Justice Samuel Alito reacts to 0bama's lies about Citizens United in his SOTU address.
Posted on 03/27/2014 7:21:37 AM PDT by A'elian' nation
I am not a lawyer or legal beagle nor have I even stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, but would there not be some connection with the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United and the current Hobby Lobby case? And if so, why isn't this being discussed in the media and conservative talk radio?
In Citizens United, the Supreme Court basically established corporations as individuals allowing them to contribute to political campaigns. If a corporation is regarded as an individual when it comes to political contributions, why would not a corporation be given religious freedom rights as an individual?
The mainstream mantra is that a corporation does not have religious freedoms. That applies only to individuals. Well, did not the Supreme Court do just that (giving corporations individual status when it comes to political monies ) ?
Seems like a logical legalistic connection to me, and I'm just curious as to why this connection hasn't been discussed anywhere ? If it has, I'd like to know about it; and if Citizens United isn't a precedent for Hobby Lobby's case - why not?
You would think this would be a-1 topic. It’s logical beyond anyone’s ability to not connect those two. But then again, we are down the rabbit hole so far, nothing is as it seems, ever
However, your interpretation of Citizens United is off. In Citizens United, SCOTUS did not "establish corporations as individuals allowing them to contribute to political campaigns".
There's a much longer history of SCOTUS saying corporations have some, but not all, of the protections of the Bill of Rights. Citizens United basically reaffirmed that, but is nowhere near the first ruling to come that conclusion (contrary to popular belief).
Also, Citizens United was not about corporations donating to political campaigns. Generally speaking, it has to do with corporate political speech & how it is paid for.
Justice Samuel Alito reacts to 0bama's lies about Citizens United in his SOTU address.
Thank you for linking me to that post and thread. I was not aware of it, and from the title I did not make a Citizens United connection.
Much thanks for the Citizens United clarification. But I am gratified to know that Citizens United is a growing crack in the progressive foundation and is being used in the Hobby Lobby case.
Citizens United. So much to love about it ... even its name!
“If a corporation is regarded as an individual when it comes to political contributions, why would not a corporation be given religious freedom rights as an individual?”
Corporations don’t have all the rights that individuals have, so it can’t be assumed that they have one right just because they’ve been afforded another. This has been brought up in the arguments before the court in this case.
For instance:
"No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority." --Thomas Jefferson to New London Methodists, 1809. ME 16:332
"That form [of self-government] which we have substituted [for that which bound men under the chains of monkish ignorance and superstition] restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion." --Thomas Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman, 1826. ME 16:182
"A right to take the side which every man's conscience approves in a civil contest is too precious a right, and too favorable to the preservation of liberty, not to be protected by all its well-informed friends." --Thomas Jefferson to Katherine Sprowle Douglas, 1785. FE 4:66, Papers 8:260
"Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men, governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity? But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:223
"The freedom of opinion and the reasonable maintenance of it is not a crime and ought not to occasion injury." --Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1801.
"The legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions." --Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Baptists, 1802.
"This country, which has given to the world the example of physical liberty, owes to it that of moral emancipation also. For as yet, it is but nominal with us. The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice the freedom asserted by the laws in theory." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1821. ME 15:308
"It is inconsistent with the spirit of our laws and Constitution to force tender consciences." --Thomas Jefferson: Proclamation Concerning Paroles, 1781. FE 2:430, Papers 4:404
"The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:221
"[The] liberty of speaking and writing... guards our other liberties." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Philadelphia Democratic Republicans, 1808. ME 16:304
"We are bound, you, I, and every one to make common cause, even with error itself, to maintain the common right of freedom of conscience." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. It behooves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1803. ME 10:381
"I am... averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public: because it would countenance the presumption of those who have endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience which the laws have so justly proscribed." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1803. ME 10:380
"We ought with one heart and one hand to hew down the daring and dangerous efforts of those who would seduce the public opinion to substitute itself into that tyranny over religious faith which the laws have so justly abdicated. For this reason, were my opinions up to the standard of those who arrogate the right of questioning them, I would not countenance that arrogance by descending to an explanation." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378
"The following [addition to the Bill of Rights] would have pleased me: The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty or reputation of others, or affecting the peace of the [United States] with foreign nations." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.
Although these quotations may not be directly pertinent to some aspects of this week's Supreme Court case, Jefferson does emphasize the Founders' intent that the rights of conscience and of free exercise of religious belief are, under the Framers' Constitution, outside the purview of federal government, because those rights are "natural rights" of individuals, derived from the Creator. They are not what might be called "grants" derived from a human legislature.
Politics, Marxist politics, IS the religion of the left. They would like to have no other gods before them.
The article that you linked said this:...the government’s ability to compel for-profit companies with religious convictions to pay for birth-control coverage.
There is a widely-circulated inaccuracy in those passages that has been used to whip up the Left. Hobby Lobby does not object to providing coverage for birth control per se; out of some 18 forms of birth control specified by the ACA, Hobby Lobby objects only to 3 of them that cause abortion. So the passage should have read:
In Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the national hobby and crafts chain store asked the Court to take on the birth control mandate that applies to for-profit companies. ...the government’s ability to compel for-profit companies with religious convictions to pay for abortion coverage.
In Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the national hobby and crafts chain store asked the Court to take on the abortifacient mandate that applies to for-profit companies.
Since we’ve been transformed into a nation of men, and are no longer a nation of laws, then who knows how the Court will decide this? Roberts has already demonstrated a willingness to detach himself from the principles of the Constitution.
I think they’ll decide against Hobby Lobby as a matter of expedience, because there will be a carpload of lawsuits coming down the pike if they allow Hobby Lobby to be exempt from the odious law known as ObastardCare.
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