Big Supreme Court decision Monday

[Jim in CT]

Hobby Lobby vs Kathleen Sebelius, concerns Hobby Lobby's contention that it's unconstitutional for the feds to require them to offer free contraception to employees as part of their healthcare.

Now, I could be wrong, but my understanding is that if a woman needs birth control pills for medical reasons (which is fairly common), Hobby Lobby is willing to provide it. HL does not want to provide contraception that is not related to a medical condition, in other words, they don't want to provide the tools for their employees to engage in recreational sex.

If that's true, we'll see if religious freedom means anything in this country. If the Supreme Court says that HL must provide what is essentially safety equipment for a voluntary, recreational activity...then I want to know why my health insurance doesn't give me a free ski helmet. I choose to ski, why should I have to buy my helmet, if Sandra Fluke doesn't have to buy her birth control?

If my presumption is true (that contraception is provided when there's a medical issue) than this has absolutely nothing to do with healthcare. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Bupkus.

[Cool Beans]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

If that's true, we'll see if religious freedom means anything in this country. If the Supreme Court says that HL must provide what is essentially safety equipment for a voluntary, recreational activity...then I want to know why my health insurance doesn't give me a free ski helmet. I choose to ski, why should I have to buy my helmet, if Sandra Fluke doesn't have to buy her birth control?

To heck with a ski helmet I would love to have it cover my kayak and fishing gear. Recreational fishing is almost as fun as recreatinal sex.... LOL

[FishermanTim]

How soon before the SC decides on more important factors, like the chickens in a cage issue?
Seems like the authorities, as a whole, have literally "taken the summer #^&#^&#^&#^&, only they started back in January!!!
They will chide in on low level issues that shouldn't have been escalated to their level, and end up putting off key decisions until it's too late to do anything except apologize to the victims!

[Raven]

these guys tried to invent a square bodied headless chicken
that was fed intravenously and never ever walked ......
always about the profit... all other considerations are ignored

[Cool Beans]

Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in contraceptive mandate challenge 5-4 decision

Also

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled Monday that public sector unions cannot collect fees from home health care workers who don't want to be part of a union.

[Jim in CT]

Yep. On one hand, a relief. On the other hand, scary to me that 4 Supreme Court justices think it's of for the feds to force you to be complicit in somehting which violates your religious beliefs.

The Court has not been kind to Obama for the last week.

[Raider Ronnie]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

Yep. On one hand, a relief. On the other hand, scary to me that 4 Supreme Court justices think it's of for the feds to force you to be complicit in somehting which violates your religious beliefs.

The Court has not been kind to Obama for the last week.

Poor Obozo
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

[eelskimmer]

It is my understanding that Hobby Lobby does not object
to paying for contraception for its employees--only for
those (next morning pills) that can cause abortion.
This is a different story than women reproduction rights.
But you won't hear it on the drive-by media.

[PaulS]

Originally Posted by Raider Ronnie

Poor Obozo
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Takes a classy man to make fun of another person's name.

[PaulS]

Frankly, I could care less what he thinks. At least someone finally responsed to one of his posts.

[Fishpart]

It’s increasingly ridiculous to use the word “liberal” to describe the modern American collectivist. There’s nothing liberal about them at all. They’re shooting for the ultimate subversion of liberty, by re-defining “liberty” as a form of compulsion. In other words, they’re saying you are being oppressed unless a wise and virtuous dictatorial authority can force other people to give you what the authoritarians have decided you “deserve.” You aren’t “free” as long as you must provide for yourself. Liberty becomes a term used to describe its exact opposite: a set of active obligations placed upon other people. It’s right up there with any perversion of language and thought described by George Orwell in “1984.” Actually, it is one of the perversions he laid at Big Brother’s feet: “Freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.”

[Jim in CT]

On MSNBC.com, I saw the headline "Ruling A Rallying Cry For Women".

Yeah, yeah. Upholding the constitution is akin to waging war on women, I get it...They interviewed Reb Deb Wasserman Shultz. If Miss Schultz thinks that that the freedom of religion ends where feminist causes begin, she can try to amend the constitution to reflect such. Until then, freedom of religion applies even when that freedom is expressed in a way contrary to the views of contemporary feminism.

[PaulS]

I think you either read into things too much or give it too much thought.

I could have easily said "Thanks goodness....." Either way, I'm thankful I don't feel the need to wish cancer on someone for they way they vote.

[spence]

Originally Posted by PaulS

I think you either read into things too much or give it too much thought.

I could have easily said "Thanks goodness....." Either way, I'm thankful I don't feel the need to wish cancer on someone for they way they vote.

Dude, he's just punking you.

-spence

[Sea Dangles]

Spence knows how it feels

[RIROCKHOUND]

Originally Posted by spence

Dude, he's just punking you.

-spence

If he is not, he (Detbush) has too much time on his hands.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND

If he is not, he (Detbush) has too much time on his hands.

Heh, heh . . . I like that--Detbush for Detbuch. Sort of like ARE I ROCKHEAD for RIROCKHOUND. It's stuff like that which makes posting fun--though, as you say, it is a marker of that "too much time on hands" syndrome.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by PaulS

I think you either read into things too much or give it too much thought.

It didn't take much thought . . . perhaps a little more than the thought you gave to your remarks. Perhaps your reading more into my response than is necessary . . . it was pretty straightforward and uncomplicated.

I could have easily said "Thanks goodness....."

But you didn't. And you capitalized God . . . ah, I'm probably reading too much into your use of orthography and diction. But, then, perhaps you should pay a bit more attention to what you say and how you say it. Just a thought. Small potatoes. Not important. Especially if what you say is insignificant enough that giving it thought would spoil it.

Besides "Thank goodness" is a euphemism for "Thank God" or, more pointedly in this case, for "Thank god."

Either way, I'm thankful I don't feel the need to wish cancer on someone for they way they vote.

But why would you be thankful (to whom or what) that you don't feel the need to wish cancer on someone? To paraphrase Hillary, what difference does it make? And why are you so concerned if someone else does that you have to point it out and decide the person is miserable for doing so? And then be thankful that you were never "allowed" to do so? Maybe you should shake off the chains that constrain you and try it. Maybe those that say such things are relieving some unhealthy tensions. Unwind a bit. Loosen up and use that God-given, or naturally evolved, or personally concocted use of speech to express your dislike, or even hatred, of what others do . . . oh . . . I guess you do . . . in your own way. You're just nicer about it. Or seem to be.

[buckman]

I think some here totally misjudge the level of frustration and anger that a lot of us are feeling.
Fees went up again at the RMV today .... Services will decline
Pissed off
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

[detbuch]

QUOTE=Fishpart;1046042]It’s increasingly ridiculous to use the word “liberal” to describe the modern American collectivist. There’s nothing liberal about them at all. They’re shooting for the ultimate subversion of liberty, by re-defining “liberty” as a form of compulsion. In other words, they’re saying you are being oppressed unless a wise and virtuous dictatorial authority can force other people to give you what the authoritarians have decided you “deserve.” You aren’t “free” as long as you must provide for yourself. Liberty becomes a term used to describe its exact opposite: a set of active obligations placed upon other people. It’s right up there with any perversion of language and thought described by George Orwell in “1984.” Actually, it is one of the perversions he laid at Big Brother’s feet: “Freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.”[/QUOTE]

Well said. What you describe is uncomfortably obvious. But for many, if not most, it is also too uncomfortable to discuss. It is like some indomitable bogeyman that can only be avoided by looking the other way. Or by creating pleasant fictions on how the "virtuous" dictatorial authoritarians will make us a better world if only we would stop harassing them with notions of freedom or individual liberty or personal responsibility. And for God's sake (or god's sake or goodness sake) stop harping about a form of government which has been outraced by time.

We have somehow supposedly arrived at a time and place where liberty or freedom are beyond our individual grasp and beyond our consent to be governed by a servile State which is limited as set forth in a description of its powers written on ancient parchment. A time and place where, as Spence might say, a piece of paper is no different than a pizza.

A time and place where a plethora of uniquely evolved individuals are too much of a burden on "society." A time and place where the Wilsonian progressive notion of society functioning as a well ordered bee hive is the model to emulate. A time and place where the masses must be schooled and instructed to fit in their proper place in the hive. Eventually, those who don't fit into the prescribed compartments will have to be cared for, in whatever manner is affordable to society, and provided with, or forced to take freely provided contraception so as not to overburden the order and function of the collective responsibilities.

A time and place, however, which opposes its own concept of science and evolution. It purports to be a time and place that broke from the notion of some creative design to one that evolved to the present by accident through a Darwinian like evolution. And now the accident of science will be the tool by which we create the time and place of our choosing. Somehow, these progressive ideologies will be the intelligent designers of our time and place . . . of our being. In contradiction to the whole notion that intelligent design is some absurd creative beginning, progressive ideology has turned its own notions upside down and will somehow end the evolutionary process by designing a perpetual utopia.

It will, of course, fail through the very evolutionary process in which it claims to believe. The thing about evolution and the dialectic process, as long as there is being, it never ends.

And that founding piece of paper differs from a pizza in that it was intelligently designed to provide for the time and place where individuals can continuously evolve as a society.

[PaulS]

I think your comment took a lot more thought (as you certainly spent more time that I did on typing your response). I do thank God (capitalized ) that if someone does something as minor as vote differently than I do, I don't wish a miserable disease on them. I don't have the hatred you mention.

Am I getting into a typical detbuch poopoo now?

Thanks for the backhanded insults.

Is it a wonder people ignore the vast majority of your posts. (how is that for "shaking off the chains of constraint")

[Jim in CT]

The liberal reaction to this was perfectly predictable. And tiring. And dishonest to the core.

(1) conservatives want to deny women their right to healthcare. Insane. HL was willing to provide 16 of the 20 forms of contraception mandated by Obamacare. They only objected to the 4 that don't take effect until after the egg is fertilized, which they see as abortion.

Have liberals become so paralyzed with entitlement that they actually claim that if someone doesn't wish to buy something for you, that's the same as them denying you access to that something? Have liberals completely abandoned the notion of self sufficiency? I am bald. My employer will not pay for me to receive a scalp transplant if I asked. Is my employer therefore denying me of my right to get a scalp transplant? Of course not. I can get it on my own if I so choose. He is under no obligatuion to give me everything I could possibly want, and he's not denying me access to anything when he says "I'm not paying for that".

(2) The owners of HL are imposing their beliefs on their employees. Ridiculous. The owners of HL are not trying to change their employees' minds about Christianity or abortion. The employees are still free to do whatever they choose. They just have to leave their employers out of it. The only ones here subjected to coercion, were the owners of HL, who were being forced by the feds to be complicit in that which violates their religion.

This should not have been a toughie, it should have been 9-0.

[detbuch]

QUOTE=PaulS;1046179]I think your comment took a lot more thought (as you certainly spent more time that I did on typing your response).

Thanks for amending your original "too much thought" to "a lot more thought." I plead guilty to that, but, as I said. it didn't take much thought, just more, as we both agree, than you gave.

I do thank God (capitalized ) that if someone does something as minor as vote differently than I do, I don't wish a miserable disease on them. I don't have the hatred you mention.

So, then, you do thank God. That may be important to you in a larger context, but of little significance to your post here--just an expression. A sort of general gratitude and pat on the back that you're better than someone else in some particular way.

But if you stretch your imagination a bit, expand your consciousness within the boundaries, expansive as they may be, of this thread, can you see how your post in which you thank God, and speak of voting, and the President in a thread about religious freedom before the Supreme Court . . . can you see how someone might wonder how your apparent belief in God would fit into our larger present day political scheme and how it would reconcile the problems of the ACA mandates and religious freedom? I thought it would be very interesting to hear what your thoughts are on all of this. Apparently, none of that interests you and was dismissed as too much thinking.

Am I getting into a typical detbuch poopoo now?

If you wish. It is fun, but a distraction from the flow of the thread--a sort of thread hijacking. I tried to bring your comments re Raider Ronnie into that flow in a meaningful way, but you apparently would have none of that, just, it seems, to insist on your reproof of RR.

Thanks for the backhanded insults.

I don't thank God, or anybody else, that I don't feel insulted when someone asks my opinion or says something truthful about me. Perhaps it's politically incorrect egotism on my part that I find back and forth discussions on political, religious, or personal philosophies and truthful comments about me as portions of personal growth and satisfaction--not stupid, closed-minded, made-up-minds arguments, but real and open dialogue.

Is it a wonder people ignore the vast majority of your posts. (how is that for "shaking off the chains of constraint")[/QUOTE]

YES!!!! A true and powerful blow to my unworthy ego (and no doubt backed by solid research and survey of all members). I bet that felt good! And it should. That's what nasty, snide remarks and insults are for. To make you feel good, or to have a little malicious fun (which also makes you feel good). But you are much nicer about it than those you chide. You don't use cuss words or wish miserable diseases . . . and no hatred . . .just mild, good natured, corrective abuse. But the motivation is the same.

By the way, your policing of what you consider classless or offensive comments would be more convincing if you applied it equally to all who make such comments, not just those who particularly irritate you (or are of a certain political persuasion). Otherwise it makes it seem that you have an agenda other than cleaning up the political forum.

And thanks for responding to my posts. Every time you do, it brings attention to some of my vast majority of posts which would otherwise go unnoticed.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by spence

Yes, that's how the Justices operate, with utter disregard for the ramifications of their decisions. They probably don't care about the constitutionality of precedents either.

-spence

I don't absolutely know how the Justices operate, but guess that contrary to "utter disregard" (another one of those little absolutes that slip into your comments though you believe there are no absolutes?) they adjudicate specifically on the ramifications of their decisions. I think they intend specific ramifications. The major difference between "conservative" and progressive judges is that the former intend to uphold their oath to protect and defend the Constitution, the latter, in spite of their oath, intend to advance their opinion on some current variant of notional social justice--even if the ramification is nullification of the Constitution.

I would say that those who uphold their oath care far more about constitutionality, whether it be precedent or originality, than those who wander into judgment by personal opinion. But both, in my opinion, are aware of, and actually seek, the ramifications of their decisions.

BTW, the idea that a "precedent" is in and of itself constitutional is not an absolute. Every Court decision which creates new precedent that previously didn't exist, is in itself a change from and often a contradiction to previous precedent. And if later Courts find in a precedent a contradiction to the Constitution, they would be absolutely correct in striking it down.

The Constitution has been overburdened to the point of destruction by bad precedent.

[detbuch]

QUOTE=spence;1046194]I'm still dumfounded how Alito could play the corporations are people card without any reference to Citizens United.

???????

There's a lot of irony as well.

???????

So the for profit corporation now has deep Christian convictions that must not be infringed...but what would Jesus think about company owned by billionaires?

The entire ACA and its implementation is an infringement not just on First Amendment Rights, but on the whole founding notion of individual liberty and personal unalienable rights. I guess, since that doesn't dumbfound you, you would be dumbfounded by some small infringement on the whole massive infringement.

As for Jesus . . . He would not be concerned by any of it. Not by conservatism, progressivism, the Constitution, Marxism, statism, whatever . . . render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's. If the State were to take your life because of your belief in Him, what would matter to Him is that you would give that life to follow Him. The State would lose a body, but heaven would gain a soul.

I may be wrong, but that is my understanding.

And perhaps the best part is the Right celebrating a case where the Court says the easy solution is for the Government to just pay for the contraception.

That's rich.

That is a progressive notion which "the Right" should not adopt, but throws, probably sarcastically, back at the dependence on government regulation instead of self regulation. It is, in my opinion, wrongheaded. "The Right" should stick with personal responsibility in matters such as choice of contraception. Anyway, when the government "pays" for something, it is always the people, in the long run, who are doing the paying. It's just that, when the government rather than the individual decides, some individuals get shafted and others benefit. But that is exactly, besides the massive infringement, what the government mandated ACA does.

While this case may not open up the flood gates like some predict I do think it's opened up a can of worms the Court may regret.

-spence[/QUOTE]

The can of worms was long ago opened by the Court when it began en masse abandoning the Constitution and legislating from the bench. The process is just carrying itself out. This decision is just a tiny correction.

[spence]

Woa, maybe you guys have it all wrong

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/us...thecaucus&_r=2

-spence

[Fishpart]

Originally Posted by spence

Woa, maybe you guys have it all wrong

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/us...thecaucus&_r=2

-spence

NY Times=Pravda

Looks like some "scholar is Pole Vaulting mouse turds. Even as a stand alone sentence the meaning is not that different..

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,.... " Which means We The People tell the government what to do not the other way around. Applying it to modern times, Congress is closest to the people therefore, Congresses' "obstructionisim" is clearly communicating to our monarch the People's wishes.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Fishpart

NY Times=Pravda

Looks like some "scholar is Pole Vaulting mouse turds. Even as a stand alone sentence the meaning is not that different..

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,.... " Which means We The People tell the government what to do not the other way around. Applying it to modern times, Congress is closest to the people therefore, Congresses' "obstructionisim" is clearly communicating to our monarch the People's wishes.

Yup. But even with the minimal ability required to jump those small turds, their leap is so weak that the "scholar" and those who hail abolishing the period as the means to make "you guys have it all wrong," can't get off the ground and fall face down on the droppings. I think, according to their view, that removing the period is not supposed to make that which follows it a stand alone sentence, but a connected qualifying clause of equal importance to what goes before it. That is, it is supposed to stress that without government "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" would not be possible. That government is co-equal to those rights, or even precedent to them in importance. And the next step would be the progressive one that not only is government more important than those rights . . . it grants them. That is, it creates them. Therefor, government is supreme, not rights. And, of course, the straw man is then created that constitutional conservatives devalue the importance of government, or accuse government of being an evil, or at best an obstacle to freedom and rights.

But the slightest rational scrutiny of what conservatives believe finds no such view of government. On the contrary, they concur with those who wrote the Declaration and formed the GOVERNMENT described by their Constitution and by all of the collateral documents they left for posterity. Their view is that government is necessary, but not co-equal to their unalienable rights, nor certainly not the creator or granter of those rights. Conservatives of a constitutional stripe are not anti-government. They cherish the government derived from the Declaration and the Constitution. They are against government which would destroy the one they cherish and replace it with an all powerful central authority which recognizes only those rights it creates.

As you say, period or no period, the meaning is not changed. The Declaration makes it clear that it is not government which grants those unalienable rights, but a Creator--that Creator clearly not being the government since it says ". . . all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . . ." Unless government can create "all men" it cannot be the creator, and if it did create unalienable rights, then it could not alienate them, which would be a contradiction. It is clear that those rights endowed by a Creator were meant to be free, most importantly, from government usurpation.

The secondary importance of government re our unalienable rights is established, as you say, by the words following the phantom period: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men . . ." That is, people create governments, not, as you say, the other way around. And, in our founding, government was created mainly to protect already existing rights, which could not be usurped or alienated by that government. And further, government derives its ". . . just powers from the consent of the governed . . ." Again, as you well say, We the People are not dictated to or regulated against our consent. And that is further ordained by limitations placed on government in the Constitution which is a plan for government created by We the People.

And if all that still leaves some doubt as to which is more important, our unalienable rights or government, consider the next words that follow the above quotes: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it . . ." Does this leave any doubt about what was intended to be most important--unalienable rights or government?

And yes, on the Federal level, Congress was meant to be the people's voice, not the President. Congress was meant to be the most powerful and influential branch of the Federal Government. And originally congressional power was mainly to rest in the House of Representatives. The Senate was meant to be mostly an advisory appendage of Congress and to presidential appointments and treaties. As such, it was appointed by state legislatures, not by direct vote. That was done intentionally so as not to weaken the power of Congress by a competing section of longer duration in its own branch. And to secure the power that States possessed at the founding by preventing a major portion of the Congress from aligning with the central Federal political establishment against the will of the people as expressed by their own state governments. The Senate was a throw in to appease some who worried about a too powerful House of Representatives, and, to some extent, a transfer of the bicameralism in the Articles of Confederation and the English Parliament. So now, instead, we have a too powerful Senate and a weak House. It was not really necessary to even have a Senate in the first place. It became one of the Trojan Horses used by progressives to weaken federalism and advance to an all-powerful central government. That was accomplished by their 17th amendment.

The Senate now regularly opposes House legislation. And it protects the President in his unconstitutional endeavors. And the Senate/President coalition rams through regulations and rhetorically demagogues the House painting it as do nothing while they don't allow it to do things, and further demonize any "conservative" efforts perennially painting them as the racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-middle class, for the rich, anti-environment, anti-progress, etc., etc., etc., very little of which can be rationally demonstrated, but most of which is very effective as The People are progressively dumbed down on political and historical awareness.

And yes, we are closer to an elected monarchy than a constitutional republic. And NO, we who oppose this do not have it all wrong.

[Swimmer]

One point that Ronny makes, and is echo'd by many on both sides of the aisle, is that people on the handout train will never vote for anyone else other than someone like O'Bama, who strives for a single party system in this country by keeping those underachievers of which he spoke on the gravy train. In other words they are indentured servants to the democratic party, i.e. slaves.

[Swimmer]

Not blowing smoke up anyone's arse, but quite a few of you articulate very well your thoughts into words here. I enjoy reading these disertions from time to time.