Free Republic

Suddenly it's a possibility that experts are contemplating: marriage equality could be the law of the land all across the United States within one year. On Wednesday, Utah asked the Supreme Court to resolve its dispute with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals which two weeks ago became the first U.S. circuit court to declare that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Legal experts say the Supreme Court is likely to accept the case. With lawsuits piling up, and gay marriage on an undefeated legal streak since the Court axed the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, the...

Have we reached Peak Reid Demagoguery yet? I thought we had yesterday when Democrats signed onto Harry Reid’s Kochsteria strategy for the 2014 midterms, but we actually missed the new nadir for America’s top-ranked demagogue — but our good friend Larry O’Connor at the Free Beacon didn’t. Yesterday, when addressing the media about the Democratic strategy to undo Hobby Lobby, Reid insisted that the Senate wouldn’t let “five white men” have the last word on contraception mandates.Um …CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO “The one thing we are going to do during this work period, sooner rather than later,...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is so angry over the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the Hobby Lobby contraception case last week that he apparently forgot Justice Clarence Thomas is black. The Nevada Democrat lamented the court’s ruling which allows Hobby Lobby and other for-profit companies with religious objections to certain forms of contraception to avoid providing them to employees in health insurance plans mandated under Obamacare. Hobby Lobby approves of 16 out of 20 forms of contraception that have been approved by the FDA. “People are going to have to walk down here and vote, and if they vote...

What this country almost certainly doesn't need right now is more laws and regulations; but it doesn't necessarily need fewer laws and regulations, either. What we appear to need above all else is a deeper -- and that's not saying much -- understanding of the purposes for which a civilized society passes laws and enacts regulations. We need, in essence, moral instruction. Eeek! "Moral instruction"? "Right" and "wrong"? By whose lights, whose standards? The contraception debate -- to the extent you call it a debate instead of a shouting match -- brings to mind these fundamental, yet generally skirted,...

When religion goes, other religions take its place. They mimic the forms and formalities of it without the substance. They are faiths without any gods but themselves and without any devils but themselves. Confronted with the religious horror of abortion, the post-religious faiths of the free world act out a godless religious drama in which they take turns playing all the old religious roles without the religion. The most pernicious of these is the martyr to the morally superior high ground of humanism. Faced with imagined violence, they retreat into a universalism that no one else shares. "We feel your...

A pending federal court ruling could upset the entire Obamacare applecart and send the president’s titular achievement back to the Supreme Court. The appellate court in Washington, D.C., could decide Halbig v. Burwell as early as today, deciding whether the federal subsidies provided to 90 percent of Obamacare enrollees who signed up through the federal exchange are legal, according to CNBC. Michael Cannon, director of health studies for the Cato Institute, helped craft the plaintiff’s argument. Studying the legislation carefully for three years, he has said that the Obama administration and its supporters are claiming powers “that “Congress never gave...

As a faithful Catholic with moral objections to forced Christian complicity in both abortion and contraception, I had many reasons to rejoice in the Supreme CourtÂ’s majority decision in Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby written by Justice Alito. Unfortunately, the CourtÂ’s reasoning was not one of them. Two premises in the majorityÂ’s argument were especially troubling: first, the CourtÂ’s assertion of the legal inscrutability of moral and religious beliefs, and second, its assumption of the GovernmentÂ’s claim that contraceptives and abortifacients are necessary for womenÂ’s health and well-being. Contrary to the first premise, I agree with dissenting Justice Ginsburg that...

"They want us to pay for our own raisins that we grew," says Raisin Valley Farms owner Marvin Horne. "We have to buy them back!" This is but one absurdity that Marvin and his wife Laura have faced during their decade-long legal battle with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Every year, the Hornes plant seeds, tie vines, harvest fruit, and place grapes in paper trays to create sun-dried raisins. And every year, the federal government prevents them from bringing their full harvest to market. It's called an agriculture marketing order. Depression-era regulations meant to stabilize crop prices endanger...

Seldom in American history has the Supreme Court unanimously rejected positions advocated by presidents’ administrations. But in this at least, President Obama has produced the fundamental transformation he promised in 2008. Over the last three years, the court has rejected administration positions repeatedly in unanimous 9-0 decisions.A review of these cases reveals much about the governing philosophy of the Obama administration. It’s even clearer in the 2012 Hosanna-Tabor Church v. EEOC case, in which the court unanimously said churches have the right to select their own clergy. The administration’s position, that government could decide who counts as clergy, was described...

If Eric Holder were a baseball player, he’d have been benched long ago — if not kicked off the team. His batting average before the Supreme Court is abysmal, losing again and again in his efforts to undermine the Constitution. This term featured four big strike downs. First was Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, in which the Supremes tossed out ObamaCare’s contraceptive abortion mandate and upheld the First Amendment rights of several family-owned businesses to make their living in conformance with their religious beliefs. Although the government was not party to another case, Harris v. Quinn, the Justice Department filed an...

The Supreme Court's recent decision in the Hobby Lobby case demonstrates that the court, at least the five justices who voted in favor of Hobby Lobby, has little concern for, and probably little understanding of, women's health care. By ruling that corporations, on the grounds of the alleged religious views of their owners, can deny women access to some forms of contraception, the court set a horrible precedent that if followed will endanger the health and lives of many American women. The Hobby Lobby ruling may at first seem like a victory for the minority of Americans who think that...

Last week the Supreme Court determined that it was unconstitutional for Obamacare to dictate that for profit companies such as Hobby Lobby must provide certain forms of contraception that they object to due to their deeply held religious beliefs. This all came from the contraception mandate, one of the many Obamacare edicts that mandated companies must provide morning after pills as well as normal contraception or risk paying steep fines and potentially forced out of business. The hysteria that has resulted from the outcome of the Hobby Lobby decision have come mostly from shrieking feminists and liberal beta males seeking...

Today, the Supreme Court granted Wheaton College an injunction pending appeal against enforcement of the contraception mandate, even though Wheaton was eligible for the accommodation HHS has provided for religious non-profits. Specifically the Court ordered: If the applicant informs the Secretary of Health and Human Services in writing that it is a non-profit organization that holds itself out as religious and has religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services, the respondents are enjoined from enforcing against the applicant the challenged provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and related regulations pending final disposition of appellate review. To...

We Americans are one lawyer away from losing our right to practice our religion. One more liberal Supreme Court Justice would mean that liberal extremists would be able to use the full power of the government to force people of faith to offer sacrifices at the altars of the gods of liberalism -- abortion, contraception, gay marriage, etc. Liberal Supreme Court judges have said that employers have no religious freedom. If an employee wants something, then the employer must provide it despite the employer’s religious beliefs. No woman needs contraceptives or to be sterilized. Those are not part of providing...

For some time now, Elizabeth Foley and David Rivkin have had two questions about the 44th president: “How is he getting away with this? And why isn’t someone doing something about this?” Foley, a professor of constitutional law at Florida International University College of Law, and Rivkin, lead outside counsel of Florida et al. v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of three Obamacare challenges that ended up before the Supreme Court in 2012, are doing something. They are the architects of the House of Representatives’ likely lawsuit against President Obama, which would challenge the president’s selective...

The economy is shrinking, the Middle East burns, and our southern border is under siege, so with all of that bad news, what do Democrats do? They distort the Supreme Court's decision on the Hobby Lobby case to fan the flames of the phony Republican war on women to score political points. In the Supreme Court's dissenting opinion penned by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, "The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would ... deny legions of women who do not hold their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive coverage." She later continued, "The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield."...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – ObamaCare's controversial HHS mandate suffered another setback on Thursday, as the Supreme Court voted to allow a Christian college to opt out of signing a form that would result in their insurance company providing employees with “free” birth control and abortifacients. Instead, says the high court, the coverage will kick in after they inform HHS of their religious objection. The 6-3 decision exempts Wheaton College from filing Form 700, which certifies its religious objection to providing abortifacient drugs to women, until the case has been fully adjudicated. In all likelihood, the matter will ultimately be decided by...

Pro-abortion pastors from different “Christian” denominations distributed condoms outside a Hobby Lobby store to protest this week’s Supreme Court decision giving it and other companies the ability to opt out of the Obamacare HHS mandate that compels them to pay for abortion-causing drugs for their employees. This comes after a NARAL board member suggested abortion activists have sex in Hobby Lobby stores as a protest. The Chicago Sun Times has more on what happened: hobbylobby27Christian clergy and activists from different faiths protested outside a Hobby Lobby on Route 59 Wednesday in protest of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that says...

Christian right's plan is simple: Dominate courts, state legislatures, and push their twisted morality on all of us. “If fascism comes to America, it will not be identified with any “shirt” movement, nor with an “insignia,” but it will probably be “wrapped up in the flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution,” wrote in a 1936 issue of The Christian Century. Nobel Laureate recipient Sinclair Lewis put it even more succinctly when he warned, “It [fascism] would come wrapped in the flag and whistling the Star Spangled Banner.” No one who has followed the...

Why are women’s rights stalling even as other societal advances are made? The answer is a disaster for the right. Progressives often comfort themselves that while they’re losing a lot of economic battles, at least they’re winning the so-called culture wars. New York’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a staunch proponent of both gay marriage and tax cuts for the wealthy, symbolizes that political paradox for the left. But lately it’s impossible not to notice that even our culture war victories are uneven. They mostly involve gay rights, particularly marriage equality, and rarely women’s rights. In the same few years that...