Freedom?

What’s new Today

Our #1 story explains how the birth control mandate in Obamacare is not simply an assault on the Catholic Church by on liberty itself.  #2 tells us of how the MSM reacted to the Komen Planned Parenthood story vs the Obamacare and the Catholic Church story.  No doubt who is in the bag for whom.  #3 looks at the Progressive movement and how they are undermining the essential things we need for happiness.  #4 looks at fairness in the tax system.  #5 explains the Sarah Palin story in Newsweek. 

1.  Obamacare exposed

The political furor over President Obama's birth-control mandate continues to grow, even among those for whom contraception poses no moral qualms, and one needn't be a theologian to understand why. The country is being exposed to the raw political control that is the core of the Obama health-care plan, and Americans are seeing clearly for the first time how this will violate pluralism and liberty….

… What the law does cement is the principle that the government will decide for everyone what "health care" must mean. The entire thrust of ObamaCare is to standardize benefits and how they must be paid for and provided, regardless of individual choices or ethical convictions….

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577209112780407698.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

So “Catholic” politician Nancy Pelosi finally gets to see what’s in the bill that she so adroitly told here troops that they needed to pass in order to find out what’s in it.  This is an assault on freedom and individual liberty.  It’s not just the mandate that violates the Constitution.  Obama has rewritten the First Amendment with Obamacare.  It cannot be allowed to stand and I think this decision by the Obama Administration may give SCOTUS pause when they consider the mandate this term.  I look for it to the entire law to be struck down. 

2.  MSM in the tank for the left

When the abortion giant's funding was in jeopardy, the media provided 24/7 coverage with a decidedly liberal slant. When the feds assaulted First Amendment religious freedom, you could hear the crickets chirp.

Secular progressive bias in the media was never more evident than in the past few weeks with the difference in coverage of two major news stories — the temporary cutoff of funds from the Susan G. Komen Foundation to Planned Parenthood and the ultimatum from the Obama administration that the Catholic Church and its institutions had a year to find a way to violate their consciences and beliefs and provide contraceptive services as mandated by ObamaCare.

A study by the Media Research Center (MRC) shows that in the first 60 hours after the Feb. 1 announcement that Komen was cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood, no fewer than 13 major stories appeared on CBS, NBC and ABC morning and evening news shows with 35 clips and quotes coming from supporters or representatives of Planned Parenthood and only 11 from Komen representatives or supporters.

By contrast, MRC notes, when the Obama administration announced on Jan. 20 that it was giving religious institutions one year to comply with a mandate for coverage of sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and contraception in their health plans without a co-pay, it took CBS 10 days to air one news brief on the controversy while NBC and ABC said nothing for two weeks.

http://news.investors.com/Article/600445/201202071903/planned-parenthood-defended-not-catholic-church.htm

Nothing surprising here, but the statistics are damning for the MSM. 

3.  Coming Apart:  How Progressives are destroying America

…And Coming Apart shows, if anything can, how Barack Obama is a poster boy for everything that's wrong with America -- everything that got it started Obam-ing apart.

About a century ago and more, the educated elite decided that America needed to be governed by people like them: clever, educated, creative, and expert. Progressives, they called themselves. The rest of America wasn't so smart, so it needed to be supervised by this educated elite. The result, a century later, is that life is great for the educated top 20 percent, liberal and conservative -- living ordered, fulfilling lives in SuperZip enclaves -- while life for the bottom 30 percent is falling apart.

Why? Well, it couldn't possibly be that when people don't have to work, don't get married, don't engage in civic groups, and don't attend church, they end up miserable, could it? Of course not -- not when liberals are running things in accordance with the strict principles of progressive politics. What could go wrong?

Everything. There are four things wrong in the lower-class enclaves of America, according to Charles Murray. No work, as men hang around sleeping and watching TV. No marriage, as women give up on the arduous task of civilizing lower-class men and take easy money from the state instead. There's no civic engagement, as people bowl alone. And there's a collapse of religion.

The core of Murray's book is that if you want to be happy, in the full sense of "eudaimonia" in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics -- that is, full human flourishing over a lifetime doing the right things in the right way at the right time -- you need to check in on four basic qualities. You need satisfying work, you need to be married, you need to engage in civil society, and you need to attend church once a week. Look at a community without the Big Four, and you will likely find only 10 percent of people "very happy." Look at folks with all four, and you will find almost 80 percent of people reporting themselves "very happy." Call it the American project: family, vocation, faith, and community. Rush Limbaugh talks about it every day: American exceptionalism.…

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/lets_stop_obama-ing_apart.html#ixzz1lmoVw8gP

It really isn’t rocket science.  We know what you need to be happy and fulfilled in life, but it seems the left has other ideas.  Ann Coulter said it well when she said, “the history of liberalism consists of replacing things that work with things that sounded good on paper.”

4.  Obama, the Democrats and Fairness

…In fact, the very rich pay far more in taxes than the relatively low nominal numbers they report on their tax returns. Many very wealthy people obtain most of their income from dividends, capital gains and interest on tax-free state and municipal bonds. The actual tax rate Mitt Romney, Warren Buffet and most other wealthy people pay on dividends, when correctly calculated, is about 52 percent, as reported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes the federal and state corporate-level-profits tax burden, plus federal and state taxes on dividends. ... Just about every industrial country provides relief for the double taxation of corporate equity, either by having a lower personal rate on dividends, a personal tax credit for dividends or a lower corporate-level tax. Despite the 2003 dividend tax cut, the overall U.S. rate of dividends ... is still the fourth-highest among the 34 high-income nations of the OECD. Mr. Obama seems to think it is "fair" to tax the same income multiple times, at a total effective rate of more than 50 percent…

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/30/obamas-odd-sense-of-fairness/

Progressive love to imitate all things European except when it would cut taxes.

5.  Palin publishes in Newsweek

After tweeting angrily about how Newsweek had run an article about "dumb" critics of Barack Obama by Andrew Sullivan,  a "Trig Truther," Sarah Palin has published her own piece in the same magazine about her special-needs son.

It is a juxtaposition that is not quite as ironic as some people think. Sullivan's conspiracy theory, that Palin did not actually give birth to her own son, should have caused him not to be taken seriously about anything by any serious media outlet. Newsweek was making amends by running Palin's article about the joys and challenges of raising a child with Down syndrome. What was Palin supposed to do? Refuse the offer to publish? …

… Palin's article would not be considered controversial except for the fact everything she does or says causes the heads of certain people to explode. Her story is touching and sometimes sad. It humanizes a woman who has become, in her own way, the most powerful female politician in the world, beloved by many, reviled by some….

…The irony is not Palin has published an article in a magazine she had recently condemned. It is that a woman whose merest word can shake the corridors of power and spill gallons of ink and untold bandwidth is, in the end, also a mom who loves her children, just like any other in this world.

http://news.yahoo.com/sarah-palin-writes-her-son-newsweek-heads-explode-183500543.html

I like Sarah Palin.  I think she’s real and she’s actually got principles.  And I think it is these two factors that drive the left nuts. Not aborting a handicapped child to the left is unfathomable.    

Culture Wars and Is it Fair?

Obama tramples the Constitution

What’s new Today

 #1 tells us that the culture wars exist, but contrary to what the left says they are the aggressors.  #2 is one of the battle lines in the culture war in California over the issue of gay marriage.  #3 talks about another front in the culture war, that being the Roman Catholic Church and Obamacare.  #4 tells the story of voter ID and the use by the Conservatives of Rhode Island.  The left accuses the right of looking to disenfranchise blacks and Hispanics.  It seems the liberal state of Rhode Island just passed a voter ID law.  #5 is a great list of question to which you can ask “Is it fair?”  #6 tells of a devastating attack on AGW in Germany. 

1.  The Culture Wars

If you're not with us, you're against us. President Bush popularized this expression after 9/11 to describe his foreign policy doctrine: Countries couldn't support or indulge terrorists and be our friends at the same time. But his detractors quickly turned it into a fairly paranoid vision of domestic political life, as if Bush had been talking about domestic opponents and dissenters.

The irony is that few worldviews better describe the general liberal orientation to public policy and the culture war. The left often complains about the culture war as if it's a war they don't want to fight. They insist they just want to follow "sound science" or "what works" when it comes to public policy, but those crazy knuckle-dragging right-wingers constantly want to talk about gays and abortion and other hot-button issues.

It's all a farce. Liberals are the aggressors in the culture war (and not always for the worse, as the civil rights movement demonstrates). What they object to isn't so much the government imposing its values on people — heck, they love that. They see nothing wrong with imposing their views about diet, exercise, sex, race and the environment on Americans. What outrages them is resistance, or even non-compliance with their agenda. "Why are you making such a scene?" progressives complain. "Just do what we want and there will be no fuss."

Consider President Obama's decision to require most religious institutions — including Catholic hospitals, schools, etc. — to pay for contraception, sterilizations and the "morning after" pill. When "ObamaCare" was still being debated, the White House had all but promised Catholic leaders that it would find a compromise to spare the church from the untenable position of paying for services that directly violate their faith. Now that ObamaCare is the law, the administration says the church, like everyone else, must fall in line….

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-02-07/komen-planned-parenthood-contraception-catholic/52992232/1?loc=interstitialskip

Once again Jonah Goldberg hits the nail on the head.  When the left moans about the lack of bi-partisan cooperation what they mean is the right needs to bend to their wishes. 

2.  Gay Marriage Ban Unconstitutional says California appeals court

A federal appeals court Tuesday struck down California's ban on same-sex marriage, clearing the way for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on gay marriage as early as next year.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that limited marriage to one man and one woman, violated the U.S. Constitution. The architects of Prop. 8 have vowed to appeal.

The ruling was narrow and likely to be limited to California….

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/02/gay-marriage-prop-8s-ban-ruled-unconstitutional.html

What is interesting is the timing of this.  Just as the Obama Administration appears to be attacking freedom of religious beliefs, a liberal court is expanding a freedom to marry(with all the unintended consequences this will bring).  If anyone doesn’t think liberalism is a form of a religion you only have to look at how they are trying to impose their beliefs on others.  It appears the left is saying “We are thy Lord and Savior.  Thou shall not have strange or politically incorrect beliefs before us.”

3.  Bishops say White House not entirely honest

As to Carney’s repeated claim of churches are “exempted from this policy,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops shot back: “This is not entirely true. To be eligible, even churches and houses of worship must show the government that they hire and serve primarily people of their own faith and have the inculcation of religious values as their purpose. Some churches may have service to the broader community as a major focus, for example, by providing direct service to the poor regardless of faith. Such churches would be denied an exemption precisely because their service to the common good is so great. More importantly, the vast array of other religious organizations – schools, hospitals, universities, charitable institutions – will clearly not be exempt [emphasis added].”

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=49362

It appears to me that the White House is calling on the Catholic Church to discriminate against non-Catholics.  It they refuse to discriminate, they will be punished. 

4.   Voter Fraud

At a Senate hearing on voting rights last fall, Democrat Dick Durbin pointed out that voter ID laws were nothing more than a coordinated Republican effort to block poor and minority voters from the ballot. It’s a familiar charge, and Hans Von Spakovsky—Heritage Foundation fellow and leading voter ID proponent—squirmed briefly, before finding an out: “I don’t believe that the Democrats in Rhode Island who control...the state legislature would agree with that.”

There’s a reason voter ID supporters have turned Rhode Island into a talking point: Of the eight states to pass photo ID laws in 2011, only Rhode Island had a fully Democratic legislature and a liberal governor. What’s more, black and Latino lawmakers were among the most vocal supporters of the July bill. Since then, Republicans have been happily invoking the law to rebut liberal accusations that voter ID laws are reviving Jim Crow-era tactics to disenfranchise minorities. If voter fraud is indeed taking place in Rhode Island, it would lend some credence to GOP talking points. But does the Rhode Island law actually represent good faith electoral reform?

Voter ID bills are nominally designed to safeguard against voter impersonation, but this argument is generally considered dubious, since there is scant evidence of such fraud. (Ari Berman in Rolling Stone and Ryan Reilly in TPM have done an admirable job outlining the problems with voter ID justifications.) Rhode Island, where voter impersonation has never been proven, is no exception. But anxiety over voter fraud carries particular weight in the Ocean State, which has a long legacy of political corruption. The author of the bill, Rhode Island Secretary of State Ralph Mollis (a Democrat), told me he introduced it not in response to specific charges of impersonation, but to “address the perception of voter fraud.” Local journalist Ted Nesi echoed the sentiment, telling me, “People in Rhode Island assume everyone’s on the take.”…

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/100429/rhode-island-voter-id-laws-hispanic

This is an interesting article because what it basically does is to find that in this case it is the Democrats who are paranoid.  It assumes that because no one is looking for this type of voter fraud that it doesn’t exist.  Quite frankly there is more proof of voter fraud than there is of global warming due to CO2 releasing into the atmosphere and what is being proposed is a lot less expensive or intrusive as a solution to a perceived problem.

5.  Is it Fair?

Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?

Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?...

…Is it fair that President Obama sends his two daughters to elite private schools that are safer, better-run, and produce higher test scores than public schools in Washington, D.C.—but millions of other families across America are denied that free choice and forced to send their kids to rotten schools?...

…Is it fair that after the first three years of Obamanomics, the poor are poorer, the poverty rate is rising, the middle class is losing income, and some 5.5 million fewer Americans have jobs today than in 2007?...

…Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy—pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is "subsidized"?...

…Is it fair that thousands of workers won't have jobs because the president sided with environmentalists and blocked the shovel-ready Keystone XL oil pipeline?...

…Is it fair that federal employees receive benefits that are nearly 50% higher than those of private-sector workers whose taxes pay their salaries, according to the Congressional Budget Office?...

…Is it fair that in 27 states workers can be compelled to join a union in order to keep their jobs?...

…Is it fair that our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids—who never voted for Mr. Obama—will have to pay off the $5 trillion of debt accumulated over the past four years, without any benefits to them?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577206980068367936.html?mod=ITP_opinion_0

I don’t think it is fair.  Do you? 

6.  German body blow to AGW

Today, not one, but two of Germany’s most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun).

Germany has now plunged into raucus discord on the heated topic of climate change

What has set it all off? One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”

Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Persuaded by Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.

http://notrickszone.com/2012/02/06/body-blow-to-german-global-warming-movement-major-media-outlets-unload-on-co2-lies/

AGW apparently is going down for the count.  The lies, exaggerations, and inaccuracy of the AGW hypothesis is becoming more and more evident.