Category Archives: morality

Washington State and Abortion

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Washington passed a law—SB6219—that mandates all health coverage policies issued in that State provide (and charge for) coverage for abortions, with no exceptions whatsoever, including no exceptions for religious belief regarding life and conception. Under SB6219, no insurer can offer a policy that does not include abortion coverage.

Leave aside the cynical claim by Washington’s lawyers that

its no-exception abortion coverage mandate in health plans does not necessarily require health plans to include abortion coverage.

Leave aside that the Supreme Court has already ruled—repeatedly—that religious exceptions and conscience exceptions must be included in any such law.

The Cedar Park Church, in Bothell near Seattle, is challenging that law in Cedar Park Assembly of Kirkland v Kreidler (Kreidler is Myron Kreidler, Washington’s Insurance Commissioner; Jay Inslee, Washington’s Governor, also is a defendant. Both are defendants in their official capacities); the case currently is before the 9th Circuit.

What really jumps out at me, though, is this assertion by the State [emphasis added]:

The state lawyer emphasized what the church didn’t allege: “no carrier” would offer a plan consistent with its beliefs, it sought such a plan from other carriers, or that the state rejected a submitted plan.

On what basis does the State (or any State, or the United States) claim a preemptive, a priori, authority over a private enterprise’s business decision?

More importantly, on what basis does the State (or any State, or the United States) claim a preemptive, a priori, authority over a private citizen’s medical decision that should only involve that citizen and his doctor and secondarily (with no tertiary) his health coverage provider?

Most importantly, on what basis does the State (or any State, or the United States) claim a preemptive, a priori, authority to allow a baby to be killed before it’s born?

The answer to each of those questions is that there is no legitimate basis for such claims.

Some of Biden’s and his Progressive-Democratic Party’s Racism Stymied

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At least temporarily. Recall the American Rescue Plan Act which the Progressive-Democratic Party rammed through on strict party lines via reconciliation and that President Joe Biden (D) happily signed into law. That law

allows for automatic loan forgiveness up to 120% of the federal loan for farmers or ranchers who are “socially disadvantaged,” which is defined as “Black, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Hispanic, or Asian, or Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.”

It’s hard to get any more blatantly racist than that: it explicitly discriminates on the basis of race, barring Americans of the wrong race from participating at all in the program.

Union City, TN, farmer Robert Holman had sued the USDA, as administrator of the loan forgiveness program, on the basis of that blatant, intrinsic program racism. Last week, US District Judge S Thomas Anderson, Chief Judge of the Western District of Tennessee, issued an injunction against the USDA blocking it from issuing any forgivenesses until the case has made its way all the way through the courts and likely appeals.

Southeastern Legal Foundation General Counsel Kimberly Hermann, whose firm was one of two representing farmer Holman, has most of the right of it:

The Biden administration uses equity as a license to punish Americans—here farmers—because of their skin color. The Court’s order sends a clear message to President Biden that racially exclusive programs, whether on a farm or in a school, are unconstitutional.

Biden didn’t act alone on this, though. As noted above, the Progressive-Democratic Party—acting alone in Congress—passed the bill that Biden signed. His appointees in the Ag Department enthusiastically tried to act on that racism.

Heads up, though, and here’s the rest of the right of it: an injunction is only temporary and will be superseded by the district court’s final ruling. That ruling then will stand or fall on appeal, and the Biden administration’s and Progressive-Democrat-run Congress’ bigotry ultimately will be blocked or restored by the final appellate ruling.

All Politics is Local

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That’s what an erstwhile Democrat and Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill said some 40 years ago. He’s right: every elected politician is beholden to his constituents and to no one else (at least legitimately so), and those constituents are the citizens in his district.

It doesn’t get any more local than school board elections, and lately, it hasn’t been much more political than with those school boards whose members choose to ignore their constituents, the parents whose children those members demand to indoctrinate. That indoctrination, coming deliberately at the expense of reading (because literature is just stuff by a bunch of old, dead, white patriarchs), writing (because sentences and paragraphs in the American English way are White Supremacist constructions), arithmetic (because that’s just racist), is carefully centered on critical race theory, our nation’s evil Founders, and the divisiveness of celebrating our national flag, our national anthem, our Pledge of Allegiance—that last to the point that those school board members ban our Pledge’s recital in class and at school board meetings.

And so parents—who became exposed to the indoctrination sewage being inflicted on their children while locked up in their homes during Government-mandated lockdowns related to the Wuhan Virus situation—have begun fighting back, emphasizing their localness and getting political: calling out those abusive school board members and running for school board positions themselves—and overwhelmingly replacing those abusive members.

One example—an example of increasing typicality—is this.

Leigh Wambsganss is one of those parents who sparked a grassroots, anti-CRT revolt in Southlake, Texas, that mobilized record turnout in local school board elections to defeat pro-CRT board members by landslide margins.

Even though the Left so hates having its diktats challenged that Leftists overtly threaten the Wamgsgansses of the parents for their impudence, Wambsganss had this:

it’s like once you walk through that fire, you’re untouchable. And the more national news we got and the more we were hit, the more invincible we became. Because now you can say anything, it just doesn’t matter to us anymore.

Because the point of it all—the hugely important point—is this, also from Wambsganss:

If we are going to take America back, we have got to take our public school systems back. And the only way you’re going to do that is win your school board elections.

Preach it, Sister.

Compelling Interest and Racism

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors correctly decry President Joe Biden’s (D) race-based “equity” programs and diktats as taking our nation back to an ugly past.

By equity, Mr Biden means preferences for some racial groups over others to achieve equal outcomes.

And

Mr Biden sells his agenda as taking America into the future. But allocating government funds or privileges by race is a step back to an uglier past. … If applied on the scale Mr Biden hopes, America would become a nation of groups competing for racial spoils and defined outcomes rather than seeking equal opportunity for everyone.

The editors added this near the end of their piece, and here I demur from them.

Strict scrutiny requires that the government have a compelling interest for discriminating by race, and that it must use the least restrictive means to achieve that interest. If less restrictive ways can achieve the same purpose, the policy fails.

There shouldn’t be any strict scrutiny on such matters; the policies should fail on their face. There’s nothing in the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protections clause that permits Government-determined “compelling interest” to override our Constitution [emphasis added].

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

All of that plainly applies to our Federal government every bit as much as it does to each of the governments of the several States.

The Strict Scrutiny standard, as applied here, has been unconstitutional from the start and was an earlier Supreme Court attempt to duck its responsibility in applying our Constitution rather than seeking out excuses and methodologies for getting outside of it.

Government’s compelling interest is to defend and uphold our Constitution.

Full stop.

Also Too Weak

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Recall that President Joe Biden (D) came before the American people and touted a bipartisan infrastructure deal, to the tune of $1.2 trillion.

Recall, further, that barely two hours later, Biden again came before us all and said he would refuse to sign that deal unless and until he had, at the same time, a reconciliation-passed bill that had everything in it that was not included in the bipartisan “deal.”

Now Biden is back before us all, saying he’ll sign the bipartisan “deal” and then work on getting further bills passed that have everything in them that he wants.

So—which time was he lying: the first time, speaking from his heart when he said he’d refuse to sign the bipartisan bill unless he got the reconciliation bill with everything else in it, also, or the second time when he was speaking politically, to cover his political behind?

Or: was he simply engaging in the Biden Flip-Flop and speaking in whichever way gives him the most personal political advantage?

Or: does he not truly understand the situation for longer than a few hours?

Under any of those alternatives, Biden’s word is worthless, his commitments entirely unreliable. Any further negotiation with Biden will be just a waste of effort. Any Republican who takes anything Biden says seriously after this—and that particularly includes Senator Rob Portman (R, OH)—is simply exposing himself as wholly gullible.