Reformation
The Dread Roberts Decision: Let The Cultural Civil War Begin
“This decision I would go as far to say is lawless. Absolutely lawless!“
Constitutional attorney Mark Levin
The Supreme Court’s stunning 5-4 decision on June 28 upholding Obamacare–with Justice John Roberts siding with the liberals of the Court–left me with the same sadness and bewilderment I felt when I watched terrorists fly planes into the World Trade center buildings and the Pentagon.
Those attacks came from without, and signaled America’s weakness before the forces of evil and the removal of God’s blessing and protection from our land. Last week’s decision by the Supreme Court came from within–and again shows how vulnerable we are to the tyranny of our leaders and lack of corporate character.
Just as the wrong-headed Dred Scott decision led to the election of Abraham Lincoln and beginning of the Civil War, I believe this dreaded John Roberts Court decision will lead to a cultural civil war through election day and beyond.
Are you ready to join the fight? And will this momentary curse on our nation actually become a blessing in disguise?
Here are some lessons from the infamous July 28 Supreme Court decision.
1. Your taxes are going up unless you vote to repeal Obamacare.
The high court’s ruling leaves in place 21 tax increases in the health-care law costing more than $675 billion over the next 10 years, according to the House Ways and Means Committee. Of those, 12 tax hikes would affect the middle class, families earning less than $250,000 per year, including a “Cadillac tax” on high-cost insurance plans, a tax on insurance providers, and an excise tax on medical device manufacturers.
For the average America family, it will amount to a seven percent increase. “This is a clear violation of the president’s pledge to avoid tax hikes on low-and middle-income taxpayers,” said a statement from the panel, which is chaired by Rep. Dave Camp, Michigan Republican.
According to a Wall Street Journal economist, 75% of the new taxes will be squarely on the now-squeezed middle class (people making less than $120,000).
2. This is another Dred Scott, Roe v. Wade moment. The Supreme Court of the United States simply got it wrong on this monstrous bill–with vast ramifications, just like the aforementioned bad decisions. I’m actually proud of Justice Anthony Kennedy in this particular case. He read a ten-minute scathing dissent on behalf of Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia. It called Roberts’ reasoning “feeble” and “verbal wizardry.”
“[W]e cannot rewrite the statute to be what it is not,” the four Justices write. “[W]e have never—never—treated as a tax an exaction which faces up to the critical difference between a tax and a penalty, and explicitly denominates the exaction a ‘penalty.’ Eighteen times in (Obamacare) Congress called the exaction a ‘penalty.'”
Other constitutional lawyers chimed in about Roberts feckless opinion, labelling it “incompetent,” “laughably inane,” “facially ridiculous,” “mis-read and re-wrote,” “tortured logic, ” and “none of it can pass rational scrutiny.”
The only positive was Roberts’ punting the fraudulent bill back to Congress and the American people. Writing for the majority, he rightly noted:
“Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”
3. People are known by their deeds – Now we know there are essentially four Supreme Court justices with strict constructionist views of the Constitution. Four others are liberal activists, and John Roberts is not the principled jurist we thought he was. In the biggest case of his life–the one that will define his legacy–he became either a legal “gymnast,” a judicial activist, or a bullyable Chief Justice.
Some say he did it to protect the Court’s reputation–to keep it from becoming politicized. If that’s true, then he placed the egos of nine people over the needs of three hundred million. Plus, the liberals on the Court always vote liberal on big cases. It’s only the conservatives that are sometimes squishy–and unprincipled. Never the other way around. Progressives always label something “political” when they don’t get their way.
In all probability, Roberts buckled due to pressure from the White House and threats from the liberal media. In trying not to politicize the Court, he made a bad decision which is the epitome of politicalization–he caved in to the pressure of the Left. They are gloating and swooning now because they know that they can both influence elections (think Clinton in 1992), and also sway the Supreme Court under unprincipled leaders.
Businessman Donal Trump agreed: “It’s a disaster and obviously it would have been better if it was knocked out, but Justice Roberts wanted to be loved by the Washington establishment. And by the way, he is now loved, because the way they’re talking about him, it’s unbelievable. So he is a beloved man to the liberals.”
Yet, Erick Erickson of Redstate, usually a red-meat conservative commentator, was somewhat forgiving and conciliatory toward John Roberts. He likened Roberts’ actions to “chess rather than checkers” by forcing the Congress to deal with this issue as a matter of policy, not legality:
“With John Roberts’ opinion, the repeal fight takes place on GOP turf, not Democrat turf. The all or nothing repeal has always been better ground for the GOP and now John Roberts has forced everyone onto that ground. It seems very, very clear to me in reviewing John Roberts’ decision that he is playing a much longer game than us and can afford to with a life tenure. And he probably just handed Mitt Romney the White House.”
Maybe there is a silver lining in this very poor judicial decision.
4. Elections have consequences – the election of Barack Obama, possibly the worst president in all of American history, not only brought us Obamacare, re-defining marriage and a languishing economy, but also two more liberal activist justices–Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. If John McCain had been elected, we’d have neither. The 2008 election was a terrible setback for the country
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican candidate, may not be Abraham Lincoln, but at least he’s right about the following: “If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we’re going to have to replace President Obama.”
“Let’s make clear that we understand what the Court did, and did not do. What the Court did today was say that Obamacare does not violate the Constitution. What they did not do was say that Obamacare is good law or that it’s good policy. Obamacare was bad policy yesterday. It’s bad policy today. Obamacare was bad law yesterday. It’s bad law today.”
We need Mitt Romney to become an Abraham Lincoln to help us face the dark days ahead.
5. The power of deception has been unleashed in American public life. We now know that the Affordable Health Care Act was based on a lie. The Democrats first health care draft called the bill what it really was–a tax. That bill was scrapped because their leadership knew the people wouldn’t accept it and their members couldn’t run on it.
So they deceptively changed it to a “mandate, a fee, a penalty” that they said fit under the Commerce Clause. This was one of many lies about the bill. Sarah Palin was right in her early tweet after the decision: “Obama lies. Freedom dies.”
Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh said it this way: “Obamacare is nothing more than the largest tax increase in the history of the world. And the people who were characterizing it as such were right and were telling the truth. We have the biggest tax increase in the history of the world right in the middle of one of this country’s worst recessions.”
Probably the clearest voice on the fraudulent terms of the bill came from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:
“Two and a half years ago, a Democrat president teamed up with a Democrat-led Congress to force a piece of legislation on the American people that they never asked for, and that has turned out to be just as disastrous as many of us predicted.”
“Amid economic recession, a spiraling federal debt, and accelerating increases in government health spending, they proposed a bill that has made these problems worse.”
“Americans were promised lower health care costs. They’re going up. Americans were promised lower premiums. They’re going up. Most Americans were promised their taxes wouldn’t change. They’re going up. Seniors were promised Medicare would be protected. It was raided to pay for a new entitlement instead.”
“Americans were promised it would create jobs. The CBO predicts it will lead to nearly 1 million fewer jobs. Americans were promised they could keep their plan if they liked it, yet millions have learned they can’t.”
“And the President of the United States himself promised up and down that this bill was not a tax. This was one of the Democrats’ top selling points — because they knew it would have never passed if they said it was.”
“The Supreme Court has spoken. This law is a tax. This bill was sold to the American people on a deception. But it’s not just that the promises about this law weren’t kept. It’s that it’s made the problems it was meant to solve even worse.”
6. The Supreme Court has now fueled an American cultural civil war that will not be concluded until one side wins.
There is no compromise in Obamacare. Either we have tyranny (big government) or we have liberty (limited government). Either the government controls our healthcare, or we replace that with market-driven solutions that we control ourselves.
There was no compromise over slavery. Either the government sanctioned the tyranny of slavery or the slaves were set free. The healthcare war is also a battle of tyranny versus liberty. Will we be slaves to entitlements (selfish desires), or a free people who put their trust in God?
7. We are back to 1776 in this nation. The “King” has fraudulently levied a deceptive and unjust tax on his subjects. Like the early Colonists, we must rise up as the first Tea Party members did and cast off the yoke of bondage–even if it means “our lives and our sacred honor.”
8. What’s needed to stop the train wreck of America is a prayerful, passionate, modern-day revival and cultural revolution. We must repent of our sins and apathy, vote this president out of office on November 6, increase people of liberty in the House, and elect fifty-one freedom-loving patriots in the United States Senate.
And do the same in every other arena of government in these United States of America. We can start with a renewal of self-government in our own lives and families.
We the People must win this cultural battle–not the Supreme Court. On January 6, 2013, the tyranny of Obamacare can be repealed and replaced with a plan that is based on freedom. Read Heritage Foundation’s good analysis here.
Conclusion
Barack Obama will now re-cast his signature issue, not as a tax, but an act of compassion to grant health care to all Americans. But a lot of dumb, or even evil things can be done in the name of compassion. Don’t fall for it. The end does not justify the means.
Take some time to re-read the Declaration of Independence at your family gathering this 4th of July. It will remind you that a noose of tyranny–taxation without representation–had been foisted upon our ancestors by the British Crown.
But they loved God and liberty enough to rise up and cast it off.
Let the cultural civil war begin.
A Week To Change Our World
I don’t usually combine topics, but this week is a doozy. I am constrained to tie together a number of events that will hit our nation and world in some pretty momentous ways.
First of all, a friend of mine reminded me that fifty years ago this week Madalyn Murray O’Hair was successful in getting voluntary prayer banned in the public schools. Many people believe that decision launched us into a cultural death spiral in which we’re getting very close to crashing into the ground.
Didn’t help Ms. O’Hair much either. She ended up being kidnapped and murdered by one of her atheist buddies. Her body was found on a Texas farm in 2001, cut up in pieces with a saw, and dumped in a barrel.
Sometimes you reap what you sow on earth–let alone before God.
This week some human justice is also going to be meted out that may affect the future trajectory of the United States. Because of a deadline, I have to jump the gun and announce that Obamacare is going down, Eric Holder will be found in contempt of Congress, the lawlessness of the Obama administration has reached new heights, and, in world news, Egypt has voted for terrorism.
Is this a week that will change our world?
OBAMACARE
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act–more simply known as Obamacare–was a 2700 page boondoggle that a Democratically controlled House and Senate forced on the American nation in March of 2010. It was the biggest federal power grab in the history of the United States, bringing the federal government into regulating nearly one-sixth of the American economy.
Of course, it was intended to be a necessary first step toward a one-payer (government) monopoly on health care that would eventually put private insurance out of business and allow the federal government to control American lives from cradle to the grave. Liberals believe it is necessary and compassionate. Wiser minds understand that it spanks of tyranny and will lead to higher costs, gross corruption, rationed care and ultimately, national bankruptcy (look across the Atlantic).
Though many people in America have been tempted by the lure of “free health care,” the polls have consistently shown that a majority of US citizens opposed Obamacare two years ago and still oppose it today.
That will be a mute point on Thursday. I predict that the US Supreme Court will strike down the entire bill–dealing a stinging rebuke to Barack Obama’s signature issue. The constitutional-attorney-president is going to find out that he didn’t learn the ABC’s of freedom at Harvard. The American Constitution (Commerce Clause) does not allow the government to force us to buy anything, not cars, not insurance, and according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, not even broccoli.
Obamacare is toast, and probably so is Barack Obama. This week will be his worst week in a string of bad weeks that are making clear to the American nation that he is not up to the job. This is the beginning of the end of the Obama reign.
It also needs to be the beginning of the real health care reform in which we go back to a one-payer system that places the patient in control of his health insurance in direct relationship to his or her doctor, eliminates all the unnecessary mandates, allows portability and competition across state lines, and drives costs down through rubust market competition.
Even if the Court only strikes down the individual mandate, Obamacare is history. May our next batch of leaders take us into wise and constitutional health care renewal.
CONTEMPT CHARGES
Also on Thursday, The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. be held in contempt of Congress for stone-walling the “Fast and Furious” botched gun-running operation. In this ill-advised program, border agent Brian Terry was killed by a gun sold to Mexican cartel operators. Since that time, Holder has testified nine times before Congress, but has refused to come clean on the details nor hold anyone responsible for the tragedy.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Sunday that the vote could still be postponed or scrapped if Holder and Justice Department officials present congressional investigators with documents related to a probe into Operation “Fast and Furious.
If the House votes to hold him in contempt, Holder would be the first U.S. attorney general in history held in contempt of Congress–another major embarrassment for the president and his close friend. The matter would then be referred to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — a Justice Department employee and Obama administration appointee — who would have to decide whether to bring criminal charges against the attorney general, and/or his boss.
This cover-up is actually more important than Watergate. It isn’t just a bungled burglary. It was a botched gun smuggling program that killed at least one American agent and probably hundreds of Mexican citizens.
ARIZONA IMMIGRATION & FURTHER LAWLESSNESS
This week the Supreme Court also gave out a mixed ruling on illegal immigration in Arizona. It struck down three provisions that they said intruded on federal responsibilities. But it affirmed the most controversial part of the law which allows local police to check the immigration status of anyone suspected of a violation or crime.
Ultimately, the Supremes kicked the can back into Congress’ court where comprehensive immigration reform is still desperately needed. Again, maybe a new set of leaders next year will finally settle the simmering issue of a porous border, twelve million illegals among us, and America’s commitment to accepting immigrants from the world (more than any other nation) and caring for the strangers among us.
Yet, following the decision to allow police to check papers of suspected illegals, the Obama administration extended its spree of lawlessness by promptly saying it would not respond the the calls of local police to Homeland Security–unless the illegal was a convict! In other words, they still want the Hispanic votes of most illegals and will only enforce the law when they want to.
The spirit of lawlessness.
It’s an epidemic–for political reasons–in this Administration. The rule of law is being sytematically replaced by the rule of men–the very reason we fought for American Independence.
In fact, it goes a step further. In their response to not getting their complete way on the immigration ruling, the Obama Administration said it would use the local police phone calls to the Feds to determine if the local police are being discriminatory!
When crybabies don’t get their way, they not only take their ball and go home–they bring back a lawyer to accuse you of bullying.
The current Administration is increasingly dissing the other branches of government in most of their policy making, including immigration. President Obama’s previous decision to exempt young illegals (16-30 years of age) from the threat of deportation—without a law made by Congress—drew this response from Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent in the Arizona decision:
“To say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing immigration law that the president declines to enforce boggles the mind,” Scalia said.
EGYPTIAN SHARIAH?
And finally, this week also saw Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood declared the new president of Egypt by a 51-49 vote.
What’s so had about that? It’s democracy in action, isn’t it?
There are two problems. First, democracy is usually better than tyranny, but without the restraints of law (a biblically-based Constitutional Republic), democratically chosen leaders (such as Adolph Hitler) can dupe the masses and rise to power and create misery for the people.
Mohammed Morsi is an Islamicist–a terrorist. He comes from an organization committed to annihilating the Jews and even setting up their capital in Jerusalem. There is no question that the ultimate agenda of a Muslim Brotherhood run-Egypt will be a drip-feed instigation of sharia law over Egyptian society.
So the noose is tightening around the land of Israel.
We have entered a new phase in human history. A lawless spirit rules in America, though the possibility for renewal has been re-kindled. And near the birth of civilization, the so-called Arab Spring appears to be giving birth to a wintry relgious tyranny–by the vote of the unsuspecting masses.
We need to increase our prayers.
It is a week to change our world.
Gender Killing: The Next Stop on Abortion’s Slippery Slope
Our cowardly legislators in Washington D.C.–actually 168 of them (including seven Republicans)– took an infamous vote last week, failing to stop “gender profiling” in the lucrative abortion business. The House of Representatives fell short in an effort to ban abortions based on the sex of the human fetus.
The vote was 246-168, a sizable positive majority, but thirty votes shy of the two-thirds majority that was required for passage.
The legislation would have made it a federal crime to perform or force a woman to undergo a sex-based abortion, a practice that is common in some Asian countries where families wanting sons abort female fetuses. It is common under the “one-child” policy in China–which sparked Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng and his family fleeing to the United States on May 19.
Now he may regret his decision. Our own leaders have become like the godless communist Chinese rulers–not willing to stop the slaughter of innocent babies for almost any reason.
Most pro-abortionists don’t like the term “slippery slope.” They say it’s a straw man argument that doesn’t apply to real life moral issues.
Well, it’s time for a much-needed reality check on the slippery slope of abortion. We’ve arrived near the bottom of the cliff where nearly all selfish choices are okay to kill babies–including if you don’t want a “girl.”
The pro-choicers said it wouldn’t happen. It did.
Maybe this is the real war on women.
Abortion has become so commonplace in the world over the past forty years that we’ve become numb to its chilling reality and effects. Abortion is by far the greatest form of genocide ever invented. According to the Guttmacher Institute, there have been anywhere from one to two billion abortions worldwide since 1970.
Let that number sink in: One to two billion people.
Please forgive the impreciseness of the figure, but abortions have always been hidden and clouded in mystery by those who perform them–so the true number is nearly impossible to come by. But few dispute that one to two billion is an accurate global estimate.
That means in your town or city, one-sixth to one-third of the population has been quietly murdered during your lifetime.
Ponder that thought for a moment.
I live in South Kitsap county, Washington–an area that is home to 60,000 people. Statistically-speaking, some 10-20,000 human beings have lost their lives in my area through abortion since the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.
Ten to twenty thousand. That’s a staggering number of people.
It’s the same percentage in your town, city, and nation. One sixth to one third of all the people around you have perished in the past four decades.
Do you care? Have you forgotten what evil we tolerate through the holocaust of abortion?
I’m in Los Angeles this week with my family. This morning I purchased a Los Angeles Times newspaper to catch up on world events. On page A-8 there was a lead story entitled, “Seattle in the Grip of Violence.”
Obviously, the story got my attention because we live near the Emerald City. The subtitle to the article read, “A rampage that killed five prompts the city to confront a wave of often deadly gunfire.”
The lengthy story chronicled a spate of murders that have taken place in the city of Seattle this year. The most recent was the senseless killings of a mentally disturbed man named Ian Stawicki who walked into an artsy University District cafe last week and used a gun to murder five people before finally shooting himself in the head.
These murders are tragic and horrific. The story describes the fear and anxiety that now exist in the Seattle area because of the uptick in murders. There have been 21 murders in Seattle during the first six months of the year. That’s the same total for all of 2011.
Twenty-one people murdered. That’s a grievous situation.
But let’s bring ourselves back to reality. Seattle has a population of over 600,000 people. Using the Guttmacher statistic on global abortions as a guide, then the real murder count in Seattle since 1970–through abortion alone–has been one to two hundred thousand people.
That’s 2500-5000 a year.
That’s a heck of a bigger number than twenty-one. And it’s not just a number. It represents the precious lives of real people, just like you and me, who have been cruelly killed through abortion.
To feel the reality of this, let’s go back to my area across the water from Seattle for a moment. According to the global statistics, our region has quietly erased the lives of ten to twenty thousand human beings during the Abortion Holocaust. Imagine a person with a gun, terrorizing the neighborhoods of South Kitsap every day for the past forty years.
It amounts to killing one or two people every single day for forty years! Can you imagine how the residents of the area would feel if that had been the case?
That’s the reality of abortion. Now let’s return to “sex selection” in abortion.
I was in China twice last year–and will be there again in about five weeks. Last July I was in a gathering of about four thousand young people where the evil of aborting females in China was exposed. At the end of the presentation, hundreds of Chinese girls stood, saddened and weeping over the loss of millions of their fellow females because of China’s sex selection abortions.
The boys and fathers also stood to embrace and confort the girls. In China today, because of gender profiling abortion, 58% of the nation are males–an immense problem in coming years. Yet, as I saw at the youth gathering, even the girls who have survived felt marginalized and unwanted.
I spent hours that night putting my arms around these precious Chinese girls letting them know that they were special–and that the death of their “sisters” had been wrong, cruel, barbaric.
Now this same form of gender-based abortion is rearing its ugly head in America. First it was early term abortions under the guise that fetuses were”not fully human,” just clusters of cells. Then it became later term abortions (did age in the womb really matter?). Next up was partial birth abortions where our little ones are partially removed from the womb in order to kill them. And now it’s come to “sexual preferences.
“If I want a boy, you die!”
A slippery slope–really, a deadly lie that we’ve foisted on ourselves for decades.
All of it–not just the sex selection choice–is based on bare, bald selfishness. If I don’t want a baby, you die. If I don’t want to carry you long-term, you die. If I don’t want a girl, you die. Of course, the reverse is also true–if I don’t want a boy, then you die.
What’s next? If I don’t want a boy or girl that has your father’s eye or hair color, then I’ll kill you until I get one that looks like me?
All of this charade is diabolical nonsense.
The one hundred and sixty-eight US representatives who didn’t have the guts to stop sex-selection in abortion need to be removed from office at the polls in November. Don’t believe their nuanced excuses about “excesses” in the bill or other concerns.
We need leaders who stand up for the right to life. It is the first of all human rights.
National Right to Life legislative director, Doug Johnson, had this to say about the shameful House of Representatives vote: “We are heartened that a strong majority of House members voted to ban performing or coercing abortions for the purpose of eliminating unborn babies of an undesired sex—usually, girls. Shamefully, President Obama, and a minority of 168 House members, complied with the political demands of pro-abortion pressure groups, rather than defend the coerced women, and their unborn daughters, who are victimized by sex-selection abortions.”
Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy laments that God’s people have allowed America to careen down the slippery slope of abortion for far too long. He said this about the gender-based abortion vote: