The Patriot Post® · One Small Victory for Religious Liberty

The Foundation

“[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men.” –John Adams

Inspiration

“We received wonderful news late [Friday] afternoon that the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had granted an injunction in favor of our clients, Frank and Phil Gilardi and their two companies, preventing application of the HHS Mandate against them until their appeal is fully resolved. The Mandate was set to apply on April 1st, when the companies’ health plans were to be renewed. … The Gilardis are Catholic, and they run their companies pursuant to their faith. In keeping with their Catholic faith, for at least the last ten years, the Gilardis have ensured that they do not pay for any contraceptive methods, including abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization procedures in their employee health plan. If their employees choose to purchase such products and services with their own money, they are free to do so. The HHS Mandate, however, would require the Gilardis and their companies to pay for such products and services in violation of their Catholic faith. Failure to comply would result in annual penalties of more than $14 million dollars. … [T]he Mandate does not apply to our clients while their case proceeds on appeal, and they will not have to start paying for products and services on April 1st that run contrary to their religious beliefs.” –The American Center for Law and Justice

Political Futures

“When former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean began campaigning for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, he would regularly say in his stump speech, ‘I am tired of fighting elections on guns, God and gays. We’re going to fight this election on our turf, which is going to be jobs, education and health care.’ Fast-forward 10 years to the third month of President Obama’s second term. Suddenly, the Democrats’ turf doesn’t look so friendly anymore. It’s not hard to see why they’re changing gears to fight a culture war of their own choosing. The U.S. economy is still suffering through the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression. … Suddenly, guns, God and gays don’t look so bad as key issues for the Democratic Party. … Democrats, detecting a sudden shift in public opinion on the issue [of same-sex ‘marriage’], are just now starting to lead from behind. Unless the economy markedly improves in the near future, or Obamacare is miraculously implemented without a hitch, expect Obama and the White House to turn the 2014 election into an all-out culture war centered around gun control and gay marriage. This is the only turf that appears remotely friendly to them these days.” –The Washington Examiner

Government

“The farce that is the Supreme Court of the United States has now taken up a new cause: same-sex marriage. To push that cause, the anti-Constitutional members of the Supreme Court prepared to declare that the federal government cannot define marriage for the purpose of federal benefits under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). This is the same Supreme Court that declared last year that the federal government can force individuals to buy health insurance. To simplify, then: The federal government can’t define how federal cash gets spent, but it can define how your cash gets spent. There is no logical principle that undergirds any of this.” –columnist Ben Shapiro

Re: The Left

“No progressive 100 years ago could have conceived of gay marriage. In fact, merely a decade-and-a-half ago, the entirety of the Democratic Party supported traditional marriage, codified under law. … [F]or progressives, where’s their next redefinition in the ongoing process of redefining marriage? Does the evolution end with one man and one woman, or one man and one man, or one woman and one woman? Why could it not next progress to one man and multiple women? Could it involve an adult and a minor? Could their evolving redefinition include first cousins or a parent and child? Could it include multiple heterosexuals or homosexuals in single or even joint or group spousal relationships? The answer: progressives, by their very definition, cannot answer you. We do know, however, that progressives are happy to do with marriage what they do with everything: hand it over to the federal government. Render under government what is government’s. And what is government’s province? It’s anything progressives decide. … [Conservatives] can tell you our end-goal, our ideal. Progressives cannot. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a train-wreck of an ideology, with literally no end to its havoc. It is currently careening into the most fundamental building block of human civilization: the family.” –professor and author Dr. Paul Kengor

Faith and Family

“In recent decades, marriage has been weakened by a revisionist view that it is more about adults’ desires than children’s needs. This view reduces marriage primarily to intense emotional bonds. If marriage were just intense emotional regard, marital norms would make no sense as a principled matter. There is no reason of principle that requires an emotional union to be permanent. Or limited to two persons. Or sexual, much less sexually exclusive (as opposed to ‘open’). Or inherently oriented to family life and shaped by its demands. Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children and deny the importance of mothers and fathers. It would deny, as a matter of policy, the ideal that children need a mother and a father. … It would be very difficult for the law to send a message that fathers matter once it had redefined marriage to make fathers optional.” –Heritage Foundation’s Ryan T. Anderson

The Gipper

“Here in America, religious beliefs are central to our founding principles. We draw special strength from our unity as a people who trust in God, and from the lessons for us and our children in our rituals. … Christians [celebrated] with their families the resurrection of Christ, His victory over death. We will remember that He gave His body and His blood – washing clean the faults and the shortcomings of the world. In our rejoicing we will renew the hope that is ours through the risen Lord.” –Ronald Reagan

Culture

“Abortionist Kermit Gosnell is on trial in Philadelphia, and not just for killing babies outside the womb, but also for killing a mother through reckless use of anesthesia. Network TV coverage of the trial? Zero on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, NPR and PBS. … They’re not unaware of it. CBS aired one story after the initial clinic raid in 2011. … CBS even passed along that Gosnell’s clinic was described as a ‘house of horrors.’ Now it’s in court, and the networks can’t find any horrors. … [According to] the AP: ‘A medical assistant told a jury Tuesday that she snipped the spines of at least 10 babies during unorthodox abortions at a West Philadelphia clinic, at the direction of the clinic’s owner.’ … It gets more grotesque at every turn. Clinic assistant Adrienne Moton testified she took a photo of the child described as ‘Baby A’ with her cell phone before Dr. Gosnell took the baby out of the room. … ‘I just felt he could have had a chance. … He could have been born any day.’ Another Gosnell assistant said the abortionist joked about one child he murdered: ‘This baby is big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.’ … ABC, CBS and NBC piled up 96 stories on Todd Akin’s medically inept comments on rape and abortion and also wallowed in outrage over Richard Mourdock’s remarks on God’s will and a child conceived in rape. Their pro-life rhetoric was sold as a major scandal. It’s unbelievable that Dr. Gosnell’s trial for his actions inside his ‘house of horrors’ haven’t drawn one network story.” –columnist L. Brent Bozell

For the Record

“Political correctness crosses a line when it no longer conveys stupidity but pathetic weakness to our enemies. Last Friday, the U.S. Army formally decided not to award Purple Heart medals to the victims of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, which claimed 13 lives and wounded 32 people. The Army preposterously claims that handing out medals would damage Major Nidal Hasan’s ‘ability to receive a fair trial.’ The Army issued a ‘position paper’ in which it expressed concern that awarding the medal to the shooting victims ‘would set the stage for a formal declaration that Major Hasan is a terrorist.’ This is because the Purple Heart is awarded to those who have been ‘wounded or killed in any action against an enemy of the United States.’ But Hasan clearly was a terrorist. … The FBI and Congress have found his carnage to be an act of terrorism, while the Obama administration insists it was an incident of ‘workplace violence.’ … Neal Sher, a New York lawyer who represents the Fort Hood victims, called the Army’s findings ‘rubbish.’ ‘These victims have been given the back of the hand by their government,’ he claimed. I’ll go further. In its absurd ruling the Obama administration has given them a kick in the gut.” –National Review’s John Fund

Essential Liberty

“Nuclear weapons give North Korea an impregnable strategic defense, but that’s not enough for the regime to survive. It also needs money, and the country is an economic basket case. International sanctions, especially U.S. Treasury sanctions, have constricted North Korea’s ability to get money from the sale of missiles, counterfeit cigarettes, counterfeit dollars, and other contraband – long its main sources of income. It may be reaching a point of desperation where brandishing the threat of war – including nuclear war – is its only way it can get the money that it desperately needs. Congress needs to be on guard for any administration request for assistance funds for North Korea. Expensive overflights by stealth bombers won’t mean a thing if the administration quietly capitulates to North Korea’s demands. … The only course that’s open to us now is to avoid giving in to blackmail while hoping that the inevitable demise of the regime comes sooner rather than later, and without a major upheaval. Rather than oblige North Korean propaganda with tit-for-tat demonstrations that serve no strategic purpose, the more prudent response is to yawn and think about something else.” –Mario Loyola, Director of the Center for Tenth Amendment Studies

Opinion in Brief

“Those who believe that blatant thievery of the sort which Cypriot depositors are about to suffer cannot happen in Barack Obama’s America are overlooking a vital truth about leftists and their relentless pursuit of agenda items. Specifically, the confiscation of wealth in Cypress is based on the same disregard (disdain) for individual property rights and blind hatred for the successful that drives Obama and Democrats to use the ‘rich’ as a convenient punching bag to counter the mindless spending and fiduciary recklessness that have left America in a $16.3 trillion deficit hole, with no relief in sight. As Obama demonstrated last November, when practiced with sinister skill and cunning, class warfare can win elections. Indeed, Obama’s main election strategy was to attack people of means and suggest that all of America’s economic woes could be resolved if only the rich were forced to pay their ‘fair share.’ … Unfortunately, that warped thinking also causes Marxists to ignore the fact that ‘the rich’ have the Constitutional right to be treated as equal and without the wicked bias and discrimination so pervasive in the White House and US Senate. Can’t happen here? Just remember the brutal force used by Obama, Pelosi and Reid to force Obamacare down the throats of people who did not want Marxist medicine.” –columnist John Lillpop

Insight

“Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways; hence, there are an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, bonuses, subsidies, incentives, the progressive income tax, free education, the right to employment, the right to profit, the right to wages, the right to relief, the right to the tools of production, interest free credit, etc., etc. And it is the aggregate of all these plans, in respect to what they have in common, legal plunder, that goes under the name of socialism.” –French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

The Last Word

“In the midst of all the hyperbole surrounding guns, it is worth noting that in 1999, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama voted ‘present’ on a piece of legislation that would require adult prosecution for anyone 15 years of age or older who discharged a gun in or near a school. The bill, which was proposed in response to the murders at Columbine High School, was enacted by a vote of 52-1. Even the Chicago Tribune pilloried Obama and four of his colleagues who joined him in voting ‘present,’ calling them ‘gutless sheep.’ Considering how gung-ho Obama is these days to have the Second Amendment declared null and void, one can only assume that, as with same-sex marriages and women in frontline combat, his position has, as Jay Carney likes to say, evolved. Isn’t it a shame that his positions never evolve in the right direction?” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team