic charities. HHS offers what it calls an “accommodation,” rather than accepting the fact that these ministries are integral to our Church and worthy of the same exemption as our Catholic churches. And finally, it seems to take away something that we had previously—the ability of an exempt employer (such as a diocese) to extend its coverage to the employees of a ministry outside the exemption.

(The bishops’ document) United for Religious Freedom explained that the religious ministries not deemed “religious employers” would suffer the severe consequence of “be[ing] forced by government to violate their own teachings within their very own institutions.”After Friday, it appears that the government would require all employees in our “accommodated” ministries to have the illicit coverage—they may not opt out, nor even opt out for their children—under a separate policy.In part because of gaps in the proposed regulations, it is still unclear how directly these separate policies would be funded by objecting ministries, and what precise role those ministries would have in arranging for these separate policies.Thus, there remains the possibility that ministries may yet be forced to fund and facilitate such morally illicit activities…

 the bishops explained that the “HHS mandate creates still a third class, those with no conscience protection at all:individuals who, in their daily lives, strive constantly to act in accordance with their faith and moral values.”This includes employers sponsoring and subsidizing the coverage, insurers writing it, and beneficiaries paying individual premiums for it.Friday’s action confirms that HHS has no intention to provide any exemption or accommodation at all to this “third class.”In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs that they proclaim on the Sabbath.We cannot now abandon them to be forced to violate their morally well-informed consciences.

Because the stakes are so high, we will not cease from our effort to assure that healthcare for all does not mean freedom for few.Throughout the past year, we have been assured by the Administration that we will not have to refer, pay for, or negotiate for the mandated coverage.We remain eager for the Administration to fulfill that pledge and to find acceptable solutions—we will affirm any genuine progress that is made, and we will redouble our efforts to overcome obstacles or setbacks.Thus, we welcome and will take seriously the Administration’s invitation to submit our concerns through formal comments, and we will do so in the hope that an acceptable solution can be found that respects the consciences of all.At the same time, we will continue to stand united with brother bishops, religious institutions, and individual citizens who seek redress in the courts for as long as this is necessary.

For now, this remains necessary.

The cases proceed through the courts, and the latest HHS proposal is likely a response to a DC Circuit Court judge who required the government to report back on what ‘accommodations’ it was making that it had promised would be forthcoming. This does not suffice, say Becket Fund attorneys representing the most cases against the federal mandate.

Today’s announcement of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the HHS mandate leaves the religious liberty of millions of Americans unprotected.

“Today’s proposed rule does nothing to protect the religious freedom of millions of Americans. For instance, it does nothing to protect the rights of family businesses like Hobby Lobby,” said Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.  “The administration obviously realizes that the HHS mandate puts constitutional rights at risk.  There would have been an easy way to resolve this—expanding the exemption—but the proposed rule expressly rejects that option.”

Becket Fund Executive Director Kristina Arriaga sent out this press release:

We’re all still reeling from the Administration’s announcement on the HHS Mandate last Friday, which, as it turns out, is 80 pages of nothing new.
 
The Administration’s proposal is murky on the details – in fact, it’s not at all clear how this would work, if it could work at all; but it’s clear that it still fails to protect our nation’s 237-year guarantee of religious liberty for millions of Americans.
 
As I mentioned in my email to you last Friday when the Obama Administration released this proposal “respecting the concerns of some religious organizations,” – their words, my emphasis – the millions of American entrepreneurs who want to live their lives and run their businesses with their faith intact are not covered even a stitch by this proposal.
 
They are still forced to choose between their conscience and their livelihood.  These entrepreneurs are winning big in court – 11 wins for businesspeople of faith to just 3 for the government –  yet the Administration still refuses to accept that religious liberty is even at issue in these cases.
 
So, as far as the Becket Fund is concerned, the fight against the HHS Mandate is far from over…

The government seems to have been so intent on defining religious liberty as narrowly as possible that they’ve drafted a convoluted 80-page proposal riddled with half-baked ideas and vague accounting schemes.

And, finally, says Helen Alvare…

…these proposed regulations show the government’s standing obsession with this narrow piece of the Affordable Care Act. From August 2011 to today, the White House and HHS have expended enormous amounts of time, written hundreds of pages of rules and amended rules and “safe harbor” provisions, occupied press conference time, re-election campaign ads, and delivered speeches—all to promote the notion that free contraception and early abortifacients are the near sum of women’s freedom.

It’s as clear, and offensive, as that.

Tagged with: • • • • •
Jan 16

Obama declares Religious Freedom Day

Abortion, Church, Culture, Law, Politics, Society No Comments »

In another twist on news that doesn’t square with other news, and words by the president that don’t match actions by the president…

Mr. Obama declared January 16th Religious Freedom Day. Here’s the Proclamation:

Foremost among the rights Americans hold sacred is the freedom to worship as we choose.

Right there is a tip off to where his administration has been going with religious liberty in America, transitioning it to the freedom to worship.

But immediately afterward he makes this fine set of points:

Today, we celebrate one of our Nation’s first laws to protect that right — the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Written by Thomas Jefferson and guided through the Virginia legislature by James Madison, the Statute affirmed that “Almighty God hath created the mind free” and “all men shall be free to profess . . . their opinions in matters of religion.” Years later, our Founders looked to the Statute as a model when they enshrined the principle of religious liberty in the Bill of Rights.

Because of the protections guaranteed by our Constitution, each of us has the right to practice our faith openly and as we choose…Americans of every faith have molded the character of our Nation. They were pilgrims who sought refuge from persecution; pioneers who pursued brighter horizons; protesters who fought for abolition, women’s suffrage, and civil rights. Each generation has seen people of different faiths join together to advance peace, justice, and dignity for all.

Define “all,” because different faiths have joined together over several decades to advance rights that don’t apply to the entire class of human beings who exist in the mothers’ wombs but are as yet unborn, and over most of 2012 to advance rights that are being denied employers who morally object to his HHS mandate. People who are battling in courts across the country to defend “the right to practice our faith openly and as we choose”.

The president continues:

As we observe Religious Freedom Day, let us remember the legacy of faith and independence we have inherited, and let us honor it by forever upholding our right to exercise our beliefs free from prejudice or persecution.

Indeed.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty issued this statement soon after the Proclamation was released.

“Today we welcome the President’s Proclamation on Religious Freedom Day. However, we deeply regret that the President does not mention the HHS mandate, which was issued by his administration and which is now trampling the religious freedom of millions of individuals, schools, hospitals, charities, and businesses throughout our nation.  Perhaps this mismatch between words and deeds can be explained by the phrase “freedom of worship,” which the President uses in the first sentence of his proclamation. Religious freedom certainly includes worship, but it extends beyond the four walls of a church. If it is not to be an empty promise, religious freedom must also include acting on one’s deepest religious beliefs when one is feeding the poor, caring for the sick, educating the young, or running a business. The HHS mandate ignores that simple truth and is therefore out of step with our traditions and our laws, which promise religious freedom for all.”  — Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

So again I’m left wondering whether the president hears his own statements and considers them. Because actions speak louder than words, and his are saying contradictory things.

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Dec 19

Obamacare HHS mandate gets judicial correction

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It was always wrong. But because it was issued by executive fiat, its violation of law had to go through the process of being tried, and there are many lawsuits standing against it.

This one scored a victory.

Today, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. handed Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey College a major victory in their challenges to the HHS mandate.  Last summer, two lower courts had dismissed the Colleges’ cases as premature.  Today, the appellate court reinstated those cases, and ordered the Obama Administration to report back every 60 days—starting in mid-February—until the Administration makes good on its promise to issue a new rule that protects the Colleges’ religious freedom.

This is major.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius cannot enforce the Obamacare contraception mandate as it is written, but must follow through on a promise to rewrite the rule to accommodate religious liberty, a federal appeals court ordered.

The Obama administration “represented to the court that it would never enforce [the mandate] in its current form against the appellants or those similarly situated as regards contraceptive services,” the three judges hearing the case wrote in their order.  The Obama team made that promise during oral arguments against Wheaton College and The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which sued over the contraception mandate but lost at the lower court level.

“There will, the government said, be a different rule for entities like the appellants .  .  . We take the government at its word and will hold it to it,” the judges wrote.

They ruled that the Obama administration must rewrite the regulation by August 2013 and provide updates to the court every 60 days. If the government fails to do so, the lawsuits may proceed.

The court also noted that the Obama administration had not made such an expansive pledge outside the courtroom.

“The D.C. Circuit has now made it clear that government promises and press conferences are not enough to protect religious freedom,” The Becket Fund’s Kyle Duncan, who argued the case, said in a statement.  “The court is not going to let the government slide by on non-binding promises to fix the problem down the road.”

Yesterday’s ruling marks the second time in two weeks that a judge has decided that Obama’s promise to change the rule eventually is an insufficient remedy to the religious liberty issues raised by opponents of the mandate.

“There is no, ‘Trust us, changes are coming’ clause in the Constitution,” Judge Brian Cogan wrote in his ruling in favor of the Archdiocese of New York two weeks ago. “To the contrary, the Bill of Rights itself, and the First Amendment in particular, reflect a degree of skepticism towards governmental self-restraint and self-correction.”

It’s about time it gets applied.

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Nov 27

Justices order Obamacare back to court

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Had President Obama lost the election, it would have been eliminated and replaced by new healthcare reform. But his win doesn’t assure that his signature legislation will survive intact.

For days, I’ve been hearing dizzying roundtable discussions with analysts focusing on different aspects of Obamacare and predicting the impact of the still unfolding law, especially as its component parts go into effect in 2013 and continue to roll out into 2014.

But then it got more immediate Monday, when the Supreme Court got involved. Again.

The Supreme Court has ordered a federal appeals court to take another look at whether a key requirement in the health care reform law violates religious freedoms.

A pending lawsuit from the private Liberty University had claimed, among other things, that the law would lead to taxpayer dollars funding abortions and contraception, a claim the Obama administration rejects. The justices issued their order Monday.

The high court in June had upheld the overall law championed by President Obama, but left room for continued legal challenges to certain aspects of the law’s application.

Justice Roberts was key to the individual mandate withstanding the constitutional challenge, to nearly everyone’s surprise at the time. But he left it in place by calling it what it was, a tax. And now that it is, and is about to be enforced, the door is open to rehear challenges to that tax – and penalty for not paying it – as a violation in itself.

So here we go again.

ObamaCare returns to federal appeals court to resume its battle against religious liberty, thanks to a Monday directive from the Supreme Court that revives the lawsuit brought by Liberty University, a Christian school in Virginia.  The Liberty suit has essentially been put on ice while the Supreme Court dealt with the constitutionality of ObamaCare’s individual mandate.  With that landmark 5-4 ruling behind us, and the entirely new concept of a shape-shifting “tax/penalty” added to Constitutional lore, it’s time for the courts to revisit some of the other places where the federal health-insurance takeover conflicts with our dwindling inventory of inalienable rights.

Liberty University’s suit ran afoul of the Anti-Injunction Act, which says that taxes cannot be legally challenged until they have been assessed.  The tax/penalty pulled some of its remarkable shape-changing tricks to get ObamaCare itself around the Anti-Injunction Act, while allowing the dishonest proponents of the law (prominently including President Obama) to claim that it wasn’t really a tax.  Those pretenses are no longer necessary, and the gigantic ObamaCare taxes are now being assessed, so Liberty University re-filed its suit, without objection from the Obama Administration.

It’s going to be very interesting following these court cases for all the charges being filed against this healthcare law.

But the main attraction will be the university’s First Amendment challenge to ObamaCare’s contraception mandates, which raise a very thorny issue.

(Several, actually.)

The law grants conscience waivers to explicitly religious institutions, such as houses of worship, but not to business enterprises run by devoutly religious people.  In other words, Congress is making laws respecting the establishment of religion and prohibiting the free exercise thereof, which the First Amendment says is a bad thing, even before it gets around to saying that abridging the freedom of speech is bad.

And freedom of speech violation is buried in the law and therefore some of these legal challenges as well. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said ‘we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.’ We’re still discovering, but you have to wonder how little they knew.

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Nov 19

Post-election reckoning

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Now that there’s been another week for the election results to sink in, more writers are taking stock of what happened, and there’s an interesting juxtaposition of views on social issues going on. Just as there was during the heat of the campaigns. Was it, is it, better to emphasize them, or de-emphasize them?

Austin Ruse vents in this opinion piece.

I wonder if these folks experienced the same campaign as the rest of us? Exactly when did Mitt Romney campaign, I mean really campaign on the life issues? What ads did he run? Perhaps they were thinking of the Romney ad meant to quell pro-choice concerns, the one telling folks they shouldn’t worry because he still favored abortion for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother? And perhaps these conservatives could show us the ads Romney ran supporting historical marriage, because I missed those and I live in what was one of the hottest of swing states, Virginia.

I might be able to understand these comments if Romney had actually run as a social conservative, but his race was first, last and always about the economy, smaller government, lower taxes, things to warm the cockles of almost any fiscal conservative. But where and when did he actually campaign as a social conservative?…

Romney did say he would defund Planned Parenthood but he never said why. He could have pointed out that there are several thousand Title X clinics not connected to Planned Parenthood that do everything Planned Parenthood does except abortions. He could have pointed out that Planned Parenthood raises a billion dollars a year and in time of fiscal crisis perhaps our money is spent better elsewhere. He could have said Planned Parenthood does not do mammograms no matter what they say. He could have said losing federal funding would hardly close Planned Parenthood down. But he didn’t say any of these things.

The decision not to run a campaign on social issues was made at the top and was ruthlessly imposed all the way to the smallest of campaign events…

Whether Team Romney knew it or not, there were three straight up pro-life votes in the states this time around. Two of them passed including one in liberal Massachusetts. And while it’s true historical marriage lost for the very first time in at least three states, in each of these very liberal states, pro-marriage forces ran ahead of Romney at the polls.

Here’s the thing. Most young people are pro-life. Most young women are pro-life. Most African-Americans are both pro-life and pro-family. These are three of the demographic groups Obama went after and won. Talk to African American pro-lifers. They were aching to help Romney but Romney was not interested in them. And they are livid. Team Romney left lots of voters behind who were eager to help and now the pundits blame them for Romney’s loss.

All along there was a war over women and it was fought exclusively by Barack Obama. There was a campaign run on the social issues but it was run exclusively by Barack Obama. Mitt Romney ceded the entire ground of the moral issues to Barack Obama and he ran right over Mitt Romney and his timid advisers.

Time to toughen up. Because some groups that seized the opportunity to advance their version of social issues are waging a scorched earth campaign to take new territory.

For the first time in its history, a United Nations agency, UNFPA, has declared access to contraception “a human right.”

“Family planning is a human right. It must therefore be available to all who want it,” declares the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) annual report. “But clearly this right has not yet been extended to all.”

The report calls on nations of the world to fight “cultural barriers,” as well as legal constraints, that cause women to forgo the use of birth control.

“What is to stop the UNFPA from declaring that abortion is a basic ‘human right,’ as they have already attempted to do several times, especially in light of the relentless UN drive to legalize abortion all over the world?” ask Brian Clowes, director of research for Human Life International, in an e-mail to LifeSiteNews.com.

The report does not explicitly call for abortion legalization. However, it considers “emergency contraception” a human right, stating it “is not effective once implantation has begun and does not cause abortion.” However, the report adds, “A single emergency contraceptive pill, when taken within up to five days after unprotected intercourse, prevents a fertilized egg from implanting.”

Therefore, it is an abortifacent. A fertilized egg is terminated, which means newly conceived human life is ended, aborted.

That’s what the battle over the HHS mandate is all about. And there’s a new setback in that, too.

The owners of Hobby Lobby asked to be exempted from providing the “morning after” and “week after” pills on religious grounds, arguing this would violate their Christian belief that abortion is wrong.

Judge Joe Heaton of the U.S. District for the Western District of Oklahoma denied the request for a preliminary injunction…

The Food and Drug Administration lists the “morning after” and “week after” pills as emergency contraceptives. But abortion opponents like the Green family consider them abortion-inducing drugs because they are often taken after conception.

Early in his administration, President Obama gave a talk to a group of men at a church over Father’s Day weekend, exhorting them to be responsible to their families, reminding them that ‘fatherhood doesn’t end at conception.’ He had it right then. Conception means a man and woman have conceived a child. If only he would remember that basic truth now, and make that a social issue worth talking about again.

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Sep 21

Obama’s internet ‘kill switch’

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A long time ago I saved news links to a story that got very little buzz at the time but caught my attention…the possibility that the president might issue an executive order to control the internet, under the pretext of security concerns. The story has recycled now, I’m not good at cleaning out saved files, and so dots are easier to connect.

In the many news feeds and press releases and bulletins and emails I get every day, this item popped up by a news hound who sends out loads of links to hot button issues of the day. At first glance, I thought it was an old story just discovered (happens a lot on the internet, as we all know). But reading it through again, it seems to have lurked under radar for a long while, and its surfacing again.

The president of the United States will be able to essentially flip switch and turn off the Internet during times of a national crisis or emergency, as defined by the president. I don’t know what limits there are on it, but it’s cybersecurity, and the president’s going to have that power…

“At a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, [Secretary of Homeland Security Janet] Napolitano said the executive order is ‘still being drafted in the inter-agency process’ and ‘is close to completion depending on a few issues that need to be resolved at the highest levels.’”

It says here, “The White House began to explore an executive order last month after Senate Republicans blocked” the bill. Yep. Republicans said (summarized), “What do you mean the president’s gonna have the power to turn off the Internet? We’re not gonna do that!” So Obama said, “To hell with you guys. We’ll just bypass you.” Obama is again set to bypass Congress, which has rejected any attempt to pass this kind of legislation.

All of which is not new. He took this stance a while back.

“The president expressed frustration, saying we have got to scour everything and push the envelope in finding things we can do on our own.”

For Mr. Obama, that meeting was a turning point. As a senator and presidential candidate, he had criticized George W. Bush for flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the White House, when Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Obama largely worked through the legislative process to achieve his domestic policy goals.

But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress. Branding its unilateral efforts “We Can’t Wait,” a slogan that aides said Mr. Obama coined at that strategy meeting, the White House has rolled out dozens of new policies…

Each time, Mr. Obama has emphasized the fact that he is bypassing lawmakers. When he announced a cut in refinancing fees for federally insured mortgages last month, for example, he said: “If Congress refuses to act, I’ve said that I’ll continue to do everything in my power to act without them.”

Aides say many more such moves are coming. Not just a short-term shift in governing style and a re-election strategy, Mr. Obama’s increasingly assertive use of executive action could foreshadow pitched battles over the separation of powers in his second term, should he win and Republicans consolidate their power in Congress.

Now add this use of executive action to the desire to control information, and anything is possible. But we heard rumblings of this in 2009.

A Senate bill would offer President Obama emergency control of the Internet and may give him a “kill switch” to shut down online traffic by seizing private networks — a move cybersecurity experts worry will choke off industry and civil liberties.

Details of a revamped version of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 emerged late Thursday, months after an initial version authored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., was blasted in Silicon Valley as dangerous government intrusion.

“In the original bill they empowered the president to essentially turn off the Internet in the case of a ‘cyber-emergency,’ which they didn’t define,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which represents the telecommunications industry.

“We think it’s a very bad idea … to put in legislation,” he told FOXNews.com.
Clinton said the new version of the bill that surfaced this week is improved from its first draft, but troubling language that was removed was replaced by vague language that could still offer the same powers to the president in case of an emergency.

“The current language is so unclear that we can’t be confident that the changes have actually been made,” he said.

The new legislation allows the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and make a plan to respond to the danger, according to an excerpt published online — a broad license that rights experts worry would give the president “amorphous powers” over private users.

“As soon as you’re saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it’s going to be a really big issue,” Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CNET News.

It bubbled up again in 2010.

Senators Lieberman, Collins, and Carper have proposed cybersecurity legislation that would require Internet service providers and search engines to develop a “kill switch” to shut down entire swathes of the Web, or even the whole Internet, at the president’s order. Is this systemic control-alt-delete a smart security measure or a potential freedom of information overreach?

Read the cross-section of snips that follow that question. They’re more worrisome than not.

So then along comes this issue again, now. And once again, virtually under radar. But not fully.

The White House has finally responded to criticism over US President Barack Obama’s hushed signing last week of an Executive Order that allows the government to command privately-owned communication systems and acknowledges its implications.

When President Obama inked his name to the Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions Executive Order on July 6, he authorized the US Department of Homeland Security to take control of the country’s wired and wireless communications — including the Internet — in instances of emergency. The signing was accompanied with little to no acknowledgment outside of the White House, but initial reports on the order quickly caused the public to speak out over what some equated to creating an Oval Office kill switch for the Web. Now the Obama administration is addressing those complaints by calling the Executive Order a necessary implement for America’s national security.

“The [order] recognizes the creation of DHS and provides the Secretary the flexibility to organize the communications systems and functions that reside within the department as [Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano] believes will be most effective,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden tells the Washington Post.

Hayden insists that “The [order] does not transfer authorities between or among departments,” but the order does indeed allow the DHS to establish and implement control over even the privately owned communication systems in the country, including Internet Service Providers such as Time Warner, Verizon and Comcast, if the administration agrees that it is warranted for security’s sake.

Sorry folks, that’s just chilling to me. Given the powers this government has taken upon itself to deny freedoms and liberties for falsified and fantastically fabricated reasons, there’s good reason to be skeptical at the very least.

Immediately after last week’s signing, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said the order allowed the DHS “the authority to seize private facilities when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications.”

Following up with the Post this week, EPIC attorney Amie Stephanovich stands by that initial explanation, agreeing that the DHS can now “seize control of telecommunications facilities, including telephone, cellular and wireless networks, in order to prioritize government communications over private ones in an emergency.”

“The previous orders did not give DHS those authorities over private and commercial networks,” adds. Stepanovich. “That’s a new authority.”

According to the order, the DHS can take charge of “commercial, government, and privately owned communications resources” to satisfy what is described as “priority communication requirements.” With little insight from outside the White House, though, what constitutes such an emergency may very well be decided on by Washington, where the country’s elected leaders are still split on all things involving the Internet.

Emphasis added, for good reason.

“This should have been done by Congress, so there could have been proper debate about it,” Stepanovich tells the Post of last week’s signing. “This is not authority that should be granted by executive order.”

White House spokesperson Hayden adds to the Post, “Mobile phones, the Internet, and social media are all now integral to the communications landscape,” concreting still the allegations that this order could be used as a kill switch to any of the millions upon millions of handheld and desktop devices across the country.

Everyone across the world who got so engaged when the US Congress was considering SOPA and PIPA legislation ought to be aware of this. It sure concerns me. What they couldn’t do to kill social networking throughout the developing world, even in Iran with the determined democracy movement, they may be able to pull off in the US by executive fiat. 

Which is unimaginable. Except after the HHS mandate.

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Aug 20

Who speaks for women?

Abortion, Culture, Law, Politics, Society No Comments »

Now that’s become a very interesting question.

This election, candidates and campaigns are as focused as ever on demographics. But this year, the ‘Woman Vote’ has either hit a new stride, or been thrust into a endurance marathon. The competition over who speaks for women hasn’t been this strong since the original feminists emerged. That competition has re-emerged because their voices and message have been subjugated since Roe.

Every year since Roe, the March for Life rally on the Mall of Washington has continued to draw larger numbers of pro-life advocates, well over 200,000 participants from around the nation and the world, braving some of the worse winter weather and other hardships  and winding up joyful and energetic in the harshest conditions to stand up for the right to life.  And they’re increasingly young participants.

So in this election year madness with the HHS mandate calling contraception, morning after pills and sterilization procedures ‘women’s preventive health’, and enforcing it on virtually all employers’ health care plans  no matter whether it violates their conscience or morally informed beliefs about the dignity of all human beings…or not…the issue is prominent in politics and public debate.

The ‘Women Vote’ has become a key battleground for candidates, as if it were monolithic. Stabs have been made to shore up support for the HHS mandate, or at least the appearance of it, and they have fallen way short of anything significant.

The other day, there was a ‘We Are Women’ rally, which drew a scattering but got shored up by hyperbolic media. Take this report, for example:

Women across the country participated in “We Are Women” rallies on Saturday to protest state legislation limiting access to contraception and abortion. Hundreds of advocates gathered in Kansas, Colorado, Virginia, Florida, Arkansas, Idaho, and Oklahoma to demand that lawmakers abandon efforts to undermine women’s health.

“Today’s rally was part of a national movement that has had enough of the war on women,” Kansas rally organizer Kari Ann Rinker said.

This is sheer sophistry, an exercise in wordplay. There is virtually unlimited access to abortion and contraception in this country. The aggression over moving the bar has been on the side of abortion and contraception activists to make it now a luxury paid for by employers and everyone else in spite of birth control pills posing dangers that undermine women’s health. Oh, the irony.

What isn’t being talked about is that the new mandate also pre-disposes women to serious long term and permanent health problems. In conjunction with the defense of both religious liberty and the spiritual well-being of women, we must also refute the absurd and deceptive statement that “women are healthier on birth control.”

Providing free hormonal birth control to women under the guise of ‘preventative services’ and ‘women’s health’ is a lie and women of all faiths deserve to know the truth.

Hormonal birth control methods can enter the body in various ways. These ways include ‘The Pill’ (by mouth), the Mirena IUD (Intrauterine Device), the implant (placed under the skin), ‘the Patch’ (absorbed through the skin), and the Vaginal Nuvaring. There are many other estrogen -progestin name brands that can be added to this list. Any way you name it, these hormone drugs dispense poison into a woman’s body.

Perhaps HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius should inform her President of the following before he makes additional statements to the press like “it is cheaper to prevent than to treat.” Consider this:

— Since 1975 there has been a 400% increase in “in situ” breast cancer among pre-menopausal women under 50 years old. This mirrors the increased use of birth control over these same years. (“In situ” is a medical term which means “at the location”.

— A Mayo Clinic study confirms that any young girl or woman who is on hormonal birth control for 4 years prior to their first full term pregnancy increases their breast cancer risk by 52%.

— Women who use hormonal birth control for more than 5 years are four times more likely to develop cervical cancer.

— The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a research arm of the World Health Organization, classifies all forms of hormonal contraception as a Group 1 carcinogen. This group of cancer causing agents also includes cigarettes and asbestos. Why is it that the FDA can require cigarette manufacturers to place warning labels and real life photos of corpses on cigarette packages to warn consumers of the health dangers yet they, in turn, take an equally harmful substance (hormonal birth control) and force companies to give it away free to young girls without parental consent and woman of all ages?

— For high school boys and men to take steroid drugs, it is a crime. Whereas girls and women taking steroid drugs (i.e. hormonal birth control) are now treated as if they are taking a sacred, life preserving vitamin that women cannot live without.

That nails it.

This is not information that should be kept from the public. Women deserve to be told the truth. They are not being warned that birth control methods are causing breast, liver, and cervical cancer. They are not being told about the “silent killer” effect which is causing them to unknowingly abort their babies. They are instead being told that they are healthier on birth control because it decreases ovarian and uterine cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, out of 100 women with cancer, 31 have breast cancer, 6 have uterine cancer, and 3 have ovarian cancer. This is not a healthy tradeoff of risks that is worth taking.

If, indeed,” it is cheaper to prevent than to treat” then it is time for the White House, Kathleen Sebeilius, and all health agencies within the government to sound the warning trumpet to warn women on hormonal birth control about these devastating medical consequences.

Clearly, birth control does not help women at risk, it places women at risk.

So this small ‘We Are Women’ rally draws a small group of demonstrators and gets hyped as ‘thousands, nationwide’ while the ‘March for Life’ rally gets virtually igorned each January.

But media attention is irrelevant for the validation of some strong women’s initiatives growing and spreading now since the HHS mandate was announced. Like ‘Women Speak for Themselves.’ Who are being validated by new signers every day.

WSFT began with an open letter to the White House, Congress and Secretary Sebelius in February 2012, demanding respect both for religious freedom and for an understanding of woman’s freedom and equality that goes beyond “free contraception.”  It now has over 31 thousand signatories from every state.

“It defies reason that a few groups could speak for all women on issues of life, family, sex and religion,” said WSFT founder, Helen Alvare.

“The 31,000 plus women who have signed onto our open letter will no longer sit silently by while a few political figures and their allies insist that religious freedom has to bow to the theory, the ideology really, that the centerpiece of women’s freedom is sexual expression without commitment,” continued Alvare.

Catherine, a woman in her twenties living in New York City and a signatory, wrote to WSFT: “Out of respect for themselves and others, many women choose to live a life of sexual integrity…Many of my girlfriends and I have found this approach to our sexuality to be freeing, empowering, and constitutive of a deep sense of happiness.”

“I’m a pro-choice woman who respects the rights of other women to hold different views,” wrote another WSFT member Carol, from Vermont. “More specifically I expect the government, in compliance with the Constitution, to protect every person from being coerced into acting in a manner contrary to his or her conscience. The HHS mandates are a fundamental violation of our rights to free speech and religion.”

Hundreds more women wrote to WSFT to express their strong opposition to the message of the Saturday rally.

Here’s their message:

“An honest ‘We Are Women’ rally would acknowledge the diverse views held by women. It would acknowledge the science about the decline in women’s well-being associated with the world view this rally represents,” Alvare says. “No one speaks for all women on these issues. Let women speak for themselves.”

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Aug 07

What August 1st meant

Culture, Media, Politics, Society No Comments »

The HHS mandate went into effect. Religious institutions have a year ‘to figure out how they’re going to violate their consciences’, as NY Cardinal Timothy Dolan put it. Other employers have to do it now. And on the same day, Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day was held across America. How are they connected?

Both events represented a line crossed with new limits on the ability to hold and express personal beliefs without government restriction.

The Becket Fund went to court that day filing an appeal for injunctive relief, and said this:

“Remember August 1, 2012.  Today begins a violation of American conscience like we have never seen before in our country, and Wheaton College personifies it,” said Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.  “Everyone knows Wheaton is a school that lives out its faith.  But today our government is telling Wheaton it is not ‘religious enough’ to have a conscience, and so can be forced to participate in abortions or face heavy fines.  Wheaton’s only recourse is to ask the federal courts for emergency relief.”

Wheaton does not qualify for the one-year “safe harbor,” which the government offered to certain religious organizations as a temporary reprieve from the HHS mandate.  So, in a few short months, Wheaton faces the prospect of over a million dollars per year in fines and other penalties—unless it agrees to violate its core religious beliefs by providing insurance coverage for “emergency contraceptives” that they believe cause abortion.

“Wheaton’s employees are standing with the school but they are afraid,” said Duncan.  “Many employees have said that, if Wheaton is forced to terminate insurance coverage, they will not be able to afford health care for their families.  Wheaton has always provided generous employee benefits, but now the government is forcing it to choose between caring for its employees and honoring its faith.  The government should never be able to put anyone in that position.”

But by fiat, they are, defying previous boundaries to government intrustion into religious liberty and conscience rights.

The American Life League issued this warning on August 1st:

The president’s HHS Mandate redefines and marginalizes religious freedom in favor of government ideology. History tragically teaches us that if our government can abolish one constitutional right, then all constitutional rights are put in jeopardy.   This path sets a dangerous and foolish precedent that First Amendments rights such as freedom of speech, association, freedom of the press, and the rights to assemble and petition the government may be just as easily curtailed in the future.

The other big event that day was different in scope and scale and historic precedent, sort of. But it became a benchmark in American life and culture, as unlikely as the Chick-fil-A fiasco seemed when it first erupted.

Remember that heady time not so long ago when Americans concerned about the unintended consequences of same-sex marriage were told that we had nothing to fear because the redefinition of marriage to accommodate gays and lesbians would not affect our families or our freedoms? You and your churches and businesses can go on believing what you want about marriage, we were told; just let us do our thing and we’ll let you do yours.

How times have changed. In just a few short years, a movement once known for championing tolerance has become the epitome of intolerance. Using their culturally sanctioned victim status as cover, America’s gay-rights leaders have become the iron-fisted enforcers of a strict new speech code in which anyone who questions same-sex marriage is denounced as a hateful, homophobic bigot. Erstwhile pleas for “dialogue” about the best way to protect both the institution of marriage and gay and lesbian interests have been replaced by blatant bullying and vicious personal attacks.

She’s right.

Mayors in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco pronounced Chick-fil-A unwelcome in their communities…

The marriage views that prompted Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to denounce Chick-fil-A and its jobs as unwelcome in a city plagued by crime and unemployment apparently did not bother Emanuel when spouted by his former boss, President Barack Obama, who embraced same-sex marriage only three months ago. As for those “Chicago values” of which Chick-fil-A ran afoul, don’t ask Emanuel to explain how a family-owned company that graciously serves gays and lesbians along with anyone else willing to buy its chicken sandwiches offends Windy City ideals but anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan — whom Emanuel embraced the same week he was chiding Chick-fil-A —does not.

Consistency never has been the strong suit of the marriage redefinition crowd. Nor has respect for diversity — if by the term one means ideological, not simply sexual, difference.

Still, the hostility, contempt and even outright bullying directed at those who oppose same-sex marriage has exploded…

That’s not an exaggeration.

One example:

As police and store employees grappled with graffiti that appeared overnight on the back wall of a Torrance Chick-fil-A, online supporters and protesters alike criticized the vandalism.

“Tastes like hate” was scrawled in large black lettering on the wall of the restaurant, mimicking the chain’s advertising.

“The Chick-Fil-A stores are all independently owned. Vandalism, like that in L.A., hurts the local owner who may not share Cathy’s views,”  a Twitter user…posted, referring to company President Dan Cathy’s recent public stand against same-sex marriage that has sparked a national uproar.

And btw…Dan Cathy didn’t take a public stand against same-sex marriage, which few have taken the time or trouble of researching the story to point out. He responded to a question by a Baptist press outlet whether he believed in the Biblical definition of marriage, and he replied that he did. Media have been irresponsible in their handling of this story.

But back to the vandalism on the outside of a LA franchise, spray-painted “Tastes like hate.”

“wow really?

(my sentiments exactly)

it’s one thing to protest Chick-fil-A but vandalism? im all for freedom of speech but this has gone too far,” (someone) wrote on Twitter. “Wow. So 2 wrongs make a right now days?” wrote another Twitter user from North Carolina.

Many wrongs. Here’s another.

A vandal spray painted an anti-hate message on a Des Peres [Missouri] Chick-Fil-A on Saturday in what appeared to be a response to the fast-food chain owners’ opposition to same-sex unions.

According to the store, someone spray painted “don’t hate” one of the store’s brick walls and “tastes like hate” on the drive-through path.

I’m embarrassed for all the good and upright citizens in the gay community who would never stoop to these low-grade intimidation tactics.

So here’s a learning moment, brought to us by someone who both stooped to the level of harrassment without thinking it through, and learned something from the response on the other side of the provocation.

A minor Internet sensation erupted this week when Adam Smith, former CFO and treasurer of medical supplies manufacturer Vante, videotaped himself bullying a Chick-fil-A drive-thru employee. Smith was fired by his company because of his behavior, but the young woman he harassed provided a model in how to respond to hateful speech.

In the video, initially titled “Reduce $’s to Chick-Fil-A’s Hate Groups,” Smith orders a “free water” from the Chick-fil-A drive thru for the purpose of insulting and harassing the young service worker. “I don’t know how you live with yourself and work here,” he tells the employee at the window. “I don’t understand it. This is a horrible corporation with horrible values. You deserve better.”

“I’m a nice guy, by the way . . . totally heterosexual,” he continues. “Not a gay in me, I just can’t stand the hate.”

Hate. Where do people get these ideas? They manufacture them. They generate them. Then they believe them.

The company that Smith works for issued a press release announcing that Smith is “no longer an employee of our company” and that they expect their “company officers to behave in a manner commensurate with their position and in a respectful fashion that conveys these values of civility with others.”

So the piece continues…

Such behavior has become all too common among those who support homosexual rights and will likely occur with increasing frequency in the future. But what makes the video noteworthy is the gentle and kind response of the Chick-fil-A employee.

I don’t know if, Rachel, the young woman in the video, is a Christian, but her response provides a helpful model for believers. Caught off guard in an uncomfortable and demeaning situation, she responds with civility and gentleness, expressing a desire to serve others. There’s a time to respond with arguments and persuasion and there are times when all that you can do is respond with kindness. Rachel has obviously developed the type of character that would allow her to quickly realize what response was needed.

And it was effective.

UPDATE: Mr. Smith apologized to Rachel and answered questions about his actions.

Look at both videos. It’s a remarkable transformation, the initial provocation and the effect of this young woman’s witness to dignity and respect. That update should be at least the same Internet sensation, but deservedly more.

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