WARD WORLD

Mark Steyn: The Church of Big Government

2012-03-07T19:06:00.001-05:00

Discussing the constitutionality of Obamacare's "preventive health" measures on MSNBC, Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post told Chris Matthews that she reasons thus with her liberal friends: "Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion in the First Amendment, but they did."

Maybe. A lot of other constitutional types in the Western world have grown increasingly comfortable with circumscribing religious liberty. In 2002, the Swedish constitution was amended to criminalize criticism of homosexuality. "Disrespect" of the differently orientated became punishable by up to two years in jail, and "especially offensive" disrespect by up to four years. Shortly thereafter, Pastor Ake Green preached a sermon referencing the more robust verses of scripture, and was convicted of "hate crimes" for doing so.

Conversely, the 1937 Irish Constitution recognized "the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith." But times change. In 2003, the Vatican issued a ruminative document on homosexual unions. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties warned Catholic bishops that merely distributing the statement could lead to prosecution under the 1989 Incitement to Hatred Act, and six months in the slammer.

In Canada, Hugh Owens took out an advertisement in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, and he and the paper wound up getting fined $9,000 for "exposing homosexuals to hatred or ridicule." Here is the entire text of the offending advertisement:

Romans 1:26
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13
I Corinthians 6:9

That's it. Mr. Owens cited chapter and verse — and nothing but. Yet it was enough for the Saskatchewan "Human Rights" Tribunal. The newspaper accepted the fine; Mr. Owens appealed. That was in 1997. In 2002, the Court of Queen's Bench upheld the conviction. Mr. Owens appealed again. In 2006, the Court of Appeal reversed the decision. This time the "Human Rights" Commission appealed. The supreme court of Canada heard the case last autumn, and will issue its judgment sometime this year — or a decade and a half after Mr. Owens's original conviction. It doesn't really matter which way their Lordships rule. If you were to attempt to place the same advertisement with the Star-Phoenix or any other Canadian paper today, they would all politely decline. So, in practical terms, the "Human Rights" Tribunal has achieved its goal: It has successfully shriveled the public space for religious expression — and, ultimately, for "exercise of religion."

In the modern era, America has been different. It is the last religious nation in the Western world, the last in which a majority of the population are (kinda) practicing believers and (sorta) regular attenders of church. The "free exercise" — or free market — enabled religion to thrive. Elsewhere, the established church, whether de jure (the Church of England, the Church of Denmark) or de facto (as in Catholic Italy and Spain), did for religion what the state monopoly did for the British car industry. As the Episcopal and Congregational churches degenerated into a bunch of mushy doubt-ridden wimps, Americans went elsewhere. As the Lutheran Church of Sweden underwent similar institutional decay, Swedes gave up on God entirely.

Nevertheless, this distinction shouldn't obscure an important truth — that, in America as in Europe, the mainstream churches were cheerleaders for the rise of their usurper: the Church of Big Government. Instead of the Old World's state church or the New World's separation of church and state, most of the West now believes in the state as church — an all-powerful deity who provides day-care for your babies and takes your aged parents off your hands. America's Catholic hierarchy, in particular, colluded in the redefinition of the tiresome individual obligation to Christian charity as the painless universal guarantee of state welfare. Barack Obama himself provided the neatest distillation of this convenient transformation when he declared, in a TV infomercial a few days before his election, that his "fundamental belief" was that "I am my brother's keeper."

Back in Kenya, his brother lived in a shack on $12 a year. If Barack is his brother's keeper, why can't he shove a sawbuck and a couple singles in an envelope and double the guy's income? Ah, well: When the president claims that "I am my brother's keeper," what he means is that the government should be his brother's keeper. And, for the most part, the Catholic Church agreed. They were gung ho for Obamacare. It never seemed to occur to them that, if you agitate for state health care, the state gets to define what health care is.

According to that spurious bon mot of Chesterton's, when men cease to believe in God, they do not believe in nothing; they believe in anything. But, in practice, the anything most of the West now believes in is government. As Tocqueville saw it, what prevents the "state popular" from declining into a "state despotic" is the strength of the intermediary institutions between the sovereign and the individual. But in the course of the 20th century, the intermediary institutions, the independent pillars of a free society, were gradually chopped away — from church to civic associations to family. Very little now stands between the individual and the sovereign, which is why the latter assumes the right to insert himself into every aspect of daily life, including the provisions a Catholic college president makes for his secretary's IUD.

Seven years ago, George Weigel published a book called The Cube and the Cathedral, whose title contrasts two Parisian landmarks — the Cathedral of Notre Dame and the giant modernist cube of La Grande Arche de la Defense, commissioned by President Mitterrand to mark the bicentenary of the French Revolution. As La Grande Arche boasts, the entire cathedral, including its spires and tower, would fit easily inside the cold geometry of Mitterrand's cube. In Europe, the cube — the state — has swallowed the cathedral — the church. I've had conversations with a handful of senior EU officials in recent years in which all five casually deployed the phrase "post-Christian Europe" or "post-Christian future," and meant both approvingly. These men hold that religious faith is incompatible with progressive society. Or as Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's control-freak spin doctor, once put it, cutting short the prime minister before he could answer an interviewer's question about his religious faith: "We don't do God."

For the moment, American politicians still do God, and indeed not being seen to do him remains something of a disadvantage on the national stage. But in private many Democrats agree with those "post-Christian" Europeans, and in public they legislate that way. Words matter, as then-senator Barack Obama informed us in 2008. And, as president, his choice of words has been revealing: He prefers, one notes, the formulation "freedom of worship" to "freedom of religion." Example: "We're a nation that guarantees the freedom to worship as one chooses." (The president after the Fort Hood murders in 2009.) Er, no, "we're a nation that guarantees" rather more than that. But Obama's rhetorical sleight prefigured Commissar Sebelius's edict, under which "religious liberty" — i.e., the freedom to decline to facilitate condom dispensing, sterilization, and pharmacological abortion — is confined to those institutions engaged in religious instruction for card-carrying believers.

This is a very Euro-secularist view of religion: It's tolerated as a private members' club for consenting adults. But don't confuse "freedom to worship" for an hour or so on Sunday morning with any kind of license to carry on the rest of the week. You can be a practicing Godomite just so long as you don't (per Mrs. Patrick Campbell) do it in the street and frighten the horses. The American bishops are not the most impressive body of men even if one discounts the explicitly Obamaphile rubes among them, and they have unwittingly endorsed this attenuated view of religious "liberty."

The Catholic Church is the oldest continuously operating entity in the Western world. The earliest recorded use of the brand first appears in Saint Ignatius's letter to the Smyrnaeans of circa a.d. 110 — that's 1,902 years ago: "Wherever Jesus Christ is," wrote Ignatius, "there is the Catholic Church," a usage that suggests his readers were already familiar with the term. Obama's "freedom to worship" inverts Ignatius: Wherever there is a Catholic church, there Jesus Christ is — in a quaint-looking building with a bit of choral music, a psalm or two, and a light homily on the need for "social justice" and action on "climate change." The bishops plead, No, no, don't forget our colleges and hospitals, too. In a garden of sexual Eden, the last guys not chowing down on once-forbidden fruits are the ones begging for the fig leaf. But neither is a definition of "religion" that Ignatius would have recognized. "Katholikos" means "universal": The Church cannot agree to the confines Obama wishes to impose and still be, in any sense, catholic.

If you think a Catholic owner of a sawmill or software business should be as free of state coercion as a Catholic college, the term "freedom of conscience" is more relevant than "freedom of religion." For one thing, it makes it less easy for a secular media to present the issue as one of a recalcitrant institution out of step with popular progressivism. NPR dispatched its reporter Allison Keyes to a "typical" Catholic church in Washington, D.C., where she found congregants disinclined to follow their bishops. To a man (or, more often, woman), they disliked "the way the Church injects itself into political debates." But, if contraceptives and abortion and conception and birth and chastity and fidelity and sexual morality are now "politics," then what's left for religion? Back in the late first century, Ignatius injected himself into enough "political debates" that he wound up getting eaten by lions at the Coliseum. But no doubt tut-tutting NPR listeners would have deplored the way the Church had injected itself into live theater.

Ignatius's successor bishops have opted for an ignobler end, agreeing to be nibbled to death by Leviathan. Even in their objections to the Obama administration, the bishops endorse the state's view of the church — as something separate and segregated from society, albeit ever more nominally. At the airport recently, I fell into conversation with a lady whose employer, a Catholic college, had paid for her to get her tubes tied. Why not accept that this is just one of those areas where one has to render under Caesar? Especially when Caesar sees "health care" as a state-funded toga party.

But once government starts (in Commissar Sebelius's phrase) "striking a balance," it never stops. What's next? How about a religious test for public office? In the old days, England's Test Acts required holders of office to forswear Catholic teaching on matters such as transubstantiation and the invocation of saints. Today in the European Union holders of office are required to forswear Catholic teaching on more pressing matters such as abortion and homosexuality. Rocco Buttiglione's views on these subjects would have been utterly unremarkable for an Italian Catholic of half a century ago. By 2004, they were enough to render him ineligible to serve as a European commissioner. To the college of Eurocardinals, a man such as Signor Buttiglione can have no place in public life. The Catholic hierarchy's fawning indulgence of the Beltway's abortion zealots and serial annullers is not reciprocated: The Church of Government punishes apostasy ever more zealously.

The state no longer criminalizes a belief in transubstantiation, mainly because most people have no idea what that is. But they know what sex is, and, if the price of Pierre Trudeau's assertion that "the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation" is that the state has to take an ever larger place in the churches and colleges and hospitals and insurance agencies and small businesses of the nation, they're cool with that. The developed world's massive expansion of sexual liberty has provided a useful cover for the shriveling of almost every other kind. Free speech, property rights, economic liberty, and the right to self-defense are under continuous assault by Big Government. In New York and California and many other places, sexual license is about the only thing you don't need a license for.

Even if you profoundly disagree with Pope Paul VI's predictions that artificial birth control would lead to "conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality," the objectification of women, and governments' "imposing upon their peoples" state-approved methods of contraception, or even if you think he was pretty much on the money but that the collective damage they have done does not outweigh the individual freedom they have brought to many, it ought to bother you that in the cause of delegitimizing two millennia of moral teaching the state is willing to intrude on core rights — rights to property, rights of association, even rights to private conversation. In 2009, David Booker was suspended from his job at a hostel for the homeless run by the Church of England's Society of St James after a late-night chit-chat with a colleague, Fiona Vardy, in which he chanced to mention that he did not believe that vicars should be allowed to wed their gay partners. Miss Vardy raised no objection at the time, but the following day mentioned the private conversation to her superiors. They recognized the gravity of the situation and acted immediately, suspending Mr. Booker from his job and announcing that "action has been taken to safeguard both residents and staff." If you let private citizens run around engaging in free exercise of religion in private conversation, there's no telling where it might end.

And so the peoples of the West are enlightened enough to have cast off the stultifying oppressiveness of religion for a world in which the state regulates every aspect of life. In 1944, at a terrible moment of the most terrible century, Henri de Lubac wrote a reflection on Europe's civilizational crisis, Le drame de l'humanisme athee. By "atheistic humanism," he meant the organized rejection of God — not the freelance atheism of individual skeptics but atheism as an ideology and political project in its own right. As M. de Lubac wrote, "It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organize it against man." "Atheistic humanism" became inhumanism in the hands of the Nazis and Communists and, in its less malign form in today's European Union, a kind of dehumanism in which a present-tense culture amuses itself to extinction. "Post-Christian Europe" is a bubble of 50-year-old retirees, 30-year-old students, empty maternity wards . . . and a surging successor population already restive to move beyond its Muslim ghettoes.

Already, Islam commands more respect in the public square. In Britain, police sniffer dogs wear booties to search the homes of suspected Muslim terrorists. Government health care? The Scottish NHS enjoined its employees not to be seen eating in their offices during Ramadan. In the United Kingdom's disease-ridden hospitals, staff were told to wear short sleeves in the interests of better hygiene. Muslim nurses said this was disrespectful and were granted leave to retain their long sleeves as long as they rolled them up and scrubbed carefully. But mandatory scrubbing is also disrespectful on the grounds that it requires women to bare their arms. So the bureaucracy mulled it over and issued them with disposable over-sleeves. A deference to conscience survives, at least for certain approved identity groups.

The irrationalism of the hyper-rational state ought by now to be evident in everything from the euro-zone crisis to the latest CBO projections: The paradox of the Church of Big Government is that it weans people away from both the conventional family impulse and the traditional transcendent purpose necessary to sustain it. So what is the future of the American Catholic Church if it accepts the straitjacket of Obama's "freedom to worship"? North of the border, motoring around the once-Catholic bastion of Quebec, you'll pass every couple of miles one of the province's many, many churches, and invariably out front you'll see a prominent billboard bearing the slogan "Notre patrimoine religieux — c'est sacre!" "Our religious heritage — it's sacred!" Which translated from the statist code-speak means: "Our religious heritage — it's over!" But it's left every Quebec community with a lot of big, prominently positioned buildings, and not all of them can be, as Montreal's Saint-Jean de la Croix and Couvent de Marie Reparatrice were, converted into luxury three-quarter-million-dollar condos. So to prevent them from decaying into downtown eyesores, there's a government-funded program to preserve them as spiffy-looking husks.

The Obama administration's "freedom to worship" leads to the same soulless destination: a church whose moral teachings must be first subordinated to the caprices of the hyper-regulatory Leviathan, and then, as on the Continent, rendered incompatible with public office, and finally, as in that Southampton homeless shelter, hounded even from private utterance. This is the world the "social justice" bishops have made. What's left are hymns and stained glass, and then, in the emptiness, the mere echo:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar . . .

Female Democratic Lawmakers Refuse to Condemn Bill Maher's Comments Abou...

2012-03-07T16:18:00.001-05:00

Cardinal: Obama Admin Lectured Bishops on Catholic Teaching

2012-03-07T15:32:00.000-05:00

From: LifeNews.com

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops, has released a public letter today detailing a stunning conversation he and other bishops had with top White House officials about the controversial Obama mandate.

In the letter, Cardinal Dolan relates a shocking meeting in which top Obama Administration asked to meet with the bishops to “work out the wrinkles” of the mandate. After accepting the invitation and arriving at the White House, the bishops asked whether any ability to broaden the very narrow religious exemptions in the mandate were off the table.

“The invited us to ‘work out the wrinkles.’ We have accepted that invitation,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, this seems to be stalled: the White House Press Secretary, for instance, informed the nation that the mandates are a fait accompli (and, embarrassingly for him, commented that we bishops have always opposed Health Care anyway, a charge that is scurrilous and insulting, not to mention flat out wrong.”)

Dolan writes: “At a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom—that is, revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption—are all off the table. They were informed that they are. So much for “working out the wrinkles.” Instead, they advised the bishops’ conference that we should listen to the “enlightened” voices of accommodation, such as the recent, hardly surprising yet terribly unfortunate editorial in America.”

He said, “The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers

“We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans,” the archbishop of New York wrote in a public letter to the Catholic bishops last Friday. “We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it.”

The Catholic bishops’ president made it appear the mandate is not going to be changed in any way to protect religious freedom.

Dolan said, “The White House already notified Congress that the dreaded mandates are now published in the Federal Registry ‘without change.’ He added that “The Secretary of HHS is widely quoted as saying, ‘Religious insurance companies don’t really design the plans they sell based on their own religious tenets.’ That doesn’t bode well for their getting a truly acceptable “accommodation.”

Cardinal Dolan also said “We will continue to accept invitations to meet with and to voice our concerns to anyone of any party, for this is hardly partisan, who is willing to correct the infringements on religious freedom that we are now under. But as we do so, we cannot rely on off the record promises of fixes without deadlines and without assurances of proposals that will concretely address the concerns in a manner that does not conflict with our principles and teaching.”

He added that “Congress might provide more hope, since thoughtful elected officials have proposed legislation to protect what should be so obvious: religious freedom. Meanwhile, in our recent debate in the senate, our opponents sought to obscure what is really a religious freedom issue by maintaining that abortion inducing drugs and the like are a ‘woman’s health issue.’ We will not let this deception stand. Our commitment to seeking legislative remedies remains strong. And it is about remedies to the assault on religious freedom. Period.”

“Perhaps the courts offer the most light,” he said about the many lawsuits that have been filed against the mandate.

Dolan warned the bishops that “given this climate, we have to prepare for tough times. Some, like America magazine, want us to cave-in and stop fighting, saying this is simply a policy issue; some want us to close everything down rather than comply (in an excellent article, Cardinal Francis George wrote that the administration apparently wants us to ‘give up for Lent’ our schools, hospitals, and charitable ministries); some, like Bishop Robert Lynch wisely noted, wonder whether we might have to engage in civil disobedience and risk steep fines; some worry that we’ll have to face a decision between two ethically repugnant choices: subsidizing immoral services or no longer offering insurance coverage, a road none of us wants to travel.”

Cardinal Dolan added that “we know so very well that religious freedom is our heritage, our legacy and our firm belief, both as loyal Catholics and Americans. There have been many threats to religious freedom over the decades and years, but these often came from without. This one sadly comes from within. As our ancestors did with previous threats, we will tirelessly defend the timeless and enduring truth of religious freedom.”

U.S. State Department Actively Promoting Islam in Europe

2012-03-06T21:52:00.000-05:00

From: Stonegate Institute

The United States ambassador to Spain recently met with a group of Muslim immigrants in one of the most Islamized neighborhoods of Barcelona to apologize for American foreign policymaking in the Middle East.

U.S. Ambassador Alan Solomont told Muslims assembled at the town hall-like meeting in the heart of Barcelona's old city that the United States is not an "enemy of Islam" and that U.S. President Barack Obama wants to improve America's image in the Middle East as quickly as possible by closing the "dark chapters" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

"There are things that the United States has done badly," Solomont said at the February 28 gathering organized by a non-profit organization called the Cultural, Educational and Social Association of Pakistani Women. "But now the Obama government wants to improve relations with Muslims," he promised.

During the one-and-a-half-hour question-and-answer session, Solomont asked those in attendance simple rhetorical questions, including: "Did you know that the United States sends a lot of money to Pakistan?" and "Did you know that the decision to destroy Osama bin Laden's house was made by the United States?"

After responding to queries about the "Talibanization of Pakistan due the war in Afghanistan" and the "demonization of Islam in the West," Solomont said Obama wants to end the long-time American practice of establishing alliances with dictators in the Middle East, a strategy which he said has failed to prevent the rise of "the bearded ones" [radical Islamists], this according to the Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia, which also interviewed Solomont on the sidelines of the event.

The Barcelona meeting, which was held in a Muslim ghetto called Raval (a.k.a. Ravalistan because Muslim immigrants now make up 45% of the barrio's total population), is an example of the Obama administration's so-called Muslim Outreach.

The U.S. State Department -- working through American embassies and consulates in Europe -- has been stepping-up its efforts to establish direct contacts with largely unassimilated Muslim immigrant communities in towns and cities across Europe.

Proponents of Obama's approach to public diplomacy -- some elements of which originated with his immediate predecessor -- say it is part of a "counter-radicalization" strategy which aims to prevent radical Muslims with European passports from carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States.

A key component of the strategy is to "empower" Muslims who can help build a "counter-narrative" to that of terrorists. In practice, however, Obama ideologues are crisscrossing Europe on U.S. taxpayer funded trips to "export" failed American approaches to multiculturalism, affirmative action, cultural diversity and special rights for minorities.

Further, American diplomats are repeatedly apologizing to Muslims in Europe for a multitude of real or imagined slights against Islam, and the U.S. State Department is now spending millions of dollars each year actively promoting Islam -- including Islamic Sharia law -- on the continent.

In Ireland, for example, the U.S. Embassy in Dublin recently sponsored a seminar ostensibly designed to help Muslim immigrants increase their influence within the Irish business and financial communities.

The opening speech at the event was delivered by Imam Hussein Halawa of the Islamic Cultural Center of Ireland, despite the fact that leaked U.S. State Department cables show that the U.S. government has known for many years that Halawi is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and serves as the right-hand man of the radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Halawa, an Egyptian immigrant who has dedicated his life to the cause of introducing Islamic Sharia law in Europe, told those in attendance that the main purpose of the conference was to bring the Irish banking system into conformity with Islamic legal principles. U.S. Ambassador Dan Rooney, a lifelong Republican turned Obama acolyte, said at the same conference that the United States was a "solid partner" behind Halawa's venture.

In Austria, the U.S. Embassy in Vienna sponsored a film contest in February on the theme of "Diversity and Tolerance" aimed at teaching wayward Austrians that they should show respect for Muslim immigrants who refuse to integrate into their society.

Ambassador William Eacho, an Obama campaign fundraiser turned political appointee, awarded the first prize to a group of students in the northern Austrian town of Steyr who produced a one-minute silent film promoting tolerance for Muslim women who wear Islamic face-covering veils such as burkas in public spaces.

Obama and his team may think they know what is best for Europeans, but according to recent polls, more than 70% of Austrians are in favor of a law that would ban the burka.

In Belgium, U.S. Ambassador Howard Gutman, another Obama fundraiser turned diplomat, told lawyers attending a conference in Brussels in November 2011 that Israel is to blame for Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe.

According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, Gutman, who is Jewish, showed conference attendees a video of himself receiving a warm welcome at a Muslim school in Brussels, which he said proved that Muslims are not anti-Semitic. Following a barrage of criticism for rationalizing the growing problem of anti-Semitism in Europe, the U.S. Embassy in Belgium removed the evidence by uploading an amended transcript of Gutman's remarks on its website.

In France, the U.S. Embassy in Paris co-sponsored a seminar to teach Muslims in France how they can politically organize themselves. Operatives from the Democratic Party coached 70 Muslim "diversity leaders" from disaffected Muslim-majority suburban slums known as banlieues on how to develop a communications strategy, raise funds and build a political base.

The French government -- which has been trying to reverse the pernicious effects of decades of state-sponsored multiculturalism -- expressed dismay at what it called "meddling."

The Obama administration's Muslim-oriented coaching sessions on community organizing come as the Persian Gulf Emirate of Qatar is busy peddling the fundamentalist teachings of Wahhabi Islam -- which not only discourages Muslim integration into the West, but actively encourages jihad [holy war] against non-Muslims -- to hundreds of thousands of disgruntled Muslim immigrants in France.

As the Obamans and the Wahhabis compete for influence among Muslim immigrants, forward-looking analysts fret that France may yet end up with politically organized jihadists turning the banlieues into Islamic emirates.

In Norway, where Muslim immigrants already have more rights than native Norwegians, the U.S. Embassy in Oslo organized a "dialogue meeting" designed to "empower" Muslim immigrant women in the country.

According to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Obama's special envoy to the Muslim world, Farah Pandith, castigated the Norwegian government's integration policies as being insufficiently fair to Muslim immigrants. She also told Norwegians that Muslims are "more free to practice Islam in the United States than in any other country in the world." Conservative Party leader Erna Solberg said Norway has much to learn from the Americans.

In Britain, U.S. embassy employees in London frequently conduct outreach to help "empower" the Muslims across the country. According to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable, for example, Ambassador Louis Susman "engages with U.K. Muslim communities regularly…he has spoken to Muslim groups in Wales and Scotland, visited the London Central Mosque, and hosted an interfaith breakfast at his residence, among other activities."

Susman has come under fire for visiting another London mosque, namely the East London Mosque, which is one of the most extreme Islamic institutions in Britain. Built with money from Saudi Arabia to propagate Wahhabi Islam, the sprawling facility is home to the London Muslim Center, which the U.S. government has long known is a haven for Islamic extremists. During his visit, Susman spoke of his "great admiration" for the mosque and his enthusiasm for meeting its staff.

According to the leaked cable, "Having the U.S. Ambassador visit and listen respectfully to Muslim points of view has an enormous impact on groups that often feel marginalized and ignored."

Palin vs. Fluke

2012-03-06T16:27:00.001-05:00

MIchele Bachmann On Rush Limbaugh and Media Priorities

2012-03-06T15:31:00.001-05:00

Laura Ingraham: Barabara Walters “Laughed It Off” When I Was Called a Slut (Video)

2012-03-06T14:52:00.001-05:00

O’Reilly And Bernie Goldberg Tear Apart Sandra Fluke, ‘Poster Person For The Entitlement Society’

2012-03-05T21:34:00.001-05:00

The Misogynist Left Mash-up

2012-03-05T18:13:00.000-05:00

Kirsten Powers Tells Megyn Kelly ‘Liberal Men Are Allowed To Be Misogynist, Apparently’

2012-03-05T16:01:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons Kirsten Powers is my favorite liberal. She is at least intelectually honest. Her article referenced by Megy Kelly is

Great Tweet By Laura Ingraham

2012-03-05T15:52:00.001-05:00

Ed Schultz called me a slut last May...still waiting for Obama's call.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan: ‘We Did Not Ask for This Fight, But We Will Not Run From It’

2012-03-05T15:37:00.000-05:00

From: CNSNews.com

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter on Friday to all the Catholic bishops of the United States reasserting the conviction of the Catholic Church that it will not yield to the Obama administration’s command—issued in the form of a Health and Human Services regulation implementing the president’s health-care plan--that Catholics and Catholic institutions must violate the teachings of their faith by purchasing and providing health insurance plans that pay for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients.

“We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans,” Cardinal Dolan wrote his brother bishops.

“We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it,” he said.

“Since January 20, when the final, restrictive HHS Rule was first announced,” Cardinal Dolan wrote, “we have become certain of two things: religious freedom is under attack, and we will not cease our struggle to protect it.”

Although the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops posted the cardinal’s letter on its website on Friday and issued a press release about it, neither The Washington Post nor The New York Times nor any other American newspaper that appears in the massive Lexis-Nexis database of news sources published a story about it in any of their Saturday editions. Nor, as of the early hours on Sunday, had any secular newspaper that shows up in a Google News search published a story about the letter.

Despite the silence from the establishment media, the cardinal’s defiant letter was in fact a major event in what has become the most significant confrontation over religious freedom in the history of the United States.

On Thursday, the Senate voted 51 to 48 to reject an amendment sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri that would have added “conscience protection” language to the Obamacare legislation, and thus protect employers from being forced to provide health insurance coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients if they have a moral or religious objection to these things.

If enacted, this amendment would nullify the HHS sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation insofar is it effects employers, but not insofar as it effects individuals who buy their own insurance and who would still be mandated under Obamacare to purchase insurance.

“And you now ask the obvious question,” wrote Dolan, “”What’s next?’”

Dolan first noted that the Obama administration’s regulation jeopardizes the church’s ability to carry out the ministries that he said have been entrusted to it by Jesus.

“As pastors and shepherds, each of us would prefer to spend our energy engaged in and promoting the works of mercy to which the Church is dedicated: healing the sick, teaching our youth, and helping the poor,” said O’Connor. “Yet, precisely because we are pastors and shepherds, we recognize that each of the ministries entrusted to us by Jesus is now in jeopardy due to this bureaucratic intrusion into the internal life of the church.”

Cardinal Dolan then said that the so-called “concession” President Obama had offered in February—that he would order insurance companies working with Catholic institutions to provide sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients to the workers at those institutions for free—did not solve the problem.

“For one, there was not even a nod to the deeper concerns about trespassing upon religious freedom, or of modifying the HHS’ attempt to define the how and who of our ministry,” wrote the cardinal.

“Two, since a big part of our ministries are ‘self-insured,’ we still ask how this protects us,” he wrote. “We’ll still have to pay and, in addition to that, we’ll still have to maintain in our policies practices which our Church has consistently taught are grave wrongs in which we cannot participate.

“And what about forcing individual believers to pay for what violates their religious freedom and conscience?” he wrote. “We can’t abandon the hard working person of faith who has a right to religious freedom.

“And three,” he said, “there was still no resolution about the handcuffs placed upon renowned Catholic charitable agencies, both national and international, and their exclusion from contracts just because they will not refer victims of human trafficking, immigrants and refugees, and the hungry of the world, for abortions, sterilization, or contraception.”

The cardinal revealed that President Obama had invited the bishops to work with the White House to “work out the wrinkles” on his proposed accommodation. But that effort failed to make progress as the White House showed no flexibility on the core issue.

“At a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom—that is, revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption—are all off the table,” wrote the cardinal. “They were informed that they are. So much for ‘working out the wrinkles.’”

The cardinal said that the bishops would continue to seek a legislative remedy to the administration’s attack on religious liberty and would also pursue protection of religious liberty through the federal courts.

“Perhaps the courts offer the most light,” he said, pointing to the Supreme Court’s recent 9-0 decision against the Obama administration in the Hosanna-Tabor case in which the administration tried to tell a Lutheran church who its ministers would be.

“Given this climate, we have to prepare for tough times,” the cardinal wrote.

He closed the letter by noting to his brother bishops that religious freedom now faces a threat not from a foreign enemy but from within the United States.

“Brothers, we know so very well that religious freedom is our heritage, our legacy and our firm belief, both as loyal Catholics and Americans,” he wrote. “There have been many threats to religious freedom over the decades and years, but these often came from without. This one sadly comes from within. As our ancestors did with previous threats, we will tirelessly defend the timeless and enduring truth of religious freedom.”

Sickening Cruelty: Libtalker Mocks Tornado Victims

2012-03-05T13:30:00.000-05:00

Maher To Limbaugh: I Can Call Palin C**t, ‘I Don’t Have Sponsors – I’m on HBO’

2012-03-03T21:13:00.000-05:00

Afterburner with Bill Whittle: My Friend Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-03T01:38:00.000-05:00

Bill O'Reilly Tackles Sandra Fluke

2012-03-02T23:31:00.001-05:00

Forget the Mediaite.com take. O'Reilly is right

ADAM BALDWIN on Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-02T18:06:00.000-05:00

Watch Andrew Breitbart On The First-Ever Episode Of Red Eye, As Friday’s Panel Pays Tribute To Him

2012-03-02T16:45:00.001-05:00

Breitbart’s Last Laugh

2012-03-01T23:51:00.000-05:00

From: The Weekly Standard

I woke up this morning to about ten emails from journalist friends asking if our mutual friend, Andrew Breitbart, was really dead. “Really” was the operative word. Some meant it in the traditional sense: Is it possible for the human inferno that Breitbart resembled to have actually been extinguished at age 43, leaving his elegant wife Susie and his four beloved children behind? Several, however, meant it as in: Is Andrew really dead? Many of us didn’t know if we could trust the announcement, thinking this could be another Breitbart caper, as he always had two or three in his back pocket.

By way of greeting, I used to ask Breitbart what kind of evil he was up to.

“Most kinds,” he’d say, gamely.

So one could easily have envisioned this being the latest Breitbart media stunt: Fake your own demise, go missing for 24 hours, thus encouraging all your ideological adversaries to bleat and fume and make asses of themselves just to prove what kind of sonsofbitches you were up against. Let the record show that tasteful blogger Matt Yglesias came through like clockwork, nearly getting ahead of the Los Angeles coroner’s announcement by crowing: “Conventions around dead people are ridiculous. The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBreitbart dead.” (Well done, Matt! Perhaps you could pass your thoughtful sentiments on to his fatherless children, since they likely don’t follow you on Twitter. Prick.)

His intensity could alternately be amusing and taxing. When he’d call you in the white-hot fever of one of the headline-garnering skirmishes that he’d inserted himself into – ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, Anthony Weiner’s schwantz pictorials – you knew that you could set the phone down, run some errands, and do some light yard work, then return without him ever realizing that you’d been gone. One of the many benefits of being friends with Andrew was that when he was on fire, which was often, there was no need to carry your share of the conversational load.

But at heart, he was in it for more than scoring points for “The Movement” as he unironically called it. As anyone who has seen his recent CPAC speech knows, Breitbart had the brains, the talent, and the animal charisma to get people to set cars on fire for him, or to run off with him to the desert where he might start his own anti-Obama doomsday cult. But while he believed in what he espoused, perhaps a little too much, he was also in it for other reasons – for action, and for amusement. He didn’t just hit scandal head-on. He enjoyed coming at it slyly. He gloried in the art of presentation. A few years back, when getting drinks with Andrew, his wife, and Fox News host Greg Gutfeld at a Washington, D.C. hotel, Breitbart showed me his Twitter mug shot.

Since he knew that I despise Twitter on principle, I thought he was deliberately sticking me in the eye. But he wasn’t. “Seriously,” he said. “Take a look. Do you notice anything different about me?” In the photo, he had newly grown facial hair. He was looking off into the middle distance in a way that did not quite resemble himself.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Did you lose weight? Get a haircut?”

“NO!!!!” he exclaimed, with some disappointment. “It’s exactly like Eric Boehlert’s Twitter picture! I’m mirroring him!” he said of his bête noir from the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters, which regularly tormented Breitbart, and which in turn, was tormented by him.

There’s not a chance I could pick Eric Boehlert out of a police lineup. But there’s no way Breitbart would’ve known that. He was a man who both loved and hated with his whole heart, often getting wrapped around the axle of his own narrative. When I looked at his long-suffering wife, asking her what she made of this, she affectionately shrugged her shoulders. The universal loving-wife symbol for, “What can you do?”

I tried to calm Breitbart down several times, to no avail. A few years back, he told me the doctor said that he needed to decelerate his stress levels. Consequently, he wanted me to teach him how to fly fish. Then he thought better of it. The problem, he admitted, was, “Every time I see a tree, I just want to kick its ass.”

The last time I saw Andrew was just a few weeks ago in what turned out to be one of his last capers: dinner at a swank Chicago penthouse with former Weather Underground terrorists/Obama confidants Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Andrew and I often disconnected on politics. Even though we were both conservatives, his mode was a little ferocious for my taste. We knew this, however. And so, it was never an issue. What was important is that he had the quality that all people I like most have: he made me laugh. Whatever his faults, he was wicked and loyal and funny – both sick and dark in the best possible way.

Our party arrived at our economy hotel, which sat next to a highway in the ghetto. It smelled of failure and water damage. Breitbart showed up late, letting me know he was on the grounds by sending a text which read: “We have to score some heroin before we head out….Wait, I think there’s someone outside my hotel room who can help.” We did not score heroin, which neither of us used, though in the hotel bar, we all doubled over as Andrew worked out his shtick during pre-game drinks as he proudly explained to us a new coinage of his – “Retrobate” – the process whereby one sexually fantasizes about aged actresses who you once had a crush on, in their younger incarnation.

Our friend, Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson, had won the Ayers dinner at an Illinois Humanities Council auction, and had brought us along. Tucker and I were a little worried that we had in our possession a human grenade in Breitbart, though if we were being honest with ourselves, that’s precisely why we brought him. With Andrew, every day was anything-can-happen day.

As it happened, Breitbart was on his best behavior. “I’m here to learn,” Andrew said facetiously. It was part of the pleasure of keeping company with him. He wasn’t just a friend, he was a co-conspirator. Once we arrived at the apartment, much to Andrew’s and Ayers’s chagrin, they got along famously. Just two guys having dinner, finding commonality, even if Andrew regarded it his hidebound duty to passive-aggressively heckle Ayers as he served us plates of hoisin ribs and farmhouse cheeses. (“This is the bomb, Bill,” Breitbart said to the former explosives-rigger.)

When Ayers asked me what I was reading right now, I told him “Moby Dick,” which actually lived up to its billing. Ayers agreed, though added, as any good academic would, “You’ve picked up the gay subtext?” Breitbart nearly choked on his tofu and quinoa. “You mean in Moby Dick?” Andrew asked. “Or at this dinner?”

Though the dinner took place on Super Bowl Sunday, Ayers and co. abruptly dismissed us before halftime, leaving our plan of attack only half realized, as we were attempting to ease into the evening like gentlemen and polite dinner guests. When we adjourned to the Drake Hotel bar to catch the end of the game and commiserate about how we got rolled, or “community organized” as Breitbart put it, I still had a list of Ayers questions that needed answering. So as I ticked through my list, I asked Breitbart to help fill in the blanks, in character, as Ayers. He eagerly obliged.

Me: “Who taught you how to make bombs? And could you still rig one up if pressed?”

Breitbart, as Ayers: “That’s interesting. I’d like for you to try this Chilean sea bass that’s been encrusted with a special Phyllo dough.”

The next morning, we rode together to the airport. As usual, I didn’t have to do much talking. Breitbart was full of stories and ideas and asides. He sang along lustfully when our cab driver blasted Tina Marie’s ‘80s hit “Lover Girl.” He told me of his super-secret guerrilla PR campaign for the upcoming documentary on him, appropriately titled, “Hating Breitbart.” He would start an anonymous website asking people to upload their hating Breitbart videos, in which they’d be encouraged to cap on him mercilessly. He would blindly commission – for high five figures – Obama propagandist Shepard Fairey to put up anti-Breitbart posters all over L.A. Then he’d call a press conference, announcing who the sponsor of all the anti-Breitbart animus was – Andrew Breitbart himself. It would’ve been a fine caper.

As we took our seats on the plane out of Chicago, Andrew was a row behind me. This I counted a blessing, thinking I could get some much-needed work-related reading done. But no such luck. Andrew asked his fellow row-mate, “Would you switch seats with him, so I can talk to him?” Andrew often seemed like he just wanted someone to talk to.

And so we did, for hours. We talked about his kids, whom he was crazy about. And we talked about one of his favorite films, Grandma’s Boy, about a slacker video game tester forced to move in with his grandmother. We talked about his sterling academic credentials (he pulled a solid 2.0 at Tulane, the New Orleans party school), and at his good fortune in finding his way in the world, even if finances were sometimes tight.

We talked about aging, as two middle-aged guys who get into the Bloody Mary cart at 11 in the morning sometimes will. I told Andrew that his good friend, Five for Fighting’s John Ondrasik, had a hit song called “100 Years” – about aging – that never ceases to freak me out. The protagonist of the song describes the different ages of his life – 15, 33, 45, and so on – that tick by in a blink. It doesn’t help, I told Andrew, that I was 33 when the song seemingly came out yesterday, but that I am closer to 45 now, thus illustrating Ondrasik’s point.

In a very rare spell of silence, Breitbart stewed for several minutes. Then, he wistfully replied, “Don’t worry, man. It’s something that bothers me, too. But I have it all figured out. We all need to go to work together every day from 9 am to 3 pm, whether we need to or not. In a classroom. We’ll even sit at those peninsula-shaped desks, with our pencil sharpeners and Elmer’s glue. And we’ll do it for nine months out of every year.”

“Why on earth?” I asked, puzzled.

“Because,” he said. “When we were in school, that was the last time we watched the clock, and wanted it to hurry up. The last time it took too long to get to the next thing.”

As we parted company at baggage claim, Andrew was still talking (as always) about how we needed to meet for drinks, about his next caper, about a proposed Grandma’s Boy viewing party. Neither of us knew that the time we were just speaking of was in shorter supply for him than for the rest of us. Makes me wish we were sitting at our peninsula-desks, stalling the clock.

Several years ago, when Breitbart was in the middle of one skirmish or another – I don’ t even remember which one – I told him that I didn’t know whether I should encourage him, but that he made me laugh, as always. I asked him when someone finally shot him, “Can I read a poem at your memorial service? ”

“I think I should stop,” he admitted of his latest caper. “But it’s so fun and the hate mail is something to behold….And of course you can read my favorite poem, William Carlos William’s ‘Little Red Wheelbarrow’ at my wake.” Well my friend, you mercifully didn’t get shot. But here you go anyway:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

I’ve never had any idea what the hell that poem means. And I suspect that neither Breitbart, nor William Carlos Williams, had a clue either. But it doesn’t matter. As Andrew held, sometimes absurdity is worth it for its own sake. And as he once wrote to me, “I hope people see that I’m dead serious about what I’m dead serious about, and besides that, it’s all about a good laugh.”

David Frum is a Low-Life Scumbag

2012-03-01T22:56:00.000-05:00

From: YID With LID: David Frum is a Low-Life Scumbag

Krauthammer: Breitbart Pursued Truth With 'Utter Fearlessness'

2012-03-01T19:33:00.000-05:00

Warrior: Franklin Center Remembers Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-01T19:25:00.000-05:00

‘The Five’ Reflects On Death Of Their Friend Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-01T19:08:00.001-05:00

Neil Cavuto Remembers Breitbart

2012-03-01T19:04:00.001-05:00

Breitbart Memorial: "Man Against The Mob"

2012-03-01T18:58:00.000-05:00

Why the Left Hated Andrew Breitbart, in One Tweet and Two Sentences

2012-03-01T18:54:00.000-05:00

From: The Conservatory

Why the Left Hated Andrew Breitbart, in One Tweet and Two Sentences

Da TechGuy

– March 1, 2012Posted in: Editors' Picks

On the left there are plenty of people celebrating (literally, on Twitter right now), but the line from Spartacus was never more true than it is today: He’ll be back, and he’ll be millions.

I know, because I am one of those millions—and if you are a blogger or radio host on the right who has gotten involved in the last few years, so are you.

Andrew Breitbart: An Unlikely Friend By Betsy Rothstein

2012-03-01T18:35:00.000-05:00

From: FishbowlDC

Andew Breitbart of course marched to his own drummer. And he isn’t someone with whom I ever expected to be “friends.” I never wanted to write one of those stories where I relay my experiences about someone who suddenly dies. But here I am.

“Sorry you’re under fire,” Breitbart wrote me last week after I was attacked online for writing a short piece about some female journos’ choice in avatars. No one knew better than him what it felt like to endure a public stoning and the one I went through was ant-sized compared to what he experienced daily. It meant a lot to get his note. “I’ve only half thought thru how I handle it. It takes a huge toll. Its gotten to be performance art for me. Don’t make a habit of it.”

Months ago I fought with Andrew over Twitter over — well, it doesn’t matter over what right now, does it? It wasn’t a horrible fight. Just garden variety online arguing that eventually deescalated and moved into more playful online banter. At the time I told him I respected his success even if I didn’t agree with his opinion on the matter — and I meant it. You don’t have to agree with everything a person says or does to respect and admire their success or be open to their ideas.

I met Andrew during CPAC. Much to my surprise I was invited to a book party at “The Embassy” which is Breitbart’s “office” here in Washington on Capitol Hill. It’s a masculine townhouse where conservatives have gathered for parties, a haven of sorts. Andrew had no idea I would be attending the party and I’m not convinced he would have allowed it had he known. We had never met face to face and I was nervous. Would he throw me out, cause a scene? I’d heard he had a penchant for causing scenes.

In the kitchen, he greeted me (still not knowing who I was), smiled warmly and welcomed me to his home. Oh no, I cringed to myself. This could get ugly when he finds out. Shortly thereafter, I began interviewing the book author. About 15 minutes into it Andrew peered his head into the parlor, pointed at me and said, “It’s YOU!” He seemed amused. Soon he came in, sat down and we chatted for more than two hours. He was nothing I expected him to be. He had me in stitches laughing for hours as he shared stories about his life, himself, and his feelings about the media.

I wrote a lengthy profile on him and soon the hate mail poured in from those who felt I shouldn’t be talking to him, much less writing about him. They called him “Breitbarf.” Even today, I received this: “Britebarf was a vile, odious piece of crap. Good riddance.” My feeling was and still is fuck them.

Once he returned to Los Angeles, our friendship continued. Last week he asked me to be the trusted “broker” in a fight he was having with Current TV’s David Shuster. I obliged and for a day tried to get Breitbart and Shuster to agree on a bet. If Shuster lost, which Andrew seemed to know he would considering information he had, he wanted Shuster to host a seminar for “aspiring maggots” on why he was fired from both Fox News and MSNBC. He phoned early in the morning and hilariously went off on Shuster. He called me mid-morning, again to unload more. I tried hard to convince him to go on a radio show with Shuster — he declined, but instead invited Shuster on the Dennis Miller show last Thursday as he was filling in. Shuster refused. Again, I implored Andrew to go on with Shuster, who was subbing for Bill Press. I ran an item on it, complete with side-by-side pictures of him and Shuster. Andrew wrote me rather quickly, saying, “Worst most overused angry Andrew pic ever.” Ultimately I couldn’t get the pair to agree on anything, but it was fun as hell trying.

Another shock came that morning when Andrew direct messaged me and wrote, “Call in yourself. Now!” So I went on the Dennis Miller radio show and he asked me to discuss the demonized perception of him in Washington. We chatted about how interesting it was to meet one another in person after arguing online, how contentious and surreal the online world can be, and how everything is different when you meet someone in person.

An excerpt from the show: “We’ve been at war over a lot over the last couple of months and then we got to meet each other in DC and started to realize that when you put a face with these battles, sometimes those battles get alleviated. I see how the left wants to frame me as angry. But, when I’m in a crowded hotel and people point at me and start screaming ‘Racist! Racist! Racist!’ And they think that I’m crazy because I respond in kind. I’m 99% a lighthearted person, but that 1%, I will fight back.”

During the recent online uprising against me, Andrew wrote and offered to review the story and give me his thoughts. And this is what he had to say:

“I see why they are pissed! But I’m not offended in the slightest. They are not inappropriate to me, but they do enter that ‘come hither’ avatar look. Given our past back and forth on Michelle Fields… think about this: you now have a burden, ironically, the ‘sexist’ template. After Sherrod and Acorn, but 2 of countless stories we’ve done… we became bogged down on issue of ‘race’. I’d literally pray that tips coming in be of Caucasian subjects. One time we had to pass on to competitor a great pictorial of John Conyers reading Playboy while flying coach from D.C. to Detroit. Funny pic. Had to pass. Didn’t want to walk into a race trap that Media Matters would happily play up. Avoid these types of stories for a while.”

I was very much looking forward to my newfound friendship with Andrew. Even in his last days, he was a source of comfort to me and I won’t forget it. In his honor, I am using the least angry picture of Andrew I could find.

Breitbart Editor-In-Chief Joel Pollak On CNN: Andrew A 'Happy Warrior'

2012-03-01T18:24:00.000-05:00

greg Gutfeld On Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-01T18:20:00.001-05:00

Michael Reagan On Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-01T18:20:00.000-05:00

Video Response: Remembering Breitbart

2012-03-01T18:18:00.000-05:00

Glenn Beck Puts Aside Any Past Differences To Eulogize Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-01T18:12:00.001-05:00

Andrew Breitbart Took Away The Last Shred Of Credibility David Frum Had Today

2012-03-01T16:38:00.000-05:00

The title is lifted from THE HAYRIDE,

The following is a link to a post at ACE of SPADES and it eviscerates David Frum's obscene article at the Daily Beast. I highly recommend it.

Andrew Breitbart Addresses students For Life, CPAC,1/10-2012

2012-03-01T16:26:00.000-05:00

Jonah Goldberg Breaks Down Remembering A Great Conservative in Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-01T16:20:00.000-05:00

Fox News Remembers Breitbart

2012-03-01T16:16:00.001-05:00

Limbaugh: Breitbart Was A Bulldog For The Cause

2012-03-01T16:15:00.001-05:00

Rep. McCotter on the House Floor: Mourning the Loss of Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-01T16:15:00.000-05:00

Rep. Louie Gohmert Pays Tribute to Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-01T16:01:00.000-05:00

Sean Hannity Responds To the Death of Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-01T15:59:00.000-05:00

Andrew Breitbart at CPAC 2012

2012-03-01T15:44:00.000-05:00

Tucker Carlson Gives A Heartfelt Tribute To Andrew Breitbart

2012-03-01T12:55:00.001-05:00

Washington Bill Forcing Abortion Coverage Moves Ahead

2012-02-29T23:14:00.000-05:00

From: Life News.com

The bill the Washington state House approved that would require that any insurance policy sold to state residents for maternity coverage also require policyholders to pay for coverage of abortions has been approved by a state Senate committee.

The measure forces all individuals to purchase and all businesses sell abortion insurance coverage on a maternity plan. The Engrossed Substitute House Bill 2330 passed from the House floor 52-46 and then passed through several Senate hurdles to end up in the Ways and Means committee.

Monday evening, the Senate Ways and Means Committee passed ESHB 2330 to the Senate Rules Committee “without recommendation.” It passed along party lines with the 13 Democrats supporting it and 8 Republicans voting no.

Officials with the Family Policy Institute of Washington have been closely following the measure, and indicated the “Do pass without recommendation” tag is rare “because it indicates a willingness to allow the bill to more forward but does not indicate the committee is recommending it be passed. Usually a bill moving out of committee has the recommendation “Do pass.” This rarity is an indication that this bill has serious problems that even the proponents recognize. Still, the committee did not consider any amendments.”

“The Washington State Legislature is one step closer to passing a bill that would make it illegal to either sell or purchase an insurance plan that does not provide abortion. This bill would deny every individual and insurance company in Washington State the right to purchase a product that would not require them to subsidize abortions,” the pro-life group says.

According to FPIW, the committee’s own attorney told members, “Fiscal Analyst Tim Yowell of our staff has estimated that our state’s annual federal revenue under the Labor/HHS federal appropriations act is $6 billion annually. This is the amount that would be at risk under the Hyde/Weldon Amendment, if triggered by SB 6185.”

“We have provided the committee two statements from experts on the subject who believe this bill DOES violate that amendment,” FPIW adds.

Now that the been has been voted out of committee, it seems likely the bill will get pulled from Rules to the Senate floor in the next few days.

“If the bill does not have the votes to pass on the floor then the Senate Majority Leader, Lisa Brown from Spokane (Democrat, 3rd Legislative District), will not call it for a vote on the floor for fear of losing,” the group said. “We don’t know how everyone is going to vote, so we still need your support in continuing to call your senators directly, which is best, or through the legislative hotline at (800)562-6000.”

FPIW says the bill is unnecessary as “insurance carriers already provide coverage for abortions on maternity plans,” and “anyone wishing to buy or business wishing to offer this coverage may do so.” he says the legislation violates federal law, specifically the “Hyde/Weldon Amendment”, which prohibits funding abortions as stated in Section 508, (d) (1) and (2).

“Since it violates the Hyde/Weldon Amendment, a Senate Ways and Means committee bipartisan, fiscal staff member has given the estimate that this risks forfeiting 6 billion dollars annually in Labor, Health and Human Services and Education,” Geis explains.

“It violates the U.S. and Washington State constitutional rights of citizens to freely practice their religion and freedom of conscience,” he adds. “Also, because it violates the 1st Amendment, it puts the State in the position of being sued and losing additional millions in legal fees over many years as is the case in the Stormans’ lawsuit, which won due to religious liberties.”

Leading pro-abortion groups praised the vote, with NARAL Pro-Choice Washington’s Interim Executive Director Christi Stapleton said in a statement, according to AP, that the measure “moves our state one step closer to protecting all Washington women’s access to truly comprehensive reproductive health care coverage.”

Senator Mike Padden of Spokane is a pro-life opponent of the abortion mandate who says the state could spend years in court defending the bill. With a twist in state or federal courts, the state could even attack the Hyde amendment itself. It should not be lost on pro-life advocates that Washington State was the first to legalize abortion, even before the Roe v. Wade decision. If such an assault on the Hyde amendment were successful, it could be an additional blight against the state.

Senator Mike Padden said, “We know [the bill] does impact the Hyde Amendment and it violates the Hyde Amendment which says no government may discriminate against insurance because it does not cover abortion, and that is exactly what this is doing.”

David Schmidt of Live Action also looked at the bill and said it is something that should engender strong opposition.

“Planned Parenthood and other abortion industry allies like NARAL are rallying behind a new Washington State bill that would require health insurance coverage for abortion if a health plan covers maternity care,” he says. “This act will force everyone, include those with pro-life values, to purchase an insurance plan that pays for elective abortion if they want an insurance plan that contains maternity coverage. Those interested in an insurance plan without abortion coverage would be banned from having their plan cover maternity care.”

“The bill is called the Reproductive Parity Act or HB 2330 and has passed the House Health Care & Wellness committee and Ways & Means committee on the back of support from Democrats. The companion Senate bill SB 6185 passed the Health & Long-Term Care committee 9 days ago and now heads to the Rules committee. The full state House and Senate have yet to hold a vote,” Schmidt added.

And Sister Sharon Park of Washington State Catholic Conference described the bill simply as “a direct assault on certainly religious liberty but also on the sanctity of human life. It would mandate that abortion be covered in all health plans in the state of Washington.”

Schmidt noted how leading pro-abortion groups are pressing for the legislation.

“Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest which is the political lobbying arm of Planned Parenthood of the Northwest states, “we want to make sure all insurance policies provide abortion coverage,’” he said. “NARAL Pro-Choice Washington is also backing the mandated abortion coverage proposal and says that they have “mobilized its statewide network of members and activists to call and email their legislators in support of the Reproductive Parity Act.’”

On the other side, Dan Kennedy, CEO of Human Life of Washington, told the Seattle Times that “to mandate that we violate our conscience is tyranny.”

State Rep. Eileen Cody and Sen. Steve Hobbs are the prime sponsors of the pro-abortion legislation. Hobbs is running for Congress in the new 2nd Congressional District and FPIW says “this move is seen as an effort to gain favor with Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).”

The legislation is tied to the Obamacare law Congress passed, according to comments Cody made in an interview with the Seattle PI newspaper.

“The federal bill required that no federal money go towards abortion in the exchange: We’re making sure there will be parity between all choices for reproductive rights,” she said. “There will be one plan that will not offer abortions and that will be the federal plan: All plans offered through the state of Washington will offer abortion.”

Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., the Democrats’ candidate for governor, supports the measure to force policyholders to pay premiums for abortions.

“The Reproductive Parity Act will provide a legal guarantee that all women have access to a full range of reproductive health services as the health care exchanges are established,” Inslee said in a statement. “This is a matter of reaffirming our commitment to preserving choice for Washington women and ensuring women are ensured full control of their family planning and health care.”

The bill is not the only pro-abortion attack this legislative session as FPIW tells LifeNews it is concerned about another measure targeting pregnancy centers offering women abortion alternatives.

“For the past two session, Planned Parenthood priority legislation has targeted pro-life pregnancy resource centers with unprecedented legal liabilities associated with handling medical records and administering pregnancy tests that do not apply to abortion providers who provide the same services. This legislation has been defeated two years in a row, but it is expected that another effort will be mounted this year,” the group said.

Limbaugh: Maybe It's Time To Say "The Hell" With Afghanistan And Get Out

2012-02-28T16:49:00.000-05:00

WHO WILL APOLOGIZE FOR THE MURDER OF CORPORAL TJ CONRAD???????

2012-02-27T14:49:00.002-05:00

Picture of T.J. Conrad, 22 years old killed in Afghanistan because of the burning of a Koran. Flesh and Blood shed in the name of printed type. WE apologized for destroying a book, but where's the apology for TJ CONRAD and his now seven month old baby girl pictured here? Why is his life less valuable than inanimate material?

Krauthammer: U.S. apology for Koran burning ‘embarrassing,’ ‘groveling’

2012-02-26T14:50:00.000-05:00

Congresswoman Kathy Hochul (D) Booed At Townhall Over HHS Mandate

2012-02-25T19:48:00.001-05:00

My Apology to President Karzai on Behalf of Americans

2012-02-24T16:18:00.000-05:00

Judge Mark Martin Scolds Victim Who Insulted Islam

2012-02-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

Catholic Bishops Prez: Our Rights Don't Depend on Obama

2012-02-23T21:09:00.000-05:00

From: LifeNews.com

USCCB President Timothy Cardinal Dolan has issued a new letter to his fellow Catholic bishops that is one of the strongest condemnations yet of the revised Obama mandate that pro-life advocates have blasted for trampling on religious freedoms.

In the new letter issued Wednesday and co-signed by Bishop William Lori, Dolan condemns the mandate and urges support for the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, which would overturn the revision of the original mandate that forced religious employers to pay for birth control and drugs that cause abortions. The new mandate puts the onus for paying for them on insurance companies but religious employers may still have to pay and will be required to make referrals for their employees.

Dolan obliterates the mandate, saying religious rights and freedoms are a God-given right that and it “does not depend on any government’s decision to grant it.”

“If the government can, for example, tell Catholics that they cannot be in the insurance business today without violating their religious convictions, where does it end?” Dolan asks.

“The regulations would provide no protections for our great institutions—such as Catholic charities, hospitals, and universities—or for the individual faithful in the marketplace. The regulations struck at the heart of our fundamental right to religious liberty, which affects our ability to serve those outside our faith community,” Dolan says. “On Friday, February 10, the Administration issued the final rules. By their very terms, the rules were reaffirmed “without change.” The mandate to provide the illicit services remains. The exceedingly narrow exemption for churches remains. Despite the outcry, all the threats to religious liberty posed by the initial rules remain.”

Dolan calls on pro-life advocates and Catholics to support the Blunt Amendment, which will come up soon in the Senate.

“We all need to act now by contacting our legislators in support of the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” he says.

Tell Obama: Stop This Pro-Abortion Mandate

The full text of the letter appears below:

Dear Brother Bishops,

Since we last wrote to you concerning the critical efforts we are undertaking together to protect religious freedom in our beloved country, many of you have requested that we write once more to update you on the situation and to again request the assistance of all the faithful in this important work. We are happy to do so now.

First, we wish to express our heartfelt appreciation to you, and to all our sisters and brothers in Christ, for the remarkable witness of our unity in faith and strength of conviction during this past month. We have made our voices heard, and we will not cease from doing so until religious freedom is restored.

As we know, on January 20, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a decision to issue final regulations that would force practically all employers, including many religious institutions, to pay for abortion inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraception. The regulations would provide no protections for our great institutions—such as Catholic charities, hospitals, and universities—or for the individual faithful in the marketplace. The regulations struck at the heart of our fundamental right to religious liberty, which affects our ability to serve those outside our faith community.

Since January 20, the reaction was immediate and sustained. We came together, joined by people of every creed and political persuasion, to make one thing resoundingly clear: we stand united against any attempt to deny or weaken the right to religious liberty upon which our country was founded.

On Friday, February 10, the Administration issued the final rules. By their very terms, the rules were reaffirmed “without change.” The mandate to provide the illicit services remains. The exceedingly narrow exemption for churches remains. Despite the outcry, all the threats to religious liberty posed by the initial rules remain.

Religious freedom is a fundamental right of all. This right does not depend on any government’s decision to grant it: it is God-given, and just societies recognize and respect its free exercise. The free exercise of religion extends well beyond the freedom of worship. It also forbids government from forcing people or groups to violate their most deeply held religious convictions, and from interfering in the internal affairs of religious organizations.

Recent actions by the Administration have attempted to reduce this free exercise to a “privilege” arbitrarily granted by the government as a mere exemption from an all-encompassing, extreme form of secularism. The exemption is too narrowly defined, because it does not exempt most non-profit religious employers, the religiously affiliated insurer, the self-insured employer, the for-profit religious employer, or other private businesses owned and operated by people who rightly object to paying for abortion inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. And because it is instituted only by executive whim, even this unduly narrow exemption can be taken away easily.

In the United States, religious liberty does not depend on the benevolence of who is regulating us. It is our “first freedom” and respect for it must be broad and inclusive—not narrow and exclusive. Catholics and other people of faith and good will are not second class citizens. And it is not for the government to decide which of our ministries is “religious enough” to warrant religious freedom protection.

This is not just about contraception, abortion-causing drugs, and sterilization—although all should recognize the injustices involved in making them part of a universal mandated health care program. It is not about Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals. It is about people of faith. This is first and foremost a matter of religious liberty for all. If the government can, for example, tell Catholics that they cannot be in the insurance business today without violating their religious convictions, where does it end? This violates the constitutional limits on our government, and the basic rights upon which our country was founded.

Much remains to be done. We cannot rest when faced with so grave a threat to the religious liberty for which our parents and grandparents fought. In this moment in history we must work diligently to preserve religious liberty and to remove all threats to the practice of our faith in the public square. This is our heritage as Americans. President Obama should rescind the mandate, or at the very least, provide full and effective measures to protect religious liberty and conscience.

Above all, dear brothers, we rely on the help of the Lord in this important struggle. We all need to act now by contacting our legislators in support of the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, which can be done through our action alert on www.usccb.org/conscience.

We invite you to share the contents of this letter with the faithful of your diocese in whatever form, or by whatever means, you consider most suitable. Let us continue to pray for a quick and complete resolution to this and all threats to religious liberty and the exercise of our faith in our great country.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan
Archbishop of New York
President, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Most Reverend William E. Lori
Bishop of Bridgeport
Chairman, Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty

Seven states sue over contraception mandate

2012-02-23T21:01:00.000-05:00

From: The Hill's Healthwatch

Seven state attorneys general sued the Obama administration Thursday over its order requiring some religious employers to cover birth control in their employees’ healthcare plans.

In the suit, the states argue that the White House infringed on the religious freedoms protected by the First Amendment.

“This violation of the [First] Amendment is a threat to every American, regardless of religious faith,” Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said in a news release. “We will not stand idly by while our constitutionally guaranteed liberties are discarded by an administration that has sworn to uphold them.”

The attorneys general from Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas also joined the lawsuit.

The White House policy requires most employers to include contraception in their employees’ healthcare plans without charging a co-pay. Churches and houses of worship are exempt. Institutions such as Catholic hospitals do not have to provide the coverage directly, but their employees still must receive contraception through their insurance companies with no co-pay.

The Health and Human Services Department has said it will delay the requirements for religious employers for one year. But the states’ lawsuit, which was joined by several Catholic organizations, states that HHS has already finalized the rule and therefore Catholic institutions are subject to the mandate now.

HHS has also said it will use that yearlong delay to decide how its policy will work with religious employers that self-insure.

CAMERA: Harvard to Host Conference Promoting Israel's Destruction

2012-02-20T17:04:00.000-05:00

From: CAMERA

On March 3-4, Harvard will host a two-day conference at the Kennedy School of Government focused, in effect, on dismantling the Jewish state of Israel. A number of student groups and others associated with Harvard are sponsoring “One State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One State Solution.”

Those who promote a one-state “solution” advocate creating an entity which would, through its merger with the Palestinian Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza and an influx of Palestinians from neighboring states, lose its Jewish majority and its Jewish character. In effect, Jewish self-determination would be nullified.

According to the working definition of anti-Semitism developed by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), and recognized by the United States Department of State, the One State Conference, in implicitly “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” is an exercise in anti-Semitism.

In a conversation recorded on February 9, 2012 at Imperial College in London, even Norman Finkelstein, who describes himself as having devoted his life to the cause of the Palestinians, told his interviewer, “You know and I know exactly what we're talking about because if we end the occupation, and we bring back 6 million Palestinians, and we have equal rights for Arabs and Jews, there's no Israel. That's what it's really about.”

The “Vision & Goals” section of the conference website states:

To date, the only Israel/Palestine solution that has received a fair rehearsal in mainstream forums has been the two-state solution. Our conference will help to expand the range of academic debate on this issue. Thus, our main goal is to educate ourselves and others about the possible contours of a one-state solution and the challenges that stand in the way of its realization.

Conference speakers and organizers include extreme anti-Israel academics, the founder of Electronic Intifada, members of the radical Jewish Voice for Peace and an ex-PLO spokesperson. No one even remotely sympathetic to Israel appears to be affiliated with the conference.

The Kennedy School's own notorious Stephen Walt, author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a work discredited for its shoddy scholarship and bigoted charges against American supporters of Israel, joins other Harvard figures, including law school professor Duncan Kennedy, in lending the event the imprimatur of the institution.

The One State Conference website boasts the logo of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and has been in the planning for a year. According to The Jewish Advocate, Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood released a statement, saying:

I want to emphasize once again that Harvard University and the Harvard Kennedy School in no way endorses or supports the apparent position of these student organizers or any participants they include. We hope that the final shape of the conference will be significantly more balanced.

Furthermore, the university is quoted saying that the event is being at least partially underwritten by “modest” funds set aside for student activities. According to Melodie Jackson, Associate Dean for Communications, also quoted in The Jewish Advocate: “Generally administrators try to be supportive of student ideas for events that they are planning.”

Increasingly, assaults on Israel's legitimacy and survival are promoted by academics, including at the nation's most prestigious universities.

Anti-Semitism and Sham Scholarship

Another element in the State Department-recognized working definition of anti-Semitism is “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” That is also likely to occur at the conference. Scheduled speaker Ali Abunimah has previously compared Israel to Nazis, and similar statements have been made by others. Conference organizer Ahmed Moor also accuses Jews of racism asserting, “Many Israelis and Jewish people are weaned on the idea of Jewish exceptionalism.” Marc Ellis likens Jews to Nazis and to the Egyptians of the Passover tale.

This sort of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic invective, masquerading as education, has become commonplace at these conferences. Far from being scholarly, however, many of the scheduled speakers are of dubious academic integrity and frequently disseminate misinformation and false narratives about Israel and Jews. For example:

Ali Abunimah has intentionally understated Hamas violence and disseminated false quotations to make Israeli leaders appear cruel.
Diana Buttu has repeatedly and falsely understated the extent of Palestinian terrorist violence and mischaracterized international law. She has even gone so far as to claim that Hamas rockets have no explosive head. This is an obvious falsehood.
Marc Ellis wrote a column describing how a Palestinian friend of his was murdered because Jewish settlers coveted her family's land, falsely implying she was killed by Jews when, in fact, her murderer was an Arab. Ellis is currently defending himself against charges by Baylor University that could lead to his dismissal.
Leila Farsakh falsely asserted in a French newspaper that the PLO had agreed to share land with Israel in 1974. The truth is that in 1974, the PLO reaffirmed its rejection of a land-for-peace deal in what is known as the “Phased Plan” for the destruction of Israel.
Ilan Pappé repeatedly published a fabricated quotation to make David Ben-Gurion appear to endorse ethnic cleansing. Pappé has so little regard for historical facts, he freely admits “I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what's happened.”
Nadim Rouhana was denied tenure at Boston College due to the insufficient quality of his scholarship.
Stephen Walt is best known for his book, written with John Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. The book, which claims American Jews are a fifth column that controls American policy for the benefit of Israel, is little more than a rehash of classic anti-Semitic tropes which is also rife with falsehoods.

Denying the Jewish People Their Right to Self-Determination

The “One State Conference” seeks to promote the destruction of Israel's Jewish character. Conference organizer Ahmed Moor says as much in a piece he wrote for the Huffington Post entitled, “Israel's Jewish Character Is Subject for Debate.”

The conference will feature a number of panels. Panel 7 deals with cultural identity, asking “What role should the state play in the maintenance of the national groups' identities? Will it be necessary to forge a new, shared identity in the new state?” It is interesting that this question should be addressed without a single pro-Israel panelist participating.

In addition, this is how the third panel is described on the website:

Many people with an intimate understanding of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict insist that the one-state solution is wholly impossible to implement. Worse, it is a recipe for protracted ethnic bloodshed. Could that be true?

Could it? Let's examine this issue. With a Jewish minority in Israel, Jews would face the same fate as ethnic and religious minorities in other Arab countries. For example:

According to human rights activist and former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Sudanese government's sustained persecution of religious minorities culminated in the genocide in Darfur that began in 2003. Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which charged him with three counts of genocide, and still the violence rages on.
Saudi Arabia bars all public expressions of religion other than Wahhabi Islam and prohibits all non-Muslim houses of worship. Saudi police recently raided a private home and arrested 35 Christians who had gathered simply to pray.
For decades, Coptic Christians have been second class citizens in Egypt where the building or even routine maintenance of a church was illegal, but since the fall of Hosni Mubarak violence against Christians has surged. Recently thousands of Muslims went on a rampage, attacking Copts, burning and looting Coptic homes and shops.
In Iraq, church bombings are increasingly common. Since June of 2004, 70 churches have been bombed. Thousands have been killed and nearly one half of Iraqi Christians have fled the country.
In Tunisia, the dominant political party, Ennahda, plans to institute Shariah law.
In Libya, the head of the Tripoli Military Council once led an Islamic militia with links to al-Qaida. He intends to run for office in upcoming elections which makes Christians uneasy.
Christians in Yemen are subject to abuse when they openly embrace their Christianity, with men being beaten and women harassed. They are not allowed even to bury their dead in the capital of Sana'a where all cemeteries are strictly Muslim.
Since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, the Christian community has been facing severe persecution, afraid to practice their religion publicly. In November of that year, a Christian bookstore was bombed and the store's manager tortured and murdered.

Harvard Pushing Propaganda

Perhaps little should be expected from Harvard when it comes to the subject of the Middle East. Harvard's Middle East Outreach Center, charged with providing curriculum materials to middle and high schools, has distinguished itself mostly by disseminating propaganda instead of scholarship. In addition, Harvard accepts millions in funding from Saudi Arabian princes and other wealthy Arab donors.

Even so, Harvard's Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood states, “Our mission is to train enlightened public leaders and generate the ideas that provide solutions to our most challenging public problems.” This conference is not likely to further that endeavor.

2,500 Religious Leaders Sign Letter Protesting Obama Mandate | LifeNews.com

2012-02-20T13:37:00.000-05:00

From: LifeNews.com

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins led a news conference today during which he is unveiling a new letter signed by more than 2,500 Catholic, evangelical, Protestant, Jewish and other religious leaders opposing the new Obamacare mandate.

The leaders are urging President Obama to reverse his mandate decision and protect the conscience rights of those who have moral and religious opposition to funding or providing contraceptives and abortifacients.

Perkins was joined by Dr. Richard Land, President, Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and Bishop Harry Jackson, Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church in unveiling the letter.

The text of the letter follows:

Dear President Obama:

The undersigned pastors and Christian leaders all write to raise serious concerns over what some have called the “contraception mandate” stemming from the action of Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on August 1st, 2010 to mandate that all health insurance plans in the individual and group market cover all FDA approved “contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures,” including abortifacient drugs and other devices that can destroy life in its early stages.

This mandate was not necessary, nor warranted under the provision of “preventive care services for women” contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Worse still is the fact that the mandate essentially ignores the conscience rights of many Catholic and Protestant Americans. Our country was founded on certain freedoms, the first of which is the freedom of religion. The ability of a religious person to follow their conscience without fearing government intervention has long been a protected right for Americans. It is unfathomable to picture a country that would deny religious freedoms.

On August 1, 2011, your Administration granted a narrow exemption that only covers houses of worship. However, the fact remains that the vast majority of religious organizations will be required to choose either to violate their consciences or drop their health coverage for employees. This mandate is all the more egregious for including drugs and devices that are known and scientifically shown to function in ways that can cause abortions, including varieties of the morning-after-pill, both before and after implantation. The conscience rights of those who object to such drugs, let alone object to being forced to cover such drugs, is clearly violated by the Administration action.

Due to significant opposition to this mandate, many people of faith hoped that the Administration would chose to protect the conscience rights of all people who have moral or religious objections to covering contraceptives and sterilization procedures and accordingly submitted comments to your Administration totaling over 200,000. In the face of this outcry, your Administration issued a press release on January 20, 2012 that offers groups only a one year reprieve on being forced to violate the tenants of their faith. Worse still, the decision includes a new requirement that all such religious organizations will be required to refer for that which they find objectionable in the first place.

The contraceptive mandate with the requirement that there will be no co-pay to the patient means millions of Americans will incur the additional cost for these drugs and devices. Forcing religious entities to do the same, despite objections of good conscience, is a severe blow to our religious liberty. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1779, which passed in 1786, and set the stage for the First Amendment. In it, Jefferson states: “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical.” Consequently, we ask that you would reverse this decision and protect the conscience rights of those who have biblically-based opposition to funding or providing contraceptives and abortifacients.

Respectfully,

The unveiling of the letter comes as Obama faces two additional lawsuits over the controversial mandate. Meanwhile, more than a dozen state attorneys general have signed onto a joint letter Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning started coordinating against the controversial Obama mandate requiring religious employers to cover birth control and drugs that can cause abortions.

Also, the largest Catholic pro-life group and Catholic television station have filed suit against the new Obama mandate that forces religious employers like them to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs in employee health insurance.

Late last week, the Obama administration asked a federal court to dismiss yet another lawsuit filed against the Obama administration over its mandate.

The panel that put together the mandate has been condemned for only having pro-abortion members even though polling shows Americans are opposed to the mandate.

More than 50 members of Congress banded together at a press conference to demand legislation to stop the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for insurance coverage including birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.

Congressman Jeff Fortenberry held a press conference with supporters of the bipartisan, bicameral Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. His legislation would protect the religious liberty and conscience rights of every American who objects to being forced by the strong-arm of government to pay for drugs and procedures recently mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The Fortenberry bill currently has the support of approximately 220 Members of Congress and Senators, the most strongly-supported legislative remedy to the controversial HHS mandate. This measure would repeal the controversial mandate, amending the 2010 health care law to preserve conscience rights for religious institutions, health care providers, and small businesses who pay for health care coverage.

H.R. 1179 enjoys the endorsements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and other organizations. Numerous other organizations, including the Christian Medical Association and Family Research Council, have urged support of the bill.

Sen. Roy Blunt, a pro-life Missouri Republican, is putting forward the Blunt Amendment, #1520, again, and it is termed the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. According to information provided to LifeNews from pro-life sources on Capitol Hill, the Blunt Amendment will be the first amendment voted on when the Senate returns to the transportation bill. The amendment would allow employers to decline coverage of services in conflict with religious beliefs.

Republicans are moving swiftly with legislation, amendments, and potential hearings on the mandatethe Obama administration has put in place that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying Obama’s revised mandate involves “needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions” and it urged Congress to overturn the rule and promised a potential lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates had been taking verbal swings at Obama for imposing the original mandate on religious employers, which is not popular in the latest public opinion poll and which even some Democrats oppose.

Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.

The original mandate was so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”

The administration initially approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program.

The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.

The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.

Colleen Carroll Campbell: Hollow compromise on contraception mandate

2012-02-17T20:13:00.000-05:00

From: St. Louis Today

Give Barack Obama credit: The man has chutzpah. How else do you describe a president who uses his executive authority to unilaterally manufacture a government mandate for contraception coverage — a mandate with no conscience protection for the vast majority of religious institutions to which it applies — and then, when confronted with bipartisan backlash, proposes a "religious accommodation" that amounts to little more than a cheap accounting trick?

Like the Great Stupak Sellout of 2010 — the president's toothless executive order that purported to close abortion-funding loopholes in Obamacare but actually did no such thing — Obama's much-touted compromise on the contraceptive mandate is a joke. Announced Friday in a hasty and cynical attempt to bury the story in the weekend news cycle, this tweak of the administration's original rule still forces Catholic institutions to provide insurance that covers medications and services the Catholic Church considers immoral — including sterilization procedures and the "morning-after pill," a drug that can destroy embryos by preventing their implantation in the uterine lining. The only difference between the rule's current incarnation and its former one: Obama says that insurance companies, not religious employers, will be the ones to foot the bill for the objectionable coverage.

The economics of the compromise are laughable. Does the president actually believe — or expect Americans to believe — that insurance companies will provide free birth control to women without stealthily passing the cost to religious employers or spreading it across all policyholders? The "free" benefit Obama purports to offer women is not free at all. It is a hidden tax on those policyholders who — because of age, life circumstances or ethical objections — do not use contraception. As University of Chicago finance professor John Cochrane noted recently in The Wall Street Journal, "There is a liberal dream that by mandating coverage the government can make something free," but "every increase in coverage means an increase in premiums."

The president's new plan also fails to address the religious liberty questions at the heart of this debate. Although embraced by such reliable Obama cheerleaders as Catholic Health Association president Sr. Carol Keehan, as well as the leaders of Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, the alleged compromise does nothing to ease the conscience concerns of those Catholic education, health care and charitable leaders who regard institutional fidelity to Catholic doctrine as a paramount concern. Nor does it offer any relief to religious organizations that self-insure or to individual employers — Catholic or otherwise — who object to these services and wish to operate their private businesses in harmony with their religious convictions.

For its part, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has pledged to use the legislative process and the courts to seek full revocation of the mandate, which the bishops rightly see as "the only complete solution to this religious liberty problem." They are joined in their efforts by a growing coalition of religious leaders that regard this attack on Catholic conscience rights as but one battle in a larger war against religious liberty being waged by the Obama administration.

The administration's pattern of disregarding religious liberty concerns is well documented. In the past year, Obama's Justice Department has argued in court that defenders of traditional marriage — the most visible segment of which are observant Catholics and bishops — should be regarded in law as the equivalent of racists. His National Labor Relations Board has issued rulings against two Catholic colleges, saying that they are not sufficiently Catholic to warrant religious exemptions from federal labor law — a breach of the longstanding precedent in which religious bodies, not government officials, decide who qualifies as a member of a particular church. And his Justice Department recently argued before the Supreme Court for the effective gutting of the "ministerial exception" that allows religious bodies to hire and fire employees without government interference. In a unanimous rebuke last month, all nine Supreme Court justices rejected the administration's position as a violation of the First Amendment.

Yet Obama remains undaunted, pressing forward with his controversial contraception mandate despite the mounting election-year backlash. His refusal to offer a meaningful compromise on this issue should give Catholic swing voters serious pause when considering a second Obama term. If this is how the president addresses their religious liberty concerns in an election year, just imagine how he will treat them when he no longer needs the Catholic vote.

Every Catholic Bishop Opposes Obama Mandate, Lutherans Too

2012-02-17T16:56:00.000-05:00

From: LifeNews.com

Every one of the 181 Catholic bishops in the United States have now issued individual comments, statements or opinion columns condemning the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs.

Thomas Peters, who runs the American Papist blog, has been compiling the statements from each bishop since Obama first put the mandate in place last month.

“From Portland, Maine to San Diego, California; From Miami, Florida to Seattle, Washington,” Peters writes.

“Every single Roman Catholic bishop in the United States has condemned in public the Obamacare HHS mandate — all 181 bishops who lead dioceses in the U.S. have spoken.”

“This is a simply incredible, unified, universal Catholic witness on this critical issue of religious freedom,” peters adds. “I am no longer able to find a single Roman Catholic bishop who has NOT spoken out against the mandate publicly. It is also my presumption that this conclusion applies to all Eastern Rite and Sui Iuris bishops in the U.S. It’s a complimentary sign of Catholic solidarity that so many Catholics across the country proudly helped me add their bishop’s name to this list.”

Peters has also compiled a listing of Catholic institutions that have spoken out against the mandate and that number is now at 30 and continues to grow.

But Catholics are not the only pro-life Americans upset by Obama’s attack on religious freedom by having them violate their conscience on pro-life issues.

Reverend Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President of The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, told members of Congress at a hearing on the mandate yesterday that Baptists are strongly opposed.

“We deem this recent government mandate as an infringement upon the beliefs and practices of various religious communities. Therefore, we voice our public objections in solidarity with those who cherish their religious liberties,” he said. “The decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to require virtually all health plans to comply with this mandate will have the effect of forcing many religious organizations to choose between following the letter of the law or operating within the framework of their religious tenets.”

He continued, “We add our voice to the long list of those who have championed their God-given right to freely exercise their religious beliefs according to the dictates of their faith, and to provide compassionate care and clear Christian witness to society’s most vulnerable, without government encroachment.

“I loathe the partisan nature of this discussion….I’m here for one reason, I am here because there is a narrow but very significant provision in HHS [regulations] that is I believe is very dangerous to religious people with our kind of convictions and I believe it’s also dangerous to any religious people who have unique convictions, so that’s why I am here,” Harrisons said.

John Yeats, executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention, which includes about 400,000 members, called the mandate “a frontal attack on our religious liberty” and will be teaming up with Archbishop Robert J. Carlson and others next month for a Rally for Religious Liberty at the Missouri State Capitol.

Yeats noted that Missouri Baptist universities will be forced to deal with a ruling that “seeks to secularize the institutions of faith we have built for purposes of faith.”

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik,Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, said many people of the Jewish faith are also opposed.

“In refusing to extend religious liberty beyond the parameters of what the administration chooses to deem religious conduct, the administration denies people of faith the ability to define their religious activity.

Therefore, not only does the new regulation threaten religious liberty in the narrow sense, in requiring Catholic communities to violate their religious tenets, but also the administration impedes religious liberty by unilaterally redefining what it means to be religious,” he said.

“The President’s spokesman recently when speaking about this subject said that what their concern is that they don’t want religious employers or organization restricting access to specific prescriptions etc. but of course those who have a religious objection are not seeking in America to restrict their access to it, what they are seeking is the freedom in their own right not to facilitate something that violates the tenants of their own faith,” Soloveichik said.

Laura Champion, M.D., Medical Director, Calvin College Health Services, said mainline Protestants also oppose the mandate.

She told the hearing: “Even when Americans hold vastly different views on the sanctity of life, this mandate raises a point that should be examined by all: do we value religious freedom in our country or not? Further, the mandate elevates contraception and abortive drugs to the level of preventative health care. They are not. Plan B and Ella should not be considered equivalent to cancer screening or vaccinations. Pregnancy is not a disease. This is a premise that I reject both religiously and medically.”

Champion added, “This is not about politics, this is not about contraception, and this is not about depriving women of health care. Rather, this is personal. This is about my daily life as a physician, a Christian, and a Medical Services Director. Whether I will be able as a physician to practice medicine within my belief system.

Whether Calvin College will be able to continue its historic tradition of living out the faith it teaches. A government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people, should not force the people to violate their consciences.”

The panel that put together the mandate has been condemned for only having pro-abortion members even though polling shows Americans are opposed to the mandate.

More than 50 members of Congress banded together at a press conference to demand legislation to stop the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for insurance coverage including birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.

Congressman Jeff Fortenberry held a press conference with supporters of the bipartisan, bicameral Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. His legislation would protect the religious liberty and conscience rights of every American who objects to being forced by the strong-arm of government to pay for drugs and procedures recently mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The Fortenberry bill currently has the support of approximately 220 Members of Congress and Senators, the most strongly-supported legislative remedy to the controversial HHS mandate. This measure would repeal the controversial mandate, amending the 2010 health care law to preserve conscience rights for religious institutions, health care providers, and small businesses who pay for health care coverage.

H.R. 1179 enjoys the endorsements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and other organizations. Numerous other organizations, including the Christian Medical Association and Family Research Council, have urged support of the bill.

Sen. Roy Blunt, a pro-life Missouri Republican, is putting forward the Blunt Amendment, #1520, again, and it is termed the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. According to information provided to LifeNews from pro-life sources on Capitol Hill, the Blunt Amendment will be the first amendment voted on when the Senate returns to the transportation bill. The amendment would allow employers to decline coverage of services in conflict with religious beliefs.

Republicans are moving swiftly with legislation, amendments, and potential hearings on the mandatethe Obama administration has put in place that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying Obama’s revised mandate involves “needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions” and it urged Congress to overturn the rule and promised a potential lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates had been taking verbal swings at Obama for imposing the original mandate on religious employers, which is not popular in the latest public opinion poll and which even some Democrats oppose.

Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.

The original mandate was so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”

The administration initially approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program.

The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.

The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.

Health mandate vs. religion By Senator Scott Brown

2012-02-17T13:34:00.000-05:00

From: The Boston Herald

Republicans and Democrats don’t come together nearly enough these days, and when we do it’s usually because of something we all recognize as clearly out of line. It takes a really bad idea to reveal our shared convictions on issues bigger than politics. That is the case with the new mandate from the Obama administration requiring religious organizations to offer insurance coverage for practices that go against the teachings of their church, violate the tenets of their faith and step on their constitutional protections.

Basically the government is saying, “Just do what you’re told, and leave the moral questions to us.” This runs against religious liberty, the Constitution, the consciences of millions of Americans and the independent spirit of Massachusetts. We don’t take well to imperious commands from Washington, and if we meekly submit to this mandate, you can be sure that a lot more will follow.

It was right here in Plymouth, after all, that pilgrims from Europe established a colony because of religious persecution. That tradition runs so deep that my predecessor, Sen. Ted Kennedy, believed just as I do: Religious liberty requires a conscience exemption in health care for Catholics and people of other faiths.

As a husband and father of two daughters, I believe that insurance companies should have to cover the services that women want and rely on, and that is the way I have voted. But I also recognize that there are some people who, based on their deepest moral and religious convictions, don’t agree with me regarding some of those services. My position is that we need to respect their rights too.

This latest mandate under government-controlled health care is one reason why I campaigned and voted against Obamacare in the first place. It operates by broad dictation from Washington, showing no respect for the judgment, needs or rights of individual Americans and the states. And it opens the door to endless abuses of power such as this latest mandate.

This is why I strongly support a bipartisan bill in the Senate that provides a conscience exemption from the Obamacare mandate. In effect, the bill would simply restore the relevant laws on conscience protection that existed before Obamacare removed them.

Critics would have you believe America would be turning back to the Dark Ages where evil employers would deny coverage for any illness at their personal whim. In fact, we would be returning to the way things were in 2010. There was no epidemic of employers objecting to routine insurance services then, and there will not be in the future.

The legislation I support borrows language directly from a bill sponsored by the late Sen. Kennedy in 1995, which provided an exemption for health care workers so they would not be required to provide “an item or service” they found objectionable based on “religious belief or moral conviction.”

I believe it’s possible to provide women with access to the health care they want, while at the same time protecting the rights of Americans to follow their religious beliefs, just as we did before Obamacare. The conscience exemption is a matter of fundamental fairness — and a right to be protected for all Americans, of every party and every faith.

Fox News "The Five" Discuss Newsweek's Cover Story "The War on Christianity!"

2012-02-16T23:06:00.000-05:00

HHS Prohibited Panel Developing Contraception Mandate from Considering ‘Cost Effectiveness’

2012-02-16T22:28:00.000-05:00

From: CNSNews.com

There would be no consideration of cost effectiveness.

That was the explicit condition that the Department of Health and Human Services imposed on the panel of scientists it commissioned to develop the “preventive services” mandate that will require virtually all health-insurance plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and contraceptives—including those that cause abortions.

The fact that HHS prohibited the panel from considering the cost effectiveness of the mandate it developed sharply contrasts with President Obama’s declaration at the White House last Friday that his administration had adopted the panel’s recommendations precisely because they will “make the overall cost of health care lower”

One scientist who served on the panel, meanwhile, suggested in a dissenting opinion that the panel’s recommendations in fact might not be cost effective and that the panel’s process for arriving at its recommendations “tended to result in a mix of objective and subjective determinations filtered through a lens of advocacy.”

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) that Obama signed in 2010 included a provision that all new health care plans would be required to cover “preventive services” without charging any fees or co-pay to the insured. The law allowed the secretary of health and human services to determine which “preventive services” would be mandated for women.

HHS commissioned and funded a committee of scientists, operating under the auspices of the Institute of Medicine (a part of the National Academies of Sciences), to recommend which “preventive services” for women should be included, cost free, in all insurance plans.

The panel—The Committee on Preventive Services for Women--had only 6 months to do its work and met only 5 times. On July 19, 2011, it issued a report with its recommendations. These included the following: "The committee recommends for consideration as a preventive service for women: the full range of Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for women with reproductive capacity."

Less than two weeks later, on Aug. 1 of last year, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued the panel's contraception-sterilization recommendation as a new federal regulation—set to take effect on Aug. 1 of this year.

In its report, the committee had noted the short time in which it had to work and repeatedly reiterated HHS's order that it could not consider cost effectiveness in determining its recommendations.

“The committee met five times within six months,” the report said.

“The cost-effectiveness of screening or services could not be a factor for the committee to consider in its analysis leading to its recommendations,” the report said.

“However, it should be noted that the committee did not have adequate time or resources to conduct its own meta-analyses or comprehensive systematic review of each preventive service,” the committee warned.

“Finally,” the committee said, “cost-effectiveness was explicitly excluded as a factor that the committee could use in developing recommendations, and so the committee process could not evaluate preventive services on that basis.”

“Furthermore,” the committee said, “for consistency in approach with the other three guidelines used by the ACA and given the time limitations for this study, the committee was restricted from considering cost-effectiveness in its process for identifying gaps in current recommendations.”

One of the 16 scientists on the panel—Prof. Anthony Lo Sasso a senior research scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Public Health--issued a dissenting report. He criticized the panel’s process for lack a rigorous analytical method and for filtering things "through a lens of advocacy.” He also suggested there was good reason to believe the panel's recommendations might not be cost effective.

“Readers of the Report should be clear on the facts that the recommendations were made without high quality, systematic evidence of the preventive nature of the services considered,” Lo Sasso wrote. “Put differently, evidence that use of the services in question leads to lower rates of disability or disease and increased rates of well-being is generally absent.

“The view of this dissent,” wrote Lo Sasso, “is that the committee process for evaluation of the evidence lacked transparency and was largely subject to the preferences of the committee’s composition. Troublingly, the process tended to result in a mix of objective and subjective determinations filtered through the lends of advocacy. An abiding principle in the evaluation of the evidence and the recommendations put forth as a consequence should be transparency and strict objectivity, but the committee failed to demonstrate these principles in the Report.”

Lo Sasso also raised a question about the potential cost effectiveness of offering some preventive services for free because it would create a “benign moral hazard”—leading more people to utilize the free service.

“Whether coverage of preventive service leads to a reduction in healthcare expenditure depends on the fraction of enrollees using the service before the service becomes covered and the magnitude of the response among enrollees who experience the reduction in out-of-pocket price,” wrote Lo Sasso. “Knowing how elastic patient demand is to preventive services is a critical element to a coverage decision even if one already has good estimates of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. This is self-evidently a useful parameter to know for any preventive service because it highlights the impact that first-dollar coverage of the service will have, perhaps in relation to other forms of outreach.”

Because the committee was not given the time to do a serious analysis of the real impact of the recommended “preventive services,” Lo Sasso recommended that Secretary Sebelius not mandate the services “until such time as the evidence can be objectively and systematically evaluated.”

Despite the fact that this scientifically panel charged with coming up with the recommended preventive services had been expressly forbidden from looking at their cost effectiveness, President Obama declared that his administration had moved forward with the recommendations precisely because of their cost effectiveness.

“As part of the health care reform law that I signed last year, all insurance plans are required to cover preventive care at no cost,” Obama said last Friday at the White House. “That means free check-ups, free mammograms, immunizations and other basic services. We fought for this because it saves lives and it saves money--for families, for businesses, for government, for everybody. That’s because it’s a lot cheaper to prevent an illness than to treat one.

“We also accepted a recommendation from the experts at the Institute of Medicine that when it comes to women, preventive care should include coverage of contraceptive services such as birth control,” said Obama. “In addition to family planning, doctors often prescribe contraception as a way to reduce the risks of ovarian and other cancers, and treat a variety of different ailments. And we know that the overall cost of health care is lower when women have access to contraceptive services."

Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist and Jewish Leaders Swear Disobedience to HHS Contraception Mandate

2012-02-16T18:54:00.000-05:00

From: CNSNews.com

Would you go to jail -- or even close down your hospitals and schools -- rather than violate your religious faith, a Republican lawmaker asked religious leaders at a House hearing on Thursday. The answer, given under oath, was unanimous: They will disobey.

"We're not going to violate our consciences," William E. Lori, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., told Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) in response to Gowdy's question about the Obama administration's contraception mandate.

The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church's Missouri Synod, said "Yes, I would, clearly" rather go to jail.

"I'd like to be in his cell," said Dr. Ben Mitchell, a philosophy professor at Union University. ("We'll try to work that out," Rep. Gowdy said, prompting laughter.)

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of Yeshiva University told the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee that freedom of conscience and of religion "is first and most sacred to our country."

And finally, Dr. Craig Mitchell, an ethics professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Rep. Gowdy, "This is not the kind of thing that we can afford to play with. This is essential to our country."

Gowdy suggested that maybe the Obama administration really wants to close down religiously affiliated hospitals and schools:

"Well, just so everybody understand what is going to happen -- These guys are either going to go to jail because they won't violate their religious beliefs, or the hospitals and the schools are going to close, which means governemnt is going to get bigger, because they're going to have to fill the void that is left when you guys quit doing it. And maybe that's what they wanted all along."

Thursday's hearing, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), was about the "basic question of religious freedom, and whether or not protection will be afforded to religious institutions who wish to follow their conscience in refusing to pay for products they find morally objectionable."

The Obama administration, as part of its health care overhaul, has ordered most health care plans to provide contraception -- including sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs -- as part of free, preventive care coverage.

The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is morally wrong and impermissible, and while churches themselves will not have to provide such coverage, it must be available at no cost to women working at Catholic hospitals and universities, for example.

"A government policy that encroaches on the conscientious objections of religious groups concerns all Americans who value the protections of the First Amendment," Issa said.

Transcript follows:
Gowdy: Bishop, would you rather close down your hospitals and your schools than to comply with a governmental edict that violates your faith?

Bishop William E. Lori: We are not going to violate our consciences.

Gowdy: Reverend Harrison, you've already spoken with respect to civil disobedience. I believe you said you'd sooner go to jail than violate your conscience?

Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison: "Yes, I would, clearly."

Gowdy: Dr. Mitchell?

Dr. Ben Mitchell: I'd like to be in his cell.

Gowdy: We'll try and work that out. (laughter) Rabbi?

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Freedom of conscience and of religion, congressman, is first and most sacred to Americans.

Gowdy: Dr. Mitchell?

Dr. Craig Mitchell: This is not the kind of thing that we can afford to play with. This is essential our country.

Rep. Gowdy: "Well, just so everybody understand what is going to happen: These guys are either going to go to jail because they won't violate their religious beliefs, or the hospitals and the schools are going to close, which means government is going to get bigger, because they're going to have to fill the void that is left when you guys quit doing it. And maybe that's what they wanted all along."

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Religious Groups Shouldn't Be Imposing Their V...

2012-02-16T16:11:00.000-05:00

Panel Behind Obama Mandate Dominated by Pro-Abortion Orgs

2012-02-16T15:07:00.000-05:00

From: LifeNews.com

A pro-life organization has access public records about the committee that made the recommendation to the Obama administration to adopt its new controversial health care mandate and found the panel was dominated by pro-abortion groups.

The Obama administration is coming under fire for producing a new Obamacare mandate regarding preventative services that forces religious employers to pay for abortion-causing drugs and birth control for their employees. Last week, Obama said his administration would advise the mandate to force insurance companies to provide the abortion-inducing drugs at no cost.

Now, HLI America indicates the mandate came about because of a collection of pro-abortion organizations and activists.

HLIA notes: “Through a search of public records, HLI America has been able to substantiate the claim that members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee who wrote Recommendation 5.5 have ideological commitments that raise serious questions about the supposed objectivity with which they considered the scientific evidence that led to their recommendation that the HHS mandate contraception and sterilization coverage as “preventive care.”

“The IOM members below have strong relationships with both Planned Parenthood and NARAL, and have actively supported pro-abortion candidates for public office,” the pro-life group adds. “This is by no means an exhaustive list of the involvement of the IOM committee members in pro-choice advocacy groups and pro-choice political campaigns. But these eleven members—out of a total of fifteen—demonstrate a more than casual commitment to the furthering of the abortion lobby.”

HLA determined that “not a single member of the committee has financially supported a pro-life candidate.”

According to HLA, the members of the panel leading to the Obama mandate included:
Claire Brindis is a member of the Board of Directors of the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, as well as a member of NARAL’s Pro-Choice California “1969 Society,” which has been called by NARAL “a group of our most steadfast and generous donors.”

Angela Diaz is a former board member of “Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health,” an advocacy group that “work[s] to improve access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion.” Until just a few weeks ago she served as the senior vice president of the International Women’s Health Coalition and was on the board of directors from 2007-2010. Her biography on the IWHC’s website (which was recently removed) stated that she “has a deep and long commitment to IWHC’s mission and to the organization.” The IWHC is a pro-choice advocacy group that declares that “access to safe abortion is a human right” and that abortion and contraception are “universal and inalienable” rights.

Francisco Garcia has donated between $11,750 and $13,000 to candidates that support abortion since 2004. These pro-choice candidates include Raul Grijava and Barack Obama.

Kimberly Gregory, as indicated by public records, has donated $35,200 to the California Victory 2010 of the Democratic National Committee in support of Barbara Boxer.

Paula A. Johnson is the Chairwoman of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts and is affiliated with the pro-abortion National Organization of Women (NOW). This year she will be the winner of NARAL’s 2011 “Champion for Choice” award. Public records indicate that since 2003 she has given between $9,550 and $11,000 each to the political campaigns of Pro-Choice candidates including Martha Coakley, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. She also has made contributions to Emily’s List, an organization dedicated to “electing pro-choice Democratic women.”

Roberta Ness has donated at least $2,500 to pro-abortion candidate John Kerry and to the Democratic National Committee.

Magda G. Peck is associated with a host of organizations that advocate for abortion and free access to contraception, and was on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Nebraska and Council Bluffs and served as both vice chair and chair of the board.

E. Albert Reece donated $1000 in 2010 to the campaign of pro-abortion politician Barbara Mikulski, the sponsor of the amendment that paved the way for recommendation 5.5.

Linda Rosenstock, committee chairwoman, has since October 2004 donated over $40,000 to pro-choice political candidates including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, and the Democratic National Committee.

Alina Salganicoff is the Vice President and Director of Women’s Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a major proponent of abortion and contraception on demand. She donated $950 to the Barack Obama and Judy Feder campaigns in 2008.

Carol Weisman has made $4,500 in political donations to pro-abortion candidates including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry and Judy Feder since 2000.

More than 50 members of Congress banded together at a press conference to demand legislation to stop the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for insurance coverage including birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.

Congressman Jeff Fortenberry held a press conference today with supporters of the bipartisan, bicameral Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. His legislation would protect the religious liberty and conscience rights of every American who objects to being forced by the strong-arm of government to pay for drugs and procedures recently mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The Fortenberry bill currently has the support of approximately 220 Members of Congress and Senators, the most strongly-supported legislative remedy to the controversial HHS mandate. This measure would repeal the controversial mandate, amending the 2010 health care law to preserve conscience rights for religious institutions, health care providers, and small businesses who pay for health care coverage.

H.R. 1179 enjoys the endorsements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and other organizations. Numerous other organizations, including the Christian Medical Association and Family Research Council, have urged support of the bill.

Sen. Roy Blunt, a pro-life Missouri Republican, is putting forward the Blunt Amendment, #1520, again, and it is termed the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. According to information provided to LifeNews from pro-life sources on Capitol Hill, the Blunt Amendment will be the first amendment voted on when the Senate returns to the transportation bill. The amendment would allow employers to decline coverage of services in conflict with religious beliefs.

Republicans are moving swiftly with legislation, amendments, and potential hearings on the mandatethe Obama administration has put in place that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying Obama’s revised mandate involves “needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions” and it urged Congress to overturn the rule and promised a potential lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates had been taking verbal swings at Obama for imposing the original mandate on religious employers, which is not popular in the latest public opinion poll and which even some Democrats oppose.

Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.

Bishops across the country have spoken out against the original mandate and are considering a lawsuit against it — with bishops in more than 164 locations across the United States issuing public statements against it or having letters opposing it printed in diocesan newspaper or read from the pulpit.

“We cannot — we will not comply with this unjust law,” said the letter from Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix. “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.”

The original mandate was so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”

The administration initially approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program.

The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.

The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.

Are the Elites Going after the Catholic Church?

2012-02-16T13:40:00.000-05:00

EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Are the Elites Going after the Catholic Church?: First, we had President Obama order that all Catholic employer-sponsored health insurance cover contraception. He's changing the spin, after...

Will the Bishops Go to the Mattresses?

2012-02-15T18:40:00.000-05:00

From: Crisis Magazine

A quiet, closed-door meeting in Washington next month will be of crucial importance in shaping the Church’s response to the nation’s biggest church-state crisis in decades.

When some 40 bishops of the administrative committee of the national bishops’ conference gather March 14-15 at conference headquarters, they’ll be looking at the Obama administration’s January mandate to Catholic institutions to violate Catholic teaching as well as the problematical “accommodation” of religious concerns unveiled by the president February 10.

A series of ugly events sets the stage for the bishops’ deliberations.

Flash back to early November. Obama and Archbishop (now cardinal-designate) Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the bishops’ conference, met to discuss topics including tensions in the religious liberty area. “I left the meeting somewhat at peace,” Archbishop Dolan later said.

That meant he believed Obama was likely to give church-sponsored institutions a comprehensive exemption from a Department of Health and Human Services rule requiring virtually all private health care plans to cover sterilization, abortifacients, and contraception under the new national health plan known as Obamacare.

It was not to be. On January 20 HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, acting for the administration, released the rule’s presumably final version. Its only concession to the Church was a year to comply—“a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” Archbishop Dolan said angrily.

Many people saw in the administration’s move a payoff to Obama’s supporters in the birth control-abortion industry. Administration sensitivity to potential criticism was visible in the release of Sebelius’ announcement late in the day on a Friday, a familiar Washington tactic for minimizing news coverage. In the same vein, the one-year delay in compliance (“more time and flexibility to adapt,” Sebelius said) appeared aimed at keeping the issue out of the presidential campaign.

Furious reactions from bishops and other Church sources greeted the move. The administration’s message to Catholics, one bishop said, was, “To hell with you.” Even the liberal Washington Post editorialized against, while columnist E.J. Dionne, an Obama apologist, said Obama “botched” the issue and “threw his progressive Catholic allies”—like Mr. Dionne—“under the bus.”

Hence the February 10 accommodation—if it really is that. Among other things, the difficulty it raises from the point of view of the Church is that, like a key that opens a lock, it makes the health plan a Catholic institution provides to its employees the key needed for them to unlock coverage for contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilization directly from the insurance carrier. There also are reasonable grounds for fearing that, no matter how the accountants structure it, costs of this coverage would be passed on to the Church.

If the bishops reject this deal, they don’t have a lot of options. Closing down thousands of Catholic institutions and programs isn’t likely. Remedial legislation pending in Congress has little chance of becoming law with Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House. As for simply refusing to obey the HHS rule, it’s a last resort.

That leaves litigation. Three religiously sponsored lawsuits against the new mandate, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, Colorado Christian University, and the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) are underway. The bishops could decide to back these challenges or others.

Religion in America scored a smashing 9-0 victory over the Obama. administration in the Supreme Court a few weeks ago when the justices unanimously upheld the constitutional right of churches to decide ministerial personnel matters without government interference. Now the HHS mandate could also be headed for the court.

Santorum: Obama White House Full Of ‘Elite Snobs’

2012-02-15T16:37:00.000-05:00

Abortion Groups Employ Sexist, Anti-Catholic Mandate Defense

2012-02-14T16:14:00.000-05:00

From: LifeNews.com

On February 10, President Obama announced a revision to the HHS life-ending drug mandate. National Public Radio characterized the President’s action as addressing “concerns of the Catholic Church.” In doing so, wittingly or not, NPR read from the pro-abortion script.

In this most recent replay of this old script, abortion proponents dismiss opposition to the HHS mandate as a move by the “all-male hierarchy” of the Catholic Church to deny women’s rights. “The Bishops’ War on Women” is a rant intended to mischaracterize the issue as the one of equal healthcare rights for women. The strategy includes making the hierarchy of the Catholic Church the enemy of women because the bishops uphold Catholic teaching against the use of birth control. Hence, the constant reference by pro-abortionists to “the birth control mandate.”

The claims that the pro-life movement is limited to the Catholic hierarchy and that they are trying to control the U.S. government were used long ago by Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger. The aim then, and now, is to create a boogey-man that can be dismissed as marginal and extreme.

In 1926, Sanger unsuccessfully sought Congressional support for repeal of the Comstock Act. She wrote in the American Birth Control League’s newsletter that the predecessor group of what is now the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had created “a special legislative committee organized to block and defeat our legislation. They frankly state that they intend to legislate for non-Catholics according to the dictates of the church.”

No such committee existed, but Sanger tried to influence public opinion by suggesting that the Catholic Church hierarchy was her only opposition. Later, the pro-abortion lobby used Sanger’s tactic in the lead-up to Roe. Former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a founder of NARAL, admitted that maligning the Catholic Church and claiming the hierarchy was the sole opponent to the abortion cause was a “key tactic” for the legalization of abortion.

Using Sanger’s strategy today, one pro-abortion writer characterizes the Catholic Church hierarchy as a “group of men with no real background in law or medicine, but blessed with a strong personal interest in women’s bodies” which has “quietly influenced all of the major anti-abortion legislation over the past several years.”

The president of NOW, Terry O’Neill, goes further, denying the right of the Church to hold and express its moral teaching, charging, “[F]or a bunch of men [Catholic bishops] who, forgive me, don’t get pregnant and who refuse to allow women into their own ranks of leadership, to presume to say that they can make a thing that has a conscience that trumps the conscience of an individual woman is simply laughable, but in a sad way.”

However, the truth is quite different. Opposition to the HHS mandate extends well beyond the “hierarchy,” and the reasons are not limited to shared opposition to contraception. A number of groups that do not oppose artificial contraception or sterilization, such as Americans United for Life, object to the mandate because it forces employers, against their conscientious moral beliefs, to offer plans that include FDA-approved “contraceptives” with abortifacient mechanisms of action.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, insists that the HHS mandate “is not only a Catholic issue” about birth control, but affects evangelical seminaries and colleges which oppose abortion, [who] “will also be covered by this mandate and thus violate our own consciences” (because of the mandate’s inclusion of abortion-inducing drugs). Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, whose membership numbers 15 million, points out that the new HHS revision does not protect the numerous religious organizations that self-insure, such as the Southern Baptists do for over 200,000 missionaries, social workers, pastors, and others.

The HHS mandate violates conscience rights and religious liberty protected by the Constitution. Numerous non-Catholic religious organizations and leaders object to the mandate’s affront to religious liberty. These include a range of Protestant pastors and organizations (including the National Association of Evangelicals), representatives of Jewish groups (including the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America), and the Orthodox Church.

Members of Congress who are not Catholic, but recognize the risk to constitutional guarantees of religion freedom, are speaking out. Among them is U.S. Senator Orin Hatch, who stated in response to the announcement of the HHS revision, “This is about religious freedom, and anything short of a full exemption is no compromise.” And U.S. Representative Jim Jordan said, “Under these rules, a small business owner with religious objections to abortion-inducing drugs and contraception must either violate his religious beliefs or violate the law….This ObamaCare rule still tramples on Americans’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion.”

The abortion lobby will continue to frame the debate as one about the Catholic hierarchy and women’s rights. And though NARAL’s president characterizes the HHS mandate as “mainstream policy…in line with our country’s values and priorities,” it is already evident that millions of Americans do not agree. The ever-growing broad base of pro-life supporters and countless others who care about constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of conscience for all will work ceaselessly to defeat the abortion lobby’s lies.

Michael Ramirez Cartoon On Obama Mandate

2012-02-14T15:38:00.000-05:00

Mother Dolores, nun who co-starred with Elvis, returns to the Oscars

2012-02-14T13:09:00.000-05:00

From: USATODAY.com

If you spot a nun roaming the red carpet during the Oscar telecast Feb. 26, don't adjust your set.

Mother Dolores is not flying or singing, but the real deal — and the focus of God Is the Bigger Elvis, which is nominated in the best documentary short category and premieres April 5 on HBO

"It will be so nice to be back at the Oscars," says Mother Dolores, 73, the Benedictine nun who stars in the 37-minute visit to the Abbey of Regina Laudis, appropriately located in Bethlehem, Conn. "It's such a fun night."

Did she say back to the Oscars?

"The last time I was there was in 1959, when I was a presenter," says Mother Dolores, who is spiritual counselor to 38 other cloistered sisters. "This will be different".

Different defines the life of a young woman named Dolores Hart. Rewind to 1963. Hart is a wholesome 25-year-old starlet whose leading men have included Elvis Presley (Loving You, 1957), Montgomery Clift (Lonelyhearts, 1958) and George Hamilton (Where the Boys Are, 1960). She is about to sign a seven-figure contract with producer Hal Wallis. She is happily engaged to Los Angeles businessman Don Robinson.

And she walks away from it all to head behind the walls of Regina Laudis.

Crazy? No, just quietly confident.

"I adored Hollywood. I didn't leave because it was a place of sin," she says in a measured but upbeat tone that animates God Is the Bigger Elvis (a title taken from her simple explanation for her defection from the high life).

"I left Hollywood at the urging of a mysterious thing called vocation. It's a call that comes from another place that we call God because we don't have any other way to say it. It's a call of love. Why do you climb a mountain?"

What makes the documentary unique is that Regina Laudis is a profoundly private place. Visitors must remain outside the compound. Daily life is laced with prayer, song and a lot of hard work tending to gardens, livestock and crumbling infrastructure for which the sisters are trying to raise money through the New Horizons Renovation Project (abbeyofreginalaudis.com).

Mother Dolores says she allowed access to cameras not to help with fundraising but rather to assist with soul searching.

"We wanted to invite the world into another order of life that might give some hope," she says.

God director Rebecca Cammisa felt an instant connection to the topic when project partner Julie Anderson raised the idea. Cammisa's mother was a nun for 10 years before changing course.

"The question I had was, what makes someone with Dolores Hart's level of success choose this way of life?" says Cammisa, a 2010 Oscar nominee for her documentary about Mexican migrant children, Which Way Home.

"It's a countercultural choice, but this film will show people that these are highly educated, attractive women who had boyfriends and lovers but were living in a world that didn't have enough for them," she says.

Cammisa makes that point through interviews with Sister John Mary, 44, who in her pre-Regina Laudis life as Laura Adshead was a striking, Oxford-educated advertising executive whose New York lifestyle proved empty. Her addictions led her to Alcoholics Anonymous, and eventually the abbey.

"It was a hard decision to discuss A.A. in the film, but beyond the support of the community here, I also felt that maybe if I told my story, someone could identify with it and draw courage from it," she says.

Sister John Mary adds that "everyone has a story before we came here. Our lives carry on. I'm sure Mother Prioress (Mother Dolores' title at the abbey) took Hollywood with her in her heart."

She took more than that. Robinson, Hart's fiancé, was crushed by her decision to join the abbey. He never married, and he visited Mother Dolores every year until his death in December. One of the film's most touching moments shows the former couple saying goodbye after a visit last May. It would be the last time they would see each other.

"Oh, Don, he was such a champ…" The nun's voice trails off momentarily. Then it brightens. "He's with God now. So he'd better do something good for our filmmakers."

Actually, Mother Dolores has a measure of influence on this year's nominees: As a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, she receives DVDs of nominated movies and sometimes entertains at the abbey.

She vows silence on which films will get her votes, but she says she and her sisters enjoyed The Help a great deal; ditto Meryl Streep's performance in The Iron Lady and Brad Pitt's in Moneyball.

"I find the trends funny, though, because now we're back to silent films," she says, referring to Oscar nominee The Artist. "Maybe movies from the '60s will be hip again, who knows?"

Does she ever screen her romps with Elvis, Montgomery and George?

"Not much anymore. That thrill is gone," she says. "I know what I have here is the best thing I will ever have."

Figure That 98% of Catholic Women Use Birth Control Debunked

2012-02-14T08:15:00.000-05:00

From: LifeNews.com

Abortion advocates and the White House are using a misleading figure to defend the new mandate the Obama administration put in place that requires insurance companies to offer birth control drugs that may cause abortions at no cost.

Both Obama administration officials and pro-abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood and NARAL are telling their members that 98% of Catholic women use contraception, a myth based on a misreading of a study published by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, a former Planned Parenthood affiliate.

Lydia McGrew has published a lengthy refutation of the figure that is drawing praise for its insight and accuracy.

“The survey was limited to women between 15-44. Ah, well, that explains how we weren’t including the elderly, but it also means that the silly “percent of all Catholic women” thing should be chucked out right from the beginning,” she notes.

McGrew indicates the Guttmacher study also “excluded any women who were a) not sexually active, where that is defined as having had sexual intercourse in the past three months (there go all the nuns), b) postpartum, c) pregnant, or d) trying to get pregnant. In other words, the study was specifically designed (as the prose discussion on p. 8 makes explicit, in bold print) to include only women for whom a pregnancy would be unintended and who are “at risk” of becoming pregnant.”

She continues: “Whether or not it included women who considered themselves neither trying nor not trying to get pregnant (there are some such women in the world) is unclear. It’s also unclear whether it included women who have had their reproductive organs removed because of some medical problem. Presumably the study was intended to exclude women in both of these categories, as neither would count as a woman “at risk of an unintended pregnancy.”

McGrew writes: “Now, consider what all of this means as far as the representativeness of the sample for Catholic women. Surely there are a fair number of Catholic women between 15-44 who are not “at risk of an unintended pregnancy” for various reasons. It is plausible that this number is higher among Catholics than among non-Catholics. For one thing, a faithful Catholic woman in this age category who is not married is supposed to be remaining celibate. Hence she won’t fall into the “at-risk” category, and by the same token she won’t have any use for the “services” that the Obama administration is mandating be provided. Similarly, married Catholic women are probably more likely not to be attempting to avoid pregnancy, even using Natural Family Planning, than non-Catholic women. One would think they are also more likely to be pregnant or postpartum. And so on and so forth. In short, the deliberate design of the study to cover only women who, at the time of the study, were having sexual intercourse while regarding a pregnancy as unintended would be likely to make it unrepresentative of Catholics and particularly unrepresentative of devout Catholics. Yet the study is now being cited to show the percentage of Catholic women generally who are not following the teaching of the Catholic Church in this area! What is wrong with this picture?”

Tom Hoopes of CatholicVote reviewed both McGrew’s numbers and the initial study Guttmacher conducted.
“The results are even more skewed if you ask people at the top of a survey what religion they are. People who have never darkened the door of a Catholic Church will happily mark “Catholic” on such a survey. The behavior they report will count for or against Catholics the same regardless of their actual contact with Catholicism,” he writes. “This particular survey even admits that less than a third of its “Catholic” respondents even go to Mass once a week.”

“So, what do we know from the start: We aren’t dealing with practicing Catholics. In fact, a two-thirds majority of the Catholics in the survey are not eligible to receive communion, according to the U.S. bishops (see page 9), since they skip their Sunday obligation,” Hoopes continues.

“The most shocking news, though, is that the White House is spreading false information about Catholicism in order to provide cover as it removes religious liberties for Catholic organizations,” he concludes. “White House: Retract this statement and correct the record. Stop misinforming the public about my religion for your purposes.”

DC Archbishop Wuerl Letter on Obamacare Mandate

2012-02-14T03:42:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,
Last Friday President Obama attempted to respond to the strong objections that have been raised by the Catholic Church and other faith communities to the Department of Health and Human Services’ unprecedented mandate that would force religious institutions, in violation of their religious beliefs, to provide and pay for abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization. Unfortunately, the “accommodation” that the President announced still presents grave moral concerns and continues to violate our constitutionally protected religious liberty.

The administration’s proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, particularly in the definition of who is and who is not a religious employer. Despite last month’s unanimous Supreme Court decision upholding the right of religious institutions to choose whom they appoint to teach their faith and carry out their mission, the administration remains unwavering in its attempt to assert control in matters of religion. Our Catholic schools, social service organizations, hospitals and universities are no less Catholic than our churches, but apparently, these institutions are not considered to be Catholic enough to meet the definition required by the HHS mandate for a religious exemption.

As for the insurance-related provisions themselves, the federal mandate remains essentially unchanged.The only “fix” offered by the President was to propose that insurance companies, instead of religious institutions directly, be required to cover procedures and products they find objectionable at no cost in their insurance policies. Regardless of how it is characterized, shifting the cost of these drugs and procedures to insurance companies does not make their requirement any less objectionable or lessen the infringement on our religious liberty and rights of conscience.

For example, President Obama’s announcement does not provide any accommodation for the Archdiocese of Washington. Like many large organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, this archdiocese does not purchase group health insurance from insurance companies. In order to provide insurance consistent with our religious beliefs, our health benefit plan is a self-insured plan that extends coverage to 3,600 employees. This means that the archdiocese is the insurer and the archdiocese covers all claim costs. There is no insurance company involved. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the HHS mandate, self-insured organizations like ours are treated the same as regular insurance providers. This means that like Aetna or Blue Cross, the archdiocese and other self-insured religious organizations would be required to both provide and pay for drugs and procedures we consider morally wrong in our employee health plans.

        Even for religious institutions who are employers and who purchase group health insurance from insurance companies, the problem created by the mandate remains unresolved.Those institutions will still be compelled to purchase insurance policies that provide free abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization.Since these additional drugs and procedures will be automatically provided by the insurer by virtue of the insurance policy (even though not expressly listed in the policy), it is no response to our moral concerns to say that religious employers will not have to pay for them because their insurance companies will. Catholic institutions will be forced to pay for and maintain policies that enable their employees to receive insurance coverage of products and procedures that violate our religious convictions.

        At this point, it appears that nothing has really changed. Religious employers are still being compelled to provide insurance plans that offer free abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations and contraceptives in violation of their religious freedom.

        What is at stake here is a question of human freedom. The authors of the Bill of Rights enshrined freedom of religion as our nation’s first and founding principle. We should not be reduced to petitioning the government for rights that the Constitution already guarantees. The only complete solution to the problem that this mandate poses for religious liberty is for Congress to pass legislation to protect our freedom. The Respect for Rights of Conscience Act is one of several bills that have been introduced for this very purpose.

        We cannot become complacent or allow ourselves to be distracted by incomplete proposals presented as definitive solutions. The Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty is working on a formal response and action steps. In the weeks and months ahead, please continue to pray and share this information with others so that we may reverse the effects of this misguided regulation.

            In the hope that this information is helpful and with every good wish, I am

                                                                                   Faithfully in Christ,
                                                                                   Donald Cardinal Wuerl
                                                                                   Archbishop of Washington

Archbishop Chaput: Obama HHS Mandate "Insulting, Dangerous"

2012-02-13T23:29:00.000-05:00

From: LifeNews.com

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia is one of the most highly regarded Catholic bishops because of his ability to passionately defend the pro-life position. A new statement he released about President Barack Obama’s pro-abortion, anti-conscience mandate is drawing rave reviews.

Chaput’s statement follows in its entirety:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services refused on Jan. 20 to broaden the exception to its mandate that nearly all Catholic employers must cover contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization in their health-care plans.

An “accommodation” offered Friday by the White House did not solve the problem. Instead, it triggered withering criticism from legal scholars such as Notre Dame’s Carter Snead, Harvard’s Mary Ann Glendon, Princeton’s Robert George, and Catholic University of America president John Garvey, along with non-Catholic scholars including Yuval Levin, the religious liberty law firm the Becket Fund, and numerous Catholic and other organizations.

Many Catholics are confused and angry. They should be.

Quite a few Catholics supported President Obama in the last election, so the ironies here are bitter. Many feel betrayed. They’re baffled that the Obama administration would seek to coerce Catholic employers, private and corporate, to violate their religious convictions.

But it’s clear that such actions are developing into a pattern. Whether it was the administration’s early shift toward the anemic language of “freedom of worship” instead of the more historically grounded and robust concept of “freedom of religion” in key diplomatic discussions; or its troubling effort to regulate religious ministers recently rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court in the Hosanna Tabor case; or the revocation of the U.S. bishops’ conference human-trafficking grant for refusing to refer rape victims to abortion clinics, it seems obvious that this administration is – to put it generously – tone deaf to people of faith.

Philadelphians may wish to reflect on the following facts: The Archdiocesan Secretariat for Catholic Human Services spends $278 million annually on services to the community. About 4,000 employees make up our secretariat’s workforce. Catholic Social Services is the largest social-service agency in Pennsylvania and the largest residential care/social-service subcontractor with the Department of Human Services of the City of Philadelphia.

There’s more. Archdiocesan Catholic Health Care Services is the largest faith-based provider of long-term-care services to the poor and elderly in the five-county area, and the seventh-largest nationally.

And our Nutritional Development Services ministry serves more than eight million meals a year to schoolchildren, summer programs, and child-care centers. It also provides 2 million pounds of nonperishable food to needy families and the elderly through its Community Food Program.

Much of the money used by these ministries comes from public funding. But of course, the reason these ministries are trusted with public funding is that they do an excellent job. The service relationship works well without compromising the integrity of either the government or the Church. In fact, in a practical sense, government often benefits more than the Church.

It’s also important to note that many millions of the dollars disbursed are resources directly donated by faithful Catholics to carry out their Gospel mission to serve the needy. For the Church, this makes perfect sense: As a believing community, we share our resources freely and gladly. We’ll cooperate with anyone in service to the common good, so long as we are not forced to compromise our religious beliefs.

But the HHS mandate, including its latest variant, is belligerent, unnecessary, and deeply offensive to the content of Catholic belief. Any such mandate would make it morally compromising for us to provide health-care benefits to the staffs of our public-service ministries. Moreover, we cannot afford to be fooled – yet again – – by evasive and misleading allusions to the administration’s alleged “flexibility” on such issues. The HHS mandate needs to be rescinded.

Many critics are focusing on the details of this or that particular version of the HHS regulation – the narrowness of the religious exemption, the breadth of the mandate, the hollowness of the grace period. As useful as this approach may be, it risks wandering into the weeds. The White House response on these points is ambiguous and weak. The true magnitude of the issue is getting lost as just another debate about details.

In reality, no similarly aggressive attack on religious freedom in our country has occurred in recent memory.

The current administration prides itself on being measured and deliberate. The current HHS mandate needs to be understood as exactly that. Commentators are using words like “gaffe,” “ill conceived,” and “mistake” to describe the mandate. They’re wrong. It’s impossible to see this regulation as some happenstance policy. It has been too long in the making.

Despite all of its public apprehension about “culture warriors” on the political right in the past, the current administration has created an HHS mandate that is the embodiment of culture war. At its heart is a seemingly deep distrust of the formative role religious faith has on personal and social conduct, and a deep distaste for religion’s moral influence on public affairs. To say that this view is contrary to the Founders’ thinking and the record of American history would be an understatement.

Critics may characterize my words here as partisan or political. These are my personal views, and of course people are free to disagree. But it is this administration – not Catholic ministries, or institutions, or bishops – that chose the timing and nature of the fight. The onus is entirely on the White House, which also has the power to remove the issue from public conflict. Catholics should not be misled into accepting feeble compromises on issues of principle. The HHS mandate is bad law; and not merely bad, but dangerous and insulting. It needs to be withdrawn – now.

Video: Archbishop Cardinal Wuerl denounces contraception accommodation on America’s Newsroom

2012-02-13T20:14:00.002-05:00

Obama's 'Compromise' Is Utterly Untenable, Requires Us To Become Complicit In Evil

2012-02-13T18:12:00.000-05:00

From: CNSnews.com

Human Life International Pres. Father Shenan J. Boquet made the following statement in response to the Obama administration’s proposed “compromise” on the contraception/sterilization/abortifacient mandate:

“We at Human Life International stand with the Catholic bishops and a diverse group of organizations and individuals in rejecting the false compromise offered by the Obama administration in an apparent attempt to gain wider acceptance of the mandate that requires free coverage of contraception, sterilization, and abortion inducing drugs.

“Having closely examined all available information on the compromise, we are appalled at the cynicism displayed by both its content and the means by which it was announced. The original unjust mandate required that conscientious objectors to this policy would be forced to pay for insurance that will cover morally abhorrent ‘care.’ With the so-called compromise we are still forced to pay for insurance that covers procedures and drugs that directly contradict our religious beliefs. The compromise is a distinction without a difference and merely an accounting trick that does nothing to change the fact that we will have to pay for chemical abortions, sterilizations and contraception for any employee.

“The Obama administration's verbal engineering is an egregious and blatant attempt to divide certain Catholic organizations from others and from the bishops, all in an effort to secure even the thinnest possible façade of Catholic approval. Sadly, the administration has found prominent organizations to be complicit in this calculated move. It should be noted that though the bishops were not consulted on this compromise, it appears that Catholic Health Association (CHA) and Catholic Charities USA were consulted and their agreement secured before the bishops even had an opportunity to examine the proposal. The Obama administration’s proposal was clearly not an attempt at good faith dialogue and genuine compromise.

The apparent agreement between the Obama administration, CHA, Catholic Charities and Planned Parenthood is utterly untenable from a Catholic point of view, requiring that we become complicit in evil.

“It appears that the stalwart unified voice of bishops, laity, Catholics and all citizens of good will compelled the administration to offer this weak, symbolic compromise because of questions about what the mandate meant for President Obama’s reelection campaign. We have seen clearly the ideological goals this administration is pushing with this unjust mandate. We can only imagine what will be inflicted on Catholics and on all Americans should the president win reelection and not have to worry about currying favor with Catholics.

“Under the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’), the HHS has entirely too much unchecked power over health care in the United States, and given their history of disregard for both religious liberty and human life, we have no confidence that the federal government can be trusted to administer health care that respects the dignity of every human person from conception to natural death. Not only do we support legislation currently being considered in Congress to ensure clear and strong protection for freedom of religion and conscience, but we also call upon our political leaders to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety so that it may be replaced by a system in which human life and dignity, and the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, are secured.

“This compromise offered by President Obama demands that we compromise our religious beliefs and our commitment to the health and life of women and children while they compromise nothing. We at Human Life International stand with our Bishops and call upon the administration to honor the freedom endowed by God and honored by our nation’s Bill of Rights. We will render unto Caesar only that which belongs to him and not what belongs to God.”

Mark Steyn: Obama goes Henry VIII on the church

2012-02-13T15:17:00.000-05:00

From: Mark Steyn, The Orange County Register

Announcing his support for Commissar Sebelius' edicts on contraception, sterilization, and pharmacological abortion, that noted theologian the Most Reverend Al Sharpton explained: "If we are going to have a separation of church and state, we're going to have a separation of church and state."

Thanks for clarifying that. The church model the young American state wished to separate from was that of the British monarch, who remains to this day Supreme Governor of the Church of England. This convenient arrangement dates from the 1534 Act of Supremacy. The title of the law gives you the general upshot, but, just in case you're a bit slow on the uptake, the text proclaims "the King's Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England." That's to say, the sovereign is "the only supreme head on earth of the Church" and he shall enjoy "all honors, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits and commodities to the said dignity," not to mention His Majesty "shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, record, order, correct, restrain and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offenses, contempts and enormities, whatsoever they be."

The president of the United States has decided to go Henry VIII on the Church's medieval ass. Whatever religious institutions might profess to believe in the matter of "women's health," their pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities and immunities are now subordinate to a one-and-only supreme head on earth determined to repress, redress, restrain and amend their heresies. One wouldn't wish to overextend the analogy: For one thing, the Catholic Church in America has been pathetically accommodating of Beltway bigwigs' ravenous appetite for marital annulments in a way that Pope Clement VII was disinclined to be vis-a-vis the English king and Catherine of Aragon. But where'd all the pandering get them? In essence, President Obama has embarked on the same usurpation of church authority as Henry VIII: as his Friday morning faux-compromise confirms, the continued existence of a "faith-based institution" depends on submission to the doctrinal supremacy of the state.

"We will soon learn," wrote Dr. Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, "just how much faith is left in faith-based institutions." Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's vicar on earth, has sportingly offered to maintain religious liberty for those institutions engaged in explicit religious instruction to a largely believing clientele. So we're not talking about mandatory condom dispensers next to the pulpit at St. Pat's – not yet. But that is not what it means to be a Christian: The mission of a Catholic hospital is to minister to the sick. When a guy shows up in Emergency, bleeding all over the floor, the nurse does not first establish whether he is Episcopalian or Muslim; when an indigent is in line at the soup kitchen the volunteer does not pause the ladle until she has determined whether he is a card-carrying Papist. The government has redefined religion as equivalent to your Sunday best: You can take it out for an hour to go to church, but you gotta mothball it in the closet the rest of the week. So Catholic institutions cannot comply with Commissar Sebelius and still be in any meaningful sense Catholic.

If you're an atheist or one of America's ever more lapsed Catholics, you're probably shrugging: what's the big deal? But the new Act of Supremacy doesn't stop with religious institutions. As Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, put it: "If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I'd be covered by this mandate." And so would any of his burrito boys who object to being forced to make "health care" arrangements at odds with their conscience.

None of this should come as a surprise. As Philip Klein pointed out in the American Spectator two years ago, the Obamacare bill contained 700 references to the Secretary "shall," another 200 to the Secretary "may," and 139 to the Secretary "determines." So the Secretary may and shall determine pretty much anything she wants, as the Obamaphile rubes among the Catholic hierarchy are belatedly discovering. His Majesty King Barack "shall have full power and authority to visit, repress, redress, record, order, correct, restrain and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offenses, contempts and enormities whatsoever they be." In my latest book, I cite my personal favorite among the epic sweep of Commissar Sebelius' jurisdictional authority:

"The Secretary shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance."

Before Obama's Act of Supremacy did the English language ever have need for such a phrase? "Tooth-level surveillance": From the Declaration of Independence to dentured servitude in a mere quarter-millennium.

Henry VIII lacked the technological wherewithal to conduct tooth-level surveillance. In my friskier days, I dated a girl from an eminent English Catholic family whose ancestral home, like many of the period, had a priest's hiding hole built into the wall behind an upstairs fireplace. These were a last desperate refuge for clerics who declined to subordinate their conscience to state authority. In my time, we liked to go in there and make out. Bit of a squeeze, but it all adds to the fun – as long as you don't have to spend weeks, months and years back there. In an age of tooth-level surveillance, tyranny is subtler, incremental but eminently enforceable: regulatory penalties, denial of licenses, frozen bank accounts. Will the Church muster the will to resist? Or (as Archbishop Dolan's pitifully naïve remarks suggest) will this merely be one more faint bleat lost in what Matthew Arnold called the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith?

In England, those who dissented from the strictures of the state church came to be known as Nonconformists. That's a good way of looking at it: The English Parliament passed various "Acts of Uniformity." Why? Because they could. Obamacare, which governmentalizes one-sixth of the U.S. economy and microregulates both body and conscience, is the ultimate Act of Uniformity. Is there anyone who needs contraception who can't get it? Taxpayers give half-a-billion dollars to Planned Parenthood, which shovels out IUDs like aspirin. Colleges hand out free condoms, and the Washington Post quotes middle-aged student "T Squalls, 30" approving his university's decision to upgrade to the Trojan "super-size Magnum."

But there's still one or two Nonconformists out there, and they have to be forced into ideological compliance. "Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion in the First Amendment," Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post offered to Chris Matthews on MSNBC. At the National Press Club, young Catholics argued that the overwhelming majority of their co-religionists disregard the Church's teachings on contraception, so let's bring the vox Dei into alignment with the vox populi. Get with the program, get with the Act of Uniformity.

The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: First, other pillars of civil society are crowded out of the public space; then, the individual gets crowded out, even in his most private, tooth-level space. President Obama, Commissar Sebelius and many others believe in one-size-fits all national government – uniformity, conformity, supremacy from Maine to Hawaii, for all but favored cronies. It is a doomed experiment – and on the morning after it will take a lot more than a morning-after pill to make it all go away.

Notre Dame Faculty to Obama: ‘This Is a Grave Violation of Religious Freedom and Cannot Stand’

2012-02-13T12:33:00.000-05:00

From: CNSnews.com

Twenty-five Notre Dame faculty members--led by the university’s top ethics expert, and including some of the school’s most eminent scholars--have signed a statement declaring that President Barack Obama’s latest version of his administration’s mandate that all health insurance plans in the United States must cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions, is “a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand."

The statement—put out on the letterhead of the University of Notre Dame Law School--is also signed by leading scholars from other major American colleges and universities, including Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, Brigham Young, Yeshiva and Wheaton College.

Prof. Carter Snead, a professor of law at Notre Dame, was one of the lead organizers of the statement, which was published on his official law school letterhead. Notre Dame's top ethics expert, Snead serves as director of the university's Center for Ethics and Culture, a position to which he was appointed by Father John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame.

In 2009, Father Jenkins awarded President Barack Obama an honorary Notre Dame law degree.

Some of the other distinguished Notre Dame faculty who signed the statement condemning Obama’s mandate are Prof. Patrick Griffin, chairman of Notre Dame's History Department; Prof. Richard Garnett, an associate dean; John Cavadini, director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Church Life; Christian Smith, director of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society; Prof. Paolo Carozza, director of Notre Dame’s Center for Civil and Human Rights; Prof. Philip Bess, Notre Dame’s Director of Graduate Studies; and Father Wilson Miscamble, a professor of history.

Other leading organizers of the letter included Prof. Robert George of Princeton and Prof. Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School.

When Obama received his honorary degree at Notre Dame's May 17, 2009, commencement, he vowed to respect the conscience rights of those who believe abortion is wrong.

“Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women,” said Obama. “Those are things we can do.”

Many Catholic bishops and lay leaders had criticized Notre Dame's decision to grant Obama honorary degree to Obama--pointing to his long-standing position in favor of legalized abortion on demand, which included going so far as to oppose a law in the Illinois state senate that would have simply said that a baby born alive in that state was entitled to the same rights under the U.S. Constitution as any other born "person."

In their statement released late Friday, the 25 Notre Dame faculty members and the many other prominent scholars from other institutions who joined them said that Obama’s sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate--even with Obama’s proposed adjustments on Friday--remains as “assault on religious liberty and rights of conscience.”

“The administration will now require that all insurance plans cover (‘cost free’) these same products and services,” said the scholars. “Once a religiously-affiliated (or believing individual) employer purchases insurance (as it must, by law), the insurance company will then contact the insured employees to advise them that the terms of the policy include coverage for these objectionable things.

“This so-called ‘accommodation’ changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy,” they said. “It is certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services.”

The statement also said that Obama’s latest iteration of the regulation is “an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslims” and “cannot stand.”

“The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization,” the scholars said. “This is a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand. It is an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept an assault on their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick.”

Quotes On Religious Liberty

2012-02-12T16:03:00.000-05:00

John Witherspoon The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men

Date: May 17, 1775

There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.

John Adams Letter to Benjamin Rush

Date: 1812

Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.

John Adams Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law

Date: 1765

Let the pulpit resound with the doctrine and sentiments of religious liberty. Let us hear of the dignity of man's nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God . . . . Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes and parliaments.

Thomas Jefferson A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom

Date: 1779

[T]hat the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty.

James Madison A Memorial and Remonstrance

Date: 1785

Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only be reason and convection, not by force or violence." The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man: and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.

James Madison Letter to Frederick Schaeffer

Date: December 3, 1821

The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting Usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity.

James Madison essay on Property

Date: March 29, 1792

Conscience is the most sacred of all property.

George Washington letter to the Members of the New Church in Baltimore

Date: January 27, 1793

We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.

George Washington to the Annual meeting of Quakers

Date: September, 1789

The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreebly to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights.

John Leland The Rights of Conscience Inalienable

Every man must give an account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in that way that he can best reconcile to his conscience . . . . It would be sinful for a man to surrender that to man which is to be kept sacred for God.

William Penn Pennsylvania Charter of Liberty, Laws Agreed Upon in England

Date: 1682

That all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God, to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the world; and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall, in no ways, be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion, or practice, in manners of faith and worship, nor shall they be compelled, at any time, to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatever.

Hugo Black Delivering opinion of the Court for Everson v. Board of Education

Date: February 10, 1947

The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

An American Catholic's Rebuttal to Supporters of the Mandate

2012-02-11T16:02:00.000-05:00

This is likely to be the first of many commentaries on this matter, but I feel compelled to address specific points that have been made to support President Obama's unconstitutional mandate upon Catholic affiliated institutions.

Firstly, supporters of the mandate defend the proposition because as they say most Catholics do not agree with the Church on the matter of artificial birth control. Jehmu Green, on Fox News no less cited polling that 98% of Catholics oppose the Church and have used contraception. Juan Williams, also on FOX, cited a FOX NEWS poll that showed 61% of all Americans agreed with the Presidents' mandate.The Green and Williams position is that if a majority of the faithful do not adhere to the precepts of their faith, then the government is justly empowered to enforce that majority opinion upon the entire faith.

Let us suppose that these polling numbers are accurate and not skewed by faulty inquiry. If it really is 98% that oppose the Church and a mere 2% that abide by its teaching I am compelled to ask: SO WHAT? This argument in defense of the mandate is pathetic precisely because it seeks to delegitimize faith if it does not conform to majority will. If I am part of the 98% am I justified in marginalizing the 2%? Are those 2% who comply with the Church's teachings to be denied protection under the First Amendment? Are we now to extend the protections of that First Amendment exclusively to those whose lives are in contravention to the tenets of their faith? That is the logical conclusion to draw by those who cite polls to justify intruding upon religious liberty. It is however the citation of the outcome of public polling to defend this unconscionable act that is more profoundly disturbing because it undermines the heart of the First Amendment. Freedom to Worship and by extension the conscience of one's faith as outlined in the First Amendment does not exist to serve the will or conscience of a 98% majority, it is there expressly to serve and protect the minority from the will of the majority. This historic reality is absent among those who recite polls to defend the President and is therefore wholly invalid in its construction. Catholics and only Catholics are free to debate and seek to alter the precepts of their faith. Many liberal Catholics have pleaded with the Church to change its policy. It is an example of Dialogue among the faithful and in the United States of America the government is not justly empowered to take up the cause of a faction in an internal debate amongst the flock. Catholics make the rules for Catholicism and no one else. It is true of all faiths and the faithful in America.

The second defense of the mandate goes like this: Because Catholic affiliated schools and hospitals hire non Catholics, those non Catholics are not bound to the teachings of the Catholic Church and therefore any affiliated institutions depriving them of health care plans without contraception are effectively coercing them to compromise their health and principles. It is therefore held by this defense that government is justified in compelling those institutions to compromise its faith and provide such services. This is absurd.

First of all if you are a person of one or no faith working at an institution run by a contrary faith it then stands as common sense that your faith as the employee does not dictate itself to your employer. If your values are so offended by the tenets of the Catholic Institution that employs you then you are free to pursue employment with any alternative enterprise that meets your values. For that matter, as an American Catholic if you are so profoundly dissented with the faith, you are free to find peace amidst a new flock that matches your values. Simply put: The Door is open and you are free to leave.

As to the issue of coercion of non Catholic employees. Let us imagine for the moment that I am the President of the University of Notre Dame, the most prestigious Catholic University in America. In that capacity I publicly declare that we will only consider Catholic applicants for employment and furthermore be discharging all present non Catholic employees and shall only take applications from Catholics and thereby exclude non Catholics from employment in this new hiring practice. If such an action were taken the Justice Department would seek to prosecute the University for violation of federal anti discrimination laws. I use this example to illustrate how this defense is a "Catch-22". On the one hand Catholic institutions like Notre Dame are obligated by law to consider all qualified applicants and cannot prohibit by practice the employment of non Catholics. This legal reality undoes the "coercion" defense. Because the Church abides the law regarding employment, they are now compelled to violate its conscience as a result of its compliance? On the one hand the institution cannot discriminate and because it cannot by law discriminate, they are now compelled by the mandate as the employer to conform to the values of the non Catholic employee as defined by Kathleen Sebellius, that Quisling residing at Health and Human Services. What a fine legal mechanism that erodes religious liberty.

The third defense is worthless but needs mentioning. They argue "it's about women's health,not religious liberty". This is just plain dishonest. First of all, health care as a whole, women's needs or otherwise is not a right as defined by the Constitution. Freedom of Worship is. How can something that is not a right, trump the very first amendment ratified by the thirteen original states? This defense is merely a facade, given the abundance of evidence however anecdotal that Rick Perry was right when he said there was a "war on religion". There is a clear and definable segment of American society represented in this crisis of faith that are intent upon subordinating all people of faith to what they deem to be the greater moral authority, that of course being an all knowing, all powerful, wiser and beneficent federal government. They seek as evidenced in this matter, however subtle and incremental to compel people of ancient faiths to worship their newly constructed Golden Calf, an altar to honor their secular God as they seek to consign the Faith of Our Fathers with an eye towards oblivion.

I am by temperament inclined to believe that people are well intentioned in their dissent on issues of substance. On this matter I cannot bear as the evidence mounts to extend such a presumption. The assault on religious liberty in this mandate is unprecedented. It is just the beginning and the most notable chapter in a litany of lesser known efforts to diminish individual fidelity to faith. Whatever one's faith or values, this mandate is a direct assault on faith, but indirectly its greatest victim is the "Spirit of America" itself, a spirit that cherishes individuality and the freedom to define our lives on our terms as dictated by our conscience whether inspired by the divine or a choice to ignore his voice in the conducting of our life.

DEFEND YOUR FAITH
FIGHT FOR THE CONSTITUTION
PRESERVE THE "SPIRIT OF AMERICA"

Religious Liberty Homily.mp4

2012-02-11T11:19:00.000-05:00

U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops: Obama's Revised Contraception and Abortion Pill Mandate 'Unacceptable'

2012-02-11T06:48:00.000-05:00

From: The Weekly Standard

We just received information about this proposal for the first time this morning; we were not consulted in advance," the United States Council of Catholic Bishops announce in a statement released Friday evening. The bishops say that the "the law and remains a grave moral concern" and is "unacceptable."
Here's the full statement:

BISHOPS RENEW CALL TO LEGISLATIVE ACTION ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Regulatory changes limited and unclear
Rescission of mandate only complete solution
Continue urging passage of Respect for Rights of Conscience Act

WASHINGTON – The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have issued the following statement:

The Catholic bishops have long supported access to life-affirming healthcare for all, and the conscience rights of everyone involved in the complex process of providing that healthcare. That is why we raised two serious objections to the “preventive services” regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August 2011.

First, we objected to the rule forcing private health plans—nationwide, by the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen—to cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion. All the other mandated “preventive services” prevent disease, and pregnancy is not a disease. Moreover, forcing plans to cover abortifacients violates existing federal conscience laws. Therefore, we called for the rescission of the mandate altogether.

Second, we explained that the mandate would impose a burden of unprecedented reach and severity on the consciences of those who consider such “services” immoral: insurers forced to write policies including this coverage; employers and schools forced to sponsor and subsidize the coverage; and individual employees and students forced to pay premiums for the coverage. We therefore urged HHS, if it insisted on keeping the mandate, to provide a conscience exemption for all of these stakeholders—not just the extremely small subset of “religious employers” that HHS proposed to exempt initially.

Today, the President has done two things.

First, he has decided to retain HHS’s nationwide mandate of insurance coverage of sterilization and contraception, including some abortifacients. This is both unsupported in the law and remains a grave moral concern. We cannot fail to reiterate this, even as so many would focus exclusively on the question of religious liberty.

Second, the President has announced some changes in how that mandate will be administered, which is still unclear in its details. As far as we can tell at this point, the change appears to have the following basic contours:

It would still mandate that all insurers must include coverage for the objectionable services in all the policies they would write. At this point, it would appear that self-insuring religious employers, and religious insurance companies, are not exempt from this mandate.
It would allow non-profit, religious employers to declare that they do not offer such coverage. But the employee and insurer may separately agree to add that coverage. The employee would not have to pay any additional amount to obtain this coverage, and the coverage would be provided as a part of the employer’s policy, not as a separate rider.
Finally, we are told that the one-year extension on the effective date (from August 1, 2012 to August 1, 2013) is available to any non-profit religious employer who desires it, without any government application or approval process.
These changes require careful moral analysis, and moreover, appear subject to some measure of change. But we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and must be corrected. And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer. This, too, raises serious moral concerns.

We just received information about this proposal for the first time this morning; we were not consulted in advance. Some information we have is in writing and some is oral. We will, of course, continue to press for the greatest conscience protection we can secure from the Executive Branch. But stepping away from the particulars, we note that today’s proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions. In a nation dedicated to religious liberty as its first and founding principle, we should not be limited to negotiating within these parameters. The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.

We will therefore continue—with no less vigor, no less sense of urgency—our efforts to correct this problem through the other two branches of government. For example, we renew our call on Congress to pass, and the Administration to sign, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. And we renew our call to the Catholic faithful, and to all our fellow Americans, to join together in this effort to protect religious liberty and freedom of conscience for all.

Rush: Obama Didn't Cave on the HHS Mandate

2012-02-10T22:36:00.000-05:00

Santorum at CPAC: Choose the Candidate who Enables You to Say "I Have Kept My Honor"

2012-02-10T18:50:00.000-05:00

Catholic Bishops Respond to Obama's Revised HHS Mandate

2012-02-10T15:42:00.000-05:00

From: LifeNews.com

The nation’s Catholic bishops released the following statement in response to Obama’s announcement today that he is revising his pro-abortion HHS mandate.

“The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sees initial opportunities in preserving the principle of religious freedom after President Obama’s announcement today. But the Conference continues to express concerns. “While there may be an openness to respond to some of our concerns, we reserve judgment on the details until we have them,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

‘The past three weeks have witnessed a remarkable unity of Americans from all religions or none at all worried about the erosion of religious freedom and governmental intrusion into issues of faith and morals,” he said.

‘Today’s decision to revise how individuals obtain services that are morally objectionable to religious entities and people of faith is a first step in the right direction,” Cardinal-designate Dolan said. “We hope to work with the Administration to guarantee that Americans’ consciences and our religious freedom are not harmed by these regulations.”

The Obama administration’s revisions to the birth control/abortion-causing drug mandate are not meeting with support from pro-life advocates, who say the president’s claims that it is a compromise that respects religious conscience issues is a sham. But leading pro-abortion groups are delighted. On the other hand, pro-abortion groups, including the Planned Parenthood abortion business have offered glowing praise.

The Obama administration has revised its controversial mandate that had forced religious employers to pay for health insurance coverage that includes birth control and drugs like Plan B, the morning after pill, and ella that can cause abortions.

The revised Obama mandate will make religious groups contract with insurers to offer birth control and the potentially abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost. The revised mandate will have religious employers refer women to their insurance company for coverage that still violates their moral and religious beliefs. Under this plan, every insurance company will be obligated to provide coverage at no cost.

That coverage will not only include free contraception but birth control and drugs like ella or the morning after pill that may cause abortions in some cases.

Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates have been taking verbal swings at Obama for imposing the mandate on religious employers, which is not popular in the latest public opinion poll and which even some Democrats oppose.

Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its unconstitutional mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.

Bishops across the country have spoken out against the mandate and are considering a lawsuit against it — with bishops in more than 164 locations across the United States issuing public statements against it or having letters opposing it printed in diocesan newspaper or read from the pulpit.

“We cannot — we will not comply with this unjust law,” said the letter from Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix. “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.”

Responding to the announcement, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated: “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”

“To force Americans to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable. . . It is as much an attack on access to health care as on religious freedom,” he added.

The mandate is so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”

Obama: Americans—Including Catholics--Will Still Be Forced to Buy Coverage for Sterilization, Contraception, Abortifacients

2012-02-10T15:05:00.000-05:00

From: CNSnews.com

President Barack Obama announced today that “religious organizations” such as charities and hospitals will not be forced by the federal government to directly pay insurance premiums that cover sterilization, contraception and abortifacients but that their insurance providers must nonetheless provide those services free of charge to women insured by those organizations.

Obama did not announce any change at all to the administrations’ sterilization-contraceptive-abortifacient mandate insofar as it applies to individuals and private-sector business owners who will still be forced by the government to buy and/or provide health insurance plans that cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients even if those things directly violate the teachings of their religion and their conscience.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had directly and specifically asked that the administration to rescind the regulation in its entirety so that all individuals, employers and insurers, including Catholics, who have a religious or moral objection to sterilization, contraception and abortifacients would not be forced by the federal government to act against their faith and their consciences.

The bishops said that the First Amendment guarantee of the free exercise of religion protected Catholics and others who have a religious objection to sterilization, contraception or abortion from being forced by the government to buy insurance that pays for those things.

In recent days, leaders of other religious denominations have joined their voices to those of the Catholic bishops, decrying the regulation as an attack on the religious liberty of individuals as well as institutions.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission made a forceful appeal for Baptists to resist the regulation.

“Does the government have the right to intrude on the consciences of people to force them to pay for that which they find unconscionable?” said Land. “This goes contrary to our tradition in this country and contrary to our understanding of the First Amendment's religious freedom protections.”

"In my opinion, a Baptist needs to take a stand on this issue,” said Land. “Our Baptist forefathers went to prison and died for the freedoms that we have, and now it's our responsibility in the providence of God to defend these freedoms lest they be taken away by government fiat.’

Still, President Obama did not budge today in insisting that his government will order all insurance companies in America to provide all women with free sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients—and that everyone other than a religiously based organization will be forced to pay for it, whether it violates their religious beliefs or not.

“Today, we've reached a decision on how to move forward,” said Obama. “Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services--no matter where they work. So that core principle remains.

“But if a woman’s employer is a charity or a hospital that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company--not the hospital, not the charity--will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge, without co-pays and without hassles,” said Obama.

“The result will be that religious organizations won’t have to pay for these services, and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly,” said Obama. “Let me repeat: These employers will not have to pay for, or provide, contraceptive services. But women who work at these institutions will have access to free contraceptive services, just like other women, and they'll no longer have to pay hundreds of dollars a year that could go towards paying the rent or buying groceries.

“Now, I've been confident from the start that we could work out a sensible approach here, just as I promised,” said Obama. “I understand some folks in Washington may want to treat this as another political wedge issue, but it shouldn’t be. I certainly never saw it that way. This is an issue where people of goodwill on both sides of the debate have been sorting through some very complicated questions to find a solution that works for everyone. With today’s announcement, we've done that. Religious liberty will be protected, and a law that requires free preventive care will not discriminate against women.”

Obama took no questions after making his statement.

At Catholic Masses across the country over the past two Sundays, Catholic priests have read letters from their local bishops explaining the church's view that the mandate is a direct attack on the First Amendment and calling on Catholics to resist it.

For example, in Catholic churches in Virginia on Sunday, priests read a letter from Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde and Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo that said: “In so ruling, the administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.”

“We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law,” the bishops wrote.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told HHS in September that the regulation was an “unprecedented attack on religious liberty."

Many Democratic lawmakers defended the mandate, saying an aggressive campaign was being waged to stop it.

“Those now attacking the new health-coverage requirement claim it is an assault on religious liberty, but the opposite is true,” Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Patty Murray of Washington, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Religious freedom means that Catholic women who want to follow their church's doctrine can do so, avoiding the use of contraception in any form. But the millions of American women who choose to use contraception should not be forced to follow religious doctrine, whether Catholic or non-Catholic.

Statement of the Catholic bishop of Spokane on the Obama administration's contraception mandate

2012-02-09T23:48:00.000-05:00

I saw this post at Libertas et Memoria and thought I'd share.

From: Libertas et Memoria

Bishop Cupich of Spokane has finally issued an a statement attacking the president's plan to force Catholic institutions to pay for contraception in their health care coverage. The bishop's statement may be read here. Please go and read it carefully. I have some thoughts on the statement:

First, the bishop deserves credit for this clear and direct statement. He correctly identifies the two general problems with the Obama administration's mandate: 1)

Southern Baptist leader: If Obama mandate isn’t changed, Christians will go to jail

2012-02-09T21:13:00.000-05:00

From: LifeSiteNews.com

One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans.

Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com "we will not comply" with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD.

"We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just like Dr. King wrote his from the Birmingham jail," Dr. Land said.

Dr. Land wrote an op-ed on Tuesday with Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy and research at ERLC, calling his fellow Southern Baptists and evangelical Christians throughout America to oppose any infringement on the First Amendment.

"The Obama administration has declared war on religion and freedom of conscience," they wrote. "We consider this callous requirement by the Obama administration to be a clear violation of our nation's commitment to liberty of conscience and a flagrant violation of our constitutional protection to freedom of religion."

Dr. Land told LifeSiteNews he hopes Baptist ministers will "preach from the pulpit just how serious and dangerous this initiative by the Obama administration is," and "encourage their parishioners to contact their congressmen and their senators and the president and let them know how deeply unhappy they are with this decision, and they want…legislation guaranteeing that it won’t happen again."

"It is now in the providence of God," Dr. Land said. "Our responsibility is to stand and say, ‘We will not comply with this. We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just like Dr. King wrote his from the Birmingham jail.’ We will not comply."

Dr. Land, who earned a Doctorate of Philosophy from Oxford University, has been named by Time magazine as one of .The Twenty-five Most Influential Evangelicals in America."

President Obama’s recess appointment of Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) provided an insight to the president’s views, Dr. Land said. Feldblum has said whenever religious rights come into conflict with sexual rights, that sexual rights must prevail. .That’s exactly what’s happening in the Health and Human Services contraceptive and abortifacient directive,. he said. .They are saying that a woman’s right to have free contraceptive services and free abortifacients trumps the deeply held religious convictions of Catholics and Baptists and others. That’s a war on religion..

Several of the Obama administration’s actions have convinced observers the president harbors an aversion to Christian values. "I do know hostility to religious conviction in the public square when I see it, and I see it in the Hosanna case," in which the Obama administration attempted to narrowly define the ministerial exemption in hiring, Dr. Land told LifeSiteNews.com. He called the Obama administration .radically secularist. on his weekly radio program.

The op-ed he co-authored came exactly one week after Dr. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said evangelical Christians may be required to face imprisonment over the issue. Dr. Mohler said in his daily podcast, "You at least have to admire the courage of the Roman Catholic bishops in saying they are willing to go to jail rather than to comply with this. How many evangelical presidents and pastors and leaders would be willing to do the same?."

"We're going to find out in coming months," he warned.

He said despite media coverage portraying the new regulation as a Catholic issue, "evangelicals need to stand back and . in our own terms, on our own doctrine . understand that our religious liberty is being similarly subverted and attacked."

Government encroachments on religion have long concerned Dr. Land. Last December, he joined 59 other non-Catholic religious leaders in signing a letter to Barack Obama stating, "religious organizations beyond the Catholic community have deep moral objections to a requirement that their health insurance plans must cover abortifacients."

Dr. Land and Duke noted in their op-ed that the government protects other Christians from violating their consciences by exempting pacifists from serving in the military, but "the administration is refusing to allow those who believe that abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being to follow faithfully the dictates of his or her conscience on a matter as grave as the death of an unborn child."

"A person who is not free to follow the dictates of his or her moral conscience is not free," they wrote. "Our Baptist forebears died and went to prison to secure these freedoms."

In the upcoming presidential election, Dr. Land hoped faithful voters would consider the importance of religious liberty. "This is a very serious and defining moment in American society," he said.

The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with more than16 million members and 45,000 churches in the United States.

TV Network Started by Cloistered Nun Sues Sebelius

2012-02-09T19:21:00.000-05:00

From: CNSnews.com

Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN)--founded in 1981 by Mother M. Angelica, a cloistered Roman Catholic nun belonging to the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration--has filed suit against Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and other senior officials in the Obama administration arguing that a new regulation requiring health-care plans to cover sterilizations and contraceptives—including those that cause abortions—is a violation of the organization’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.

“EWTN’s sincerely held religious beliefs prohibit it from providing coverage for contraception, sterilization, abortion, or related education and counseling,” says a complaint the network filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. The network is headquartered in Irondale, Ala.

In addition to Sebelius, the suit also names as defendants Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

EWTN says that it is the world’s largest Catholic media network. According to its complaint, it produces eight different video, radio and Internet services and reaches 217 million homes in 144 countries. The network has 175 affiliated broadcast stations in the United States alone.

“EWTN airs family and religious programming from a Catholic point of view that presents the teachings of the Catholic faith as defined by the Magisterium (teaching authority) of the Catholic Church,” the networks says in its suit. “Additionally, it provides spiritual devotions from Catholic religious practice, and airs daily live Masses and prayers. Providing more than 80% original programming, EWTN offers talk shows, children’s animation, teaching series, documentaries, and live coverage of Catholic Church events.”

In its complaint, the Catholic TV network specifically explains its adherence to Catholic teachings on abortion, contraception and sterilization—the church teachings the HHS regulation would force Catholics to violate.

“EWTN thus holds and actively professes religious beliefs that include traditional Christian teachings on the sanctity of life,” says the complaint. “It believes and teaches that each human being bears the image and likeness of God, and therefore that all human life is sacred and precious, from the moment of conception. EWTN therefore believes and teaches that abortion ends a human life and is a grave sin.”

“EWTN’s religious beliefs also include traditional Christian teaching on the nature and purpose of human sexuality,” says the complaint. “In particular, EWTN believes, in accordance with Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, that human sexuality has two primary purposes: to ‘most closely unit[e] husband and wife’ and ‘for the generation of new lives.’ Accordingly, EWTN believes and actively professes, with the Catholic Church, that ‘[t]o use this divine gift destroying, even if only partially, its meaning and its purpose is to contradict the nature both of man and of woman and of their most intimate relationship, and therefore it is to contradict also the plan of God and His Will.’

“Therefore,” complaint continues, “EWTN believes and teaches that ‘any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation, whether as an end or as a means’—including contraception and sterilization—is a grave sin.”

The complaint then says: “EWTN cannot provide health care insurance covering artificial contraception, sterilization, or abortion, or related education and counseling, without violating its deeply held religious beliefs.”

“The Mandate and Defendants’ threatened enforcement of the Mandate violate EWTN’s rights secured to it by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the complaint concludes.

The lawsuit is being handled for EWTN by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit law firm that specializes in First Amendment cases.

“The federal government cannot force people to violate their religion like this,” said Mark Rienzi, a constitutional law professor at Catholic University of America, who is the senior counsel at the Becket Fund. “Mother Angelica founded EWTN to spread the teachings of the Catholic Church—not to betray them.”

Boehner: Rescind Contraception Mandate Entirely So Catholic Individuals—as Well as Institutions—Are Not Forced to Act Against Faith

2012-02-09T16:25:00.004-05:00

From: CNSnews.com

House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday told CNSNews.com through his spokesman that it is his position that the Obama administration’s regulation ordering that all health-care plans must cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions, should be rescinded in its entirety so that neither Catholic individuals, nor Catholic business owners, nor Catholic insurers, nor Catholic institutions will be forced by the federal government to act against the teachings of the Catholic faith.

Boehner also specifically indicated he is leaving "on the table" the option of inserting language into future federal spending bills to prohibit the administration from using any money to implement the regulation.

Much of the press coverage on the controversy over the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate has erroneously presented it as a conflict between America’s Catholic bishops and the administration over the question of whether the administration will expand the “religious-employer” exemption in the current version of the regulation so that the exemption will apply to Catholic institutions such as hospitals, universities and charitable organizations.

For example, citing aides to President Barack Obama, a Wednesday New York Times article presented the issue this way.

“As the Republican presidential candidates and conservative leaders sought to frame the rule as showing President Obama's insensitivity to religious beliefs, Mr. Obama's aides promised to explore ways to make it more palatable to religious-affiliated institutions,” the Times reported.

''We certainly don't want to abridge anyone's religious freedoms, so we're going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventative care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions,'' the Times quoted Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod as telling MSNBC.

But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and lay Catholic leaders have repeatedly made clear that the regulation violates the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion not only of Catholic institutions but also of individuals, employers and insurers--Catholic or otherwise--who have a religious objection to sterilization, contraception, or abortion.

“Finally, as applied to individuals and organizations with a religious objection to contraceptives, sterilization, and related counseling and education, the HHS mandate violates various protections under the Religion Clauses and Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) and the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”),” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told HHS in comments on the regulation submitted last August.

“The exemption provides no protection at all for individuals or insurers with a moral or religious objection to contraceptives or sterilization, who will experience burdens to conscience under this new mandate,” said the bishops. “Instead, it provides protection only to employers with similar objections, and even then to a very small subset of religious employers.”

“By failing to protect insurers, individuals, most employers, or any other stakeholders with a religious objection to such items and procedures, the HHS exemption, like the mandate itself, violates the First Amendment and the APA,” the bishops said.

“In sum, we urge HHS to rescind the mandate in its entirety,” they said. “Only rescission will eliminate all of the serious moral problems the mandate creates.”

On Wednesday, House Speaker Boehner gave a speech on the House floor saying that Congress “must” act to counter the administration’s regulation and that the matter was going to be taken up by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has oversight over the Health and Human Services Department. In his speech, however, Boehner spoke of the regulation only insofar as it effects “faith-based employers.”

“This rule would require faith-based employers--including Catholic charities, schools, universities, and hospitals-- to provide services they believe are immoral,” Boehner said. “Those services include sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and devices, and contraception.”

Following the speech, CNSNews.com sent Boehner Spokesman Michael Steel two questions to clarify whether the speaker’s position was that Congress should act to protect only faith-based employers from this regulation, or also individuals, private businessmen, and insurers. Also, CNSNews.com asked if the speaker believed that the House should put language in future spending bills prohibiting the administration from using federal money to implement the regulation.

Spokesman Steel said the answer to the first question was “yes.” To the second question, Steel said “all options are on the table.”

Specifically, CNSNews.com asked: “Is it your position, Mr. Speaker, that the House should pass legislation before Aug. 1 that in keeping with the position of the U.S. Catholic bishops entirely rescinds the HHS sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation so that not only Catholic institutions (such as hospitals, universities and charitable organizations) are protected from being forced by the government to act against the teachings of the Catholic faith, but that Catholic individuals, business owners and insurers are also protected from being forced by the government to act against the teachings of their faith?

Spokesman Steel responded: “Yes, it is the position of the speaker to act to rescind this rule that violates religious freedom before Aug 1.”

Then, CNSNews.com asked: “Is it your position, Mr. Speaker, that if the House Republicans fail to persuade the Senate and President Obama to enact legislation this year entirely rescinding the HHS sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation, that the House should put language in the appropriate fiscal 2013 funding bills prohibiting the administration from implementing this regulation?”

Steel responded: “All options are on the table whether it be stand alone legislation, amendments or limitation of funds provisions.”

Cardinal-Designate Timothy Dolan "Skeptical" Of Obama's Word

2012-02-09T15:20:00.000-05:00

Adrienne's Corner: It's time for the Catholic bishops to make public ...

2012-02-08T23:52:00.002-05:00

This blog posting at Adrienne's Corner represents me as well. Thought I'd share.

From: Adrienne's Corner

By Judie Brown

In these times of attack on our faith and beliefs, Catholics must have strong leaders — leaders who will stand up for what the Church teaches. Yet this is not something that is uniformly seen throughout the hierarchy of the Church. In today's commentary, we read about some of the atrocities occurring right now in our country. Read on for Judie Brown's insights.

There is something intriguing and, at the same time, troubling about the upheaval being created by the Obama administration's dictate regarding religious institutions and the right of conscience.
Read more »

Cardinal-Designate Timothy Dolan: President Barack Obama Needs To Stop 'Intruding Into Internal Life Of Church'

2012-02-08T20:48:00.000-05:00

From: CBS New York

There was a sharp rebuke Wednesday from Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan that put even more pressure on the president to calm a widening election year uproar. The issue at hand was the president’s insistence that Catholic institutions provide free birth control to their employees.

Dolan came to the South Bronx to bless a library, but he had no blessings — just harsh words — for President Barack Obama, who wants Catholic institutions to pay for birth control, the morning after pill and other services for people who work for them.

“The federal government should do what it’s traditionally done since July 4, 1776, namely back out of intruding into the internal life of a church,” Dolan told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

The leader of the New York Archdiocese picked up support from Speaker John Boehner, who said either Obama reverses the policy or the House will.

“The federal government has drifted dangerously beyond its constitutional boundaries. This attack by the federal government on religious freedom in our country must not stand and will not stand,” Boehner said.

The attacks left the White House foundering. It wants to find some way to calm Catholic opposition, but will not back down on the policy, itself.

“I want to be clear today that the commitment to insuring the women have access to these important health care services remains very strong,” Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

It has been suggested that one avenue of compromise could include granting leeway for a church-related organization not to cover birth control, but refer employees to another insurer that will provide the coverage.

Dolan would not comment on that proposal but said, “I would welcome the fact that officials of the government are saying we need to rethink that.”

The Catholic Church is still developing its strategy on how to deal with the issue. Dolan met Wednesday with members of the Catholic League and other organizations. Sources told Kramer a massive march on Washington is one of the possibilities.

The issue has also exploded on the campaign trail. Carney made the unusual move of calling Mitt Romney by name, charging it is “ironic” for him to be against the policy, since as Massachusetts governor he presided over a similar one.

Obama 'Compromise' Could Make Contraception Mandate Worse, Says Catholic Bishops' Official

2012-02-08T13:55:00.000-05:00

From: The Weekly Standard

The Wall Street Journal and New York Times both report that President Obama may be considering a "compromise" on his mandate that religiously affiliated institutions must cover contraception and abortifacients, and both papers suggest that a compromise under consideration is applying Hawaii's contraception mandate at the federal level. But Richard Doerflinger, a top official at the United States Council of Catholic Bishops, says that in "some ways" the Hawaii model "would be worse." He writes in an email to THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

It's difficult to know what people may mean by the "Hawaii compromise." But a central feature of the Hawaii law is that every religious organization that is eligible for the exemption has to instruct all employees in how they can access all methods of contraception and sterilization locally "in an expeditious manner."

Just a few days ago the White House was saying that this is just about coverage, that no one has to be involved in getting people to the actual services they object to. It would be no improvement to say: "Sure, you don't have to include the coverage, you just have to send all your lay employees and women religious to the local Planned Parenthood clinic." The Administration's press release of January 20 hinted at such a requirement.

That would not be a compromise. In some ways it would be worse.

Doerflinger also discussed the Hawaii law in an interview yesterday with the National Catholic Register:

“I’ve reviewed the Hawaii law, and it’s not much of a compromise,” said Richard Doerflinger of the USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities and the bishops’ chief lobbyist on life issues in the nation’s capital. “The Hawaii contraceptive mandate has many of the same features as the new federal mandate.”

Like the federal rule, he said, the Hawaii bill “covers all FDA-approved ‘contraceptives’ (including drugs that can cause an abortion); and the religious exemption is very narrow (though it does not include the requirement that the religious organization serve only people of its own faith to be eligible).

“It adds an extra feature — the requirement that any religious organization that is exempt must still tell all enrollees how they may directly access contraceptive services and supplies in an expeditious manner.”

In other words, the Catholic Church must directly send women to drugs and devices that are morally wrong and can do harm to them.