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Probably something having to do with ropes and scaffolds.

I don’t know about Jefferson, who was famous for defying Congress and SCOTUS with the Louisiana Purchase, but Jackson said, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!”

The whole point of Jefferson’s “wall of separation” was that it was supposed to protect churches and individuals from the federal government, not the other way around.

Can’t you just see nuns in full habits charging up the steps of Congress with rifles...

... and steel rulers

I have always held as sacred the blessed first five words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law...”

The answer is obvious and comes well before any specifics regarding the Little Sisters of the Poor. If Jefferson avoided a heart attack or a stroke over seeing what the government he created has become, he would start writing again. He would not even change many words:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government . . .

We have been "more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable" than we perhaps should have. It may be close to the time when we need restore our government. It may be close, very close, to the time when the Tree of Liberty will have to be watered again.

Recently a YouTube video of Mr. Justice Scalia was posted as an FR thread. And in listening to his discussion I was struck by Scalia’s description of Congress as “sailing close to the wind,” alluding to the congressional practice of, on the one hand, providing for accelerated judicial review of a new statute to determine if it passes SCOTUS muster, and on the other of placing in a statute fallback provisions to take effect in the event that SCOTUS finds the preferred language to be unconstitutional.
Yet the Bill of Rights was not ratified to be a ceiling over our rights. It was ratified as a floor under them:
Ninth Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Whenever Congress admits that the law is constitutionally dubious, SCOTUS should dismiss out of hand the conceit that the face-value meaning of the statute might be constitutional.

bump for later reading