The ACLU Attacks Religion Over Service to Gays

From Reuters News Service:

May 9 (Reuters) - The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday said it filed a lawsuit in federal court to block a Mississippi law allowing people with religious objections to deny services to gay and transgender people.

The law is due to take effect in July.

The ACLU said the measure is discriminatory and contradicts the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last year that legalized same-sex marriage.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)



The following is my response to this story:

 "Yet another example of the ACLU trying to eliminate religious freedom from our way of life. The gays can do and say pretty much anything they want these days, destroying business owners immediate and future incomes and demanding that upright and good people violate their personal morals, yet have ZERO TOLERANCE for anyone with the temerity to say something different than the message they are hammering into everyone about tolerance, acceptance "Love is Love, " etc.

I grew up knowing that Freedom of Religion actually meant something to this country. The prevailing message these days is, Religion is OK only so long as the gays aren't offended by pretty much anything any religion teaches about morals, personal conduct and anything else the LGBT community decides is objectionable.

So much for the ACLU defending the Constitution for everyones benefit. If only one person says boo about a particular issue, the ACLU will go to extraordinary lengths to assure that the other 350 million people in this country conform to that singular person's opinion. That isn't freedom; it's coercion through litigation. In this case, they are demanding that business owners everywhere violate any personal morals or religious objections regarding the LGBT community because a few people are offended that their minority lifestyle is not embraced by everyone.

Let me say this again...Coercion through litigation is not freedom at all. And anyone who tells you it is has an agenda all their own in which the vast minority are free to dictate to the vast majority what to think, say and do on any particular issue.

An Important Week in US History

This is an extremely important week in US history. It includes "The shot heard round the world." Please read on:

A Midnight Ride to Lexington

The events of this week in 1775, especially of April 18-19, are some of the most famous in the story of how Americans won the liberty that we still enjoy today.

Those eventful days began on April 18, 1775 with a horseback ride by Paul Revere and William Dawes. They set out to warn militias across the Massachusetts countryside of approaching British troops, who were sent to Concord to confiscate the weapons there. These British troops were also dispatched to "bring back the bodies of Mess. Hancock and Adams."
Arriving in Lexington around midnight at the home of the Rev. Jonas Clark (where John Hancock and Samuel Adams were staying), Revere passed on word of the British plans. Revere and Dawes then left Lexington, joined by Samuel Prescott, and continued their ride towards Concord. On their way, Revere and Dawes were captured by the British but Prescott escaped and alerted Concord.
After the alert by Revere had been delivered in Lexington, the local militia (largely the men from Clark's church) was mustered. On the morning of April 19, 1775, some 77 Americans would face about 800 British troops. Gunfire was exchanged -- the American Revolution had begun!
As the smoke cleared, 18 Americans lay wounded or dead (all the casualties being from Pastor Clark's church), including both black patriots (such as Prince Estabrook) and white patriots (such as John Robbins). (One of the amazing items we have in the WallBuilders library is a sermon preached by Jonas Clark on the one-year anniversary of the Battle of Lexington.)
The much larger British force, having prevailed in that Lexington skirmish, continued their march towards Concord, where they would be met by the Rev. William Emerson and 400 American patriots awaiting them. Also involved in that Concord group was black patriot Peter Salem, who a few weeks later went on to become the hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
As we remember the events of this week that occurred 241 years ago and the liberties they eventually produced, let's also remember the responsibility those events place upon us. As President John Adams reminded us:

"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it."

With DAPA, The President Broke The Law

The following commentary was written by U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R, UT) following the recent Supreme Court hearing on President Obama's unilateral amnesty for  millions of illegal aliens which also includes broad access to governmental aid programs.

'The President Broke the Law with DAPA. Will the Supreme Court Stop Him?'

"One of the most fundamental challenges facing the United States today is the deep and growing distrust between the American people and their political system in Washington, D.C. And the inconvenient truth — rarely acknowledged by Washington elites — is that the American people’s distrust of their public institutions is totally justified.

Most moms and dads in America still teach their children to follow the rules even when they’re inconvenient, to respect the authority of the law, and to work hard to earn their success. But when they look to their nation’s capital, they see a very different ethos — one that rewards politicians and bureaucrats who rewrite the rules whenever they please, flout the law with impunity, and rig public policy in their favor.

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in United States v. Texas, which challenges one of the most egregious examples of Washington’s corrupted culture: President Obama’s amnesty program, the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Records (DAPA).

For more than six decades, Congress has exercised its power over immigration by establishing a comprehensive scheme of rules and regulations governing admission to the country and the circumstances under which foreign nationals may be eligible for work authorization or government benefits.

President Obama does not like the current immigration code and, to be honest, I have problems with it as well. But neither of us is allowed to change the law on our own, a fact President Obama used to respect.

As he (the President) explained in March 2011: With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case. . . . There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President.

But just a few years later, President Obama did exactly what he had previously said was strictly prohibited by the Constitution. With the adoption of DAPA, he unilaterally suspended federal immigration law for more than 4 million aliens living in the United States illegally, granting them “lawful presence,” work authorization, and access to a host of government benefits.

President Obama claims DAPA is just a routine exercise of the chief executive’s inherent power of “prosecutorial discretion,” which gives executive-branch agencies some degree of leeway when enforcing the law. But that power has limits, and it’s clear that DAPA goes beyond them.

For instance, it is a legitimate use of prosecutorial discretion for a prosecutor to decide not to prosecute someone who got a ticket for driving 75 miles per hour in a 65-mile-per-hour zone.

But that same prosecutor could not announce that, as a matter of policy, all motorists are permitted to travel at 75 miles per hour and then create a special lane for them to do so. This would be an obvious abuse of prosecutorial discretion, as it would effectively create a new law.

That is exactly what President Obama did when he created DAPA.
DAPA is not a minor adjustment of immigration-enforcement policy; it is a wholesale rewriting of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Nor is DAPA even remotely comparable to past deferred-action programs implemented by former presidents. Historically, deferred action has been reserved to provide temporary relief to narrowly tailored groups, but President Obama has used it to circumvent the legislative process and unilaterally grant amnesty to millions of foreign nationals living in the United States illegally.

The facts of the case are clear: By adopting the DAPA program, President Obama broke the law, usurped Congress’s authority to regulate immigration, and violated his constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
You don’t have to oppose the policy outcome contemplated by DAPA to see the danger of allowing the president to singlehandedly rewrite the law.

In a republic such as ours, the stability and legitimacy of government rests, above all, on a moral foundation of public trust. Citizens must have confidence that the representatives they elect to write and enforce the nation’s laws will do so honestly, if not honorably. But today, that confidence has withered and weakened.

Fortunately, United States v. Texas gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to strengthen the public’s trust in our political system by affirming that in America no one, not even the president, is above the law."

"Equality" Demands in the State of Georgia

This week, the State of Georgia's Legislature passed a Bill addressing the issue of LGBT persons using the restroom facilities of the opposite sex, according to their birth gender. If signed by Georgia Governor, Nathan Deal, several entertainment companies including Disney and Tyler Perry Productions have stated that if the Bill is indeed signed, that they will pull out of the State, taking their production business elsewhere. Their gripe? Because they are all for "Equality" in all its forms, and against intolerance towards those of various sexual persuasions or identities. In other words, they are basically demanding that anyone of the LGBT ilk be allowed to use the public restroom facilities of their 'chosen' gender identity.
Forget the fact that this poses the traumatizing risk of children being exposed to things they just should be made to see, there is the very real probability that such allowances will pose the risk of pedophiles and other sexual predators to legally enter the bathroom of their potential victims. How is this OK with these companies who demand this so-called "equality?"
The issue is definitely a 'Hot Button' topic, and I immediately sat down and wrote the following comment to a story on today's MSN:

So, in the name of "equality" these companies and various celebrities would infringe on the rights of the vast 99% who don't want themselves or their children exposed to this vast minority of just 1% who seek to dictate to everyone else what is fair and acceptable. How about coming up with a solution that doesn't infringe on the 99% who see this as either a Freedom of Religion issue, or simply what is right, and what is blatantly wrong...or both.

It's because of the vast minority dictating to the vast majority that the Pledge of Allegiance is no longer recited in our public schools; that a student wishing to say a prayer over school lunch is prohibited; that our Freedom of Religion, as guaranteed in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, is on the brink of collapse; that the ACLU wrongly coerces school districts across the nation into banning Christmas references, and other religious activities in our schools; and that public displays of the Ten Commandments are being torn up from city hall's across the country.

Oh! Someone is offended! Now, they are going to make the entire country bend to their will, rather than displaying basic human understanding and compassion and allowing the vast majority to do, say and worship as they expect to be able to. You know...those pesky freedoms included in our Founding documents.

The Obama Administration Misrepresents the Constitution...Again.

With the recent death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a vacancy on the High Court needs to be filled which is the job of the President to Nominate a successor, but the job of the US Senate to Accept or Reject the candidate at all.

US Senator Mike Lee (R), Utah, highlights the misrepresentation of the Obama Administration of the issue to the American people in the text of his weekly address to his constituents as follows:

Chairman's Note: The People Should Determine What Kind of Supreme Court They Wish to Have

The opening words of the Preamble to the United States Constitution are familiar to us all: “We the People.” But what exactly do they mean?

It was by “the People” that the Constitution was written and ratified. It is for “the People” that my colleagues and I, along with every other public official across these United States, now serve. And it was on behalf of “the People” that the Constitution established “one supreme Court,” consisting of judges appointed “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.”

Since the tragic passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, there has been a great deal of debate about this particular provision of the Constitution.

But there should be no controversy. The text of our founding charter is clear: The president has full and complete power to nominate individuals to the Supreme Court, and the Senate has full and complete power to confirm nominees or to withhold consent.
It’s as simple as that. Indeed, the Senate retains complete discretion with respect to whether it should even consider – much less accept or reject – presidential nominees.

This should not be controversial. It is how virtually every student of the Constitution – and nearly every member of Congress – has understood the Senate’s power of “Advice and Consent” for the past 228 years since the Constitution was ratified.

But now, with the presidential election in full swing, President Obama and his allies in Congress and the media claim the opposite is true. As they tell it, the Senate is constitutionally obligated to hold hearings and to vote on the candidate that President Obama eventually nominates to replace Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.

I respectfully dissent.

"It’s as simple as that. Indeed, the Senate retains complete discretion with respect to whether it should even consider – much less accept or reject – presidential nominees."

If this a-textual and a-historical account of the Constitution were accurate, then prior Senates violated the Constitution when they did not cast up-or-down votes on Supreme Court nominees. Even the Standing Rules of the Senate would be suspect, contemplating as they do that “[n]ominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President...”

Neither does the prospect of a temporary eight-member Court raise concern. For instance, during the Court’s 2010-2011 term, the Court decided over 30 cases with eight or fewer justices, almost entirely as a result of recusals arising from Justice Kagan’s nomination. Similarly, following the retirement of Justice Powell in 1987, the Court acted on 80 cases with eight or fewer justices.

In short, the sky does not fall when the Court comprises only eight justices. As Justice Breyer recently stated, the work of the court “[f]or the most part...will not change.”

With the future of the Supreme Court now at stake, and the election for our next president already well underway, it is the People who should determine what kind of Supreme Court they wish to have. The president is entitled, of course, to discharge his own constitutional authority to nominate. But the Senate is equally entitled to withhold consent and protect the People’s voice.

As James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, "ambition must counteract ambition. And the People should decide."

President Obama's Latest Attempt to Bypass Congress

The recent FBI order to coerce Apple (inc) to write backdoor software to break into the phones of the San Bernardino shooters as a part of its investigation as been met with wall of resistance by Apple, stating it refuses to unlock the phones due to very real and worrying Governmental intrusion into privacy of its citizens that our Government is sworn to protect. Apple has used the courts to block the injunction served by the FBI, and has publicly stated that it will never unlock the phones.
President Obama, in his ever-present desire to rule as an uncrowned Monarch, has pulled out an antiquated, seldom used law from 1789 called the All Writs Act which compels law enforcement to demand technology from a company in the course of its investigation.

As Written into Law:

"The All Writs Act is a United States federal statute, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1651, which authorizes the United States federal courts to "issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law."
(a) The Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.
(b) An alternative writ or rule nisi may be issued by a justice or judge of a court which has jurisdiction.

Application of the All Writs Act requires the fulfillment of four conditions:^[3]

• The absence of alternative remedies—the act is only applicable when other judicial tools are not available.
• An independent basis for jurisdiction—the act authorizes writs in aid of jurisdiction, but does not in itself create any federal subject-matter jurisdiction.
• Necessary or appropriate in aid of jurisdiction—the writ must be necessary or appropriate to the particular case.
• Usages and principles of law—the statute requires courts to issue writs "agreeable to the usages and principles of law."

Example:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. New York Telephone Co. 434 U.S. 159 (1977) that the act provided authority for a U.S. District Court to order a telephone company to assist law enforcement officials in installing a device on a rotary phone in order to track the phone numbers dialed on that phone, which was reasonably believed to be used in furtherance of criminal activity.

Senator Mike Lee (R) Utah, has illustrated the Obama Administration's latest attempt to bypass Congress on this issue in his weekly communication with his (Lee's) constituents. This is another clear violation by Obama of the Founding Documents he has twice sworn to Uphold, Protect and Defend," which he has clearly lied about doing.

"After seven years in office, it is now very clear what President Obama does when Congress refuses to do his bidding: he simply ignores the lawmaking branch and tries to use raw power to change the law by fiat.

He did it on immigration to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. He did on education to force Common Core on the states. And now he is doing it again to try to rewrite our nation’s privacy laws.

In 1994, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which determines the requirements facing technology companies when law-enforcement agencies want their help with criminal investigations.

Specifically, the law states that it “does not authorize any law enforcement agency or officer to require any specific design of equipment, features [...] or system configurations to be adopted by any [...] manufacturer of telecommunications equipment.”

In other words, a mobile phone manufacturer, like Apple, can’t be forced to create a backdoor key for law-enforcement agencies to use to access any phone they want.

For years President Obama sought to change this law, but Congress disagreed.

So when one of the San Bernardino terrorists failed to destroy one of his three mobile phones, which was owned by the county for which he worked, President Obama saw his chance to rewrite the law through the courts.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is now claiming in federal court that the All Writs Act, passed in 1789, empowers the law-enforcement agency to compel Apple to create new software that will allow to get FBI agents into the terrorist’s phone.

Earlier this week, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, President Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, testified that there was no link between the president’s failure to change the law in Congress and the FBI’s decision to use the All Writs Act to achieve the same result through the courts.

But a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, who received a similar All Writs Act request from the FBI exposed President Obama’s tactics. In a February 29 ruling, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein wrote: “It is also clear that the government has made the considered decision that it is better off securing such crypto-legislative authority from the courts (in proceedings that had always been, at the time it filed the instant Application, shielded from public scrutiny) rather than taking the chance that open legislative debate might produce a result less to its liking.”

“Indeed,” Orenstein continued, “on the very same day that the government filed the ex parte Application in this case [...] it made a public announcement that after months of discussion about the need to update CALEA to provide the kind of authority it seeks here, it would not seek such legislation.”

People of good faith can have honest disagreements about what tech companies should or should not be compelled to do by law enforcement. But the proper place for that debate and policymaking process is Congress, not the courts."

When will Congress collectively stand up and demand the President cease his assault on Congress and the Constitution? Frankly, after everything he has done, including his open defiance of Congress, I am surprised they have failed to address the Power Grab he so blatantly uses to get his way.

Opening Public Lands to Unregulated Logging and Mining

A story from "The Guardian" today highlights an alarming bit of legislation that I absolutely had to comment on. The following are both the article and my response. Please read...

Congress is to consider two bills that would allow states to hand over vast tracts of federal land for mining, logging or other commercial activities – just weeks after the arrest of an armed militia that took over a wildlife refuge in Oregon in protest at federal oversight of public land.
Related: Oregon militia explainer: background to the standoff
The legislation, which will be presented to the House committee on natural resources on Thursday, would loosen federal authority over parts of the 600m acres (240m hectares), nearly one-third of the land mass of the US, it administers.

A bill put forward by Republican Don Young would allow any state to assume control of up to two million acres of the national forest system to be “managed primarily for timber production” in order to address what Young claims is a decline in national logging rates.

A further bill, written by Republican Raul Labrador, would allow state governors to assign up to four million acres of land as “forest demonstration areas”, which would allow logging free from any federal water, air or endangered species restrictions.

The bills, which will be heard by a Republican-dominated committee, come just two weeks after the dramatic end to the armed militia occupation of the Malheur national wildlife refuge in Oregon. The 41-day occupation, which resulted in the fatal shooting of the militia’s spokesman before the arrest of the rest of the group, was sparked by the group’s anger at federal land use regulations.

The heavily armed militia, led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy, said the occupation could last for “several years”, with some saying they were willing to die for the cause. Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz recently aligned himself with sentiments expressed by the group, releasing an advert in Nevada that criticized federal control of public land.

“If you trust me with your vote, I will fight day and night to return full control of Nevada’s lands to its rightful owners,” Cruz said in the ad. The Texas senator came third in the Republican caucus in Nevada.

Environmentalists have decried the latest attempt to strip federal control from public land, warning that endangered species and vital ecosystem services, such as clean water, will be put at risk.

“The natural resources committee is pretty radicalized at this point,” said Bobby McEnaney, senior lands analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The fact that they would react to what’s happened in Oregon to advance an agenda to take land from the federal government is seriously tone deaf.

“Most of this committee didn’t condemn the actions at Malheur, so this is not completely unexpected. The agenda here is being driven by oil, gas and timber industries. The Republicans are interested in a deregulation race to zero.”

Donald Barry, senior vice-president for conservation programs at Defenders of Wildlife, said the authors of the bill were in a “time warp”.

“One would expect this kind of thing would happen in the 1900s, but not the 21st century,” he said.

“National forests are no longer viewed by the public as an ATM machine based on the exploitation of natural resources. They are places to hike, camp and to be protected in order to provide clean water supplies. The American people clearly realize this now.

“The idea that states will manage this land well is just an illusion. They don’t have the resources to do so, which means there will be a fire sale for mining and timber companies. The American public would lose access to these lands. Those days should be behind us.”

The authors of the bills, along with the committee chairman, Rob Bishop, were all approached for comment.

My response:

"This is terrible, poorly considered legislation!

If allowed, logging and mining companies will absolutely destroy public lands for the sake of profit. Anyone who has seen the logging practice called "Clear-Cutting" knows what I'm talking about. There is no forest management; only the total decimation of every tree, whether it is mature enough or not. After doing so, it takes generations for the forest to recover.

As far as mining, they will pollute every stream they are near, destroying clean water, fish and other wildlife habitat, and affecting entire ecosystems. These companies will utilize grandfather clauses to destroy both parks and wilderness areas as well, such as one companies' attempt to mine in the middle of the pristine Glacier Peaks Wilderness. Only a land swap averted that from happening.

Add in the removal of all environmental protections and we WILL see an environmental disaster unlike anything this country has seen in decades. Anyone who jumps onboard this legislation needs to get the boot from public office as this is purely in the best interest of corporations only, and to the detriment of the American public."

Syrian Refugees and President Obama's Constitutional Misrepresentation

From The Wall Builders comes a fantastic editorial on President Obama's attempted rewrite of Article VI of the US Constitution so as to support his political agenda regarding Syrian refugees fleeing their war-torn country.
This is yet another example of the President of the United States attempting to alter the Constitution--the very guiding principles of our country--to push his political agenda forward, which is clearly becoming his attempt to change the very fabric of law that this country was founded upon. Please read on.

Article VI of the Constitution

Following the recent attacks in Paris, and after learning that terrorists were hiding among Muslim Syrian refugees, a political battle erupted in America over allowing those refugees to enter. The President supported their continued admission while Congress voted to increase screening of those refugees. Numerous governors added their opposition to accepting Syrian refugees.
Presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz recommended that America accept only Christian refugees from Syria, but President Obama flatly dismissed that proposal, explaining:

When I hear folks say that, well, "Maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims" -- when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted. . . that’s shameful.

The President's allusion to a “religious test” is a reference to Article VI of the Constitution, which says:

. . . no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

President Obama, once again, has completely rewritten the simple wording of the Constitution to make it say something it does not. As is evident from the clear wording above, the "religious test" clause applies only to federally elected and appointed officials, and that's all. It does not apply to immigrants or anyone who does not hold federal office.
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (considered one of the two "Fathers of American Jurisprudence") affirmed this in his famous 1833 Commentary on the Constitution:

 This clause. . . is designed to cut off every pretense of an alliance between the Church and State in the administration of the National Government. (emphasis added)

This clause specifically ensured that there would be no requirement that all federal officials must belong to just one specific denomination, which had been the case across much of Europe at the time the Constitution was written.
Signer of the Constitution Richard Dobbs Spaight likewise affirmed:

As to the subject of religion. . . . [n]o power is given to the general [federal] government to interfere with it at all. . . . No sect [denomination] is preferred to another. Every man has a right to worship the Supreme Being in the manner he thinks proper. No test is required. All men of equal capacity and integrity are equally eligible to offices.

The religious test clause of the U.S. Constitution applies only to those holding a federal office.
Whether or not Syrian Muslim refugees should be accepted into America is still to be determined, but contrary to what President Obama claims, Article VI of the Constitution has absolutely nothing to do with the debate.