Washington State and Abortion

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.

All Politics is Local

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

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.

More Big Tech Censorship

This time, perpetrated by Sundar Pichai and his YouTube—which Pichai controls through his control of Alphabet and Google (the latter which is wholly owned by Alphabet) and through his Google’s ownership of YouTube.

Real America’s Voice has been suspended from YouTube for a week for posting an exclusive interview with former President Donald Trump in which he discusses the disputed 2020 presidential election.

This is an image of the YouTube notice RAV received and subsequently showed to Just the News:

The notice image is hard to read (try the right-click|open in new tab trick), YouTube claimed to RAV that the video included prohibited content that “advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election.”

Except that the video—the interview with former President Donald Trump (R)—did no such thing. It merely contained Trump’s claim of a fraudulent outcome of the 2020 election. There’s not a minim of fraud, errors, or glitches, widespread or not, in the fact of his claim. Some might—and many do—dispute Trump’s claim, but there’s nothing in the censored video that is false regarding the fact of Trump’s statements about the election or in RAV‘s recording and reporting of Trump’s statements.

Of course, Pichai knows this full well; he’s that bent on censoring speech of which he personally disapproves and over which he has the nakedly raw power to commit his censorship.

You Didn’t Build That

The Progressive-Democrats are continuing their attack on American citizens being successful. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) has populated her Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth.

The past several decades have shown with devastating clarity the marked imbalance between the financial fortunes of CEOs and workers….

Never mind that the last four years before the present Progressive-Democrat-run administration and Congress has seen a marked decrease in the disparity in the financial fortunes of CEOs and workers, as workers got bigger pay raises, in per centage terms, than have the CEOs, significantly closing the gap. Never mind, either, that that decrease in the financial fortunes gap also has been markedly potentiated by the historic lows in minority and women unemployment as those especially on the bottom rungs of our economic—financial fortune—ladder saw marked increases in their wages: they got actual jobs, they became workers.

Pelosi went on:

The devaluing of work has had a negative impact on consumer confidence, job creation and economic growth….

Never mind that the only ones devaluing work, and through that negatively impacting consumer confidence, are Progressive-Democrats with their government (not economic) policy of paying people not to work. Never mind, either, that Job creation has been so anemic under this Progressive-Democrat government that there are millions more jobs available than there are workers willing to take them—especially in the low-skill milieus—because Progressive-Democrats insist on paying those least fortunate to not work, to continue being the least fortunate.

Pelosi’s wonderful select committee? It’s chaired by Congressman Jim Himes (D, CT) and populated with Progressive-Democrats like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY), Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D, WA), Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D, OH), Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D, WI), Congressman Vicente González (D,TX), Congresswoman Angie Craig (D, MN), and Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D, CA).

It’s hard to find farther left members, even for the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Pelosi to Americans: you didn’t build that. You’re not going to, either, without Government.