Walker ignores State Contraception Law! Who made him King?

It’s a funny hypocritical thing to watch Republicans accuse "King" Obama of not enforcing the “laws on the books,” while at the same time pick and choose the laws they think should enforced.

Such is the case with Scott Walker’s decision not to “enforce the state’s contraception coverage law for employers with religious objections.” That’s a blanket assumption isn't it? 

Just a note, Republicans have in other state's said they would not enforce tighter guns laws despite state law. The same goes for laws that prevent political coordination between campaigns and outside groups.

   

Walker seems to think his opinion alone is reason enough to pre-empt law:

WSJ: A spokesman for the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance said that the high court’s Hobby Lobby ruling … means the state can no longer enforce its law … Wisconsin is “pre-empted” from enforcing the state law because the Affordable Care Act allows some employers exemptions from providing contraceptive coverage.

But Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin (said) the state law “is a separate legal requirement on insurance plans in the state that is not directly affected by the Hobby Lobby decision.”

“Gov. Walker’s latest effort to unilaterally end the enforcement of Wisconsin’s birth control law without legislative action shows just how far he is willing to go to restrict women’s access to essential health care,” Tanya Atkinson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, said in a statement. According to a National Women’s Law Center memo, “Closely-held for-profit corporations doing business in Wisconsin that do not self-insure must abide by the state law, and continue to provide birth control coverage to the same extent they provide preventive care and prescription drugs.

A Hobby Lobby Terrorist is Born?

Notice the frightening similarity between this highly circulated picture of the Holly Hobby Lobby caressing her gun, with a similar terrorist photo. Oops? 

This photo is very real and worth a thousand words. Now she claims to be a victim after threatening everyone with a gun. 

Holly Fisher has become infamous as Holly Hobby Lobby for the Facebook photo she posted that showed her support for the recent Supreme Court decision. Holly posted a photograph of herself standing in front of a Hobby Lobby store while wearing a “pro-life” T-shirt and holding a Chik-fil-a cup.

"I didn’t do it to try to change minds of those who disagree with me, but more so to show like-minded people that they’re not alone and it’s okay to stand up for what you believe in, even if it’s not popular right now. I want younger Americans to know it’s okay to not follow the current liberal path…”

It's time to protect Hobby Lobby with "younger" armed civilians?

Religious Freedom's Next Corporate Step...?

Funny thing, this isn't so crazy now:

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Roman-owned pizza chain Little Caesar’s was within its rights to place Christian employees in an arena and then unleash starved, vicious lions and lionesses upon them. The court cited religious freedom as its guiding principle. The 5-to-4 ruling opened the door to potentially thousands of Christian Little Caesar employees nationwide being immediately fed to the top predators of the African savannah. 

Supreme Court Hobby Lobby Disaster! Decision based on lie.

The Supreme Court is no longer limited to the facts of the case before them. It's a shocking turn Americans should be unhappy with. Hobby Lobby got their way, giving businesses religious rights, because they simply believed something that was not true.

The justices even said as much in their decision. Here's why Hobby Lobby is the conservative courts gift to the religious right. Mother Jones:

Hobby Lobby, a craft supply chain, claimed that Plan B, Ella, and two types of IUD were abortifacients that violated the owners' religious principles. The science was against Hobby Lobby—these contraceptives do not prevent implantation of a fertilized egg and are not considered abortifacients in the medical world—but the conservative majority bought Hobby Lobby's argument that it should be exempted from the law.

The court can now make things up to shape the nations social and economic norms.   

"Narrow" Hobby Lobby decision Expands Again, Female Justices write Scathing Dissent.

The Supreme Court has already expanded their "narrow" Hobby Lobby decision to include all contraception by other Catholic challengers. Now they've made the whole process easier to implement and expand.

Remember when Justice Alito shook his head in disagreement when President Obama disagreed with the Citizens United decision unlimited corporate money in to corrupt elections? Alito grimaced, shook his head, and mouthed “no” and “that’s not true.” He also shook his head and rolled his eyes to the ceiling when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent on the affirmative action ruling recently.

It looks like Alito’s “narrow” ruling on the Hobby Lobby decision is turning out to be one big lie as well. In the dark of the night:

The Supreme Court on Thursday evening unveiled its latest ruling around birth control and religious freedom … allow(ing) Wheaton College to skirt ObamaCare's contraceptive provisions as long as the evangelical school informs the government of its religious objections to providing its staff and students with any type of birth control.

The Obama religious “provision” simply required Wheaton College to fill out the EBSA Form 700 … (which is) sent to both the government and the insurance company, that would then provide contraceptives free, using a government subsidy.

But Alito’s narrow decision expanded, due to what conservatives call “legislating from the bench,” by getting rid of the notice to the insurance company. And all without the help of congress.

All the Courts Female Justices Objected:

The decision broke down completely across gender lines — the court's male justices comprised the majority opinion — suggesting that the court's battle over religious freedom and reproductive rights is only going to get more contentious.

Saying the decision "undermines confidence in this institution," Justice Sotomayor wrote a scathing dissent, accusing the court of backtracking key elements of its Hobby Lobby decision. "Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word," Sotomayor wrote. "Not so today."

She said the ruling set up unworkable regulations that risked "depriving hundreds of Wheaton's employees and students of their legal entitlement to contraceptive coverage" and allowed "hundreds or thousands of other objectors" a similar way out.

Supreme Court Shifts First Amendment rights to Business, creating Religious system free from Government Regulation.

Small government is here, via religious freedom.

The biggest problem I have over the Hobby Lobby decision, besides giving corporations personhood, is the shift in power. A business group of 5 people or less can now overpower an individual’s First Amendment right. One person’s right cannot infringe on another person’s right...right? Supreme Court 101?

Narrow decision my Ass: This supposed narrow decision expanded the next day when the Catholic majority of justices demanded that 6 other Catholic challenges get a second look and changed to reflect their decision. They then threw out other government challenges where businesses won the right to exemption contraception from their employees health coverage.

Here's Rachel Maddow with the details:

Looking ahead, this court made it possible for new businesses to form (a group of 5 people or less), so they could operate free of government regulations.

Theocratic corporate personhood is here to stay. The next step comes when Christians challenge other religious business rights that overpower over their Christian employees. We have just introduced the possibility of religious wars. 

The protest below is a good start getting this message out. Think Progress:

A group of clergy handed out condoms to customers in front of an Illinois Hobby Lobby store on Wednesday, staging a creative, faith-based protest against the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision … Religious leaders also said they hoped the move would draw attention to the danger of allowing employers to privilege their own religious beliefs over those of their employees.

“You can make the religious freedom argument, you can make the argument about contraception, but ultimately, for me, this is about power,” said Rev. Mark Winters, a UCC minister. “Jesus had a lot of issue with powerful people using power over the powerless.”

Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, was quick to blast the ruling, saying, “I am horrified by the thought that the owners of Hobby Lobby as Christians think their corporation has a soul, and I’m even more appalled that the Supreme Court agrees.”

Dr. Bruce Powell, the leader of the protest, told News Channel 4 in Oklahoma City, “The right of religious liberty is a fundamental human right. Corporations are legal constructs. They are not human beings.”

Pro-Life Wisconsin on the Ugly Side of Hobby Lobby Win.

Men get all the help they want from their insurer, from ED drugs to vasectomies. But women...? The Hobby Lobby win beats back the 60's women's liberation movement with a major crack in the damn.

You don't have to be a part of any political party to know that sex is natural, and not a right bestowed upon us by the Bible for just making babies.  

Freedom...with limits: And what about couples who prefer to go childless. 

To conservatives, sex is dirty without pregnancy. It's not natural to have sex without babies, because the Bible says so I guess. And we are a Christian nation so it makes sense. Sex without babies is a recreational "lifestyle choice," "purely elective," and not natural: 

Peggy Hamill, State Director of Pro-Life Wisconsin: "The Obama administration's decision to grant entitlement status to contraception is thoroughly ideological. It is not medical. Pregnancy is not a disease. Fertility is a natural state - it is not a health impairment to be treated medically with birth control. Birth control to prevent pregnancy is not health care - it's a lifestyle choice. Accordingly, government should not force insurance companies, businesses and individual policy holders to cover or pay for drugs and devices that are purely elective."

 Right wing Tweets say as much, from Raw Story:

Ecstatic at the belief that stupid sluts (“Slut”in conservative parlance=anyone who has sex on purpose while female) are getting punished, they went to Twitter. I collected some tweets and some of the general arguments being floated on Storify. A big theme was the idea  that sex is not a normal part of human life, but some grotesque, exotic, shameful behavior that no proper woman would dare engage in.

Big Business to the Rescue: They will decide a Citizens First Amendment rights. Our new “Leaders?”

My born again conservative friend in Milwaukee called and said the Hobby Lobby decision confirmed for him that we are a Christian nation, and that businesses do have constitutional rights...that they were people.

That was the message he got from our very activist conservative Supreme Court yesterday. My
takeaway?

Conservatives love their “leaders,” and with yesterdays decision on Hobby Lobby, they have given everyone a look at who they think should be in charge.

"Bossy bureaucrats;" what was thought to be a pro-choice term is a deceptive anti-choice reference that defined "boss" (the CEO of a company) to mean a meddling politician. In reality, business bossy bureaucrats are now in charge, and will see part of your private medical records. Here's a down-the-rabbit-hole example, Duluth News Tribune:

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life America, a youth organization that opposes abortion, said in a statement that birth control should be a personal choice.

“As a woman, wife, mother and business owner,” she said, “I am perfectly capable of making my own decisions about birth control without having an employer buy it for me or being forced to provide it against my will to my employees. I control my life, not bossy bureaucrats.”

Employers aren't buying contraceptives for women because contraception is a medical treatment, part of our health care system, administered by doctors.

The Hobby Lobby decision is a giant but welcome step toward plutocracy, or what right wingers call freedom from government. Who would have imagined Americans celebrating the loss of their individual constitutional rights when they go to work. And yet it's happening.

I thought the following observation in Think Progress about the false premise big government wanted to control women's health, was oddly missing in the media’s coverage:

In order to cast themselves as the tolerant side working to empower women, anti-choice activists had stolen pro-choice messaging to obfuscate their position and spread misinformation.

Hobby Lobby supporters’ claims that they were “empowering” women rang particularly hollow. 

There was a cruel visual irony to seeing a crowd of women chanting “women in control” and cheering as the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could control what birth control options are available to their employees. They imagined a false scenario in which government bureaucrats might control women’s health care, and created a future in which corporate bureaucrats will actually control women’s health care. Ban bossy bureaucrats, indeed.

BIG ISSUE: The real problem with the conservative activist Supreme Court decision is the abandonment of the idea that company policies cannot infringe on the individual rights of Americans working for them. That's gone now:

The anti-choice rally also attempted to frame a win for Hobby Lobby as a win for religious freedom, but it’s unclear how that’s the case. A small minority now have the ability to exercise their religious beliefs through corporate practices, but millions of Americans will now have their religious rights unjustly limited.

NEXT UP: Bossy Bureaucrats treatment of pregnant women, if you can believe this one or not:

NBC: The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to consider how much protection a federal law gives to pregnant women in the workplace. The case centers around Peggy Young, a UPS driver in Landover, Maryland, who became pregnant in October 2006 and gave her supervisors a note from her midwife recommending that she not lift packages weighing more than 20 pounds during her pregnancy. UPS said it could not make such an accommodation, and she was required to take an unpaid leave of absence, during which she had no health insurance.

Ginsberg Responds to the Conservative Activist Supreme Court Bullies.

Here's a piece on the Justice Ginsberg descent: 

Addressing the majority of her colleagues — including all but one of the six men sitting on the Supreme Court — Ginsburg wrote: "until today, religious exemptions had never been extended to any entity operating in 'the commercial, profit-making world.'" 

“The reason why is hardly obscure. Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community. Indeed, by law, no religion-based criterion can restrict the work force of for-profit corporations...The distinction between a community made up of believers in the same religion and one embracing persons of diverse beliefs, clear as it is, constantly escapes the Court’s attention. One can only wonder why the Court shuts this key difference from sight. "In sum," Ginsburg adds about the free exercise claims at the heart of this case,“‘[y]our right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.’” "Although the Court attempts to cabin its language to closely held corporations," she writes,  "its logic extends to corporations of any size, public or private. Little doubt that RFRA claims will proliferate." 

Here’s  more from Ginsberg’s decision, in her own words:

“Again, the Court forgets that religious organizations exist to serve a community of believers. For-profit corporations do not fit that bill. Moreover, history is not on the Court’s side. Recognition of the discrete characters of “ecclesiastical and lay” corporations dates back to Blackstone, see 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 458 (1765), and was reiterated by this Court centuries before the enactment of the Internal Revenue Code. See Terrett v. Taylor, 9 Cranch 43, 49 (1815) (describing religious corporations); Trustees of Dartmouth College, 4 Wheat., at 645 (discussing “eleemosynary” corporations, including those “created for the promotion of religion”). To reiterate, “for-profit corporations are different from religious non-profits in that they use labor to make a profit, rather than to perpetuate [the] religious value[s] [shared by a community of believers].” Citing Braunfeld v. Brown, (1961), the Court questions why, if “a sole proprietorship that seeks to make a profit may assert a free-exercise claim, [Hobby Lobby and Conestoga] can’t . . . do the same?”

But even accepting, arguendo, the premise that unincorporated business enterprises may gain religious accommodations under the Free Exercise Clause, the Court’s conclusion is unsound. In a sole proprietorship, the business and its owner are one and the same. By incorporating a business, however, an individual separates herself from the entity and escapes personal responsibility for the entity’s obligations. One might ask why the separation should hold only when it serves the interest of those who control the corporation.

In any event, Braunfeld is hardly impressive authority for the entitlement Hobby Lobby and Conestoga seek. The free exercise claim asserted there was promptly rejected on the merits. The Court’s determination that RFRA extends to forprofit corporations is bound to have untoward effects.Although the Court attempts to cabin its language to closely held corporations, its logic extends to corporations of any size, public or private.19Little doubt that RFRAclaims will proliferate, for the Court’s expansive notion of corporate personhood—combined with its other errors in construing RFRA—invites for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faith.

Importantly, the decisions whether to claim benefits under the plans are made not by Hobby Lobby or Conestoga, but by the covered employees and dependents, in consultation with their health care providers. Should an employee of Hobby Lobby or Conestoga share the religious beliefs of the Greens and Hahns, she is of course under no compulsion to use the contraceptives in question. But “[n]o individual decision by an employee and her physician— be it to use contraception, treat an infection, or have a hip replaced—is in any meaningful sense [her employer’s] decision or action.”

It is doubtful that Congress, when it specified that burdens must be “substantia[l],” had in mind a linkage thus interrupted by independent decisionmakers (the woman and her health counselor) standing between the challenged government action and the religious exercise claimed to be infringed. Any decision to use contraceptives made by a woman covered under Hobby Lobby’s or Conestoga’s plan will not be propelled by the Government, it will be the woman’s autonomous choice, informed by the physician she consults.

Indeed, approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be “perceived as favoring one religion over another,” the very “risk the Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.” Ibid. The Court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield, cf. Spencer v. World Vision, Inc., by its immoderate reading of RFRA. I would confine religious exemptions under that Act to organizations formed “for a religious purpose,” “engage[d] primarily in carrying out that religious purpose,” and not “engaged . . . substantially in the exchange of goods or services for money beyond nominal amounts.”

More 5-4 Conservative Activist Supreme Court Decisions. Will the Media ever notice? Religious freedom for Companies.

Let's make the Roberts court the most overturned court in U.S. history soon, okay?

We now have the possibility of a separate religious "nation" of companies exempt from constitutional requirements. Reporter Chris Hedges warned us this was highly likely. He was proven right today. And the conservative activist justices, all men, are having their way like never before.  This decision is just the first, setting up many more anti-women cases.

Some in the media are saying this is a narrow decision, giving this court a pass again, but it really isn't.

The 5 male justices think they can keep women from getting contraceptive coverage and throwing equality out the window for corporate religious reasons. Instead of science, they allowed the belief of Hobby Lobby to decide their case.

Oh, and this is what women want...to pay out of pocket instead of having insurance coverage:



A Better Idea: Business, say the five conservative justices, can force women to pay their own way. This means that having or not having a child is a woman's "problem." Perhaps woman should take that one step further, and cut men off from their connection to fatherhood too, if and when they choose. They should take custody rights away from these incidental fathers who have so little to do with family planning. Guys apparently want to be free from the burden of birth control, and the justices are using religion to do that.

Americans won't be happy if Hobby Lobby wins.

While D.C. Republican politicians insist on doing just the opposite of what the American public want, polling keeps telling them to wake up. Let's just say that if the conservative activist Supreme Court decides Hobby Lobby has the First Amendment right of religious freedom, there's going to be big trouble in this country. I've highlighted a new polls responses supporting employer provided birth control:

Most Americans support the Obamacare provision requiring employers to provide birth control coverage for their workers at no additional cost, according to new polling conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), and don’t believe that corporations should be able to claim religious liberty exemptions to get out of this policy.

6 in 10 Americans believe that both publicly held and privately owned corporations should be required to follow Obamacare’s birth control provision ... even in the cases of religiously affiliated institutions, like colleges and hospitals. Churches shouldn’t have to offer copay-free birth control.

The Journal of the American Medical Association found even stronger majority ... 7 in 10 respondents said that companies should cover the full cost of contraception in their insurance plans.

Another poll found that two thirds of female voters hope that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood lose their Supreme Court case. PRRI has consistently found that most religious Americans are supportive of expanding birth control coverage, too.

How many Americans would be affected?

About 14,000 workers are employed at the two companies that are currently seeking to eliminate coverage for birth control prescriptions and counseling … more than 70 other companies also sued over this Obamacare provision, and likely wouldn’t hesitate to remove contraceptive coverage if the ruling goes their way.

Research has also shown that ensuring women have access to the pill helps them invest in their careers and remain in the workforce. 

Oklahoma Public School District adopts Hobby Lobby Bible Class

An unbiased public school course on the Bible? Students aren't coerced into taking the class because it's voluntary, and the curriculum has been designed to pass constitutional challenges. 

So what would make me suspicious of something so meticulously designed to indoctrinate school kids into the Christian faith? 

ChristianPost: Dan Barker, The Freedom From Religion Foundation of Madison co-president and a former pastor, stated in the press release that he was troubled about the possible content of the elective course.

Mustang Schools Superintendent Sean McDaniel (said), “When our pre-enrollment packets were returned by students earlier this semester, more than 170 students indicated the course would be their first choice for an elective class."

Barker detailed what an FFRF attorney found in the course, and how crosses the line in so many ways. Remember, this is just the toe in the door. It truly is amazing. Radio Audio:

Hobby Lobby's Common Core alternative? 

Dallas News: The president of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores is working to add the Bible to the curriculum of public high schools nationwide. His purpose, stated more clearly at some times than at others, is for students to learn its text and put America on a righteous course.

“This nation is in danger because of its ignorance of what God has taught,” Hobby Lobby's Steve Green said last year to the National Bible Association, announcing his plan for the high school course. “There are lessons from the past that we can learn from, the dangers of ignorance of this book. We need to know it, and if we don’t know it, our future is going to be very scary.”

The public Mustang School District in suburban Oklahoma City will begin teaching a class about the Bible as an elective beginning this fall. The goal is to place the Bible course in thousands of schools by 2017. The Green Scholars Initiative wasn't intended to proselytize or “go down denominational, religious-type roads,” and persuaded the board that the plan would pass any constitutional challenges.

A constitutional challenge would conceivably cost the district more money. Perhaps Steve Green will foot that bill? 

Hobby Lobby: 4th of July all about God?

Hobby Lobby religious in-your-face arrogance is a freedom they have under our constitution. But to drone on with quotes by people, and not the founding document, is an old ploy. Perhaps they would like to use a quote from me...?

Check out their full page July 4th ad:

They don't want Sharia law, but would gladly force repressive Christianity on everyone else. They're also fighting to make the U.S. a theocratic government, apparently sensing the time is right:

The simple minds at Hobby Lobby can afford to scare a whole bunch of Americans away on the 4th of July with their religious declaration of dependence.