Stinging Rain, The Dream

Sebellius is a LIAR

This from Bill Donahue, filed under the title Obama Mandate Never Scrutinized.

Following her testimony yesterday before the Senate Finance Committee, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius was asked whether she spoke to the bishops about the controversial mandate she is pushing. She admitted she did not. Then she said, “I know that the president has spoken to the bishops on several occasions.”

Sebelius is wrong. Bishop William Lori, who heads the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, said this week that administration officials should have sat down with the bishops. “That certainly did not happen,” he said. Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who heads the bishops’ conference, met once with the president, and that was three months ago; the two phone calls he has had since were to inform him that the bishops’ religious liberty concerns would not be honored.

Under questioning from Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sebelius further admitted that HHS never subjected the religious liberty issues to a legal analysis, as requested by 27 senators. She also admitted that she never asked the Justice Department to consider this issue.

It gets worse. Today’s New York Times reports today that the administration announced the Obama mandate “before it had figured out how to address one conspicuous point: Like most large employers, many religiously affiliated organizations choose to insure themselves rather than hire an outside company to assume the risk.” As the Times points out, this is not a slight issue: 60 percent of all workers with health insurance are covered by a self-funded plan, and the figure jumps to 82 percent for large companies. And no one bothered to address this?

So they refused to consult with the bishops; they refused to weigh the First Amendment religious liberty concerns; and they refused to study how the mandate might impact self-insured companies. In other words, with characteristic arrogance, they just “winged it.” Wait until the Supreme Court hears all of this.

OK, all well and good. But for God’s sake don’t say “Wait until the Supreme Court hears all of this.” I hope they shoot it down if it comes to that, but I hope it doesn’t come to that. It’s a gamble to hope the SCOTUS bails out religious liberty, even though it would be awesome to see a big victory there, I mean 6-3 or better.

Also, I don't think Sebellius is wrong, I think she's lying when she says "I know that the president has spoken to the bishops...." Either that or Obama lied to her, but why should he? She's his Catholic bitch and always does whatever he wants.

Obama delenda est.

Time for Formal Excommunications?

I just Googled 'hhs mandate formal excommunications' and really smart Catholic guy Dr. Jeff Mirus was the top hit. The piece has a lot of good links in it near the top; here's an excerpt from his analysis:

The debate over whether pro-abortion Catholic political leaders should be refused communion or even formally excommunicated has been going on for years. The bishops have been divided in theory on this question and, in practice, no modern bishop has been willing to excommunicate in the war against Catholic participation in the culture of death. But the HHS mandate changes the debate in at least two ways.

First, the HHS mandate takes its Catholic proponents from encouraging grave moral evil to enforcing participation by other Catholics in that evil. In other words, the offense has shifted from personal involvement in evil to a direct assault on the Church. Moreover, there is more than one point of assault. There is one assault against the moral dignity of Catholics and another assault against the clear directives of the bishops who govern the Church.

Second, the bishops have chosen to make the HHS mandate a sort of tipping point. Why they have been so confused and ineffective in their response to the steady erosion of moral values by the American legal system over the past two generations is a matter for historical study. But for whatever combination of reasons now—one of which is certainly this crossing of the thin line between encouragement to participate in evil and actual force—the bishops have decided that they have been pushed as far as they are willing to be pushed, and they have decided to push back.

This seems to be true. The pastor of my parish mentioned the Obama administration by name in a meeting, not from the pulpit, but in a homily he went on for 20 minutes about how unconscionable this action is. And he is fairly moderate most of the time, perhaps to a fault.

Here's Dr. Mirus's conclusion:

Right now, I think we may say that the bishops have taken the glove off. I use the singular advisedly. But there is another glove to be removed. If we have really reached the tipping point, then many things ought to change. To be sure, Bishops ought to be enlisting the hosts of heaven in this conflict, giving it the spiritual focus it deserves. But as the Incarnation demonstrates, God prefers to work through nature rather than in place of nature. Both politically and spiritually, the most potent natural tool a bishop possesses is his disciplinary authority. Therefore discipline has to reach its tipping point, too. Only then can it slide rapidly into place.

Steps to Fight the Obamacare HHS Mandate

Here's an email from my friend about things you can do to fight Obama and the HHS Mandate. I plan to do all these things, in addition to voting for someone in the primary who can actually beat Obama in the general.

My Friends,

You may have heard the news about new rules resulting from the new Healthcare Act. Under the new rules Catholic institutions and other Catholic employers are required to provide services which are in direct conflict with their consciences.

If you believe that the services involved; contraceptive services, sterilizations, and drugs which cause abortions, are not morally objectionable, you may be dismayed by firestorm which has resulted from these new rules. Imagine for a moment, though, that the rules require you to do something that you find morally objectionable. That is exactly what these new rules do.

This is a serious breach of the religious liberty which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

I believe that this is a brazen act by our government. If you agree, then I ask you to educate yourself on this issue. We all need to explain to others how drastic these new rules are.

One example of what will happen if these rules go into effect is that Catholic Relief Services, which provides needed food and medicine to poor and starving people throughout the world, will be required to pay massive punitive fines amounting to $140,000,000 per year. As you might imagine, this will have a severe impact on their ability to fulfill their mission. Other entities which will be affected by this ae Catholic and other Christian Schools, Hospitals, non profits, and other charities.

I ask you to do four things:

1. Pray for our country. A novena prayer about this issue is located here: http://www.priestsforlife.org/novenas/hhs-mandate.htm

2. Read the talking points provided by Priests for Life. They are located here: http://www.priestsforlife.org/hhsmandate/talking-points.pdf

3. Write to your legislators using the following link. Priests for life will hand deliver your message to your legislators.
http://www.priestsforlife.org/freedom-of-conscience/index.htm

4. Listen to the webcast or simply look at the links to resources listed here:
http://instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=26593149

May God Bless You and May He protect our country!

Fight, fight, fight using all means at your disposal. Obama delenda est.

More Pillution News

Remember the first pillution story I reported on? Here's the latest one, no doubt leaked to MSNBC by those horrible Catholics. And here I am clean out of animal drag queen jokes. But I suppose that the topic of prostate cancer is less humorous than the idea of a dance troupe of homosexual fish. Excerpt:

"Several studies now have found an association between estrogen exposure and prostate cancer," said study researcher Dr. David Margel, a uro-oncology fellow at the University of Toronto. In this case, he said, "We think this is environmental —[estrogen] goes into the water, into our food chain."

At the same time, Margel said, "We can't establish a cause-and-effect relationship. We definitely don't think the take-home message is women should stop taking the pill."

Yeah, why stop taking the pill over this, ladies? After all, you already increase your own chances of breast cancer, liver cancer and cervical cancer by taking birth-control pills.

But seriously, we've seen this knee-jerk disclaimer before from the Iain Murray piece as quoted in the first pillution story.

The cause of intersexuality among fish, scientists speculate, is pollution in the water, particularly hormones. Why don’t we have more outcries about hormones, and campaigns to save the fish populations? Why aren’t environmentalists lobbying on Capitol Hill to keep these chemicals from being dumped into our rivers?

Maybe because the source of these chemicals is not some corporate polluter, but something a little more dear to the Left: human birth-control pills, morning-after pills, and abortion pills.

The takeaway from these stories for me is this: although they are stating that hormones from oral contraceptives might not be causing prostate cancer they are not denying that there are female hormones are in our water supply.

One more related item. Happy Valentine's Day, and I hope all the married people reading this at least try to make a baby tomorrow. You have the power to change the future.