Obama’s War on the Catholic Church

“It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.” — James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance — 1785

With the Obama administration’s forcing the Catholic Church to pay for birth control and the morning after pill for employees last year you might have thought this was the last straw. When the bishops and the clergy fought back and Kathleen Sebelius, the director of HHS, did not rescind on the decision you might have thought Obama would scale back his war on the Catholic Church. But this is not the case.

While in Ireland this week he dropped a bombshell that has gone pretty much ignored by the mainstream media when he said religious schools encourage division. Barack Obama actually made this claim at a speech in Belfast on Monday, but it seems to be gaining traction overnight. His claim, aimed at both Catholic and Protestant “schools and buildings,” came in prepared remarks rather than an extemporaneous response to a question. The Scottish Catholic Observer quotes the argument accurately:

“The US President has made an alarming call for an end to Catholic education in Northern Ireland in spite of the fact that Archbishop Gerhard Müller told Scots that Catholic education was ‘a critical component of the Church.’

President Barack Obama (above), repeated the oft disproved claim that Catholic education increases division in front of an audience of 2000 young people, including many Catholics, at Belfast’s Waterfront hall when he arrived in the country this morning.

“If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden—that too encourages division and discourages cooperation,” the US president said.

The US politician made the unfounded claim despite a top Vatican official spelling out the undeniable good done by Catholic education in a speech in Glasgow on Saturday and in his homily at Mass on Friday.”

I’ll quote the passage from Obama’s speech in its full context:

“We need you to get this right. And what’s more, you set an example for those who seek a peace of their own. Because beyond these shores, right now, in scattered corners of the world, there are people living in the grip of conflict -- ethnic conflict, religious conflict, tribal conflicts -- and they know something better is out there. And they’re groping to find a way to discover how to move beyond the heavy hand of history, to put aside the violence. They’re studying what you’re doing. And they’re wondering, perhaps if Northern Ireland can achieve peace, we can, too. You’re their blueprint to follow. You’re their proof of what is possible -- because hope is contagious. They’re watching to see what you do next.

Now, some of that is up to your leaders. As someone who knows firsthand how politics can encourage division and discourage cooperation, I admire the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Assembly all the more for making power-sharing work. That’s not easy to do. It requires compromise, and it requires absorbing some pain from your own side. I applaud them for taking responsibility for law enforcement and for justice, and I commend their effort to “Building a United Community” — important next steps along your transformational journey.

Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity — symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others — these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it. If towns remain divided — if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs — if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.

Ultimately, peace is just not about politics. It’s about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don’t exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation.”

Does that make the context any better? Not really. He’s speaking in terms of Northern Ireland, but pretty explicitly calling for that to be a model for the rest of the world. His argument makes two very large assumptions, which is that the conflict in Northern Ireland was about religion, and that parochial schools make people inclined to violence. The first is a gross oversimplification; the conflict in recent times was political, dealing with ethnic conflict and sovereignty issues, with religion used more for tribal identification than a core of the conflict.

The second is just absurd. Catholics and Protestants have thousands of schools in the US, and we don’t have warfare in the streets in the US between the sects. The issue wasn’t the schools, or the belief systems of Catholics and Protestants that such schools teach. However, this makes a handy mechanism to call for the displacement of private education and religious instruction from education, with nothing left except state-controlled schools that indoctrinate children into whatever norms the governing/ruling class deem acceptable.

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a foreign visit to an Islamic nation where he told people on his arrival that they shouldn’t have madrasas. Can you?

Did he say when visiting Israel, say “You Jews shouldn’t have synagogue schools and you Muslims shouldn’t have mosque schools.” I can’t remember. Did he?

If Obama wants to talk about religions causing division, hate, and war I suggest he take a look at his beloved Islam where Shia’s and Sunnis have been killing Christians, Jews, and themselves since the seventh century.

Archbishop Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, told an audience in Scotland that Catholic education provided a rare place where ‘intellectual training, moral discipline and religious commitment would come together’ while giving the prestigious Cardinal Winning Lecture on Saturday to officially launch the St Andrews Foundation for Catholic teacher education at Glasgow University. During Mass at St Andrew’s Cathedral, Glasgow, on Friday night he said that ‘the Catholic school is vitally important a critical component of the Church,’ adding that Catholic education provides young people with a wonderful opportunity to ‘grow up with Jesus.’

Obama is now insisting on enforcing an ObamaCare regulation that would force Catholic individuals, business owners and institutions to provide health care plans that cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. The Catholic bishops of the United States have unanimously declared this regulation an "unjust and illegal mandate" that violates the constitutionally guaranteed right to free exercise of religion.

Dozens of Catholic business owners and institutions are now suing the Obama administration over this regulation. The University of Notre Dame and Catholic University of America are among those who have filed suit. A number of Protestant business owners and institutions have also sued the administration over this regulation because it forces them to provide abortion-inducing drugs and IUDs in contradiction to their moral and religious beliefs.

The Catholic Church and Catholic religious orders run schools in the United States and elsewhere that are designed not only to teach children reading, writing, arithmetic, history and other academic subjects, but also to teach them the theology and moral views of the faith, and to train their characters in keeping with those moral views.

As a product of a Catholic school education through the 8^th grade I can say that it taught me much more than the reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, and civics. It also taught me morals, love of God and family, and living by the Ten Commandments — something we direly need in our schools today.

In a fit of ignorance I enrolled my three children in government schools in the early 1970s. By the time my youngest reached fifth grade all were enrolled in Catholic school where they graduated high school from. All received a fine college preparatory education allowing them to continue on to college with no problems.

Millions of children have matriculated through their K-12 education in Catholic and Christian schools. Not only has this been good for the kids it has saved the taxpayers billions in school costs if all of those children had been enrolled in our failing public school system. Just think of all of those teachers union pensions we would be on the hook for.

Obama never fails to enlist children in his secularist crusades, whether at home or abroad. Last week he trotted out two nine-year-old girls to introduce him at a White House event celebrating “LGBT Pride Month.”

“We could not be prouder of Zea and Luna for the introduction,” he said. “Zea and Luna are here with their moms, and also I think with Grandma and Grandpa — correct? And so feel free to congratulate them afterwards for their outstanding introduction.”

Zea and Luna proved useful to Obama not only as props for LGBT rights but also as mouthpieces for his gun-control agenda: “When Zea and Luna wrote me last December, they told me they would have voted for me if they could have — thanks, guys. They also laid out quite an agenda. I hope Congress is listening to them. But I want them and all of you to know that I’m not giving up the fight to keep our kids safe from gun violence.”

It just so happens that Zea and Luna also support additional funding for Arne Duncan’s Department of Education. According to Obama, Duncan has lots of innovative ideas on how to jumpstart America’s sluggish schools and needs more money to enact them. Chicagoans may remember one of them: his thwarted plan to start a “gay high school” in the Windy City that he hoped to call “Social Justice Solidarity High School.”

This week Obama took his Brave New World propaganda to the youth of Northern Ireland. He has visions of a secularist utopia for them too. With uniformed school children arrayed behind him, he in effect called for the elimination of religious education in Northern Ireland:

“If towns remain divided — if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs — if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.”

Obama’s presumption knows no bounds. The Northern Irish, already enjoying a “chic” culture, as he put it, are evidently capable of his level of enlightenment, provided that they listen to their youth. Apparently referencing his own claimed evolution on gay marriage — recall that he credited his daughters with stimulating his moral imagination by bringing over to the house the adopted children of homosexual couples — he urged Northern Irish youth to keep liberalizing their elders:

“Politicians oftentimes follow rather than lead. And so, especially young people helped to push and to prod and to protest, and to make common cause with those who did not look like them. And that transformed America — so that Malia and Sasha’s generation, they have different attitudes about differences and race than mine and certainly different from the generation before that. And each successive generation creates a new space for peace and tolerance and justice and fairness. And while we have work to do in many ways, we have surely become more tolerant and more just, more accepting, more willing to see our diversity in America not as something to fear, but as something to welcome because it’s a source of our national strength.”

If the point wasn’t clear enough, Obama said that he hoped that one day they could “fall in love with whomever” they want.

Gay marriage, abortion on demand, free contraceptives, Plan B at the local drug store, an all-pervasive secular culture — this is the glorious future Obama implied for the Northern Irish. But he sternly warned the teens that the choice is theirs: “Whether you let your kids play with kids who attend a different church — that’s your decision.”

For Obama, “peace” and secularism are always one and the same, and if you don’t choose the latter you are a violent bigot. The arrogant Brave New World babble he dumped on these children is impossible to comprehend apart from that assumption. Never mind that plenty of blood, flowing from “chic” addresses like those of his friends at Planned Parenthood, gushes in secularist countries too.

Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once remarked, “In order for Israel to be counted among the nations of the world, it has to have its own burglars and prostitutes.” In Northern Ireland’s case, pace Obama, it can’t be considered civilized until it has fewer religious schools and more abortionists.

However, Obama’s arrogance did not go unnoticed by the Irish. Far-left Irish politician Clare Daly, formerly a leader in the country’s Socialist Party, is being called “disgraceful” by her compatriots after lashing out against President Obama in the wake of his visit to Ireland for the G-8 Summit.

A member of Parliament of Dublin North, Daly mocked the Obama family for repeatedly referring to Ireland as “home” before ripping into the U.S. president’s foreign policy.

“It’s hard to know which is worse,” she added, “the outpourings of the Obamas themselves, or the sycophantic fawning over them by sections of the media and political establishment.”

She called Obama the “hypocrite of the century” for telling Irish youths the United States supports those who choose peace, while providing arms to Syrian rebels and increasing drone strikes by 200 percent.

“The reality is, by any serious examination, this man is a war criminal,” Daly declared. “He has just announced his decision to supply arms to the Syrian opposition, including the jihadists, fueling the destabilization of that region, and continuing to undermine secularism and knock-back conditions for women.”

She proceeded to excoriate the country’s Prime Minister Edna Kenny, for making Ireland “a nation of pimps, prostituting ourselves for a pat on the head” and a “lapdog of U.S. imperialism.”

We cannot hear him liken Catholic and Protestant schools to racial segregation in America without a sense of alarm. Clearly, President Obama dismisses religious freedom as a basis for parents' choosing different schools for their own children.

Mr. Obama's own grandparents exercised their choice in sending him to Honolulu's prestigious Punahou Academy. This pricey ($20,000/year) prep school was founded by Congregationalist missionaries. With roots in the faith-based community, it hardly qualifies as a segregation academy. Similarly, the president and Mrs. Obama have chosen Washington, D.C.'s very posh Sidwell Friends School for their daughters. They have every right to do so, but no one would credit this Quaker-founded school as part of a segregation system.

Mr. Obama has been zealous in trying to block other parents' exercise of education choice. His administration has been eager to shut down Washington, D.C.'s Opportunity Scholarships. This program permits low-income parents of area students to choose a private or parochial school for their kids. Most of these scholarships go to minority students and many of them choose Catholic schools where a majority of their classmates are non-Catholic.

It is a shocking thing for the President of the United States to show such open hostility to faith-based schooling. As their motto goes, these are "schools you can believe in." And the record of religious schools in America is a great one.

We need to view Mr. Obama's comments in the context of his other policies. His administration is pushing for ever more pre-K programs nationwide. Despite the documented failure of Head Start, he wants to enlist more very young children in school programs that will replace church-based child care and care in the home.

This is what secularists have wanted in our country, too: All children under the guise of the all-powerful state. This has always been a goal of Marxists.

We should not be surprised that President Obama, who attended Marxist scholar’s conferences in New York City when he was a student at Columbia University in 1983, is so openly hostile to schools you can believe in.

The fact is that in Northern Ireland, the religious schools have been leaders in reconciling historic antagonisms. And this is true in America, too. Here, for example, Evangelicals, Lutherans, Orthodox Christians, and Orthodox Jews have joined with Catholics in resisting the menacing HHS Mandate. That mandate is the gravest threat to religious freedom in this country since 1786.

Mr. Obama should reread his Constitutional Law texts. There, he would find the landmark ruling of the Supreme Court in 1925, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters. The KKK had pushed through an Oregon referendum that outlawed private and religious schools.

Unconstitutional, said the high Court:

“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments of this Union rest excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”

President Obama continues his relentless drive to "fundamentally transform America." He does not appreciate the historic fact that religious freedom was the foundation for civil liberty in our country. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison all believed this. So did Protestants, Catholics, and Jews of the Founding Era. Respect for the convictions of others does not breed hostility. It is the beginning of civility.

The Pierce Court decision concluded with this ringing affirmation of parental rights and religious freedom:

“The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations. Those "obligations" included then, and continue to include, our obligations to our Creator.”

President Obama continued his War on Christianity Monday and the broadcast networks continued to ignore it. Obama used a town hall meeting for youth in Belfast to show his contempt for religious education. The president criticized separate religious schools for promoting “division.”

The story drew attention in conservative media outlets and was linked on the Drudge Report. But no major network news show covered the event in the two days that followed. ABC, CBS and NBC all skipped the story, even though it made the rounds in conservative media especially on Wednesday.

Some of the news Wednesday night wasn’t particularly compelling. ABC “World News with Diane Sawyer” took two minutes to devote to “flash mobs for hire.” NBC “Nightly News” found 36 seconds to devote to the decline of the Houston Astrodome, the “cathedral of sports once known as the eighth wonder of the world.”

The Obama administration has angered people of faith on several issues from gay marriage and abortion to birth control mandates and hiding a cross when Obama was speaking at Georgetown. This time, his attack was directed at Catholic and Protestant education.

Is Georgetown University Still Catholic?

“Scandal is a word or action evil in itself, which occasions another's spiritual ruin.” — St. Thomas Aquinas, Patron of Catholic Universities.

According to Wikipedia Georgetown University is a private research university in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Jesuit and Catholic university in the United States. Georgetown's main campus, located in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, is noted for Healy Hall, a National Historic Landmark in the Romanesque revival style. Georgetown operates a law center on Capitol Hill and auxiliary campuses in Italy, Turkey, and Qatar.

Georgetown's founding by John Carroll, America's first Catholic bishop, realized efforts to establish a Roman Catholic college in the province of Maryland that were repeatedly thwarted by religious persecution. The university expanded after the American Civil War under the leadership of Patrick Francis Healy, who came to be known as Georgetown's "second founder" despite having been born a slave. Jesuits have participated in the university's administration since 1805, a heritage Georgetown celebrates, but the university has always been governed independently of the Society of Jesus and of church authorities.

Jesuit settlers from England founded the Province of Maryland in 1634. However, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War led to stringent laws against Roman Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including Andrew White, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. During most of the remainder of Maryland's colonial period, Jesuits conducted Catholic schools clandestinely. It was not until after the end of the American Revolution that plans to establish a permanent Catholic institution for education in the United States were realized.

Because of Benjamin Franklin's recommendation, Pope Pius VI appointed former Jesuit John Carroll as the first head of the Roman Catholic Church in America, even though the papal suppression of the Jesuit order was still in effect. Carroll began meetings of local clergy in 1783 near Annapolis, Maryland, where they orchestrated the development of a new university. On January 23, 1789, Carroll finalized the purchase of the property on which Dahlgren Quadrangle was later built. Future Congressman William Gaston was enrolled as the school's first student on November 22, 1791, and instruction began on January 2, 1792.

In its early years, Georgetown College suffered from considerable financial strain, relying on private sources of funding and the limited profits from local lands owned by ex-Jesuits. The Maryland Society of Jesus began its restoration in 1805, and Jesuit affiliation, in the form of teachers and administrators, bolstered confidence in the college. The United States Congress issued Georgetown the first federal university charter in 1815, which allowed it to confer degrees, and the first Bachelor degrees were awarded two years later. In 1844, the school received a corporate charter, under the name "The President and Directors of Georgetown College", affording the growing school additional legal rights. In response to the demand for a local option for Roman Catholic students, the Medical School was founded in 1851.

The university has around 7,000 undergraduate and over 8,000 post-graduate students from a wide variety of religious, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds, including 130 foreign countries. The university's most notable alumni are prominent in public life in the United States and abroad. Among them are former U.S. President Bill Clinton, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, dozens of governors and members of Congress, and the heads of state or government of more than a dozen countries. [Source: Wikipedia]

Until the ninth grade I went to Catholic school where the secular education was above average and we also learned about the Catholic faith. One of the tenants of the faith we learned about in our Catechism lessons was something called scandal. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia Scandal is defined thusly:

“According to St. Thomas scandal is a word or action evil in itself, which occasions another's spiritual ruin. It is a word or action, that is either an external act—for an internal act can have no influence on the conduct of another—or the omission of an external act, because to omit what one should do is equivalent to doing what is forbidden; it must be evil in itself, or in appearance; this is the interpretation of the words of St. Thomas: minus rectum. It is not the physical cause of a neighbor's sin, but only the moral cause, or occasion; further, this moral causality may be understood in a strict sense, as when one orders, requests, or advises another to commit the sin (this is strictly inductive scandal, which some call co-operation in a broad sense), or in a large sense, as when a person without being directly concerned in the sin nevertheless exercises a certain influence on the sin of his neighbor, e.g. by committing such a sin in his presence (this is inductive scandal in a broad sense). For scandal to exist it is therefore essential and sufficient, with regard to the nature of the act and the circumstances under which it takes place, that it be of a nature to induce sin in another; consequently it is not necessary that the neighbor should actually fall into sin; and on the other hand, for scandal strictly so-called, it is not enough that a neighbor take occasion to do evil from a word or action which is not a subject of scandal and exercises no influence on his action; it must be a cause of spiritual ruin, that is of sin, consequently that is not scandal which merely dissuades the neighbor from a more perfect act, as for instance, prayer, the practice of the Evangelical virtues, the more frequent use of the sacraments, etc. Still less can that be considered scandal, which only arouses comment, indignation, horror etc., for instance blasphemy committed in the presence of a priest or of a religious; it is true that the act arouses indignation and in common parlance it is often called scandalous, but this way of speaking is inaccurate, and in strictly theological terminology it is not the sin of scandal. Hence scandal is in itself an evil act, at least in appearance, and as such it exercises on the will of another an influence more or less great which induces to sin. Furthermore, when the action from which another takes occasion of sin is not bad, either in itself or in appearance, it may violate charity (see below), but strictly speaking it is not the sin of scandal. However, some authorities understanding the word scandal in a wider sense include in it this case”

The Catholic Encyclopedia divides scandal into two divisions:

“(1) Scandal is divided into active and passive. Active scandal is that which has been defined above; passive scandal is the sin which another commits in consequence of active scandal. Passive scandal is called scandal given (scandalum datum), when the act of the scandalizer is of a nature to occasion it; and scandal received (acceptum), when the action of the one who scandalizes is due solely to ignorance or weakness—this is scandal of the weak (infirmorum),—or to malice and evil inclinations—this is pharisaical scandal, which was that of the Pharisees with regard to the words and actions of Christ.

(2) Active scandal is direct when he who commits it has the intention of inducing another to sin; such is the sin of one who solicits another to the crime of adultery, theft etc. If one prevails upon another to commit the sin not only because of an advantage or pleasure believed to accrue therefrom but chiefly because of the sin itself, because it is an offence to God or the ruin of a neighbor's soul, direct scandal is called by the expressive name of diabolical scandal. On the other hand scandal is only indirect when without the intention to cause another to fall into sin we say a word or perform a deed which is for him an occasion of sin.”

By now you must be asking yourself why all of this information regarding Catholic doctrine. To answer your question I believe it is necessary to lay the foundation for what I am about to say about the Catholic Church and Georgetown University in particular.

Georgetown University has been on a slippery slope towards progressive liberalism and away from its Catholic roots for a long time. So it's no surprise the Jesuit institution would invite someone like Kathleen Sebelius, head of the Department of Health and Human Services to speak on May 18 in one of its commencement ceremonies at the Public Policy Institute.

However the HHS secretary causes scandal when she identifies as Catholic while publicly and consistently promoting abortion on demand through all trimesters of pregnancy. Through two terms as governor of Kansas, she vetoed anti-abortion legislation in 2003, 2005 and 2006 and vetoed a bill in April 2008 that would have strengthened her state's limits on late-term abortions.

Add to that her acceptance of hundreds of thousands of dollars from a late term abortion doctor, and her willingness to protect Dr. Tiller from being sued and prosecuted while she was governor of Kansas. Not to mention numerous fundraisers provided by Planned Parenthood.

When Sebelius talks about being "personally against abortion" but endorses it at every turn, she exposes her utter duplicity. Yet Georgetown looks the other way. This is a classic example of Scandal.

The Georgetown University News made the proud exclamation about their choice of speakers:

“Our commencement speakers are exceptional individuals who represent the highest levels of excellence and who will provide inspiration for our students as they envision more clearly the impact they can make in the world,” said Georgetown President John J. DeGioia. “These individuals from diverse backgrounds have worked tirelessly to improve the lives of others through public service, research, teaching and creative endeavors.”

When it came to Sebelius they had this to say:

“Sebelius was sworn in as the 21st secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2009. Since taking office, she has led efforts to improve America’s health and enhance the delivery of human services to some of the nation’s most vulnerable populations, including young children, those with disabilities and the elderly. As part of the historic Affordable Care Act, she is implementing reforms she says have ended many of the insurance industry’s most discriminatory practices and will help 34 million uninsured Americans get health coverage. She is also working with doctors, nurses, hospital leaders, employers and patients to implement policies aimed at slowing the growth of health care costs. Sebelius served as governor of Kansas from 2003 until her cabinet appointment and was named one of America’s Top Five Governors by Time magazine.”

Not one word about her unwavering support of abortion or push to override the First Amendment by ordering Catholic institutions to provide free birth control and abortifacients. It was this very issue that brought a Georgetown student, Sandra Fluke, to national exposure.

The Cardinal Newman Society, a Catholic organization supporting college students on campuses, has put up a petition on its site requesting DiGioia to rescind Georgetown's invitation to Sebelius. The CNS states:

“Last week The Cardinal Newman Society released a list of 11 scandalous commencement speakers at Catholic colleges and universities, as well as a report on homosexual “lavender graduations” including one at Georgetown.

The nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university has chosen to honor Sebelius by granting her a prestigious platform at its Public Policy Institute commencement ceremony, despite her role as the lead architect of a healthcare mandate that will force Catholic institutions to pay for contraception, abortifacients and sterilization against their religious beliefs. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has termed the mandate “an unwarranted government definition of religion” that is “alien both to our Catholic tradition and to federal law,” “a violation of personal civil rights” and “a mandate to act against our teachings.”

But Secretary Sebelius’ record on abortion is at least as troubling as the mandate. When Governor of Kansas, Sebelius supported abortion rights and vetoed pro-life legislation. In 2008, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City reportedly told Sebelius, a Roman Catholic, to stop receiving the Eucharist until she publicly recants her position on abortion and makes a “worthy sacramental confession.”

The HHS secretary was also instrumental in creating the ObamaCare contraception mandate issued in January of this year. But the Catholic Church vehemently opposes this violation of religious freedom:

Surely the Church presents an obstacle to fully implementing ObamaCare just as it did when it argued against Margaret Sanger when she promoted widespread use of birth control. Sanger hated the Church and fought its bishops in public forums. It should also be noted that Margaret Sanger was an avowed racist who wanted to abort Black babies so we could reduce their population. This is the same Margaret Sanger honored by Hilary Clinton a few years ago.

In asking Sebelius to speak at commencement, does Georgetown have an arrangement with the Obama administration to attack its own Church? They were already in the news when one of their law students hit the airwaves with her demand for American taxpayers to foot her annual contraception bill. Now they will be honoring an abortion rights supporter.

It was also at Georgetown University that the administration decided to cover all religious statures, symbols, and paintings in honor of Barack Obama when he spoke their soon after his inauguration. Their excuse was that they did not want to infringe on the principle of the separation of church and state. How feeble a response for taking a purely secular position. Georgetown is not a secular university; it is and always had been a Catholic University based on the principles, tenants and doctrine of the Catholic Church. If you do not approve of this condition, then don’t go there.

This has been an ongoing trend in the Catholic Church for since the 1970’s. Prestigious Catholic universities like Notre Dame and Catholic University have followed similar paths. Isn’t it time for Cardinal Dolan, the prelate of the Catholic Church in America to speak out in condemnation of these policies and begin to excommunicate some of these Catholic administrators and politicians who profess to be Catholic while giving scandal to the Church.

I hope that Georgetown will see the error of its ways and disinvite Sebelius, but I doubt it will happen. We are too far down the road of progressive secularism in the Catholic Church.

The Magic of Obama

“A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.” — Friedrich August von Hayek

Ever wonder why Obama looks so sharp in a dark suit? Ever wonder about that ear-to-ear professional grin he's got? About those little dramatic pauses before he drops a well-rehearsed line? Ever wonder where he keeps his high hat and magic wand?

Well, you don't have to wonder any longer. We're due to see another magic campaign by The Great Obama. It'll be one stunt after another, like those Styrofoam Greek columns at his victory rally in Denver.

Now that the GOP race is settling out, Obama is starting his real campaign. That messianic halo is beginning to hover over his head again. People are beginning to faint at his performances. The other day, in Charlotte, he asked his audience to stay calm and let that fainting lady or gent be treated by the medics.

"Folks do that all the time when I speak," he said modestly, barely restraining himself from performing a miraculous resurrection of the flesh, right there on stage. In a couple of months he could be doing the full Elmer Gantry, raising his arms and going Heal! Heal! as the victim is carried away.

And the crowds will go wild. They love this stuff, our super-intelligent left.

Sandra Fluke is no fluke. She was a set-up, a full-time radical activist for the last ten years — after majoring in Women's Rage at Cornell University. Fluke has been so "active" in the last decade; it's hard to see how she even found time for bathroom breaks. At age 31 Ms. Fluke is a "student" at Georgetown Law School, specializing in activism against this Catholic private university. She's a professional victim or an accuser, depending on the needs of the moment.

That's why you are paying your taxes for Women's Studies, Black Studies, Hispanic Studies, the lot. Your money is going to train "activists" to do PR stunts, in order to squeeze out even more of your money. It all feeds the left-wing Demagogue Machine.

L'Affaire Fluke comes down to Alinsky Rule 1: Pick the target; freeze it; then polarize it — "polarize" means a hysterical mob assault on the designated scapegoat of the moment. This is pure Alinsky, something Obama and his left-wing minions have been well trained in. It is something the conservatives cannot seem to figure out how to combat.

Check out Lenin's Hanging Order. It's all there. Nothing has changed, now that we have Vladimir Ilyich Obama in the White House. Today we are all kulaks.

The U.S. Army used to tell combat soldiers to "find 'em, fight 'em, fix 'em." "Polarize" means to fix 'em, to neutralize the enemy, discredit them, scare them witless, and traumatize them. Raging mobs create fear even without the threat of Siberian prison camps and basement executions. We've seen the radical media go after Republicans and conservatives over and over again. No one is immune; two-year-old Trig Palin is still targeted by the utterly shameless left. Apparently little baby Trig isn't covered by International Women's Day. Nor is Governor Sarah Palin, of course.

Obama has refurbished that oldest trick of the theater, the claque — the wildly applauding gang paid to sit in front of the crowd, ready to cheer on command. With a well-trained claque you can say anything and the audience will still applaud. Most people are afraid to stand out from a maddened crowd. It's how Demagogues operate.

We call our national claque "the mainstream media," and we know they march in lock-step, because they were exposed in the JourNOlist scandal. It's the most significant media scandal ever, and the media are covering it up, of course.

Real journalists don't sing from the same song sheet every single day. Today, our media do that, which means they have no real journalists, just party operatives like George Stephanopoulos. Identical media words every day are a sure sign of coordination. If you ever need to prove the existence of media bias to a friend, just tell him to look at the lockstep headlines.

Right now those "spontaneous" Occupy mobs are being trained by the SEIU to shaft Mitt Romney during the campaign. That "99%" lie they came up with is a setup for the coming campaign. Those 99 signs are not homemade. The 99% slogan is totalitarian, of course, because it tells half the country to shut up and obey orders. It's The Great Obama practicing his tricks for the big show.

The media beat up Obama's enemies in broad daylight, to make sure he won't have real competition in the campaign. Clarence Thomas called the media a "high-tech lynch mob" when he was up for his 1992 Supreme Court nomination, and they haven't changed their stripes. The mob is now trying to gun down Mitt Romney's opponents, one after the other, saving their biggest ammo for Mitt himself. It's happening in broad daylight, and only conservatives are taking notice.

A century before canned laugh tracks, Italy's La Scala Opera House had claques. So did Benito Mussolini in the 1930s. Opera is in the blood over there, and Mussolini loved to strut on the big opera stage. When the Partisans caught him in the end they hung him upside down next to his mistress, suitably mutilated. They understood the value of drama, too. If it bleeds, it leads.

Bill Clinton was the first Democrat to bring a Hollywood director to the White House to stage his television stunts, but Obama makes the Clintons look like Arkansas hillbillies. The Great Obama's election opponents in Chi-Town magically disappeared from their campaigns — twice after sealed divorce records were exposed in public at critical moments. In Chi-Town Axelrod's "opposition research" takes on a whole new meaning.

Hillary and Bill felt the sting of that Obama whip during the 2008 primaries, when all the media turned on them as racists, on cue. Remember that? Choreographed by the wizard and his crew.

This time the target of Sandra Fluke turned out to be Rush Limbaugh. But it could have been Rick Santorum, or you or me. Obama operates by scapegoating. his administration has tried to scapegoat Israel by using front groups like J Street, staffed by Soros activists. The Great Obama took on the whole Catholic Church in the run-up to the Fluke stunt. Obama knows he lost any real Catholics a long time ago, so he has nothing to lose by attacking the Church on abortion. The Fluke stunt was timed to peel off female voters for Obama.

Most American presidents try to combine interest groups. Obama likes to split them. First he carves out the True Believers. Then he tries to sweep up the wishy-washies toward election time.

Admittedly, Rush walked right into the trap by calling the lady a tramp. He lost his deft touch, and just a few blundering missteps turned him into the target of the day. Sandra Fluke is even now being turned into a martyr of leftist womanhood. She's now Saint Fluke the Martyr for abortion rights, all free from the taxpayer.

This is the second time Rush has been honored by presidential attention from a Democrat. Bill Clinton tried to blame Rush for the Oklahoma City bombing. Now The Great Obama has him assaulting American womanhood in the person of Sandra Fluke.

On the other hand, Rush is making out fabulously from all the notoriety. All the talk show hosts in America are wishing The Great Obama had picked on them instead.

So everybody's having fun, except for the American people, who are being suckered.

Obama Is Not Only A Liar, He is a Coward

“The essential question is whether, in America, the people’s psychology has been so successfully warped, the individual’s spirit so thoroughly trounced, and the civil society’s institutions so effectively overwhelmed that revival is possible. Have too many among us already surrendered or been conquered? Can the people overcome the constant and relentless influences of ideological indoctrination, economic manipulation, and administrative coerciveness, or have they become hopelessly entangled in and dependent on a ubiquitous federal government.” — Mark Levine, Ameritopia

Today during his conveniently called press conference to compete with the Republican Super Tuesday primary President Obama when asked a question about Bill Maher’s misogynistic remarks about conservative women and his acceptance of his $1 million dollar contribution to his Super Pac Obama called for an end to the press conference and walked of the podium. He did not have the guts to answer the reporter’s question. Yet he did have time to say how proud he was of Sandra Fluke, the 30 year-old Georgetown Law student gender reassignment and contraception activist.

Sandra Fluke was a set-up by the Democrat party. Knowing that they were losing the church-state argument they changed the narrative to a women’s health issue by bringing an unvetted “expert” into a congressional hearing without allowing for the three day advance notice so the committee staffers could check her bona fides as an expert and gather information on her background.

Fluke was the sole witness who appeared on Feb. 23 before an all-Democratic panel chaired by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Fluke, the 30-year-old past president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice, said she was testifying in support of the ObamaCare regulation that requires all health insurance plans — including those offered by Catholic universities — to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives. She said she wanted to tell the stories of some women at Georgetown Law who were affected by the fact that the student health-care plan at the Catholic university does not cover contraceptives.

This led to her bombshell unchallenged testimony decrying that a Catholic university was not supplying her with free contraception for her sexual life. They did not know that she was also an advocate for free transgender surgery, or in the new lexicon “sexual reassignment.” All of this was lost to the committee as she smugly gave her testimony, some of it right out of Media Matters an organization she has contributed to.

Fluke testified, "a married female student told me she had to stop using contraception because she couldn’t afford it any longer. Women employed in low wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice."

“You might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways," Fluke told the Democratic panel. "Unfortunately, that's not true."

CNSNews.com confirmed, however, that the Target store at 3100 14th St., NW, in Washington, D.C., which is 3 miles from the Georgetown Law campus, offers Tri-Sprintec, the generic form of the birth-control pill Ortho Tri-Cyclen. Target sells a month's supply of this birth control pill for just $9 to individuals without health insurance coverage for the pills.

A CVS pharmacy only two blocks from the Georgetown Law campus also sells a month's supply of the same generic birth control pills for $33.

Enter Rush Limbaugh who fell into the Democrat trap and called her a prostitute and a slut. This is what the left wanted. They now had a cause — the Republicans war on women. Truth matters not here, it’s all about perception and the right once again is losing the battle to the superior forces of the media, the entertainment industry and the left. But what is the real truth behind Sandra Fluke?

President Obama injected himself Friday into the controversy over Rush Limbaugh's comments about a Georgetown University student who spoke to lawmakers about birth control, calling the 30-year-old woman to thank her for "exercising her right as a citizen to speak out."

But Limbaugh stood his ground, using his nationally syndicated radio show to mock Obama's call and charge Democrats with trying to exploit the controversy to make up for "failure on their decades-long abortion push."

"It just isn't the winning issue for them it used to be. If it were, this wouldn't be about contraception, this would be about abortion," Limbaugh said Friday.

The president called the student, Sandra Fluke, on Friday afternoon to express his disappointment in the "personal attacks" against her, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

Limbaugh, on his radio show earlier this week, had called Fluke a "slut" following her comments in favor of mandatory contraceptive coverage.

"The fact that our political discourse has become debased in many ways is bad enough. It is worse when it's directed at a private citizen who was simply expressing her views on a matter of public policy," Carney said.

He said Obama called Fluke to express disappointment about the attacks and "thank her" for exercising her right to speak out.

The phone call came as lawmakers across Capitol Hill were weighing in, and as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee incorporated Limbaugh's comments into its fundraising campaign.

Limbaugh, on his show Friday, charged that Democrats were only elevating this issue because they're losing the argument on abortion.

"Now what's happening here politically, with the elevation of contraception here to such prominence in the national debate to me, it is evidence that the Democrats, the left have encountered utter political and moral failure on their decades-long abortion push," Limbaugh said.

Limbaugh also pointed out that Democrats had not spoken out about over-the-top comments made by other media personalities like Bill Maher, who tweeted that "Jesus just f----- Tim Tebow bad" during the Christmas Eve Broncos-Bills game and reportedly called Sarah Palin a "c---" last year.

"So I ask Jay Carney," Limbaugh said. "Will President Obama now give back the 1-million-dollar donation that Bill Maher gave his Super PAC?"

Kirsten Powers, a Fox News contributor and Democrat Party strategists claims Rush Limbaugh isn’t the only media misogynist. In her recent column in the Daily Beast Ms. Powers, a person I rarely agree with wrote:

“Did you know there is a war on women?

Yes, it’s true. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, Matt Taibbi, and Ed Schultz have been waging it for years with their misogynist outbursts. There have been boycotts by people on the left who are outraged that these guys still have jobs. Oh, wait. Sorry, that never happened.

Boycotts are reserved for people on the right like Rush Limbaugh, who finally apologized Saturday for calling a 30-year-old Georgetown Law student, Sandra Fluke, a “slut” after she testified before congress about contraception. Limbaugh’s apology was likely extracted to stop the departure of any more advertisers, who were rightly under pressure from liberal groups outraged by the comments.

Let it be shouted from the rooftops that Rush Limbaugh should not have called Ms. Fluke a slut or, as he added later, a “prostitute” who should post her sex tapes. It’s unlikely that his apology will assuage the people on a warpath for his scalp, and after all, why should it? He spent days attacking a woman as a slut and prostitute and refused to relent. Now because he doesn’t want to lose advertisers, he apologizes. What’s in order is something more like groveling—and of course a phone call to Ms. Fluke—if you ask me.

But if Limbaugh’s actions demand a boycott—and they do—then what about the army of swine on the left?

During the 2008 election Ed Schultz said on his radio show that Sarah Palin set off a “bimbo alert.” He called Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut.” (He later apologized.) He once even took to his blog to call yours truly a “bimbo” for the offense of quoting him accurately in a New York Post column.

Keith Olbermann has said that conservative commentator S.E. Cupp should have been aborted by her parents, apparently because he finds her having opinions offensive. He called Michelle Malkin a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick.” He found it newsworthy to discuss Carrie Prejean’s breasts on his MSNBC show. His solution for dealing with Hillary Clinton, who he thought should drop out of the presidential race, was to find “somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.” Olbermann now works for über-leftist and former Democratic vice president Al Gore at Current TV.

Left-wing darling Matt Taibbi wrote on his blog in 2009, “When I read [Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.” In a Rolling Stone article about Secretary of State Clinton, he referred to her “flabby arms.”When feminist writer Erica Jong criticized him for it, he responded by referring to Jong as an “800-year old sex novelist.” (Jong is almost 70, which apparently makes her an irrelevant human being.) In Taibbi’s profile of Congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann he labeled her “batshit crazy.” (Oh, those “crazy” women with their hormones and all.)

Chris Matthews’s sickening misogyny was made famous in 2008, when he obsessively tore down Hillary Clinton for standing between Barack Obama and the presidency, something that Matthews could not abide. Over the years he has referred to the former first lady, senator and presidential candidate and current secretary of state as a “she-devil,” “Nurse Ratched,” and “Madame Defarge.” Matthews has also called Clinton “witchy,” “anti-male,” and “uppity” and once claimed she won her Senate seat only because her “husband messed around.” He asked a guest if “being surrounded by women” makes “a case for commander in chief—or does it make a case against it?” At some point Matthews was shamed into sort of half apologizing to Clinton, but then just picked up again with his sexist ramblings.

Matthews has wondered aloud whether Sarah Palin is even “capable of thinking” and has called Bachmann a “balloon head” and said she was “lucky we still don’t have literacy tests out there.” Democratic strategist Jehmu Greene, who is the former president of the Women’s Media Center, told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in 2011 that Matthews “is a bully, and his favorite target is women.” So why does he still have a show? What if his favorite target was Jews? Or African-Americans?

But the grand pooh-bah of media misogyny is without a doubt Bill Maher—who also happens to be a favorite of liberals—who has given $1 million to President Obama’s super PAC. Maher has called Palin a “dumb twat” and dropped the C-word in describing the former Alaska governor. He called Palin and Congresswoman Bachmann “boobs” and “two bimbos.” He said of the former vice-presidential candidate, “She is not a mean girl. She is a crazy girl with mean ideas.” He recently made a joke about Rick Santorum’s wife using a vibrator. Imagine now the same joke during the 2008 primary with Michelle Obama’s name in it, and tell me that he would still have a job. Maher said of a woman who was harassed while breast-feeding at an Applebee’s, “Don't show me your tits!” as though a woman feeding her child is trying to flash Maher. (Here’s a way to solve his problem: don’t stare at a strangers’ breasts). Then, his coup de grâce: “And by the way, there is a place where breasts and food do go together. It’s called Hooters!”

Liberals—you know, the people who say they “fight for women”—comprise Maher’s audience, and a parade of high-profile liberals make up his guest list. Yet have any of them confronted him? Nope. That was left to Ann Coulter, who actually called Maher a misogynist to his face, an opportunity that feminist icon Gloria Steinem failed to take when she appeared on his show in 2011.

This is not to suggest that liberals—or feminists—never complain about misogyny. Many feminist blogs now document attacks on women on the left and the right, including Jezebel, Shakesville, and the Women’s Media Center (which was cofounded by Steinem). But when it comes to high-profile campaigns to hold these men accountable—such as that waged against Limbaugh—the real fury seems reserved only for conservatives, while the men on the left get a wink and a nod as long as they are carrying water for the liberal cause.

After all, if Limbaugh’s outburst is part of the “war on women,” then what is the routine misogyny of liberal media men?

It’s time for some equal-opportunity accountability. Without it, the fight against media misogyny will continue to be perceived as a proxy war for the Democratic Party, not a fight for fair treatment of women in the public square.”

I pasted in Power’s full column as I felt she had a great deal to say that I agreed with. For a committed liberal Democrat to take off on her own compatriots was quite refreshing.

Let us avoid offering Fluke too much sympathy. She paid for the bed; now she gets to lay on it. Fluke — who we now know was never some shrinking violet dragged into the spotlight of purported conservative sexism; but was, and is, another sad sack who sold her soul to Pelosi and her minions — will come to regret allowing the Democrats to turn her into a Muppet. But, that’s the price of doing business with the dark side, Sandy. When they’ve moved on to the next weird little prop in their crusade for control, Fluke will be left counting No. 2 pencils in the basement of the House Minority Counsel’s office and reminiscing about how cool it was being important for a few months.

A couple of weeks ago, the unhinged Democratic spokes mouth and Kennedy fetishist Chris Matthews told Mimi Alford to “shut up.” Alford published a book detailing her life; and in the course of doing so, revealed some borderline pornographic albeit unsurprising details about the late President John F. Kennedy.

The woman dared to point out that one of the great icons of liberalism ran the White House like a junior varsity Playboy mansion and Matthews and the liberals went at her like they were David Brock and she was a kilo of pure Bogota nose candy. Granted, JFK fit her in between romps with Marilyn Monroe and half the gun molls on the Eastern Seaboard and she survived; so she should probably count her blessings. And yet, liberals are outraged by Limbaugh’s remarks.

The breathtakingly unfunny Bill Maher — who continues to exist on pay cable for no reason I can discern — used language about Sarah Palin which makes “slut” seem like a compliment. Of course Maher, who is one of the loudest mouthpieces in the Democratic ranks, talks like that a lot. In fact Maher is likely the crudest of the liberal sock puppets; and he is lauded for his crudeness. And yet, liberals are outraged by Limbaugh’s remarks.

The liberal storm troopers who think spectacularly sexist — and shockingly sexualized — remarks about Sarah Palin, Jan Brewer, Michele Bachmann, Laura Ingraham (at whom Ed Schultz directed the EXACT SAME EPITHET), Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and any other woman who dare to disagree with the white male millionaires who control the Democratic Party are acceptable, are outraged by Limbaugh’s remarks. Spare us all your phony feminism, Democrats. You’re only fooling yourselves.

Nonetheless, calling the latest prop in the Democrats’ Cirque de Hypocrisy a “slut” was artless and crude. That sort of language is best left to the slimy underbelly of American political discourse; like the liberals who are outraged by Limbaugh’s remarks.

You may say that I am using a moral equivalency to defend Rush Limbaugh, well I am not. What Rush did was stupid and gave the liberals a way to divert the losing argument over the Obama administration’s plan to force a religious group to go against the tenants of their faith — something forbidden by the First Amendment. Rush’s comment’s allowed the left to pose a victim in Sandra Fluke and create a poster child for “women’s health.” Like a rabbit Rush fell into Pelosi’s snare.

Don't expect MSNBC or other liberal media outlets to showcase Georgetown University senior Angela Morabito anytime soon. The conservative student may attend the same school as feminist activist and law student Sandra Fluke, but, as Morabito makes clear in a March 2 post at The College Conservative, they're worlds apart in their worldview:

“…. Having been told by Congress to more or less shut up and go home, Sandra found a sympathetic ear in Nancy Pelosi. She is not going to find one on the Georgetown Campus. She is wildly out of step.

Senate Democrats needed a show pony for this circus – and they knew they could find a liberal woman on a college campus who would willingly trot around the ring. That’s why Nancy & Pals created a photo op with all the props – the microphones, the podium, an air of pretense, and the all-important liberal media – for Sandra to tell her “story.” And it is just that – a story, told on a stage.

But Nancy Pelosi and the Liberal Media should know that they can no longer rely on college campuses as an endless source of liberal support. My colleagues and I at TheCollegeConservative are creating a new wave on campuses across the country. Every day we make it a little safer to be conservative – out in public – without fear of bad grades as a result of our views. Sandra should know we have no fear in calling out a classmate for thoughtless liberal ideology.

Sandra Fluke doesn’t speak for me. Or for Georgetown.

She doesn’t speak for those of us who worked hard to be able to choose to come to a great institution with a great tradition of faith and scholarship. She certainly can’t speak for the Jesuits who dedicated their lives to God and Education with a long established set of rules. There are only ten of them, and Ms. Fluke would do well to give them a quick read.

If she wants a more liberal sex life, she can go to Syracuse. (Syracuse, I must apologize – but we are in March and basketball matters – sorry you got caught up in this.)

Sandra doesn’t even speak for all skanks! She only speaks for the skanks who don’t want to take responsibility for their choices. That’s a tiny group of people. Hey Sandra! How about next Saturday night, you come hang out with me and my gay boyfriends! Your hair will look fabulous and you’ll get to see great musical theatre! Oh, and odds of you getting pregnant? Zero percent.

Even the oh-so-left HuffPo called Sandra out on her media sluttery: ”Fluke got the stage all to herself and was hailed as a hero by the crowd and Democratic lawmakers on the panel, all of whom rushed to appear on camera with her at the end. “Excuse me. I’d love to get a picture with our star,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said as she pushed her way through the packed room to Fluke.” Star of what? Star of the bedroom sex tape? When did Georgetown Law start admitting Kardashians?

Sandra, we might be on the same campus, but we are not on the same planet.

Sandra told some sob stories about how contraception isn’t covered by the Jesuit institution we attend. (Maybe they don’t cover it because, you know, they’re a Jesuit institution. Religious freedom? Anyone? Bueller?)

A student group called Plan A Hoyas for Choice staged a demonstration against the university health plan last year, duct taping their mouths and chaining themselves to the statue of Georgetown’s founder on the university’s front lawn. Then, a funny thing happened – nothing. We left them there. Now Sandra has chained herself to the sinking ship of Pelosi Liberalism. She will always be remembered as a Welfare Condom Queen.

Let’s talk priorities here. It costs over $23,000 for a year at Georgetown Law. Sandra, are you telling us that you can afford that but cannot afford your own contraception? Really? Math was never my strong suit, but something about Sandra’s accounting just doesn’t seem right.

No one forced Sandra to come to Georgetown. And now that she has, Sandra does not have to depend on the university health plan. She could walk down the street to CVS and get some contraception herself. Or, go to an off-campus, non-university doctor and pay for it out of pocket. (Or, you know…maybe not have so much sex that it puts her in financial peril?)

Funny how the same side that cries “Get your rosaries off my ovaries” is the same side saying, “on second thought…please pay for me to have all the sex I want!” The people who espouse “pro-choice” “values” are the same people who say religious institutions have no right to choose.

Imagine if someone else had asked the government to cover a different activity. Let’s say I want to go rock climbing. It’s my body and my choice and I want to climb all the cliffs I can! Imagine if I went to the government and asked it to pay for helmets and ropes and band-aids I’ll need to safely climb rocks every day of my life. What would everyone say?

“It’s your choice to do that- no one’s forcing you to scale cliffs. So, either quit it or pay for it yourself!”

This is the reaction we should have had to Sandra Fluke.

Sandra, I hope you take to heart our school’s motto of “Cura Personalis” – care of the whole person. You are so much more than your reproductive organs. Please, have some self-respect and take responsibility for your choices instead of having to beg the government for help. The government should not be able to force a religious institution – like the one we attend – to pay for the things they don’t believe in. That is pretty clear in the first amendment. But since you missed the ten commandments I can’t expect you to read the Bill of Rights either.

I believe in Georgetown. I love this school. And I know that we are so, so much better than what Sandra Fluke would make us out to be.”

All Rush or any other commentator had to do was contact Ms. Morabito or the Campus Conservatives and read her post and Sandra Fluke would have been totally discredited without bringing the wrath of the radical left to Fluke’s defense. You see, there are other voices at Georgetown, voices we do not hear in the media. It’s time for people of integrity and morals to fight back against what Kirsten Powers calls the misogyny of liberal media men. But we have to fight back with conviction and intelligence.

Should We Pay for Sandra’s Sex?

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." — Frederic Bastiat

Sandra Fluke is a student at Georgetown Law. She’s also a “reproductive rights activist” who agrees wholeheartedly with the Obama administration’s controversial contraceptive mandate. Her reasoning, though, is likely to enrage some critics.

During a testimony in front of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on Monday (a meeting that was held by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi), Fluke — who was coincidentally the only witness heard — described the financial constraints that purchasing birth control puts on her peers.

“Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy,” Fluke said, referring to the fact that the university doesn’t pay for contraception. “Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school.”

She detailed, among other stories, how one woman felt “embarrassed” and “powerless” at the pharmacy counter when she “learned for the first time” that contraceptives weren't‘t covered by the university’s health care plan.

Watch her complete testimony, below:

CNS News’ Craig Bannister, though, challenged Fluke’s $3,000 figure and came up with some pretty interesting numbers:

“$3,000 for birth control in three years? That’s a thousand dollars a year of sex – and, she wants us to pay for it. [...]

At a dollar a condom if she shops at CVS pharmacy’s website, that $3,000 would buy her 3,000 condoms – or, 1,000 a year…

Assuming it’s not a leap year, that’s 1,000 divided by 365 – or having sex 2.74 times a day, every day, for three straight years. And, I thought Georgetown was a Catholic university where women might be prone to shun casual, unmarried sex. At least its health insurance doesn’t cover contraception (that which you subsidize, you get more of, you know).”

Rush Limbaugh took off on Sandra during his radio show.

So, poor ole Sandra wants to have sex and wants us to pay for her birth control pills. If she is having sex and we are paying isn’t that the definition of prostitution? What is amazing is how this misguided girl is willing to go on public television and claim she needs her sex life subsidized by the school she is attending. Doesn’t she realize that Georgetown is a Catholic university and that she is demanding them to do something that goes against the tenants of the Catholic Church? Why not go to a Jewish university and demand they out pork on the cafeteria menu.

There is nothing stopping Sandra from going to a secular school for her law degree where she might be able to get her contraception medication for free. But no, Sandra wants it her way. She wants the Catholic Church to bend to her way of life. This is what progressives do.

In the liberation tradition, the dream is a liberation from all effort, a paradise on earth — a Utopia. The sweated laborer dreams of turning the tables on his employer and making him sweat. The housewife dreams of making her husband a drudge. The underprivileged minority dreams of privilege. The artist dreams of creative paradise. The businessman seeks liberation from the terror of failure. And the politician's eyes gleam.

The most glaring difference in the two traditions is over sex. Conservatives at our best want sexual freedom, the right to freely give your love and fidelity to one other in the central human drama of sexual reproduction. Liberals want sexual liberation, the right to opt out of the drama of sexual reproduction and separate sex from its curious connection with children. Liberals insist that we talk about contraception, abortion, gays, lesbians, and trans-genders and trundle out The Way We Never Were, according to author Stephanie Coontz, whenever conservatives start to talk about the collapse of marriage among the lower classes.

The trouble with liberation is that its dreams can be realized only with force, and so wherever it has been tried, the liberation movement has trod a trail of tears, a road back to serfdom. That is why liberal reformers want to force the Catholic Church to bend to their will. You can't have wall-to-wall sexual liberation if serious Christians are left with an opt-out.

The free man is joyful in taking responsibility; the liberated man is terrified of it. The free man is a risk-taker; the liberated man is a risk-avoider. The free man's word is his bond; the liberated man's word is a whine. The free man takes the blame; the liberated man lives to blame. The free man asks only to serve; the liberated man demands to be served. The free man lives to give back; the liberated man scorns the "give-back."

Conservatives have our own little yearning for liberation. We would like to be liberated from the tyranny of liberal cultural hegemony. But this is a weakness, for freedom has never promised liberation.

It is almost a divine witness that the two popular movements of the Obama era so exactly impersonate the ideas of the two traditions. The Tea Party takes its name from a protest against government-sponsored monopoly and privilege. The Occupy movement takes its name from the plan of every dawn raider: invade, occupy, and plunder.

We should thank President Obama for forcing us to choose between freedom and liberation. Usually liberal politicians try to muddy the waters, and they cloak their liberation in the language of freedom just like FDR and his Four Freedoms. They want us to think that America is still free when they pile on the compulsory and mandatory government programs. The dreadful fear that Obama stirs up in conservatives is this: what if Americans this November openly choose liberation instead of freedom? What happens to America then?

It's a fearful thought. But free men and free women have never believed in giving in to fear.

Sandra wants to be a liberated woman, but she wants someone else to foot the bill. She wants, in the words of Bastiat, plunder.

Obama Is Finishing The Work Of The American Communist Party

"I ... place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. ... Taxation follows that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression. ... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." — Thomas Jefferson (1816)

A fascinating theory has been advanced by Dick Morris, which, in turn, is being considered by Rush Limbaugh and other leading conservatives. Morris speculates that the Obama HHS mandate on contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients is a fight with the Catholic Church that Team Obama wants — and with the focus based narrowly on contraception, not abortifacients.

Dick Morris may be right. It seems no accident that Obama publicly noted that the vast majority of Catholic women use contraception. Yes, the vast majority does, but the vast majority does not support abortifacients — that is, "contraceptive" drugs that cause or induce an abortion.

Obama is underscoring "contraception" generally, not abortifacients specifically. Sadly, our superficial media, which reflexively ramrods everything into a 10-second sound-bite, is aiding and abetting his tactic. Again and again, I hear reporters refer to Obama's mandate not as a mandate on "contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs" (which it is), but as simply one on "contraception" and women’s health

If Obama can successfully frame the debate that way, which should be easy with the American public, he can make great headway on this assault on the Roman Catholic Church. He will appeal to many apathetic Roman Catholics as well as many Protestants who disagree with the Catholic Church on contraception. Among non-evangelical Protestants, Obama will find lots of sympathy from the liberal mainline denominations that flew off the hinges decades ago, and some of which are members of the hideous Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Their split with Rome over matters of birth has roots in the Episcopal Church's embrace of contraception a century ago.

Speaking of a century ago, if this is indeed a gambit by Obama to pit religious believers against the Catholic Church, it would be nothing new from the radical left. Consider some examples:

In Paul Kengor’s book, Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century, he highlighted the case of Anna Louise Strong. Strong was an editor to the flagship publication of the communist front Friends of the Soviet Union, which masterfully manipulated progressives like Upton Sinclair. He published a photo of Strong and Sinclair together on the "Friends" editorial page, where a stoic Sinclair vows to "expose the lies and slander" against poor old Joe Stalin — maligned by those mean American anti-communists. Click here for more photos.

Anna Louise Strong was a loyal American Bolshevik. In a July 1953 report, Congress described her as "one of the most active agents for the Communist International." She did dutiful propaganda work for Moscow, shamelessly arguing that Stalin had "conquered wheat," even publishing a widely read pamphlet by that name, when, in fact, Stalin launched a famine that killed millions.

Among Strong's propaganda work was to enlist Protestant clergy against the Catholic Church. One egregious example was an incendiary letter to the editor Strong placed in the October-November 1941 issue of The Protestant. There, she made the claim that the Vatican was calling for religious freedom in the USSR not because the Soviets were blowing up churches, killing priests, and gulaging nuns, but because the Church was seeking control of Russia. This was ludicrous, but it was just what some anti-Catholic Protestants wanted to hear.

Among Strong's propaganda work was to enlist Protestant clergy against the Catholic Church. One egregious example was an incendiary letter to the editor Strong placed in the October-November 1941 issue of The Protestant. There, she made the claim that the Vatican was calling for religious freedom in the USSR not because the Soviets were blowing up churches, killing priests, and gulaging nuns, but because the Church was seeking control of Russia. This was ludicrous, but it was just what some anti-Catholic Protestants wanted to hear.

That letter from Strong was so deceptive and such blatant Soviet propaganda that it was highlighted by Congress in a major report on subversive activities by American communists.

Among the communist organs that Anna Louise Strong wrote for was the Chicago Star, known to locals as the "Red Star." The editor-in-chief and co-founder of the Star was Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, who was a card-carrying member of Communist Party USA. You can read more about Frank Marshal Davis by clicking here.

Davis, too, targeted the Catholic Church. He wrote articles with titles like "The church's weakness," reprimanding Rome, the American bishops, and the Catholic laity for their anti-communism. In an October 1947 piece, Davis growled that "the Catholic hierarchy" had launched a "holy war against communism."

Indeed it had. As communists knew well, the Roman Catholic Church had been issuing scathing indictments of communism since the publication of Marx's Communist Manifesto in 1848 — yes, that far back — not to mention in encyclicals by Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius X, and others. Communists were furious when the Catholic Church issued a brilliant, blistering 1937 encyclical on atheistic communism, titled Divini Redemptoris, which called communism a "satanic scourge." One of the most prominent American Catholics leading the fight against the scourge of communists was Bishop Fulton J. Sheen who had a weekly TV show from 1951 to 1957. He predated Glenn Beck in the use of a blackboard on TV.

Committed communists like Frank Marshall Davis thus took on the Catholic Church.

Davis left the Chicago Star in 1948 to head for Hawaii, where he wrote for another communist-controlled newspaper, the Honolulu Record, and where he continued to confront the Catholic Church. In one column, titled "Challenge to the Church" (September 29, 1949), Davis framed communism as friendly to Christianity and anti-communism as un-Christian. An atheist, Davis painted an image of Judgment Day, where anti-communist Christians would be called to account for opposing communism. "The Christian churches, and the Catholic church in particular," asserted Davis, "are making a grievous error in their shortsighted belief that the major enemy of Christianity is Communism." Not only was Soviet Russia not anti-religious, insisted Davis, but Stalin had spared the planet of Hitler's "anti-Christian paganism." Christians ought to thank Stalin, not criticize him.

In another typical column from this period, Frank Marshall Davis referred to anti-communist Christians as "the Pontius Pilates of 1949."

In short, American communists and the radical left generally have long targeted the Roman Catholic Church. They know their enemy, one that is both spiritual and eternal. They have long attempted to pit Protestants and Catholics against each other. It's an old art, really, that's totally forgotten today.

And so, is this tactic being resurrected right now under Barack Obama? Is this more of the "fundamental transformation" we were promised — elected by oblivious Americans in November 2008?

Though proud of Davis, and very affectionate toward him, Obama sought to obfuscate the identity of Davis in his book, Dreams from My Father, where he strangely referred to him only as "Frank," conspicuously avoiding his full name. Politically, Obama needed to make Davis anonymous, whereas, personally, he could not avoid acknowledging in his memoirs a man who meant so much to him.

If Obama can frame his mandate as a matter of contraceptive freedom — rather than an obvious constitutional affront on religious liberty — he may be able to successfully pit large numbers of Protestants and even many Catholics against the institutional Catholic Church. It would be the kind of religious agitation that would make the Marxists of the last century — particularly Obama's mentor — very proud. How's that for "hope" and "change"?

What amazes me is that 56% of Roman Catholics voted for Obama in 2008 and that Notre Dame University invited him to address their commencement in 2009 and bestowed an honorary degree on him. I am sure Bishop Sheen is turning over in his grave.

Last Friday, the White House announced that it would revise the controversial ObamaCare birth-control mandate to address religious-liberty concerns. Its proposed modifications are a farce.

The Department of Health and Human Services would still require employers with religious objections to select an insurance company to provide contraceptives and drugs that induce abortions to its employees. The employers would pay for the drugs through higher premiums. For those employers that self-insure, like the Archdiocese of Washington, the farce is even more blatant.

David Rivkin and Edward Whelan write in the Wall Street Journal that the the birth-control coverage mandate violates the First Amendment's bar against the "free exercise" of religion. But it also violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That statute, passed unanimously by the House of Representatives and by a 97-3 vote in the Senate, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993. It was enacted in response to a 1990 Supreme Court opinion, Employment Division v. Smith.

“That case limited the protections available under the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion to those government actions that explicitly targeted religious practices, by subjecting them to difficult-to-satisfy strict judicial scrutiny. Other governmental actions, even if burdening religious activities, were held subject to a more deferential test.

The 1993 law restored the same protections of religious freedom that had been understood to exist pre-Smith. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act states that the federal government may "substantially burden" a person's "exercise of religion" only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person "is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest" and "is the least restrictive means of furthering" that interest.

The law also provides that any later statutory override of its protections must be explicit. But there is nothing in the ObamaCare legislation that explicitly or even implicitly overrides the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The birth-control mandate proposed by Health and Human Services is thus illegal.

The refusal, for religious reasons, to provide birth-control coverage is clearly an exercise of religious freedom under the Constitution. The "exercise of religion" extends to performing, or refusing to perform, actions on religious grounds—and it is definitely not confined to religious institutions or acts of worship. Leading Supreme Court cases in this area, for example, involve a worker who refused to work on the Sabbath (Sherbert v. Verner, 1963) and parents who refused to send their teenage children to a public high school (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972).

In the high-school case, the Supreme Court found that even a $5 fine on the parents substantially burdened the free exercise of their religion. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, employers who fail to comply with the birth-control mandate will incur an annual penalty of roughly $2,000 per employee. So it is clearly a substantial burden.

Objecting employers could, of course, avoid the fine by choosing to go out of business. But as the Supreme Court noted in Sherbert v. Verner, "governmental imposition of such a choice puts the same kind of burden upon the free exercise of religion as would a fine imposed against" noncompliant parties.

The birth-control mandate also fails the Religious Freedom Restoration Act's "compelling governmental interest" and "least restrictive means" tests.

Does the mandate further the governmental interest in increasing cost-free access to contraceptives by means that are least restrictive of the employer's religious freedom? Plainly, the answer is no. There are plenty of other ways to increase access to contraceptives that intrude far less on the free exercise of religion.

Health and Human Services itself touts community health centers, public clinics and hospitals as some of the available alternatives; doctors and pharmacies are others. Many of the entities, with Planned Parenthood being the most prominent, already furnish free contraceptives. The government could have the rest of these providers make contraceptive services available free and then compensate them directly. A mandate on employers who object for religious reasons is among the most restrictive means the government could have chosen to increase access.

The mandate also fails the "compelling government interest" test. Given the widespread availability of contraceptive services, and the far less restrictive other ways to increase their availability, the government can hardly claim it has a "compelling" interest in marginally increasing access to birth control by requiring objecting employers to join in this effort.

The "compelling interest" claim is further undercut by the mandate's exclusion, for purely secular reasons, of employers who offer "grandfathered" plans. These are employer-provided plans that existed at the time ObamaCare was enacted and can continue to operate so long as they do not make major changes. They cover tens of millions of enrollees, according to a recent estimate by Health and Human Services.

In an effort to rally its base in the upcoming November election, the Obama administration seems more interested in punishing religiously based opposition to contraception and abortion than in marginally increasing access to contraception services. It is the combination of the political motive, together with the exclusion of so many employers from the mandate that has profound constitutional implications. It transforms the mandate into a non-neutral and not generally applicable law that violates the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause.

In short, the birth-control mandate violates both statutory law and the Constitution. The fact that the administration promulgated it so flippantly, without seriously engaging on these issues, underscores how little it cares about either.”