The White House today announced a compromise for religious groups lambasting a recent mandate requiring health insurers to cover contraception as a preventive service. The federal government will now be extending an exemption of the mandate to religious organizations — including faith-based hospitals.

Under the new policy announced today, women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she works. The policy also ensures that if a woman works for religious employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide contraception coverage but her insurance company will be required to offer contraceptive care free of charge.

The new policy ensures women can get contraception without paying a co-pay and addresses important concerns raised by religious groups by ensuring that objecting religious employers will not have to provide contraceptive coverage or refer women to organizations that provide contraception.”

More HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

(Reuters) A U.S. Roman Catholic television network said on Thursday it has filed suit in federal court to block President Barack Obama’s new rule on contraceptives, while a Catholic Church leader and top Republicans stepped up their criticism of Obama.

The rule, implemented on January 20, requires religious-oriented groups such as charities, hospitals and universities, but not churches, to provide coverage for birth control as other health insurance providers must do. The Catholic Church opposes most methods of birth control.

EWTN Global Catholic Network said it filed its case in U.S. District Court in Birmingham, Alabama against the U.S. Department of Health Human Services and other government agencies seeking to stop the imposition of the rule. The case asks the court to find the rule unconstitutional, it said.

The rule itself is part of ObamaCare, and if one group is completely exempted, then ObamaCare is then in violation of equal protection under the law (14th Amendment, Preamble of the Constitution, and Declaration of Independence). But, if the rule applies to all, then ObamaCare is in violation of the 1st, which states that “Congress shall pass no law….prohibiting the free exercise thereof (of religion). I have to wonder if challenging simply the rule has anything to do with so many Catholic institutions supporting the health care reform fiasco. I can’t find anything that shows that EWTN supported it, but….

Anyhow

In another development, Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan, who is the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called on Obama to back off from the rule and said it contradicted assurances Obama gave him during a White House meeting in November.

Ah. So, like so many liberals, Archbishop Dolan figured he wouldn’t actually have to be a part of a restrictive, overbearing law he supported. He figured he would be exempt. Kinda like how Liberals love the thought of higher taxes and globull warming restrictions, but always for That Guy.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

ACLU:

The American Civil Liberty Union announced today that President Obama’s decision to mandate coverage for birth control does not violate religious liberty.
The ACLU’s Alicia Gay warns that the “powerful lobbying arm of the Catholic Church” mistakenly claims that the HHS contraception mandate violates their religious liberty.
Individuals who choose not to pay for employees’ contraceptives, the ACLU counters, are forcing their beliefs on their employees.

“The fundamental promise of religious liberty in this country doesn’t create a right to impose those views on others, including ignoring civil rights laws or denying critical health care,” Gay insists.

Somehow in the ACLU’s backwards world they think that the “wall of separation” between church and state is only for the church to not infringe upon the government. It is laughable because the founders’ clear intent was to keep government out of religion. It isn’t shocking, they’ve held this belief forever. If an individual wants to mention Jesus in a graduation speech they think it is the beginning of the end, but government forcing a religion to violate its own beliefs is A OK with this dangerous organization.

Just look at this sentence: “Individuals who choose not to pay for employees’ contraceptives, the ACLU counters, are forcing their beliefs on their employees.” So, according to ACLU illogic individuals who do not pay for other people’s contraceptives are somehow forcing their beliefs on others. But somehow on the same coin….the government forcing people who do not believe in contraceptives to pay for those that do are not forcing their beliefs on others. It makes your head spin.

Ed Morrissey is all over this:

The rights in the Constitution are not granted to American citizens because the government decided to offer them beneficently at their discretion. They exist in the document as a testament to our natural rights, part of our innate humanness, and are detailed in the Constitution as a bar to government’s overreach in trampling them. If the ACLU can’t figure that much out, then not only have they jumped the shark, they’ve nuked the fridge and made themselves entirely irrelevant except for the elitist crowd that cheers on tyranny. And that is exactly what has happened with this HHS mandate.

Rhymes With Right:

The ACLU seems to thinkt that if Catholic institutions are not forced to pay for the birth control, sterilization, and abortions of their employees that some substantive right is being violated. That is nonsensical – as nonsensical as arguing that a Jewish nursing home with a kosher kitchen failing to provide bacon and pork products to its non-Jewish employees is somehow an unlawful and illegitimate imposition of Judaism upon those employees.

The reality here is that the ACLU isn’t concerned about the First Amendment here. It is instead concerned about the perpetual extension of the abortion culture in America. As a result, they are willing to see the federal government require that those with moral scruples against abortion be forced to burn a little incense at the altar of Margaret Sanger – or be crushed by the instruments of the state in the same way that the ancient Romans sought to crush the early Christian community for refusing to make such sacrifices at the altar of the emperors.

This isn’t new for the ACLU. They have always been hypocrites when it comes to the first amendment, especially if it conflicts with the abortion agenda. Abortion has always trumped the 1st Amendment as the ACLU’s top priority.

Also see: PJ Tattler
The Barber Shop

(Washington Examiner) “Let’s see it,” a frustrated Sen. Jeff Sessions said on the Senate floor Monday afternoon. “Let’s bring it forward.”

By “it,” Sessions meant a Democratic proposal for a 2012 federal budget. In recent days Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, has been asking, pushing, pleading, cajoling and begging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put forward a Democratic plan. So far, Reid has steadfastly refused.

That’s nothing new. The last time the Senate passed a budget was April 29, 2009, which was, if you are counting — and Jeff Sessions is — 755 days ago.

Oh, wait, my mistake, that’s annoying, that was Byron York writing last year. Let’s move to this year

(The Hill) Senate Democratic leaders on Friday said they do not intend to bring a fiscal 2013 budget up for a floor vote.

“We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year — it’s done, we don’t need to do it,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters on Friday.

Reid and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) argued that the debt-limit agreement in August directs spending for the next year and said Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) has already asked the heads of the subcommittees to write their appropriations bills for fiscal 2013.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) has said he would probably mark up a budget resolution for 2013, but Reid recently told the Hill he didn’t expect any floor action on a measure produced by the panel.

And then we have

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who is working on his own budget plan, tweeted Friday that Senate Democrats “?confirm they’ve given up on budgeting. What a disgrace. Reid’s refusal to budget is a recipe for crisis.?”

Ryan has said that Democrats should be embarrassed to claim the debt deal as their blueprint because it “fell far, far short of solving this country’s fiscal problems.”

“It’s been more than 1,000 days since Senate Democrats have offered a budget plan to the American people,” Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the budget committee, said in a statement. “Now, once again, the Senate’s ineffectual Democrat majority balks at the task of leadership.”

Obviously, this has to be Bush’s fault in some manner or form. I’m not sure how or why, but, definitely Bush’s fault for this complete abdication of responsibility by Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats. It’s not like that pesky Constitution says

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

Technically, I suppose we could generously consider the aforementioned debt ceiling agreement to be a “consequence of appropriations,” but that would be very charitable for FY2012 and certainly does not cover Fiscal 2013. The House GOP need to make sure they go on record with a true budget, brought to the floor and passed. They’ve done that for FY2012 already. Multiple times. The Democrat controlled Senate refuses to pass one, which is quite understandable, what with the next general election coming up. They’ve decided that there is less damage in abdicating their responsibilities than in showing the American public what they intend to do with the People’s money.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Hat tip to Allahpundit that who says:

A constitution is as good as the political culture that surrounds it. Ginsburg would have been better off reminding Egyptian TV of that.

Please! This is one of the main reasons that you need to vote against Obama when it is time. I don’t want him to have the chance to appoint another justice as liberal as this one! Perhaps she should recuse herself from any rulings based on Constitutional grounds since she isn’t so fond of our Constitution. Or maybe she should move to South Africa!

Others: Jeff Goldstein

Skip ahead on the video to 9:28.

One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a Libertarianish right.
They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues.
That is not how traditional conservatives view the world. There is no such society that I’m aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.”
- Rick Santorum

Radical individualism? What would that be? Freedom? I don’t want someone to legislate morality and push their social beliefs from the federal level on me. The Constitution only gives the federal government power over what it lists and the rest is reserved for the states. It seems like all the other candidates understand this. Where in the world did people get this idea that we don’t want the Federal government in our bedrooms or want low taxes? Radical individualists!

I don’t want to smear this guy. Before I saw this I thought he was a good conservative option. Is this video out of context? Just wondering…

Meanwhile Santorum talks about how much more consistent his history is than his rivals.

Hat tip: The Green Room

(Fox News Latino) A senior member of the Obama administration said Thursday that the administration plans to change a rule to reduce the time the spouses and children of undocumented immigrants are separated from citizen relatives while they try to win legal status in the United States

Currently, undocumented immigrants must leave the country before they can ask the government to waive a three- to 10-year ban on legally coming back to the U.S. The length of the ban depends on how long they have lived in the U.S. without permission.

The official said the new rule would let children and spouses of citizens ask the government to decide on the waiver request before the undocumented immigrant heads to his or her home country to apply for a visa. The undocumented immigrants still must go home to finish the visa process to come back to the U.S., but getting the waiver ahead of time could reduce the time an undocumented immigrant is out of the country.

The waiver shift is the latest move by President Barack Obama to make changes to immigration policy without congressional action. Congressional Republicans repeatedly have criticized the administration for policy changes they describe as providing “backdoor amnesty” to undocumented immigrants.

It’s not so much Obama showing a clear lack of respect for the People’s House, ie, Congress, as it is 1) Obama attempting to create political issues with which to fight the GOP, and 2), and more importantly, the fact that Obama has never been a real leader, has no skills as a leader, and becomes petulant and therefore unwilling to do the hard work necessary to reach across the aisle and make accommodations with the opposition Party, who represent specific parts of the United States as laid out by the Constitution. Every other president has had to do this, and has worked, or at least attempted to work, with the opposition party. That’s too difficult for Emperor Obama. Funny how he keeps calling himself a “Constitutional Professor”: who’s constitution, Venezuela’s? Iran’s?

That said, if the GOP plays their cards right (sometimes a big “if”), they can use Obama’s unilateral extension of unchecked power grabs against him during the General Election, and perhaps tie it in to the Congressional Democrats. Perhaps some videos of Democrats complaining about Bush unilaterally taking on new powers juxtaposed with Obama actually doing just that.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Politico) The number of officers killed in the line of duty jumped 13 percent in 2011 compared with the year before — and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder condemned the increase as “a devastating and unacceptable trend” that he blamed on illegal firearms.

The number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty rose to 173 this year, from 153 in 2010, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund announced Wednesday. This year’s figure is 23 percent higher than 122 killed in the line of duty in 2009.

So, the guns themselves are illegal? Er, no

Holder said “too many guns have fallen into the hands of those who are not legally permitted to possess them,” in explaining the increase.

So, what does Holder propose to do?

“This is a devastating and unacceptable trend. Each of these deaths is a tragic reminder of the threats that law enforcement officers face each day,” Holder in a statement. “I want to assure the family members and loved ones who have mourned the loss of these heroes that we are responding to this year’s increased violence with renewed vigilance and will do everything within our power — and use every tool at our disposal — to keep our police officers safe.”

You know what else is a devastating and unacceptable trend? Hundreds of Mexicans being killed by guns allowed to walk into Mexico illegally, thanks to operations under the Department of Justice. Also, an AG that lies about it.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(The Politico) Barack Obama offered a spirited defense of his presidency in an interview that aired Sunday on “60 Minutes,” framing the 2012 election as a “contrast in visions.”

Stressing that the views that got him elected in 2008 still drive him, even as many supporters voice dissatisfaction, Obama said he is still determined to change Washington and to make ordinary Americans’ lives better.

“I didn’t overpromise. And I didn’t underestimate how tough this was going to be,” Obama said in the sitdown with CBS News’s Steve Kroft that was conducted on two days this week, in Washington and also in Osawatomie, Kan., where the president on Tuesday delivered a speech calling this a “make-or-break moment” for working and middle class Americans.

Really? He promised to completely change Washington. He promised to “fundamentally transform America.” His administration promised that the Stimulus would work. He promised to “restore America’s standing in the world (which Democrats had already torn down)”. He promised to have all troops out of Iraq within 16 months. That he would close Guantanamo Bay detention facility. He promised quite a lot of things, and most Obama promises have expiration dates.

The vision he offered in 2008 was something he “always believed … was a long-term project,” Obama told Kroft. “Reversing a culture here in Washington, dominated by special interests, it was going to take more than a year, it was going to take more than two years. It was going to take more than one term.”

The vision was “hope and change”. The policy was reversing a culture that he was part of as a sitting US Senator, and made even worse when he took office. The Stimulus and health care bills, among others, were all about special interests. Special interests show up at the White House on a constant basis. He panders to special interests all the time. What he can’t do is lead.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

“Atheists and radical church-state separatists have taken particular offense to the continued uttering of the Pledge of Allegiance. To these individuals, the words “under God” have no place in the public square, even when utterances are voluntary in nature.

Now, there’s a new epicenter in the debate over the Pledge. Following the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the University of Connecticut’s interim athletic director, Paul Pendergast, decided to add the recitation as a viable way for individuals to remember both the nation and U.S. troops.

Following his decision, the Pledge was first uttered after a home football game on September 16 and the response was so positive that it was extended to all football and basketball games.

Geno Auriemma, UConn‘s women’s basketball coach, agrees with the decision to include it and has been open about his support for saying the Pledge. ”It’s like anything else, you’re gonna have people that complain about it and people that love it,” he said at a press conference last week. “And then you have the wackos that say ‘well we shouldn’t bring God into this,‘ because you have to say ’one nation under God’ right?”

The decision, which has now led to the Pledge being uttered before most athletic games, is angering fans who believe the action violates the nation’s separation of church and state sentiment. Others claim that it puts non-American athletes in an unfair position — even though these individuals are obviously studying on U.S. soil and can opt out of pledging any allegiance to the country.

Some legal experts, though they may personally disagree, claim that the university is within legal bounds — so long as the pledge remains optional.

Source

Hearing someone else say something patriotic is going to do some terrible damage to you? What rubbish! This is just the “hate America” brigade at work.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here