The first part of the First Amendment to the Constitution states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
The establishment clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." has generally been interpreted to prohibit
1) the establishment of a national religion by Congress, [Also Known As the "separation" or "no aid" interpretation, and for the purposes of this article shall be known as the Free Exercise Clause] or
2) the preference by the U.S. government of one religion over another [Also Known As the "non-preferential" or "accommodation" interpretation, and for the purposes of this article shall be known as the Prohibition Clause]. But it has not been interpreted to prohibit the preference by the U.S. government of all other religions over any one.
Essentially, both clauses do the same thing. The Free Exercise Clause prohibits the government from selecting, aiding, or promoting one religion over another, while the accommodation clause prohibits the government from preferring or making the existence of one more favorable than another.
However, under this interpretation, the Prohibition Clause prohibits Congress from preferring one religion over another, but it does not prohibit the government's entry into the religious domain to make accommodations in order to achieve the purposes of the Free Exercise Clause. In other words, Congress can not prefer any one religion over any other, but under the guise of making an accommodation for any one religion government may, overtly or covertly, suppress another religion because in order to accommodate the Free Exercise Clause, the government may interfere in the establishment of one religion to accommodate the establishment of another.
There can only be one answer. The "Prohibition Clause" interpretation is flawed. There are 2 clauses at work here. The Establishment Clause, and the Prohibition Clause. The interpretations above only address the Establishment Clause. When the Prohibition Clause is included the second interpretation falls apart for the following reason:
When following a policy where Clause A and Clause B are equal, which they are, there can be no situation where there can be an situation where either clause can be allowed to interfere with the other. One can not say "I must obey Clause A and Clause B of a law, rule, or policy, when the interpretation of Clause B interferes with Clause A."
When one or more religions are established, under the second clause of not "Prohibiting the free exercise thereof (any religion)," the government's entry into religious domain to make accommodations in order to achieve the purposes of the Free Exercise Clause is prohibited because it would create a preference by commission, or omission, whether or not it is directly intended. The government's position must be hands off.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
President Obama defends attorney general regarding ATF tactics.
For the first time in history, a sitting president openly disavows a branch of the Treasury Department, pushing the blame for Fast and Furious down-the-line.
President Obama insists neither he nor Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. knew federal ATF agents were permitting illegal gun purchases on the Southwest border, even as Republican lawmakers released new documents showing the attorney general was given general briefings on the Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation.
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. confronted a week of allegations that he had misled Congress about his knowledge of the failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking program, lashing out at his Republican critics and contending that he knew nothing about secret tactics to allow illegal arms sales on the Southwest border. This dispite the fact that several emails and messages to Holder have been uncovered dating to June, 2010.
Obama is so fond of 1) Blaming Republicans, 2) Blaming the GOP, and 3) Spouting and bragging about his precious "values" while he loses control of one situation after another.
George Bush was no saint, we can all agree on that. But when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke, Bush's first remark was: "I'm responsible. I'm the Commander-in-Chief, and when something happens that is so far outside the accountability of the Chain of Command, it is the Commander-in-Chief who must step up and take responsibility." This is a truth that dates back to the Art of War, by General Sun Tzu as far back to the 6th century B.C. (Est, 490 BC). This is also a truth that Barack Obama does not understand. It doesn't matter that he has the power to make that choice. What matters is that a commander is honor-bound to step up and take the responsiblity when those under him fail. They fail because he has not taught properly.
President Obama insists neither he nor Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. knew federal ATF agents were permitting illegal gun purchases on the Southwest border, even as Republican lawmakers released new documents showing the attorney general was given general briefings on the Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation.
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. confronted a week of allegations that he had misled Congress about his knowledge of the failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking program, lashing out at his Republican critics and contending that he knew nothing about secret tactics to allow illegal arms sales on the Southwest border. This dispite the fact that several emails and messages to Holder have been uncovered dating to June, 2010.
Obama is so fond of 1) Blaming Republicans, 2) Blaming the GOP, and 3) Spouting and bragging about his precious "values" while he loses control of one situation after another.
George Bush was no saint, we can all agree on that. But when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke, Bush's first remark was: "I'm responsible. I'm the Commander-in-Chief, and when something happens that is so far outside the accountability of the Chain of Command, it is the Commander-in-Chief who must step up and take responsibility." This is a truth that dates back to the Art of War, by General Sun Tzu as far back to the 6th century B.C. (Est, 490 BC). This is also a truth that Barack Obama does not understand. It doesn't matter that he has the power to make that choice. What matters is that a commander is honor-bound to step up and take the responsiblity when those under him fail. They fail because he has not taught properly.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Bending Obamacare’s honesty curve downward
The Obamacare house of cards is crumbling before our eyes. The Obama administration’s signature piece of legislation brings a sixth of the U.S. economy under federal control, and the writing is on the wall: Obamacare will collapse under the weight of its own false promises. The only mystery left is whether we will allow America to go down with it.
Remember when President Obama claimed over and over again that his health care plan would “bend the cost curve downward”? He even declared resolutely that he would not otherwise sign the bill. Well, add that to the growing list of Obamacare lies.
This is going to be a bumpy flight.
The nonprofit and nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation recently released the results of a survey that shakes the president’s health care law right down to its core. Health insurance premiums rose in 2011 to more than $15,000 per family for the first time in American history. Not surprisingly, Obamacare itself is to blame for much of the increase. The forced requirement to include adult “children” on their parents’ insurance up to the age of 26, as just one example, contributed to 20 percent of the increase.
Before Obamacare, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) projected annual health care spending would increase an average of 6.1 percent per year over the next decade. Despite the promises, after Obamacare passed, CMS recalculated its projections upward to 6.3 percent. Huh? Now the Kaiser survey shows that the actual results for the first year amounted to a 9 percent increase. Mr. Obama bent the cost curve all right - upward.
Are the increased costs justified, even if it does break the president’s cost-curve promise because, after all, Obamacare finally was going to provide insurance for 46 million uninsured people? Brace yourself. According to Gallup, the percentage of adults in America without health insurance has increased since Mr. Obama took office and since he signed Obamacare into law.
Please return your seat backs and tray tables to their full upright position. We are hitting some major turbulence now.
OK, so health care costs are going up because of Obamacare, and more adults are uninsured since it began - mostly because of Obamanomics (that’s another story) - but at least Mr. Obama promised it would reduce the deficit, right? Well, that was then, and this is now. Administration officials are quietly abandoning the so-called CLASS Act portion of Obamacare, supposedly meant to provide long-term elderly care. In reality, this was the mother of all accounting gimmicks, which counted 10 years of tax revenues but just five years of expenditures to give a false sense of fiscal sanity. Democratic senator and Obamacare supporter Kent Conrad of North Dakota called this “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.” Absent the accounting gimmicks, the Congressional Budget Office now acknowledges that Obamacare actually increases the national deficit by $540 billion over the next 10 years.
We have just lost cabin pressure.
Of course, while each of these three lies is damning in its own right, they barely scratch the surface of the Obamacare duplicity. And let me be clear: These are lies. There’s normally something generous about our human nature that seeks to avoid that word - lies - but we are in an existential crisis in America, and it demands blunt and precise language. We did not get here because of simple distortions or exaggerations or even misrepresentations. Obamacare is the product of statements known by their makers to be untrue and meant to deceive - lies.
Mr. Obama promised on at least eight occasions that he would open his health care hearings to the public. Invite the C-SPAN cameras in, he said, so Americans would know who’s on their side. C-SPAN Chief Executive Brian Lamb said the network certainly would have covered the meetings, but the president “never asked us.”
The Obamacare lies are mounting: You could keep your current insurance. You could keep your doctor. The plan would cost less than a trillion dollars. Medicare would be protected. There would be no health care rationing. No one earning less than $250,000 per year would see an increase in his taxes. Tax credits would alleviate the burdens placed on small businesses. The plan would create 4 million new jobs, 400,000 almost immediately. Americans would love Obamacare once they saw what was in it.
The crumbling of Obamacare is now so unmistakable that its supporters have become the dog that didn’t bark. It’s difficult to find anyone outside the administration who is still willing to defend it publicly.
Calling a lie a lie is difficult for some people, but I cannot apologize for being blunt when America’s future is at stake on such a serious matter. At best, the only alternative is what “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno recently said of the president: “I can’t figure out if he’s the kind of guy who makes infomercials or the kind of guy who falls for infomercials.”
Dr. Milton R. Wolf, a Washington Times columnist, is President Obama’s cousin. He blogs at MiltonWolf.com.
Remember when President Obama claimed over and over again that his health care plan would “bend the cost curve downward”? He even declared resolutely that he would not otherwise sign the bill. Well, add that to the growing list of Obamacare lies.
This is going to be a bumpy flight.
The nonprofit and nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation recently released the results of a survey that shakes the president’s health care law right down to its core. Health insurance premiums rose in 2011 to more than $15,000 per family for the first time in American history. Not surprisingly, Obamacare itself is to blame for much of the increase. The forced requirement to include adult “children” on their parents’ insurance up to the age of 26, as just one example, contributed to 20 percent of the increase.
Before Obamacare, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) projected annual health care spending would increase an average of 6.1 percent per year over the next decade. Despite the promises, after Obamacare passed, CMS recalculated its projections upward to 6.3 percent. Huh? Now the Kaiser survey shows that the actual results for the first year amounted to a 9 percent increase. Mr. Obama bent the cost curve all right - upward.
Are the increased costs justified, even if it does break the president’s cost-curve promise because, after all, Obamacare finally was going to provide insurance for 46 million uninsured people? Brace yourself. According to Gallup, the percentage of adults in America without health insurance has increased since Mr. Obama took office and since he signed Obamacare into law.
Please return your seat backs and tray tables to their full upright position. We are hitting some major turbulence now.
OK, so health care costs are going up because of Obamacare, and more adults are uninsured since it began - mostly because of Obamanomics (that’s another story) - but at least Mr. Obama promised it would reduce the deficit, right? Well, that was then, and this is now. Administration officials are quietly abandoning the so-called CLASS Act portion of Obamacare, supposedly meant to provide long-term elderly care. In reality, this was the mother of all accounting gimmicks, which counted 10 years of tax revenues but just five years of expenditures to give a false sense of fiscal sanity. Democratic senator and Obamacare supporter Kent Conrad of North Dakota called this “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.” Absent the accounting gimmicks, the Congressional Budget Office now acknowledges that Obamacare actually increases the national deficit by $540 billion over the next 10 years.
We have just lost cabin pressure.
Of course, while each of these three lies is damning in its own right, they barely scratch the surface of the Obamacare duplicity. And let me be clear: These are lies. There’s normally something generous about our human nature that seeks to avoid that word - lies - but we are in an existential crisis in America, and it demands blunt and precise language. We did not get here because of simple distortions or exaggerations or even misrepresentations. Obamacare is the product of statements known by their makers to be untrue and meant to deceive - lies.
Mr. Obama promised on at least eight occasions that he would open his health care hearings to the public. Invite the C-SPAN cameras in, he said, so Americans would know who’s on their side. C-SPAN Chief Executive Brian Lamb said the network certainly would have covered the meetings, but the president “never asked us.”
The Obamacare lies are mounting: You could keep your current insurance. You could keep your doctor. The plan would cost less than a trillion dollars. Medicare would be protected. There would be no health care rationing. No one earning less than $250,000 per year would see an increase in his taxes. Tax credits would alleviate the burdens placed on small businesses. The plan would create 4 million new jobs, 400,000 almost immediately. Americans would love Obamacare once they saw what was in it.
The crumbling of Obamacare is now so unmistakable that its supporters have become the dog that didn’t bark. It’s difficult to find anyone outside the administration who is still willing to defend it publicly.
Calling a lie a lie is difficult for some people, but I cannot apologize for being blunt when America’s future is at stake on such a serious matter. At best, the only alternative is what “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno recently said of the president: “I can’t figure out if he’s the kind of guy who makes infomercials or the kind of guy who falls for infomercials.”
Dr. Milton R. Wolf, a Washington Times columnist, is President Obama’s cousin. He blogs at MiltonWolf.com.
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