Tag Archives: Democrat Party

News

Obama administration believes that traditional marriage is unconstitutional

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Justice Department has announced that it will no longer defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) because the president and Attorney General Eric Holder now believe the law is unconstitutional.

“After careful consideration, including review of a recommendation from me, the President of the United States has made the determination that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), 1 U.S.C. § 7, as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law, violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment,” Holder wrote in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) Wednesday.

Section 3 of DOMA is the portion of the law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Obama and Holder now support the claims of the law’s opponents that the traditional definition of marriage violates the Constitution.

Holder explained that he and Obama felt that the government could not defend the traditional definition of marriage as a rational distinction in federal court, saying that any morality-based defense of DOMA would amount to “animus” and “stereotype-based thinking” that the Constitution prohibits.

“The [legislative] record contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships – precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against,” Holder wrote.

In other words, because Congress enacted DOMA for moral reasons, the Obama administration will not defend it, because it thinks those moral reasons amount to “animus” towards homosexuals.

Holder said that Obama had decided that the traditional definition of marriage could not be defended from charges that it is not discriminatory, given what Holder said was a “history” of anti-homosexual discrimination.

“After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a heightened standard of scrutiny,” Holder said.

“The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional,” he added.

Congress, as the author of DOMA, can still defend the law in federal court.

It’s so strange to me that so many of the people who voted for Obama aspire to marriage and claim to love children. But they support the Democrat party that undermines marriage in so many ways. From subsidies for single mothers, to no-fault divorce, to opposition to shared-parenting laws, to supporting recreational pre-marital sex, to supporting same-sex marriage… Obama and the Democrats are opposed to traditional marriage. They do not believe in a lifelong commitment of one man and one woman, and a stable environment in which to raise children. They believe in feminism. They believe in big government. They believe in easy no-fault divorce. They believe in single motherhood and sole custody of children for the mother. They believe in sex education. They believe in subsidized abortion. They believe in normalizing the homosexual lifestyle (with the higher rates of promiscuity and domestic violence it entails). They believe in making people feel better about living in selfish, risky and costly ways.

Why do these people who vote Democrat expect children to grow up with a mother and a father? Why do they expect men to commit to marriage? After you have undermined every reason for men to choose to marry and become fathers, you don’t then turn around and expect people to marry, do you?

If you are a democrat, then don’t expect that you will be married. If you are a Democrat, then don’t expect to grow up with a father and a mother. If you are a Democrat, then don’t expect your parents to stay married. If life is about recreation and selfishness and having someone else pay for your risky, irresponsible behavior – this is the Democrat platform – then don’t expect to marry. Marriage isn’t free, and it doesn’t happen without the right conditions. If you are a Democrat, you destroyed marriage. Everything the Democrats stand for is anti-marriage. Democrats are anti-marriage. If you vote Democrat, then you are anti-marriage. You are causing the decline of marriage. And you are hurting children who need a mother and father.

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News

Obama administration rolls back conscience protections for health care workers

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From Life Site News.

Excerpt:

The Obama Administration has rescinded a federal regulation from 2008 that protected the conscience rights of health care providers opposed to providing abortifacient contraception, such as the Plan-B “morning-after” pill.

The Health and Human Services Department under Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, issued the new “final rule,” which leaves health-care workers of federally funded entities a narrower conscience exemption that only protects them from having to participate in abortions or sterilizations.

The new regulation replaces the earlier one enacted in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, which broadened the interpretation of existing federal conscience statutes related to abortion to include health professionals opposed to emergency contraception, such as Ella or Plan-B, drugs which pro-life advocates say also act as abortifacients.

Sebelius alleged in the promulgation of the new final rule that the Bush-era conscience regulations “instead led to greater confusion”, citing comments received by HHS. She said her department was changing the rule because it was “unclear and potentially over-broad in scope.”

The HHS Secretary said in her statement that her department did share the concern of those in favor of rescinding the rule that it had the “potential to negatively impact patient access to contraception and certain other medical services” esp. for certain sub-populations, such as “low income patients, minorities, the uninsured, patients in rural areas, Medicaid beneficiaries, or other medically under-served populations.”

The ruling is a victory for Planned Parenthood and other “family planning” groups that have insisted that drugs like Plan-B (taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse) and Ella (taken within five-days of intercourse) should be defined as “contraception.” Pro-life groups countered that pro-life health providers should be protected from discrimination under federal statutes, because these drugs could prevent a conceived human embryo from implanting in the mother’s womb, thereby aborting it.

[…]“Today’s erosion of conscience protections for medical professionals is a blow both to medicine and the right to practice one’s deeply-held convictions,” said Dr. J. Scott Ries, on behalf of the 16,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA).

Ries said the new HHS final rule disregarded the findings of the previous HHS 2008 final rule which stated that allowing health professionals to practice according to their convictions would negatively impact patient services or create “new barriers.”

“Losing conscientious healthcare professionals and faith-based institutions to discrimination and job loss especially imperils the poor and patients in medically underserved areas,” said Ries. “We are already facing critical shortages of primary care physicians, and the Obama administration’s decision now threatens to make the situation far worse for patients across the country who depend on faith-based health care.”

As the days go on, I find myself missing George W. Bush more and more. Say what you like about him, he was a Christian. And now we have a non-Christian (atheist) president and an atheistic administration. Things like conscience protections are naturally under attack. Naturally, people on the secular left think that the state has a right to impose their views and overrule the religious and moral views of individual citizens. That’s what fascism is – and fascism is exclusively a phenomenon of the political left. The right values individual liberty and free market capitalism.

News

Should government unions get inflated salaries and pensions during a recession?

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First, the raw facts from Fox News.

Excerpt:

The battle in Madison has become the epicenter of a national fight between newly empowered small-government conservatives and Democrats backed by government worker unions.

The grassroots political operation of President Obama, who on Wednesday denounced the austerity legislation as an “attack on unions,” has swung in behind the government workers. Organizing for America, the activist organizing wing of the Democratic National Committee is helping keep the pressure on Republican lawmakers who plan to pass the legislation today.

Members of the Service Employees International Union, the most influential union in national Democratic circles, have also joined the fray in support of the government workers. The SEIU is helping man an around-the-clock occupation of the central halls of the state capital.

Tea Party groups, meanwhile, have planned a counter demonstration for Saturday at the capitol in support of the measure, raising the prospect of a clash between the activist groups.

Thousands of union activists have tried to shut down the process at the statehouse, which swung to the GOP in the 2010 elections. The efforts to block access to the state Senate and disrupt debates have been described as “mostly peaceful,” though union groups have expanded their protests to the homes of individual lawmakers.

Nine protesters have been arrested so far for disorderly conduct.

The holdup in the vote is due to the fact that the Democratic members of the Senate are on the lam, denying Republicans a quorum and the chance to vote. The Democrats are holed up at a resort just across the Illinois border, putting them beyond the reach of Wisconsin law enforcement agencies that could otherwise compel at least one Democrat to appear in the Senate so a vote could take place.

So far, the hideout seems to be backfiring. Moderate Republicans who had been on the fence over the legislation are denouncing the shutdown as undemocratic.

The lower chamber of the legislature may take up the bill today if Senate Democrats remain in hiding.

The measure would increase the contributions of public employees to their own retirement and medical benefits. The plan, put forward by new Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wisc., would have public workers make equal contributions to their retirement funds (teachers currently contribute $1 for every $56.94 from the state) and increase workers’ share of health insurance premiums to 12.6 percent. Teachers in most districts currently pay less than 5 percent of their insurance costs. The national average for workers is 27 percent.

This is important because Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow are lying about the facts. But what do you expect from MSNBC?

Here’s McCain’s latest from the American Spectator. (H/T Hyscience)

Excerpt:

Quin Hillyer’s observations about the Obama-led “thugocracy” illustrate the yawning chasm between the intimidation tactics of the Left and all the prattling about “civility” liberals dished out last month.

The still-greater chasm is the economic gap between the striking government employees and the taxpayers who pay their salaries. Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard points out that the average teacher in Wisconsin receives $77,857 in total compensation, when the value of their generous benefit package is added to their salaries. Given that the median household income in Wisconsin is just above $50,000 (and the typical household has more than one wage-earner), this means that the striking teachers are earning substantially more than the people whose taxes pay their salaries. Furthermore, the basic bone of contention between them and Gov. Walker is his plan to make them contribute a larger share toward their pension and health benefits.

Michelle Malkin has more eye-opening facts about the economic realities of the Wisconsin strike. It is obvious that if voters and taxpayers pay attention to the facts, Walker wins and the strikers lose, as I said this morning:

The unemployed, the under-employed and regular folks trying to pay their bills aren’t likely to have a lot of love for people who (a) have jobs, (b) work at taxapayer expense, (c) get paid more money than the average taxpayer, and (d) go on strike because they don’t want to pay a dime toward their own generous benefits.

The thuggish behavior of the left-wing unions, supported by Barack Obama, has even radical leftists from Time and the Washington Post crying foul.

Larry Kudlow of CNBC has more.

Excerpt:

Wisconsin parents should go on strike against the teachers’ union. A friend e-mailed me to say that the graduation rate in Milwaukee public schools is 46 percent. The graduation rate for African-Americans in Milwaukee public schools is 34 percent. Shouldn’t somebody be protesting that?

Governor Walker is facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit, and he wants state workers to pay one-half of their pension costs and 12.6 percent of their health benefits. Currently, most state employees pay nothing for their pensions and virtually nothing for their health insurance. That’s an outrage.

Nationwide, state and local government unions have a 45 percent total-compensation advantage over their private-sector counterpart. With high-pay compensation and virtually no benefits co-pay, the politically arrogant unions are bankrupting America — which by some estimates is suffering from $3 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

Exempting police, fire, and state troopers, Governor Walker would end collective bargaining over pensions and benefits for the rest. Collective bargaining for wages would still be permitted, but there would be no wage hikes above the CPI. Unions could still represent workers, but they could not force employees to pay dues. In exchange for this, Walker promises no furloughs for layoffs.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is also pushing a bill to limit the collective-bargaining rights of teachers for wages and wage-related benefits. Similar proposals are being discussed in Idaho and Tennessee. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich wants to restrict union rights across-the-board for all state and local government workers. More generally, both Democratic and Republican governors across the country are taking on the extravagant pay of government unions.

Why? Because taxpayers won’t stand for it anymore.

Neil Simpson comments:

Let me get this straight: Union-loving Dems shirk their duties and leave the state?  And what, exactly, is bad about that? (That’s horrible behavior on their part of course, but if they leave and don’t come back that would be swell.)

Unemployment is stuck at 10% — which means non-union unemployment is much higher — and they think this will improve their reputations?

Poorly performing teachers close at least 15 school districts to go fight for their entitlements?  Yeah, that’ll garner a lot of sympathy.

I have been super busy at work and working weekends, so I haven’t been covering this story as much as I should be. But like Neil, I am extremely excited about this. I picked two winning issues for the GOP in 2012: School choice reform and de-funding abortion. Those are two issues that fiscal conservatives and social conservatives agree on. I’d like to now add two more issues to the list: a federal right-to-work law (can work without having to join a union) for ALL employees – public and private, and reforming public sector pensions to be in line with private sector pensions.

We have to go after Democrat special interest groups hard and stop them for collecting all of this private sector taxpayer money. Social conservatives should support this because unions are notoriously pro-abortion and anti-marriage. We need to stop giving them taxpayer money to fund their left-wing political activism.