Category Archives: supreme court
Religious Freedom
Religious freedom has been taking a beating.
A National Review editorial last week made the point that during the Clinton administration Democrats in Congress felt the Supreme Court had too narrow a view of religious liberty. As a result the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by President Clinton.
Along comes the Affordable Care Act (ACA), …which empowered the Obama administration to issue regulations that burdened a religious liberty..
This leaves Democrats in a political pickle. They passed a law to protect religious freedom, but they do not desire to protect religious freedom when doing so interrupts their risible war-on-women soap opera.
Senator Udall, in his rhetoric, has been particularly dishonest about this, characterizing the Hobby Lobby decision as mandating that women “have to ask their bosses for a permission slip to access common forms of birth control.” In fact, the decision does no such thing: Hobby Lobby has nothing to do with the right to do anything, but rather with the right to not do something.
Elsewhere on the religious freedom front, the Islamic State of Iraq has ordered Christians to either pay jizya (a religious tax), convert to Islam, or die.
The Hobby Lobby Lobby
Georgetown Law School celebrity, Sandra Fluke wrote a column in the Washington Post claiming that the Hobby Lobby decision is an attack on women because it denies them birth control.
In sum, the anti-choice movement wants to limit not just affordable access, but all access to abortion and birth control, whether it is backed by the government, by employers, or purchased by private citizens. It is an attack at all levels, and today’s decision is just another success in these efforts.
Actually, Hobby Lobby does pay for most birth control but not four types it considers to be a forms of abortion. Still, Hobby Lobby can’t deny those four items to anyone. They’re legal and relatively cheap.
Liberal Fascism author, Jonah Goldberg wrote in a column yesterday, “The notion that denying a subsidy for a product is equivalent to banning that product is one of the odder tenets of contemporary liberalism”. He began that piece observing protesters holding signs that read “Birth Control: Not My Boss’s Business.” Hobby Lobby and the Supreme Court seem to agree.
Messin’ with Obama
Last week, in Minnesota, President Obama complained that Republicans were “messin”” with him and “calling him names“. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a president say that before. Well, maybe one time. Here‘s President Obama last year.
The constitutional lawyer-in-chief added on Monday that the failure of Congress to get on board with his agenda would be justification for him to further go it alone.
Messin’ with Obama
This came after a week of of being rebuked by the Supreme Court for executive overreach.
Supine Senate
The Supreme Court came to the rescue of the Supine Senate with a 9-0 ruling against President Obama. Unable to get confirmation for three appointees to the NLRB, King Barack simply declared the Senate in recess. He then made recess appointments which don’t require senate approval.
Justice Breyer stated the obvious in the majority opinion. Namely, Congress, as an equal branch of government, “is in session when it says it is”. Constitutional Scholar Jonathan Turley called the ruling a shot across the bow for the president’s go it alone strategy.
Supine Senate
Kimberly Strassel says it came to this because “Congressional Democrats watch supinely as the president treads on their powers.”
West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd —onetime Senate majority leader and fierce defender of congressional power—would have laid down on train tracks to protest Mr. Obama’s recess appointments when the Senate was not in recess.
“Having been supine for years in the face of these encroachments, Congress is stirring”, says Dr. Krauthammer in a column titled Government by Fiat.
The Republican House is preparing a novel approach to acquiring legal standing before the courts to challenge these gross executive usurpations. Nancy Pelosi, reflecting the narrowness of both her partisanship and her vision, dismisses this as a “subterfuge.”
She won’t be saying that on the day Democrats lose the White House. Then, cheered on by a suddenly inflamed media, the Democrats will no doubt express horror at such constitutional overreach.
IRS Shared Responsibility Payment
In America we’re innocent until proven guilty. Thanks to the fifth amendment we aren’t required to testify against ourselves. That would be the same fifth amendment IRS boss Lois Lerner invoked to avoid testifying about IRS harassment of conservative groups.
As it happens, the one area where we don’t have fifth amendment protection is when it comes to reporting our obligations to the IRS.
In order to bestow on the federal government the power to force us to buy health insurance, Chief Justice Roberts deemed the penalty for not buying insurance to be a tax. That’s because while the U.S. Constitution overlooked insurance sales, it does give Congress the power to tax.
Being a tax, we are required to prove to the IRS that we don’t owe it.
IRS
To soften the blow the IRS isn’t calling this tax the Individual Mandate to Violate of Our Constitutional Rights. They are calling it your Shared Responsibility Payment. Kind of has a ring to it – the Affordable Care Act’s Shared Responsibility Payment.
Where the hell are we?
Just for the fun of it if you want to hear Obama insist again to George Stephanopoulos that the mandate isn’t a tax Click here. (You’ll have to watch a short commercial but it’s worth it.)
