Of course, this comes as no surprise – the flip flopping of Progressive (pRegressive) politicians who will say anything for political expediency. pRegressive politicians and their Praetorian Guard in the mainstream media have their panties in a bunch over the correct Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision. Driven by either agenda or ignorance, they don’t even remember that at one time they were all champions of the same religious freedom they are now against.
The SCOTUS ruling is NOT about contraception. Instead, it affirms a law dating back to 1993 – The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). This law, “to protect the free exercise of religion,” according to the U.S. Senate. Specifically, the purpose of the law is “to provide a claim or defense to persons whose religious exercise is burdened by government.” That is the crux of the Hobby Lobby claim. Congress passed this law almost unanimously.
The RFRA was introduced following an unpopular SCOTUS decision curbing the religious freedom of Native Americans to use peyote. Congressman Charles Schumer introduced the bill in March 1993, a time when liberals were strongly in favor of religious freedom. The bill was cosponsored by many of the same pRegressives screeching the loudest about the SCOTUS decision, including Rosa DeLorio, Luis Gutierrez, Nancy Pelosi, and Maxine Waters. The Senate passed this bill by a vote of 97-3.
I am sure you will recognize some of the names:
Mr. KENNEDY (for himself, Mr. HATCH, Mr. BENNETT, Mr. BOND, Mr. BRADLEY, Mr. BUMPERS, Mr. CAMPBELL, Mr. DANFORTH, Mr. DASCHLE, Mr. EXON, Mr. FEINGOLD, Mrs. FEINSTEIN, Mr. GRAHAM, Mr. HARKIN, Mr. HATFIELD, Mr. JEFFORDS, Mrs. KASSEBAUM, Mr. KERRY, Mr. LAUTENBERG, Mr. LEVIN, Mr. LIEBERMAN, Mr. METZEN- BAUM, Ms. MIKULSKI, Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN, Mr. MOYNIHAN, Mrs. MURRAY, Mr. PACKWOOD, Mr. PELL, Mr. REID, Mr. RIEGLE, Mr. SPECTER, Mr. WELLSTONE, Mr. WOFFORD, Mr. KOHL, Mr. SARBANES, Mrs. BOXER, Mr. DECONCINI, Mr. SASSER, Mr. INOUYE, Mr. BROWN, Mr. COHEN, Mr. KEMPTHORNE, Mr. PRYOR, Mr. KERREY, Mr. MCCONNELL, Mr. DODD, Mr. DURENBERGER, Mr. AKAKA, Mr. GLENN, Mr. GREGG, Mr. NICKLES, Mr. COATS, Mr. LUGAR, Mr. BREAUX, Mr. DORGAN, Mr. ROCKEFELLER, and Mr. MACK) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
What a difference a new pResident and a new agenda make (despite the fact that the Constitution has remained the same)! Senate Weasel Harry Reid was in favor of religious freedom before he was against it. Voting FOR the RFRA in 1993, he is now indignant that the SCOTUS upheld the same law he voted for. Ditto for Nancy Pelosi, who is fussing about “a gross violation of workers’ religious rights.” What religious rights are being violated (must be the fact that progressivism and intrusive government is a religion to these people)? Are the Hobby Lobby employees members of a religion with a commandment, “Thou shall be provided abortifacients paid for by someone else”? Or is it the employer whose religious rights are being violated – “Thou shalt not kill” – by making him or her purchase these drugs for the employees?
Hillary Clinton also found the Hobby Lobby decision “deeply disturbing.” How ironic that her co-president husband, in November 1993, signed the RFRA into law, and when upheld 20 years later, she finds it “disturbing”. At the signing, then-President Bill Clinton remarked, “We all have a shared desire here to protect perhaps the most precious of all American liberties, religious freedom.” He also noted that “our laws and institutions should not impede or hinder but rather should protect and preserve fundamental religious liberties.” Commenting on the Founders, he observed that they “knew that there needed to be a space of freedom between Government and people of faith that otherwise Government might usurp.”
Protecting “religious freedom” was politically expedient 20 years ago. But now the dumbed down talking point is the “war on women”. It serves its purposes for speeches and fund-raising, especially when you have a captive audience of mindless drones. The RFRA passed almost unanimously, while obamacare barely passed along party lines in the House and was rammed through the Senate using budget procedural methods rather than proper voting procedures.
Don’t expect the Praetorian Guard (media) to acknowledge the flip-flops by our pRegressive politicians – after all it is an election year. The must mindlessly continue the propaganda.
Blogs For Victory 
Great post Tired, keep up the good work you are
onetwo of a kind. LOLzeronium 234!Tired,
It’s a good example of how far left the Democrats have gone in recent years. They have used the educational system to create a mass of useful idiots, and now foam them up on baseless, emotional issues to win elections and stack the courts. From the 5-4 SC decision, it’s not hard to realize that with just one more judge, our Constitution is in peril.
One of your best posts ever, Tired.
Between vacation and the necessary upgrade from my old, trusty friend Windows XP, coupled with an upgrade to a much newer version of Microsoft Office, with all the accompanying glitches, I’ve been somewhat AWOL for the last couple weeks. B4V comment protocols apparently don’t like posts from a tablet, as I mostly got an error message saying my comment couldn’t be posted. All back up and running, now, except for a minor problem with my monitor not wanting to shut off after 10 minutes as I’ve instructed it to. Free advice from any techies in the audience would be appreciated.
What we’re seeing in the discussion over religious freedom is nothing more than a byproduct of the transition of our education system from one of teaching how to think to one of teaching what to think. The percentage of the population for whom religious beliefs and principles is an important part of their life has decreased exponentially in the last generation or two. And if religion plays a nonexistent role in your life, then religious freedom, or lack thereof, is no big deal. This is all by design by a very patient adversary, and, I think, the primary reason we haven’t had a civil war up to this point. Eliminate the things people are willing to fight for, and you eliminate the likelihood of a fight. Indoctrinate several generations that guns are evil, and you create generations that don’t even want to possess the means to fight. Glad I won’t be around to see the final results.
Conservatives have abandoned involvement in the educational system and we are paying for that. We need a long term strategy to reclaim our voice in that industry. As far as my tech advice – get an Apple. Mac Book Air preferably, and your problems will go away. PC’s suck.
Now for some fun. The following is a comment from my favorite Agnostic Athiest re: the issue at hand:
The White House will come up with a work around to provide female employees with the basic health care needs they’re currently denied. Obama could probably do this immediately, but he won’t. A delay will allow Democrats to pound conservatives for their incessant war on women right up to November.
First of all it’s important to note that another progressive is hoping that Obama will “work around” the law and the constitution and impose progressive ideals. Secondly, the “basic health care needs” women are denied are the 4 contraceptives that kill their fertilized egg – now I am not sure that those 4 contraceptions can be called “basic healthcare needs” but this particular Athiest is emotionally invested to the point of irrationality, as evidenced by his next, more delusional comment:
The bigger issue will be to develop a saner, more secular Supreme Court to reverse our present march toward theocracy.
That’s right folks – America is marching towards theocracy. Tin foil hats for everyone !!!
Cluster,
Every time I get myself convinced that this will all end peacefully, I hear comments like that, and I’m back to square one.
I think we’re all back to square one. Those of us paying attention anyway.
“A delay will allow Democrats to pound conservatives for their incessant war on women right up to November.”
So, he is willing to let women suffer in order to use it as a political hammer rather than solve the problem sooner – Politics before the people – typical proggy tactics. To this drone, “basic health care needs” are a collection (four in this case) of drugs to abort. But, regular contraceptives are still available to prevent pregnancy so the remaining four aren’t required. That is the standard preaching, “access to contraceptives make abortions unnecessary”. Even though that logic has been proven faulty time and again, proggies are not being consistent in their talking points. They would rather have an attack weapon than solve a problem and be consistent.
They would rather have an attack weapon than solve a problem and be consistent.
Tired, that’s been the Left’s MO for as long as I can remember. As long as they can continue to convince the majority of voters that they care about solving problems, and that they’re reeeeeeealy trying to solve problems, they don’t have to ACTUALLY solve problems. They’ve refined it to an art form. They couldn’t continue to get away with it If we had an unbiased media that just cared about the truth and about reporting facts.
““A delay will allow Democrats to pound conservatives for their incessant war on women right up to November.”
So the Left is going to hitch its wagon to that ridiculous WAR ON WOMEN !!!!” nonsense again? Good for them. If I were advising their campaign—as someone wanting it to fail—–I would suggest the same thing. There is no better way to point out the fatal flaws of the Left than using its own words to illustrate its weaknesses.
Cluster, your favorite Agnostic Atheist has gone into meltdown. In usual fashion, after you shoot down his pathetic post. He resorts to personal insult, mealy mouthed denials and whine about his inability to post at B4V (probably because he believes it is because he tells the truth).
These same mindless drones kept regurgitating the dumbed down talking point – “The Supreme Court has made obamacare the law of the land. So Republicans need to stop trying to repeal it.” Now the Supreme Court has ruled that Religious Freedom applies to obamacare. Organizations and employers cannot be forced by the government to provide abortifacients and other contraceptives to their employees. But do they consider this decision now the “law of the land”? Nope, they don’t get their way, they want pResident obame to find a “work around”. Again, they were for the Supreme Court before they were against it. Pathetic.
In the proggy so-called “discussion blog”, concerning this thread, once the first insult was thrown out. Their weak bashing of this topic is put aside and the personal insults and attacks begins. Well what should we expect from the thread titled “Weekly B4V Sucks Thread”. After a week of little activity with at cerebral topic on the 4th of July, they get the largest number of hits when they attack this blog, its bloggers, Sarah Palin attacks and other bashing topics.
And they stupidly wonder why they are banned here… any intelligent discussion and debate is beyond their capability. Two faced casper is there as well with the insults and attacks. His “high road” approach that he claimed to have shown here (of course he ignored times when proven wrong here and left off the insults) is completely non-existent there. He is just like any other troll – for a teacher his debate skills are just as non-existent.
Next up, when the Democrats lose the Senate, they will reverse the rules on cloture and return it to 60 votes. And those mindless drones at the other blog will say (like they are saying now on religious freedom) that it is completely different situation than before.
Pathetic as usual.
Excellent summary. I have noticed that the weekly “B4V Sucks” thread is the most commented on which fits right in with the pathologies that exist over there. As far as the Athiest’s melt down goes – that was in full bloom long before I came along. I simply watching the melt down unfold.
Tired,
Pointing out that you plagiarized the article is not an insult. It’s a fact. And saying you probably failed middle school is a guess based on the writing you have done over the years. If you find that insulting, then prove me wrong.
Now that the California Supreme Court has set the precedence that TENURE is unconstitutional, you should be worried about your position. Since your poor writing, logic, debate and comprehension skills you demonstrate at this and your progressive blog are in evidence and a matter of public record, you should look for a new job. Fast Food Fryer Engineer would suit you just fine.
cappy, I have proved you wrong on more than one occasion. The FACT that you don’t respond and leave with a whimper is all the proof I need. And don’t give me the crap “it wasn’t worth responding to”. That is what you always say when you can’t respond. You have no factual basis to respond. As in this thread, all you can do it attack the messenger and not respond to the thread. You and your ilk don’t make simple assertions. You attack with insults and name calling and you know perfectly well what I am talking about. You can’t accept the fact that you demonstrate willful ignorance. This thread demonstrates proggy hypocrisy and its lies. Now stop whining, respond to the Supreme Court reaffirming Religious Freedom for Americans (it is the law of the land always has been) or leave. It’s that simple.
What is cappy squealing about now? Not that anyone cares, but…………..it seems that he is obsessed with this blog. He still has to lurch over here to spread around more of his vitriol.
It is particularly creepy to realize that he works as a teacher. I often wonder if the parents of the poor children at his mercy for several hours a day know his real self, the one hidden behind the superficially jovial lip-synching buddy-buddy facade he presents at his school. The more we see of him online, the more of his mask falls away and the true casper shows through.
No matter how many syllables he dumps on us, he never manages to have any of them relate to actual politics. It is all emoting, all the time, and what he finds it necessary to express to us is really ugly.
He does seem to have found a home with kindred spirits, God-haters and God-deniers and lovers of baby-killing, creatures who share his disdain for the freedom to practice ones’religious beliefs. And he has finally found a place where his innate viciousness does not stand out, blending in as it does with that of his fellow travelers. What I don’t understand is why this is not enough for him, why he is compelled to try to force his utterly distasteful self on us here.
Cappy is nothing more than a two-faced little troll that reminds me of catty women on those reality shows. He demonstrates this at the other blog that tries to pass for a discussion group bit is nothing more than a bashing blog.
If I were him, I’d start looking of another career since California Supreme Court ruled tenure as unconstitutional. Cappy’s job is no longer protected and school can get rid of their crappy teachers.
“Now that the California Supreme Court has set the precedence that TENURE is unconstitutional, you should be worried about your position. Since your poor writing, logic, debate and comprehension skills you demonstrate at this and your progressive blog are in evidence and a matter of public record, you should look for a new job. Fast Food Fryer Engineer would suit you just fine.”
First, I don’t live in California, so the ruling doesn’t affect me.
Second, what I write on a blog has nothing to do with my job, so it’s not something I worry about.
Third, There really isn’t anyone on this blog that that has the writing or debate skills to evaluate anyone, so I take your comment with a grain of salt.
Keep plagiarizing. It’s what you do.
Cappy, first, I see you don’t know what legal precedents are. Just because you don’t live in California doesn’t mean the decision will not affect you. We have seen that legal precedents spread from state to state. This is related to the second point. Your blog behavior describes who you are and your capabilities, which directly affect your job. Third, anyone with a grain of intelligence can see that your reading comprehension, logic and debating skill are dismally poor if not existent. This too relates to the second point and you have again demonstrated your lack of knowledge and dismal reading comprehension. I still see that you are still avoiding the topic of the thread.
I look for topics to discuss, that is the purpose of this blog. I don’t get paid or look for credit or are rewarded in any way (except seeing you drones get your panties in a twist). Keep deflecting and dodging, that is what you do. Now you will leave with a whimper.
Note: the losers at the other blog took my tenure comment as a threat to cappy’s job. Again, they can only lie about what is written that is what the left does.
casper has never won a debate here or prevailed in any discussion. He ducks, dodges, weasels, squirms and in general twists himself into a large fleshy multi-chinned pretzel, trying to argue from the perspective of one who supports Leftist policies and governance but who doesn’t want to admit it because he also wants to posture as one who believes in the Constitution.
He says that his participation on the blog has nothing to do with his job, yet the time I asked if his school board is aware of his bizarre beliefs regarding the Constitution he whimpered that I was trying to get him fired. Evidently he is aware of the negative impression his blog posts will inevitably have on decent, intelligent people. He fled to the dark side because it is the only place where his true self can ever be welcome—–anywhere else, including (I presume) his school he will have to pretend to be something he is not. But he is obsessed with this blog, which I take to indicate that he yearns to be accepted or admired by decent people, even while understanding on another level that his true self can only be accepted by the dregs of society. He knows that, but at the same time he seems to understand that being relegated to that bunch is pretty humiliating. He would really rather be accepted here as a legitimate political commentator. It’s because he can’t and never will that he blusters with his insults and attacks.
To be accepted here as a legitimate political commentator, he would have to have a coherent political philosophy which he could explain and defend, and he simply cannot do this. He is desperate to be accepted and admired, which is why his attraction to the ugliness and hostility of the Left is nothing he can admit to. The realities of his personality and his limitations clash with his inflated self image as a classy person of high ideals, and the reality of being relegated to the only blog that will tolerate him, because he fits in so well there, has to be humiliating. He wants to think he is better than they are, but deep down he knows he is not. He is one of them.
He has to mouth pious platitudes about believing in our Constitution, while associating himself with those whose goals include undermining and subverting it, and he is caught in the middle, trying to posture as a reasonable and admirable human being while unable to resist the lure of wallowing in unbridled hostility and nastiness. Basically, the only people who can put up with him are people he looks down on, people to whom he desperately needs to feel superior, and those whose opinion he values think he is a spineless weasel.
It has to suck to be him. But it is funny to see this “teacher”, who has regularly used abysmal grammar, poor spelling and garbled syntax, criticizing the writing of anyone else. I guess it’s just another example of his disconnect with reality.
If casper has nothing to hide, if he is proud of his posts and his positions and doesn’t feel that they put him in a very negative light, he should have no problem with having his school board, and the parents of his students, read his comments.
It is really funny to watch him squeal and pee down his leg at the very thought of having anyone in his real life learn what he is really like, what he really thinks, and what he really believes is acceptable behavior.
This is an example of how the “teacher” writes:
“There really isn’t anyone on this blog that that has the writing or debate skills to evaluate anyone……..”
Really? “…anyone…THAT has…?” Hmmm.
You would think that a TEACHER would know enough to say “…anyone WHO has…”
The honesty of the statement is something else entirely. One of the funniest things I have seen on this blog was his effort to weasel out of a debate with me by trying force it into the stilted formal format of high school debate classes. He scrambled, so desperately, to find ways to gain some kind of advantage by squealing that if I wanted to debate him, I had to do it according to these rules. Basically, he was trying to find a way to avoid actually arguing facts, such as analysis of the successes of Leftist governance vs the success of the American Constitutional model back when it was actually applied to how we run the country.
It was really funny, watching him trying to act as if he was ready and willing to engage in a head to head discussion, while at the same time trying to set up these silly artificial conditions and rules.
And, of course, he never did allow himself to be drawn into anything like the debate or discussion that was my challenge to him.
The rather silly hypocrisy of the left is grandly on display – but I think it goes to a larger issue: left and right don’t agree on what something like freedom is. For our liberals, freedom means to suffer no costs or consequences for actions taken. They are, in a sense, all well and good with religious liberty, as long as it doesn’t cost them anything – but as soon as I say, “I won’t buy you birth control because it is against my religious beliefs”, they get outraged: I am costing them something for a choice they wish to make. It just isn’t fair, you see? Not too long ago, I had a liberal advise me that if I won’t pay for birth control then I must be of the opinion that only rich people can have sex!
When you reflect on it, all liberal policy proposals are geared towards removing the cost and consequences of living from the individual and putting them on the group. Health care must be free; education must be free – that we all know our liberals believe and these things are cost-shifting from individual to group, but it goes further than that. If someone chooses to live a dissolute life and the only skills they develope are an expertise in “gender studies”, then they still must be able to live a good life with good housing, nice clothes and all the technological toys in the world – and if to do this we have to take substance away from the person who lived a responsible life and learned, say, how to be a plumber, then that is just simple justice.
The circle here cannot be squared – we aren’t even talking about the same things. Our only hope, as a nation, is for us to get enough power to start the process of de-funding the left so their political power collapses and they are no longer able to propagandize for their views nor extort money from the productive economy. This will be rather bad for them and so we can rely on it they’ll fight hard against it – after all, an associate professor of gender studies is not going to want to enter the oil production field, especially as they’ll be at the bottom of the barrel…on the other hand, once such a person had got a year of actual work under the belt, they’ll start to understand how stupid liberalism is.
Freedom is an extremely simple concept—lack of force or coercion by government. Anarchy is the complete lack of rule or mandate—something America is not. We are a nation founded on law. They are simple as stopping at a red light and as complicated as the congress provides until overturning.
Nevertheless, laws, mandates, regulations (like the 10,000 plus on ObamaCare alone this year) are nothing more than force, coercion, mandates aka. shackles on the American population.
Welcome to the Obama Gulag.
Welcome to the Obama Gulag.
DB, that assumes that those of us that the Left would wish to put in that gulag just willingly roll over and go along. I think you and I both know that’s not going to be the case.
Tired, what an excellent thread post.
You point out a defining characteristic of the Left—Identity Politics.
As usual, the underlying concept is irrelevant—they look at who supports something and then come out for it or against it, but the decision is always based on the identities of the players.
So when Lefties were for religious freedom, the sheeple trotted obediently along behind them, baaaaaing in agreement. But when the same concept was brought up in the context of something not identified with the Left, the agreement changed to outrage, because it was the wrong side promoting the idea.
No matter what we are talking about, if we look at it through the lens of Identity Politics we see the same pattern. Whether it is AGW, WMD, fighting in Afghanistan, or anything else you can name, the Lefty sheeple will be in passionate, ardent agreement with whichever the Left is supporting, and will turn on a dime if the support shifts to The Other Side and be even more passionate in their denouncement of whatever it was they loved so much, so recently.
It’s the mob mentality, writ large.