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.

Advertisement

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.

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.

Mitt Romney, “Faith in America”

The speech given today by Mitt Romney was pretty good and effective, though we would have left out this section:

There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.

There is a proper distinction to be made with regard to the political sphere between values and theology. Most of Romney’s speech discussed broadly shared American values derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition. The quote above answered a theological point, and so deviated from the overall theme of the speech somewhat. But he didn’t dwell on it, so it wasn’t a major diversion. Overall, an effective and compelling presentation.

More evidence liberal values harm children

From the AP, of all places, (via Yahoo News):

…many scholars and front-line caseworkers interviewed by The Associated Press see the abusive-boyfriend syndrome as part of a broader trend that deeply worries them. They note an ever-increasing share of America’s children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures.

“This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation,” said Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. “Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, ‘What’s the harm?’ The harm is we’re increasing a pattern of relationships that’s not good for children.”

Liberals have been arguing for decades that family structure doesn’t matter, “all kids need is love” and all that. The social stigma has been all but stripped away from illegitimacy, shacking up, etc. As this article illustrates, too many children have paid the price. Yet liberals consider themselves the champions of children’s welfare because they support more government funding for various programs purportedly aimed at children. Essentially, putting more kids on the government dole = caring more about kids, in the minds of many on the left.

“Not Nobel Winners”

In their editorial “Not Nobel Winners” The Wall Street Journal offers some perspective on what a joke it was to award the “peace” prize to Forest Gore (Mama always said, everybody but me and my jetsetting friends should use less energy).

…

These men and women put their own lives and livelihoods at risk by working to rid the world of violence and oppression. Let us hope they survive the coming year so that the Nobel Prize Committee might consider them for the 2008 award.

As Bill Kristol noted on Fox News Sunday, Gore won the award merely for bloviating about the environment in a movie. But that’s typical of the left – talking about an issue or making a symbolic gesture is just as good as actually doing something.