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Opinion

gay-marriage-church

Gay marriage is now legal in all 50 states, thanks to a broad interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court — and what that means to churches is: Watch out.

The establishment of the judiciary as the arbiter of law, not the people or the duly elected — as this court case clearly paints — now sets the stage for a showdown between gay activists and the churches that gay activists can’t wait to tear down. In other words, if gay marriage is now stamped for approval by the highest court in the land as legal, it won’t take long for the radical element of the homosexual lobby to set their designs on churches. Their likely message?

Now you have to marry us, too.

Or, maybe it’ll take this form instead: Marry us, or we’ll sue.

That’s not going to sit well with the more fundamentalist religion mindset of Christianity and other religions that already views gay marriage as a direct assault on God’s word.

Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, acknowledged in an emailed statement the Supreme Court’s legalization of nationwide gay marriage means the “battlefield shifts to religious freedom.”

He went on: “Will the progressive, totalitarian and intolerant left weaponize the government and attempt to force or compel people to affirm same-sex behavior and relationships? Or will they respect the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the Constitution?”

Here’s a guess: It’ll be the former scenario that proves true.

Gays, as we’ve seen, have already cried out against Christian bakers who refuse to bake them wedding cakes; against Christian bistro, flower and chapel business owners who refused to perform their marriage ceremony; and against Christian pizzeria owners who didn’t even refuse service, but were rather asked to respond to a “what if” catering scenario for a gay marriage, and answered, in the minds of the thought police and radicalized homosexual crowd, incorrectly.

So it would seem natural to see the writing on the wall, as the biblically-based saying goes, and predict the next target of the gay lobby is churches. How’s that going to pan?

Well, here’s another prediction: Some churches, like those for Episcopalian believers – who have embraced the LGBT culture with “full and equal claim” since 1976, who consecrated the first openly gay church bishop in 2003 and who put out a directive in 2009 that allowed gay union ceremonies to go forth within the confines of the select churches – will herald this ruling and give full sanction to performing same-sex marriages. Others, like Weatherly Heights Baptist Church members in Alabama – who applauded a 74-5 vote of the Madison Baptist Association to dismiss a minister from the Southern Baptist Convention for his support of gay marriage – won’t.

And the federal government will ultimately sic the Department of Justice on these steadfast churches, and perhaps the Internal Revenue Service, to launch discrimination investigations and pull tax exempt statuses. The ensuing chaos will play in the press as yet another case of religious zealotry from the Christian camp – yet another case of Christian-fueled attacks on gays.

So Christians, listen up: Be prepared for massive spiritual warfare. The Supreme Court case legalizing gay marriage in the 50 states’ governments is just the tip of the battle that’s about to surge.

[mybooktable book=”police-state-usa-how-orwells-nightmare-is-becoming-our-reality” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Gay marriage is now legal in all

World

France-Chemical-Plant-Terrorism

French police and firefighters gather at the entrance of the factory. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Authorities found a severed head in a U.S.-owned industrial gas factory in southeastern France, which was targeted in a terror attack on Friday morning, The Wall Street Journal reported and French officials confirmed.

The facility is operated by Air Products and Chemicals, an American company, and is located in the industrial town of Saint-Quentin-Fallavier.

The decapitated body was found by two officers along with an inscription written in Arabic, French President François Hollande told a news conference in Brussels. The Interior Ministry said Yassine Salhi, 35, who had previously been under surveillance by French intelligence services from 2006 to 2008 and is believed to have links to Islamist groups, has been detained in connection with the attack.

Witnesses said they heard an explosion around 10 a.m. on Friday. Mr. Hollande said a vehicle drove into the plant with an intent to “provoke an explosion.” The president said the driver of the car might have been accompanied by someone else.

“The attack is terrorist in nature,” Mr. Hollande said, adding that two people were injured. “We must carry our values and never give in to fear.”

Read More from The Wall Street Journal

 

 

Authorities found a severed head in a

Policy

chief-justice-john-roberts

Chief Justice John Roberts (Photo: AP)

I feel compelled to comment on the Supreme Court’s latest ObamaCare decision, though I could sum up my reaction with one word: disgust.

  • I’m disgusted that we had politicians who decided in 2009 and 2010 to further screw up the healthcare system with ObamaCare.
  • I’m disgusted the IRS then decided to arbitrarily change the law in order to provide subsidies to people getting insurance through the federal exchange, even though the law explicitly says those handouts were only supposed to go to those getting policies through state exchanges (as the oily Jonathan Gruber openly admitted).
  • I’m disgusted that the lawyers at the Justice Department and the Office of White House Counsel didn’t have the integrity to say that handouts could only be given to people using state exchanges.
  • But most of all, I’m disgusted that the Supreme Court once again has decided to put politics above the Constitution.

In theory, the courts play a valuable role in America’s separation-of-powers system. They supposedly protect our freedoms from majoritarianism. And they ostensibly preserve our system of checks and balances by preventing other branches of the federal government from exceeding their powers.

To be sure, the courts – including and especially the Supreme Court – have not done a good job in some areas. Ever since the 1930s, for instance, they’ve completely failed to limit the federal government to the enumerated powers in Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court’s first ObamaCare decision back in 2012 then took that negligence to a higher level.

Now we have a second Obamacare decision. And this one may be even more outrageous because the Supreme Court decided to act as a pseudo-legislature by arbitrarily re-writing Obamacare.

Here’s what George Will wrote about the decision.

The most durable damage from Thursday’s decision is not the perpetuation of the ACA, which can be undone by what created it — legislative action. The paramount injury is the court’s embrace of aduty to ratify and even facilitate lawless discretion exercised by administrative agencies and the executive branch generally. …The decision also resulted from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s embrace of the doctrine that courts, owing vast deference to the purposes of the political branches, are obligated to do whatever is required to make a law efficient, regardless of how the law is written. What Roberts does by way of, to be polite, creative construing (Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting, calls it “somersaults of statutory interpretation”) is legislating, not judging. …Thursday’s decision demonstrates how easily, indeed inevitably, judicial deference becomes judicial dereliction, with anticonstitutional consequences. We are, says William R. Maurer of the Institute for Justice, becoming “a country in which all the branches of government work in tandem to achieve policy outcomes, instead of checking one another to protect individual rights.

Here’s the bottom line, from Will’s perspective.

The Roberts Doctrine facilitates what has been for a century progressivism’s central objective, the overthrow of the Constitution’s architecture. The separation of powers impedes progressivism by preventing government from wielding uninhibited power.

Here’s how my Cato colleagues reacted, starting with Michael Cannon, our healthcare expert whose heroic efforts at least got the case to the Supreme Court.

…the Supreme Court allowed itself to be intimidated. …the Court rewrote ObamaCare to save it—again. In doing so, the Court has sent a dangerous message to future administrations… The Court today validated President Obama’s massive power grab, allowing him to tax, borrow, and spend $700 billion that no Congress ever authorized. This establishes a precedent that could let any president modify, amend, or suspend any enacted law at his or her whim.

Now let’s look at the responses of two of Cato’s constitutional scholars. Roger Pilon is less than impressed, explaining that the Roberts’ decision is a bizarre combination of improper deference and imprudent activism.

With Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion for the Court, therefore, we have a perverse blend of the opposing positions of the judicial restraint and activist schools that reigned a few decades ago. To a fault, the Court today is deferential to the political branches, much as conservatives in the mold of Alexander Bickel and Robert Bork urged, against the activism of the Warren and Burger Courts. But its deference manifests itself in the liberal activism of a Justice Brennan, rewriting the law to save Congress from itself. As Scalia writes, “the Court forgets that ours is a government of laws and not of men.”

And Ilya Shapiro also unloads on this horrible decision.

Chief Justice Roberts…admits, as he did three years ago in the individual-mandate case, that those challenging the administration are correct on the law. Nevertheless, again as he did before, Roberts contorts himself to eviscerate that “natural meaning” and rewrite Congress’s inartfully concocted scheme, this time such that “exchange established by the state” means “any old exchange.” Scalia rightly calls this novel interpretation “absurd.” …as Justice Scalia put it, “normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.” …like three years ago, we have a horrendous bit of word play that violates all applicable canons of statutory interpretation to preserve the operation of a unpopular program that has done untold damage to the economy and health care system.

Now I’ll add my two cents, at least above and beyond expressing disgust. But I won’t comment on the legal issues since that’s not my area of expertise.

Instead I’ll have a semi-optimistic spin. I wrote in 2013 that we should be optimistic about repealing Obamacare and fixing the government-caused dysfunctionalism (I don’t think that’s a word, but it nonetheless seems appropriate) of our healthcare system.

This latest decision from the Supreme Court, while disappointing, doesn’t change a single word of what I wrote two years ago.

P.S. Since today’s topic (other than my conclusion) was very depressing, let’s close by looking at something cheerful.

I’ve commented before that America has a big advantage over Europe because of a greater belief in self-reliance and a greater suspicion of big government.

Well, now we have further evidence. Here’s some polling data from AEI’s most recent Political Report. As you can see, there’s a much stronger belief in self-sufficiency in the United States than there is in either Germany or Italy.

US-v-Italy-v-Germany-on-Self-Sufficiency

 

Polling data like this is yet another sign of America’s superior social capital.

And so long as Americans continue to value freedom over dependency, then there’s a chance of fixing the mess in Washington. Not just Obamacare, but the entire decrepit welfare state.

CATO economist Dan Mitchell: I can sum

Politics

Supreme Court Hears Arguments On California's Prop 8 And Defense Of Marriage Act

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 27: Eric Breese (L) of Rochester, New York, joins fellow George Washington University students and hundreds of others to rally outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments in a case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) March 27, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In a legally broad 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has ruled that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states under equal protection in the Fourteenth Amendment. Further, marriage is a fundamental right, according to Justice Anthony Kennedy and the liberal majority.

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. … [The challengers] ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right,” Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority. “It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality.”

While many experts had expected the ruling to be a narrow one, it was not indeed.

“Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm,” Kennedy wrote. “The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry.”

“Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions,” he added wrote. “They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

Chief Justice Roberts, who was on the receiving end of Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent Thursday, wrote a blistering dissent of the majority opinion. Roberts ripped the court’s arrogance for redefining a thousands-years-old institution and declaring a new fundamental right using authority they did not have.

“The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent. As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?”

Roberts warned that gay marriage activists further condemned their cause akin to Roe v. Wade, and the court allowed them to do so. Effectively, Roberts says, the majority turned the country into a nation governed by men, rather than laws.

But this Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be. The people who ratified the Constitution authorized courts to exercise “neither force nor will but merely judgment.” The Federalist No. 78, p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton (capitalization altered). Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same sex couples, or to retain the historic definition.

Today, however, the Court takes the extraordinary step of ordering every State to license and recognize same-sex marriage. Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their celebration. But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening. Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens—through the democratic process—to adopt their view. That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, a PPD columnist and FOX News Senior Legal Analyst, said “Roberts’ dissent makes Scalia’s read like a Christmas card.” Scalia joined Roberts’ dissent in full, but wrote “separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy,” adding that “it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me.”

Scalia argued that the debate over gay marriage is “exactly how our system of government is supposed to work,” and further noted when the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, “every state limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so.”

Scalia called the majority opinion “a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power,” adding the court’s “highly unrepresentative panel of nine” has violated “a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation.”

In a legally broad 5-4 ruling, the

Opinion

Marilyn-Mosby-Baltimore

Baltimore State Attorney Marilyn Mosby. (Photo: Tanjug/AP)

I ask you quite sincerely, What is the moral difference between racially motivated abuses of power by rogue municipal police officers and those by prosecuting attorneys?

People should be concerned by Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s behavior, but it is especially alarming when you consider that she is engaging in the same type of behavior that she is using her state power to criminalize.

We can now see why Mosby played hide the ball with the autopsy report on Freddie Gray’s death, and it certainly wasn’t to protect anyone’s privacy — except, perhaps, her own, because it is objectively damning to her politically driven prosecution.

I have always been a law-and-order type of person and a strong supporter of law enforcement officials. In my book, cops don’t receive nearly the credit and respect they deserve for helping to keep the peace, protect the citizenry and preserve ordered liberty. Over the years, I have observed how the political left has frequently abused, undermined and denigrated law enforcement, presumably because to many leftists, cops symbolize the Man — the existing power structure that represents the form of government they resent. It’s ironic that these same leftists still target law enforcement when they are now largely in control of government and have managed to fundamentally change so much about our government that it ought to be to their liking.

Despite my respect for law enforcement, I must also point out that I am equally passionate against those situations in which cops — or any other governmental officials — go rogue and abuse their authority. It is horrifying when people vested with official authority abuse their authority under color of law. And when cops cross that line, they must be brought to justice, without question.

But it’s wrong to evaluate allegations of abuse through biased lenses. You don’t assume cops are acting improperly just because you are prejudiced against cops or authority. You must assess each individual case on its own merits.

It was obvious at the time Mosby threw the book at these six officers that she had rushed to judgment and that she was primarily motivated not by justice but by political and emotional considerations, including a desire to punish cops for what she apparently believes are institutional wrongs. Why else would she attend anti-cop events? Why else would she appeal to the protesters and promise them justice?

As a state’s attorney, Mosby doesn’t have the luxury of viewing these incidents through a racial prism because of her own feelings or her desire to satiate a lynch mob. She has a fiduciary duty to weigh the evidence impartially. For her to use her power to overcharge these law enforcement officials was to extend the mob violence and mayhem of the protesters from the streets into the halls of justice, and it is despicable.

The just-leaked autopsy report reveals just how improper Mosby’s charging decisions were. She already had to dismiss her absurd false imprisonment counts when the defense exposed that the knife Gray was carrying was not legal under Baltimore’s city code as Mosby initially claimed and thus he was not arrested under false pretenses.

The report shows that Gray tested positive for “opiates and cannabinoid.” Gray was out of control, verbally and physically active, yelling, banging and disorderly enough to cause the van to rock from the inside. His ultimately fatal injury is believed to have been caused by his crashing into the inside wall of the van when the vehicle rapidly reduced its speed at some point. This apparently led to paralysis in his arms and impeded his ability to breathe.

But here’s the kicker. Had Gray remained in the prone position that officers had placed him in, he probably wouldn’t have sustained the type of injury he did. Gray’s standing up on his own, according to George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf, presented “a new and unexpected danger” that the police “could not have reasonably anticipated.”

Banzhaf said it will be “very, very hard” for the state to prove the police officers had the state of mind required to prove the criminal charges against them. Let’s just look at the most serious charge filed — that of depraved-heart murder in the second degree against Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., the driver of the van. Having a depraved heart means having a wanton indifference to the potential harm that could be caused, to the extent that the accused might as well have intended to kill the victim.

Who can look at the facts of the case that have come out so far and not conclude that this particular charge is over-the-top and unwarranted?

All the evidence will eventually come out, but from what we already know, Mosby’s decision to file such serious charges, especially this one against Goodson, ought to give us all pause. With the stroke of a pen, she has gone a long way toward ruining this individual’s life — even if he is eventually acquitted — not so that justice can be served but so the mob can be satisfied.

How is that any different from the alleged abuses she appears to be abusing her own power to pursue?

People should be concerned by Baltimore City

Video

[brid video=”10237″ player=”1929″ title=”Louis Farrakhan Calls for Attack on American Flag at Metro AME Church in D.C. “]

Nation of Islam leader and notorious racist Louis Farrakhan called for an attack on the American Flag Wednesday at the Metropolitan AME Church in D.C., and worse. Leaked audio obtained by PPD exposes the hatred spewed by Farrakhan as he addressed hundreds of followers and religious leaders from various religious sects to talk about the Millions for Justice Mobilization.

“I don’t know what the hell the fight is about over the Confederate flag,” the 82-year-old minister said. “We need to put the American flag down because we’ve got as much hell under that as the Confederate flag.”

The “protest” is set to take place in D.C. in October, and is likely to be portrayed as a peaceful event organized, attended and held by legitimate civil rights activists. However, the association of Farrakhan has already stained the event, let alone the Metropolitan AME Church in D.C.

louis-farrakhan

Louis Farrakhan, Leader, Nation of Islam is seen during his speech at Rosa Parks Funeral at Greater Grace Temple.

As usual, his speech almost immediately turned racist, stating white people don’t care about the nine black people who died when 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof walked into Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina.

“White folks march with you because they don’t want you upsetting the city,” Farrakhan said, mocking the show of solidarity from all races following the tragic event. “What the hell is the use of us paying allegiance to a flag under which we get no justice?”

His racist comments — which are meant to incite hatred and violence — were disturbingly met by cheers and applause. It was a far cry from the message heard at the first service held in Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina since the shooting.

“White folks, you’ve got to get out of your sinful nature,” he said, claiming black people are “not sinful by nature.”

“You are righteous by nature,” Farrakhan told the cheering audience. “But made sinful by your intercourse with a sinful people who rebel against God. Everywhere the white man has gone his nature drove him to kill. Kill the brown. Kill the red. Kill the yellow. Kill my own white brother, and kill the black and make sure that the black never rises again.”

Nation of Islam leader and racist Louis

Video

jon-stewart-judge-napolitano

Jon Stewart, right, interviews Judge Andrew Napolitano, left.

Judge Andrew Napolitano debates John Stewart on the Daily Show over the right of individuals to fly the Confederate flag, and whether he should run for Senate.

Napolitano, a Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst, argues that individuals have a right to fly the Confederate flag and even engage in hate speech, and tries to school Stewart on why the founders were wise enough to protect controversial speech, even if it is hatred.

“I say you have the right to fly that flag on your private property,” PPD columnist Judge Napolitano said. “You have the right to any opinion or thought you want, even one manifested or animated by hate. And the government has no business regulating thought. If the First Amendment protects anything, it protects your absolute unfettered right to think what you want and say what you think.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano debates Jon Stewart on

Video

McCaskill-Morning-Joe

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, ripped the media over their coverage of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the polls and on the campaign trail. (Photo: MSNBC/Screenshot/Morning Joe)

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, an early and vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, ripped the media over their coverage of Bernie Sanders on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. McCaskill said the media wanted “a fight in the Democratic Party” and was giving Sanders a “pass.”

“I think the media is giving Bernie a pass right now,” McCaskill said. “I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie that he’s a socialist. I think everybody wants a fight and I think they are not really giving the same scrutiny to Bernie Sanders that they’re giving certainly to Hillary Clinton and the other candidates.”

She outright dismissed the large crowds at his rallies, chocking it up to what she says is a propensity of people to follow “extreme” politicians. McCaskill also said the media “rarely” reports that Sanders is a self-proclaimed socialist. Sanders, an Independent, caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.

“Well, you know, Rand Paul’s father got massive crowds, Ron Paul,” McCaskill said. “He got the same sized crowds. Pat Buchanan got massive crowds. It’s not unusual for someone who has an extreme message to have a following, and massive is relative.”

McCaskill went on to make an electability argument for Hillary Clinton, arguing that Sanders is “too liberal” to win a national election in the United States. Hillary, McCaskill argued, has solid numbers and is unfairly being overshadowed by Sanders because the media wants drama in the primary.

“Any other candidate that has the numbers that Hillary Clinton has right now would be, you know, talked about as absolutely untouchable and all of a sudden, oh, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie,” McCaskill said. “I think Bernie is too liberal to gather enough votes in this country to become president, and I think Hillary Clinton is going to be a fantastic president. This is somebody who can carry the torch of middle class opportunity without alienating a wide swath of voters by being, frankly, a socialist.”

### TRANSCRIPT ###

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: But what do you make of these massive crowds he’s getting and the impact that could have on Hillary’s message? And they do account for something, don’t they?

McCASKILL: Well, you know, Rand Paul’s father got massive crowds, Ron Paul. He got the same sized crowds. Pat Buchanan got massive crowds. It’s not unusual for someone who has an extreme message to have a following, and massive is relative. I think Hillary had a massive crowd at her announcement. Certainly as large as any crowd that Bernie Sanders has had.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: So you think Bernie Sanders has an extreme message?

McCASKILL: I think Bernie Sanders has a message that’s touching people’s frustration and I totally get that, but so does Hillary Clinton. And she’s got years of experience working in the very same arena, working on behalf of income inequality and middle class values, middle class families, opportunity for college, opportunity for preschool. This is somebody who can carry the torch of middle class opportunity without alienating a wide swath of voters by being, frankly, a socialist.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, an early and vocal

Video

[brid video=”10218″ player=”1929″ title=”Sen. Ted Cruz Gives Floor Speech on King v. Burwell SCOTUS Decision”]

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, ripped the Supreme Court on the floor of the Senate Thursday in response to the King v. Burwell decision upholding ObamaCare.

“Today, these robed Houdinis, have transmogrified a federal exchange into a quote ‘Exchange established by the state,'” Cruz said. “This is lawless.”

“As Justice Scalia rightfully put it, ‘words no longer have meaning.'”

TRANSCRIPT (Halfway Mark)

You, the teenage immigrant washing dishes are paying illegal taxes right now today, because of President Obama’s deception, because of the IRS’s lawlessness and because of the Supreme Court’s judicial activism violating their oaths of office.

I remain fully committed to repealing every single word of Obamacare. And mark my words, following the election in 2016, the referendum that we will have, in 2017 this chamber will return and we will repeal every word of Obamacare. We’ll bring back economic growth. We’ll bring back opportunity. And then we’ll pass commonsense health care reform that makes health insurance personal and portable and affordable, that keeps government from getting between us and our doctors.

We will recognize that this horrible experiment has failed. And when millions of Americans lose their jobs, are forced into part-time work, lose their health care, lose their doctors, when millions of Americans see their premiums skyrocket, it’s incumbent on members of this body, it’s incumbent on the federal government to fix the wreckage they caused, to fix the wreckage that the Supreme Court has now embraced lawlessly.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, ripped the Supreme

Politics

Obama-Supreme-Court-split-ap obamacare ruling

Did you catch President Obama’s opener during his presser at the White House while responding to the horrendous Supreme Court ObamaCare ruling on Thursday? It’s a crash of the Constitution.

“Five years ago, after nearly a century of talk, decades of trying, a year of bipartisan debate,” Obama said. “We finally declared in America health care is not a privilege, but a right for all.”

Cue image of Founding Fathers in graves, rolling.

Health. Care. Is. Not. A. Right.

Except, now it is. And the reverberations due to be heard around the country from this core outcome of the court’s ruling – 6-3, in favor of upholding the subsidies in Obamacare – are going to be massive. How so? Just take a before-after shot.

Once upon a time, some guys with some good orating skills and even better writing talents gathered together for some political shop-talk in Philadelphia to see if they could come up with a proper way to inform the King of England they weren’t going to play his reindeer games any more.

Idea men were appointed: This “Committee of Five,” as it was dubbed, included John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Robert Livingston of New York and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Jefferson spent nearly three weeks penning what was to become one of the greatest political policy positions the world’s ever seen, the Declaration of Independence. And among its many simple premises was this powerful phrase – that governments are instituted to uphold the God-given rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Health care did not make the list.

But now, thanks to the Supreme Court, the floodgates of this limited government principle have been thrust wide. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his fiery dissent: The court was guilty of “interpretive jiggery-pokery,” a phrase defined by Merriam-Webster as “dishonest or suspicious activity.” What would be the proper term, I wonder, to describe a court case that now solidifies what many in the patriotic, traditional-minded and conservative-thinking camps of politics and culture fear is a socialist vein creeping into American society?

Oh yes – that’s called Burwellian, a playful little mix of “Orwellian” and the case name, King v. Burwell. And it’s being picked up by Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described socialist who is steaming fast and furious ahead to unseat presidential heir apparent Hillary Clinton from her throne. Recent polls, too, find in his favor.

“In simultaneous surveys, the U.S. senator from Vermont received nearly a quarter of support from likely Democratic caucus and primary voters in the states that host the first presidential nomination balloting early next year, cutting sharply into Clinton’s still-huge lead,” Bloomberg Politics just reported. “The polls suggest substantive and symbolic support for the socialist, as well as a craving among some Democrats for a Clinton rival to rise.”

Meanwhile, the number of candidates in the Republican presidential field has hit Lucky 13 – a bevy that will no doubt cause enough infighting to frustrate the few voters left in America whose attention spans aren’t limited to the time-frame of typing a tweet. Can you say disenfranchised? Let’s hope the candidate emerging from primary season is enough of a principled politician … well, let’s hope, at least, he or she is not a moderate.

Because moderate in Republican circles of late seems to mean Democratic. And in the Democratic circles, we seem to have an emerging socialist party.

So to recap: We’ve got a Supreme Court that just threw a dagger at limited government. We’ve got a sitting president who just received a judicial hand-clap for his socialist Obamacare. And we’ve got an emerging Democratic presidential candidate with a self-declared love of socialism and a voter base that finds his message compelling – and a Republican Party that seems emasculated, at worst, and confused, at best, in how to rein in this entitlement-minded atmosphere.

The days of America as a republic seem to be reaching their end. So how about a note of inspiration, to turn back the clock and remind who we are? This one from Patrick Henry seems most apt: “I know not what others may choose but, as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”

[mybooktable book=”police-state-usa-how-orwells-nightmare-is-becoming-our-reality” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Did you catch President Obama’s opener during

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