Archives for June 2014

A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that closely-held corporations do have the right to reject paying for contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs if doing so violates their conscience or sincerely-held religious beliefs.

By a 5-4 ruling, the court sided with the Christian owners of arts and crafts giant Hobby Lobby and the Mennonite leaders of Conestoga Wood Specialties.  Hobby Lobby in particular was fine paying for some 16 different types of birth control, but refused to cover the cost of medications that induce abortion after conception.  The decision in no way prevents women from obtaining any of the drugs in question with their own money.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the ruling was narrowly limited to the issues at hand and did not give blanket permission for Americans to disobey any laws they wanted by claiming it violates their conscience.

Family Research Council Senior Legal Fellow Cathy Ruse says this was not just a case about reproductive health but about the larger ideal of religious freedom.

“The right to religious freedom and the right to conscientious objection is just one of those basic fundamental rights in our Constitution.  It is embraced heartily by Americans and has throughout the centuries.  It is one of those freedoms where the individual gets to put his hand up and tell the government, ‘No, you’ve gone too far,'” said Ruse.

“The court didn’t create a new principle here.  It sure upheld and applied one of the most cherished principles that Americans own and that is our right to conscience,” she said.

The mandate was issued by the Obama administration in early 2012, as employers were ordered to cover all costs for birth control and abortafacients for women.  The fierce backlash led the Obama campaign and like-minded allies to accuse opponents of waging a war on women during that year’s campaign.

On Monday, NARAL Pro-Choice America blasted the decision.

“Today’s decision from five male justices is a direct attack on women and our fundamental rights. This ruling goes out of its way to declare that discrimination against women isn’t discrimination,” said NARAL President Ilyse Hogue in a statement.

“Allowing bosses this much control over the health-care decisions of their employees is a slippery slope with no end. Every American could potentially be affected by this far-reaching and shocking decision that allows bosses to reach beyond the boardroom and into their employees’ bedrooms. The majority claims that its ruling is limited, but that logic doesn’t hold up. Today it’s birth control; tomorrow it could be any personal medical decision, from starting a family to getting life-saving vaccinations or blood transfusions,” she said.

Ruse is dismissing the pro-choice denunciation out of hand.

“To NARAL, I would say stop being hysterical, but I don’t have much hope that they will because that is their modus operandi,” she said.

In her comments outside the Supreme Court, Ruse said this was not a major setback for women but is one that further liberates women and Monday should be a day of celebration for them.  In fact, she says women have been leading the charge against the mandate.

“Of all the plaintiffs that have filed lawsuits against the mandate, many of them are in fact women: women who run non-profits like the Little Sisters of the Poor and others but also business women who are part of small family businesses have filed suit to stop the mandate.  One-third of all business plaintiffs who have filed suit against the mandate are women.  This is a big win today for women in business and women job creators,” said Ruse.

Ruse also points out that as a myriad of judges heard challenges to the HHS mandate, a solid majority have sided with the challengers, although all three female justices on the Supreme Court voted to uphold it.  She also says public opinion polls show women to be very uncomfortable with the mandate.

Beyond that, Ruse says there was a “perverse incentive” behind the mandate.  She says instead of trying to champion women, the administration was really trying to saddle them with fewer options and higher health care costs.

“This mandate, and it’s perverse incentive to dump employees into the exchanges is not good for women at all.  It means that women would face losing their trusted doctor, their trusted medical specialist, their trusted pediatrician who has cared for her children all their lives.  That is not good for women, not to mention the spike in premiums and the sky-high deductibles that people face when they’re forced into the exchanges,” said Ruse.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy made a clarification that could take some of the jubilation out of Hobby Lobby supporters, by pointing out there was nothing stopping the government from footing the bill and making sure there is no cost to women for contraceptives or abortafacients.

Ruse says that twist would not be welcome, but she says it’s still a better option than forcing people of faith to spend money directly in ways they find morally objectionable.

“We are forced to fund things through our taxes that we disagree with all the time.  It’s not good.  It shouldn’t be that way, but that is already in play,” she said.

“It’s a far better result to make the government pay for it themselves.  They already pay for contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs in the tens of millions with our tax money all across the country in Title X clinics.  We don’t love that, but it’s happening.  They already have an easy means to do it because they’re already in the business.  So why conscript these unwilling employers and make them pay for it out of their pockets,” said Ruse.

Radio America’s Greg Corombos and Jim Geraghty from National Review breathe a sigh of relief for the Supreme Court rulings against the Obamacare contraception mandate and the ability of unions to force people into joining or paying dues. They blast Nancy Pelosi for saying all the illegals flooding our southern border are also Americans and this is not a crisis but an opportunity. They close with some news from Oklahoma too crazy to be made-up: a defeated congressional candidate alleges the winner is either a robot or doppelganger because the real winner was executed by the world court three years ago.

 

The Supreme Court is issuing a flurry of high-profile decisions in the final days of the current session, but an appeals court decision this week virtually guarantees the highest court in the land will rule on the definition of marriage one year from now,

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to strike down a Utah law defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.  The judges did place a stay on the ruling, meaning the current law stands until the Supreme Court weighs in on the matter.  State officials insist they will appeal.

In the ruling, the two judges called limiting marriage to heterosexual couples a clear violation of gay couples’ rights.

“We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right to marry, establish a family, raise children, and enjoy the full protection of a state’s marital laws,” read the opinion.  “A state may not deny the issuance of a marriage license to two persons, or refuse to recognize their marriage, based solely upon the sex of the persons in the marriage union,” the court said.

Traditional marriage supporters consider that rationale and similar court rulings to be ideological nonsense.

“There is no logic there.  Why draw an arbitrary line between the two persons and where did that come from?  Marriage has always been defined as between one man and one woman in the United States and in Utah particularly.  Polygamy is outlawed at the highest level of the Supreme Court.  What possible rationale is this to say that it is narrowly tailored to two.  That came out of left field,” said Liberty Counsel Action Vice President Matt Barber, who is also founder of barbwire.com.

He admits same-sex marriage advocates are on a legal winning streak and that a majority of Supreme Court justices are personally sympathetic to their argument, based on a pair of 2013 rulings that struck down a California constitutional amendment enshrining traditional marriage and ordered federal benefits extended to same-sex spouses in states where the couples were legally married.

Despite the apparent legal momentum on the side of same-sex marriage, Barber says last year’s Supreme Court ruling actually strengthens the case on his side of the debate.

“Even the United States Supreme Court ruled in the DOMA decision that struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act…the hubris is astounding for (Kennedy) to imagine that he can somehow redefine the institution of marriage for federal purposes.  He argued from a federalist standpoint and said unequivocally in the majority decision and in the dissent decision that states have a right to define marriage,” said Barber.

Barber says other court decisions also weigh in favor of traditional marriage.

“The 9th Circuit, the highest level that has looked at homosexuality and whether it is a suspect minority class, has said that it does not reach strict scrutiny,” he said.  “They have said, ‘No, homosexuality is behavior.  It is not an immutable characteristic.’  So there’s hope here yet, but with Justice Kennedy there’s no telling.  You might as well flip a coin,” said Barber.

Barber says the Utah marriage case is at the front of the line for this issue reaching the Supreme Court since it is the first to be ruled upon at the appellate level.  He says that means the justices will likely hear arguments late this year or early next year with a decision coming down in June 2015.

“They may have to rule pretty quick because there has been an emergency stay.  That’s the good news.  The 10th Circuit has granted a stay on this so that we don’t see all the homosexual activists clamoring to the courthouses to get their  marriage certificates,” he said.

“I think within a year we will have a final disposition on Section 2 of the Defense of Marriage Act as well as whether or not there’s somehow a constitutional right for a man to marry a man and a woman to marry a woman, something the founding fathers couldn’t have even conceptualized,” said Barber.

Barber says he and his traditional marriage allies are undaunted by the Utah decision and will fight all the way to the finish line.

“The homosexual activists are celebrating and the leftists are celebrating, but this is not a final decision by any stretch,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Patrick Brennan of National Review are pleased to see even a liberal journalist like Joe Klein calling Hillary Clinton’s book tour a “disaster”.  They also groan as Pres. Obama calls for $500 million in aid and equipment for “moderate” Syrian rebels.  And they discuss the revolting story of EPA employees in Denver being told to stop relieving themselves in the hallways.

Pro-life activists are celebrating a Supreme Court victory, as the justices unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law requiring a buffer zone around abortion clinics.

On Thursday, in the case of McCullen v. Coakley, the court voted 9-0 to strike down the Massachusetts requirement of a 35-foot buffer zone surrounding abortion clinics.  Eleanor McCullen sued the state over the law, claiming the buffer zone gave her and other peaceful pro-life activists little opportunity to have conversations with women coming to the clinics.  An appeals court previously sided with the state.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the state could come up with less restrictive ways to preserve free speech for activists while allowing others unobstructed access to the clinic.  Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a concurring opinion criticizing Roberts for not going further and accusing the court of granting far more leniency to pro-choice groups than to pro-life activists.

While the decision could have been even stronger from a pro-life perspective, activists are still thrilled with the decision.

“This is huge.  What this Massachusetts law intended was a ‘heckler’s veto.’  That’s essentially saying that if people don’t like the speech that they’re hearing from other people or others’ freedom of expression, that if they just yell out enough and enough people don’t like it then the heckler can veto free speech.  The Supreme Court said, ‘No, that is not the case,'” said Liberty Counsel Action Vice President Matt Barber, who is also founder of barbwire.com.

Despite some conservatives hoping for a stronger ruling, Barber says the fact this was unanimous is a big deal.

“This was a surprisingly unanimous decision and speaks well for the protection of innocent human life as well as both freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression in the United States,” said Barber.

Many activists and court observers also expected the Supreme Court to hand down a decision on the constitutionality of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that all employers cover the cost of birth control and abortafacient drugs for their employees.  The Christian owners of Hobby Lobby and the Mennonite leaders of Conestoga Wood Specialties are challenging the mandate on the grounds it would violate their freedom of religious expression due to their opposition to abortion.

The court announced its final decisions of the session will come Monday morning and that ruling is likely to be issued.  While Barber has no illusions of a unanimous ruling on that case, he hopes Thursday’s buffer zone ruling is a sign of things to come on the debate over the HHS mandate.

“The fact that even the most liberal justices on the bench ruled that this buffer zone law violated free speech is an indication to me that hopefully, and you can never predict what (Justice) Anthony Kennedy is going to do, but if I’m reading here, it gives me hope.  He has shown, in the past, a sensitivity toward the importance of freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression on the first amendment.  I’m hoping that it will tip the scales and he will vote affirmatively that the HHS mandate violates the first amendment,” said Barber.

Radio America’s Greg Corombos and Patrick Brennan from National Review discuss unanimous Supreme Court decisions striking down buffer zones outside abortion clinics and rejecting President Obama’s recess appointments made when the Senate was technically not in recess. They talk about a new email from Lois Lerner that demonstrates she tried to spur an investigation into a Republican lawmaker. They laugh at North Korea’s umbrage with the upcoming film “The Interview” which portrays reporters on a mission to assassinate Kim Jong Un.

The first quarter of 2014 was the worst for our economy in five years and the worst outside of a recession since the end of World War II, according to revised numbers released by the Commerce Department Wednesday.

Preliminary numbers issued weeks ago suggested a one percent contraction.  A shrinking of nearly three percent may suggest a worse economy than we really have, but economists say this is still very bad news.

“Experts say that this quarter was particularly bad but what we see is economic growth chugging along at around two percent (over the long term).  That’s not enough to create jobs Americans need.  The labor force participation rate is at 1978 levels, which is before millions of women walked into the workforce.  That is just too low.  We need to do something to ramp up our economic growth so it doesn’t just chug along at two percent,” said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who served as chief economist at the Department of Labor under President George W. Bush.

Economists of various stripes are offering explanations for the lackluster start to the year, ranging from reduced consumer spending to a colder than usual winter.  Furchtgott-Roth says not all evaluations are created equal.

“I think we need to look at consumer demand.  Exports were low.  Consumer demand was low.  It was clearly not all weather-related.  People like to say it’s weather-related because that takes the pressure off what they are actually doing.  We had bad weather in the fourth quarter of 2013 but that did not have the same effect.  Also, when there’s bad weather, you spend more money clearing out some of the snow and there’s also more of a bounce back.  We didn’t see that much of a bounce back in March.  We’ll have to see what the second quarter does,” said Furchtgott-Roth.

Another nagging drag on the economy, she says, is the worsening level of certainty business owners feel when it comes to adding jobs or planning to expand their business.  Furchtgott-Roth says conditions for business owners remind her of a very dreary time in economic history.

“We don’t have a lot of certainty now.  We have even less than we had in the first quarter.  The Middle East is blowing up.  Rebels took over an Iraqi oil refinery yesterday.  We know that inflation is starting to kick up.  We’re looking very much like the end of the 1970s, where we had inflation and oil troubles,” she said.

Furchtgott-Roth is quick to add the oil concerns are far less severe now than in the 1970s because of much greater domestic production today.

What would improve certainty and spur economic growth?  Furchgott-Roth says the first place to look is tax policy.

“There are fundamental reasons why people are not investing in the United States.  Our corporate tax rate is the highest in the world.  Both President Obama and Republican leaders and Democrat leaders in Congress agree it should be lowered.  This is something the administration and Congress should move forward with right away,” she said, noting America’s corporate tax rate is the highest in the industrialized world and that more and more businesses are engaging in “inversions,” the practice of setting up headquarters in other countries to take advantage of more favorable tax climates and taking tax revenues out of the U.S.

She says doubling down on energy production could produce a major financial windfall for our country.

“We need to have further development of our energy sector, which has been the growth driver of our economy.  All the growth in energy has been on private land.  There’s been a decline in explorations on federal lands.  We have a lot of scope to move forward with energy development on federal lands by increasing permitting.  That would also increase tax revenues to the government,” said Furchtgott-Roth.

President Obama is receiving poor marks on the economy in recent public opinion polls, however the administration frequently argues that it’s pro-growth agenda is being stymied by Republicans in Congress.  It’s priorities are often listed as being in the transportation and green energy sectors and by generating more spending in the economy through an increase in the minimum wage and equal pay for women.  Furchtgott-Roth dismissed each of those as economic losers, starting with transportation and infrastructure spending.

“We had almost a trillion in stimulus, most of which was focused on infrastructure in [2009].  Remember the shovel-ready jobs that never really appeared.  It was only last month that our employment reached levels that it was in 2007.  It’s clear that infrastructure is not a panacea.  There are many unemployed people who don;t want to be building roads.  They want other kinds of jobs,” she said, while also taking aim at the arguments for a minimum wage hike and more spending to develop renewable energies.

“Raising the minimum wage doesn’t create employment.  It just means that people whose skills are less than the new minimum wage , which would be around eleven dollars an hour, don’t get to work at all.  They have to drop out of the labor force.  They are unemployed.  Neither of those would really help to raise GDP growth,” said Furchtgott-Roth.

“Alternative energy, wind and solar, are twice as expensive as producing electricity from natural gas or from coal.  Making electricity more expensive does not increase GDP growth.  Factually, the measures that the Democrats are recommending will result in less growth rather than more growth,”  she said.

Furchtgott-Roth says urgent action is needed on tax and energy policy, but she doesn’t expect much progress this year.

“I wish I could say that this bad economic news is going to make the Republicans and Democrats get together and develop sound economic policies, but I think that’s too optimistic in the climate of Washington right now.  I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it probably won’t be sensible coordination on economic policy,” she said.

Radio America’s Greg Corombos and Eliana Johnson from National Review discuss a new poll showing the vast majority of Americans believe key IRS emails were intentionally destroyed. They look at the recent economic numbers that show a depressing 2.9 percent decline in national GDP. They close by looking at potential race baiting in the tight runoff race between Mississippi’s Thad Cochran and Chris McDaniel.

Over five -and-a-half years, Attorney General Eric Holder has politicized the Justice Department in ways never seen before, and the department’s external and internal actions are establishing a pattern of using the law to achieve political ends and taking cronyism to a new level, according to a scathing book on Holder’s tenure.

In addition to chronicling Holder’s personal and professional drift to the left and how that ideology manifests itself in his approach to justice, “Obama’s Enforcer” by Hans von Spakovsky and John Fund also offers a detailed look into some of the most explosive controversies of the Holder era.

Just days after taking office in 2009, Holder labeled the U.S. a “nation of cowards” for not having a more frank national discussion on race.  Fund and von Spakovsky contend Holder is blatantly engaging on racial bias, most notably on voting laws such as his fight against any state laws requiring voters to present photo identification before casting a ballot.

“They’re clearly waging a war on election integrity.  I have come to the belief that they really seem to think that any kind of measures that would make fraud harder to commit or might dissuade or deter people who are not U.S. citizens from voting, all of that might hurt the Democratic Party.  I think that’s one of the reasons they are doing that,” said von Spakovsky, who says Holder makes it very clear he views civil rights as a one-way street.

“There’s an inspector general’s report that was released last year about the mismanagement of the civil rights division.  They did interview Eric Holder about that.  It’s very clear that he does not believe in the race-neutral enforcement of federal discrimination and voting laws.  I find that appalling in the chief law enforcement officer of the United States,” said von Spakovsky, who is himself a former Justice Department official.

He says Holder’s philosophy is not only evident in the policies he pursues but in the cases he chooses not to prosecute.

“I know a case of almost 300 non-citizens who were registering and voting in Virginia.  That information was sent to the Holder Justice Department, which refused to do anything about it, despite the fact that it’s a federal felony to engage in that type of behavior,” he said.

In addition to picking and choosing which cases to take up, the authors allege Holder is also fostering a hostile atmosphere within the civil rights division toward anyone not marching in lockstep with his political agenda.  They say it’s an accusation the inspector general documented in his report.

“It documents the extensive bullying and intimidation of anyone perceived to be a conservative.  This is done by other liberal, career lawyers and it has been approved of by the Obama political appointees who refuse to do anything about it,” said von Spakovsky.

Part of the problem, he says, is the track record of Holder packing the Justice Department with political allies as quickly as possible.

“This administration has bent and broken federal rules on hiring to put political cronies of the president and his party into career positions as well as hiring almost exclusively from liberal advocacy organizations,” said von Spakovsky, who says clearing out the bullies and the political operatives from these key positions is much harder to do than most people realize.

“The rules governing career positions are extremely strict and firing someone is very, very difficult.  This administration has shown it has no interest in firing or disciplining liberal career folks who engage in this kind of behavior.  One particular employee who is still in the civil rights division actually committed perjury by lying to the inspector general’s investigators when they were looking at the problems in the civil rights division.  She was neither disciplined nor terminated for committing perjury.  In fact, she was treated as a hero by the Obama folks who were there,” said von Spakovsky.

Fund and von Spakovsky say Holder’s approach to racial issues also extends to mass fraud and fleecing American taxpayers to further an agenda, seen most clearly they say in the Pigford case.

In 1997, a black North Carolina farmer named Timothy Pigford sued the Department of Agriculture, alleging that he had been discriminated against in the pursuit of a federal loan.  Two years later, a judge turned it into a class action suit and any black farmer could join the lawsuit.

“A claims process was set up in which you would automatically get $50,000 if you simply filled out a form that said you had attempted to farm.  That generated huge numbers of claims that were all paid off without question.  The estimates are that 80-90 percent of the claims were fraudulent,” said von Spakovsky.

The payouts continued throughout the Bush administration, and von Spakovsky says the Obama administration doubled down on the fraud.

“A second lawsuit was filed in the Obama administration, this one adding Hispanics, women and Indian farmers.  It was very clear that this was a bogus lawsuit.  There was no evidence that these groups had been discriminated against.  The line lawyers at the Justice Department said there was no evidence here.  They could easily win this suit.  They were overridden by the White House,” he said.

“There was a meeting called at the White House of these lawyers.  They were told this would be settled.  It would be paid off.  It was very clear the White House wanted to use these taxpayer funds to make payments to these groups that they considered to be political supporters and constituents of the president and the Democratic Party,” said von Spakovsky.

Beyond the disturbing changes Fund and von Spakovsky see at the Justice Department, they say rolling back these efforts will be next to impossible, even with different leaders in place.

“This president has gotten exactly the attorney general he has wanted.  It’s going to take a new attorney general, someone with very high ethical and professional standards, to try to turn around the Justice Department and clean up what has happened.  But they’re going to have a very hard time doing that because there will be many entrenched career lawyers there, people hired by this administration who will be doing everything they can to stop and fight any attempt to clean things up,” said von Spakovsky.

Radio America’s Greg Corombos and Patrick Brennan from National Review look at the intense grilling South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy gave out to IRS Director John Koskinen in a Monday night congressional hearing. They talk about further whistleblower evidence provided by VA workers that shows that the VA covered up veteran death numbers. They close with Marion Barry ranting against a yogurt tax after mishearing a question about a yoga tax.