Obama HHS seeks to expand anti-religious-liberty mandate

Looks like the Obama Administration has responded to objections to it’s anti-religious liberty HHS mandate by expanding its reach:

In a move that is likely to reignite the ire of religious leaders, late Friday afternoon the Obama administration announced a proposal that would require universities, including religious universities, to provide contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs to their students, as well as their employees, without a co-pay. This appears to significantly widen the originally-announced HHS mandate, which had only applied to employees.

They’re showing utter contempt for the 1st Amendment rights of the American people, and now doubling down on the offense. And this after announcing they would seek accommodation and compromise on the issue. The raw cynicism of this administration is just breath-taking.

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Hugh Hewitt: Nothing shocks when anything goes

Here is an excellent column from Hugh Hewitt at The Washington Examiner on standards of public discourse. We especially liked this part:

There is one standard for all commentary, and it ought to apply to Palin and Ms. Fluke, to President Obama and President Bush, to Justice Thomas and to Justice Kagan.

So credit nothing of a condemnation from anyone who has not first articulated his or her standard, preferably backed up with a reference to the rebukes they have handed out to themselves and their own team, and only if that standard condemns all of the profane, the vulgar and the bigoted.

and also the end:

If the country abandons the right of religious people to keep their own creeds, it can hardly complain when no creed at all exists to restrain conduct or prompt apologies when they are indeed deserved.

As they say, read the whole thing.

The Church of Obama

Another great read from Mark Steyn today at National Review Online:

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.

President Obama versus religious liberty

A very strong statement on religious liberty today from Mitt Romney in the Washington Examiner:

President Obama versus religious liberty

The Obama administration is at it again. They are now using Obamacare to impose a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away.

….

My own view is clear. I stand with the Catholic Bishops and all religious organizations in their strenuous objection to this liberty- and conscience-stifling regulation. I am committed to overturning Obamacare root and branch. If I am elected President, on day one of my administration I will issue an executive order directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue a waiver from its requirements to all 50 states. And on day one I will eliminate the Obama administration rule that compels religious institutions to violate the tenets of their own faith. Such rules don’t belong in the America that I believe in.

The America I believe in is governed by the U.S. Constitution and I will not hesitate to use the powers of the presidency to protect religious liberty.

….

What the Obama administration has done is indefensible. But this is about even more than President Obama denying America’s Catholics their constitutionally protected rights. This is about the preservation of our freedom. We must come together to make sure that these egregious violations of our Constitution do not stand.

The whole article is well worth a read.

Cain on Romney and religion

Herman Cain on the latest media-generated controversy over Mitt Romney’s religious views (via NRO):

Herman Cain refused to wade into the controversy over whether it is accurate to call Mitt Romney a Christian or not.

“I’m not running for theologian in chief,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union this morning. “I’m a lifelong Christian and what that means is one of my guiding principles for the decisions I make is I start with do the right thing. I’m not getting into that controversy. He’s a Mormon. That much I know. I’m not going to do an analysis of Mormonism vs. Christianity for the sake of answering that.”

Funny, the media seem to be much more concerned with this type of question than they were in the last presidential election cycle when Racist Reverend Wright’s parishioner was running.

Cain answered the question the way it should be answered, which is not to answer it. Theological differences are as old as religion. But they have no place in a political campaign. Values are a separate issue. It matters greatly if a candidate for office accepts or rejects America’s traditional Judeo-Christian values. But people with very different theological views can and do advocate the right values. All the candidates should follow Cain’s lead and refuse to play the media’s game.

On a related note, it was unfortunate to hear some conservatives, most notably William Bennett, attribute what is a legitimate theological debate to bigotry. Perhaps he meant only that it was bigotry in the context of whether to support a political candidate. In any case, theological differences are not bigotry. Bennett should know better than to use that kind of left-wing “argumentation” style.

New York Times applies religious test to Governor Rick Perry of Texas

From The New York Times, “Rally Raises Anew Question of the Boundaries of Perry’s Faith“:

Few political figures in America have so consistently and so unabashedly intermingled their personal faith and their public persona, peppering speeches with quotations from Scripture, speaking from the pulpit at churches, regularly meeting and strategizing with evangelical Christians and even, in one recent speech, equating public office with the ministry.

This reminded us of Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day Prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

….

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

FDR – right-wing religious extremist.

Breaking News from 1517: Lutheran Church “Anti-Catholic”

This story from James Oliphant at the Los Angeles Times is just hilarious. It just shows such a glaring ignorance of basic Christian history and theology he should be embarrassed. But he obviously doesn’t know enough to be embarrassed.

Taking a page from President Obama’s political playbook, Michele Bachmann has formally left a church in Minnesota accused of holding anti-Catholic views.

Wait, hold on a minute! The Lutheran Church is “anti-Catholic”? Hasn’t this been the case since, oh, 1517 or so? Has Oliphant ever heard of Martin Luther? Churches have theological disagreements. To talk about this fact as if it can’t be based on anything more than some invidious prejudice is ridiculous. It only demonstrates the ignorance and/or prejudice of the writer. Liberals always preach “diversity”, but then they portray any disagreement as bias or prejudice.

The controversy began when someone doing opposition research on Michele Bachmann read a statement on the website of her former church in Minnesota.

Earlier this week, the Atlantic reported that that the synod’s website contains a statement that equates the pope with the antichrist. The writer, Joshua Green, also spoke with [Joel] Hochmuth [a spokesman for the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod], who explained the statement thusly:

“Some people have this vision of a little devil running around with horns and red pointy ears. (Martin) Luther was clear that by ‘antichrist’ [he meant] anybody who puts himself up in place of Christ. Luther never bought the idea of the Pope being God’s voice in today’s world. He believed Scripture is God’s word.”

The comparison of the Protestant Reformation to the rants of Obama’s racist pastor Jeremiah Wright is also a nice touch.

Obama left his church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, in May 2008 after incendiary sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surfaced in the heat of his bitter presidential fight with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton

Can Oliphant really not see any difference between a centuries-old theological disagreement and Wright’s contemporary racist, anti-American rants?

It’s pretty typical for secular liberal journalists to be ignorant of religion, this is just one glaring example out of many.

Governor says he’s a Christian, media, activists outraged

Occasionally, some public figure will say something perfectly in line with traditional Christianity, and the forces of “tolerance” in America, in the media, professional grievance groups, bloggers, etc, will react in horror and outrage. By so doing, they merely display their own ignorance and prejudice.

The latest example, from the AP, via Yahoo News:

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley told a church crowd just moments into his new administration that those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior are not his brothers and sisters, shocking some critics who questioned Tuesday whether he can be fair to non-Christians.

“Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother,” Bentley said Monday, his inauguration day, according to The Birmingham News.

Christians routinely refer to each other as brothers and sisters. That’s essentially all Governor Bentley said, it’s basically a tautology. Any journalist really should have some basic understanding of the subject he’s covering before writing an article on that subject. What’s offensive is for these crackpots to attack the governor simply for expressing his faith. There’s nothing at all offensive about any American expressing his faith, or wishing for others to join his faith.

But the reaction from advocates of “diversity” and “tolerance” was swift. From ABC News:

“We live in a country that is hugely diverse,” said David Silverman, president of American Atheists, the country’s oldest atheist civil rights group. “The governor basically said: ‘If you’re not like me, you’re second class.’ This is a man puts the Bible above the Constitution and his preacher above the president. His words are disgusting and bigoted and reinforce Alabama’s reputation for being backward and bigoted.”

The governor said no such thing. Mr. Silverman is merely projecting his own bigotry. If you object to Christians stating the basic tenets of their faith in public, then you do not in fact favor diversity or tolerance. And calling the group a “civil rights group” while they’re objecting to an American exercising his First Amendment free exercise rights was an especially nice touch.

Similarly, an activist with the Anti-Defamation League weighed in with some defamation:

A spokesman for the Anti Defamation League said the governor’s comments were “stunning” and “distressing” and were tantamount to proselytizing.

“It is stunning to me that he’d make those remarks. It’s distressing because of the suggestion that he feels that people who aren’t Christian are not entitled to love and respect,” said Bill Nigut, the ADL’s regional director.

“On the day that he is sworn in as governor, he’s sending a statement to the public saying if you’re not Christian you can’t be with me. From our point of view that is proselytizing for Christianity and coming very close to a violation of the First Amendment.”

But Governor Bentley didn’t say anything to suggest that non-Christians aren’t entitled to love or respect. Again, Mr. Nigut is projecting his own prejudice onto the governor. Being pro- your own group in no sense suggests hostility to other groups. Would Mr. Nigut accept the premise that if he said he was a proud Jew or expressed a special affinity for fellow Jews, that was anti-Christian, or anti-Muslim, or anti-anything? The idea is absurd, as is the ridiculous and somewhat Orwellian notion that an exercise of free expression violates the First Amendment.

More at RedState, well said.

Lincoln, FDR, JFK, Clinton, McCain-Palin: neocon holy warriors all?

Here is a great video in rebuttal to one of the many mischaracterizations of Sarah Palin that have gained traction in the DeMSM effort to discredit her. According to the narrative from the left, Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton must all be extremist neocon theocrats akin to the Taliban.

The repeated attempts by the radical secularist left to try to airbrush our Judeo-Christian foundations from American culture and history don’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. On the other hand, as we’ve noted for years, liberals don’t object to bringing religion into politics at all if it’s used to further a left-wing agenda.

Joe Biden vs. Barack Obama and the Democratic Party Platform

The Democratic Party platform:

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right
to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.

Joe Biden this morning on Meet the Press:

MR. BROKAW: But if you, you believe that life begins at conception, and you’ve also voted for abortion rights…

SEN. BIDEN: No, what a voted against curtailing the right, criminalizing abortion. I voted against telling everyone else in the country that they have to accept my religiously based view that it’s a moment of conception. There is a debate in our church, as Cardinal Egan would acknowledge, that’s existed. Back in “Summa Theologia,” when Thomas Aquinas wrote “Summa Theologia,” he said there was no–it didn’t occur until quickening, 40 days after conception. How am I going out and tell you, if you or anyone else that you must insist upon my view that is based on a matter of faith? And that’s the reason I haven’t. But then again, I also don’t support a lot of other things. I don’t support public, public funding. I don’t, because that flips the burden.

Biden disagrees with the official position of his party – that Americans who believe abortion is immoral should be forced to pay for them. While they were on the topic, Brokaw should have asked Biden about Obama’s opposition to the law protecting infants born alive after botched abortion attempts in Illinois.

Speaking of the platform, Biden should also be asked, in light of his answer on abortion, about the Democrats’ efforts to force Americans who disagree to accept and treat same-sex “marriage” as identical to marriage.