Free Republic

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, January 31, 2020   Officer Was Previously Convicted of Related Obstruction Offenses Daniel Davis, 44, a former major at Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP) in Angola, Louisiana, was found guilty by a jury yesterday in federal court for his participation in the beating of an inmate who was handcuffed, shackled, and not resisting and for failing to intervene to stop his subordinates from participating in the same beating. In a previous trial in January 2018, Davis was convicted of conspiring with other officers to cover up the beating by...

It takes some doing to get embroiled in a court fight with nuns who provide hospice care for the indigent. Amazingly, the Obama administration has managed it.Its legal battle with the Little Sisters of the Poor is the logical consequence of Obamacare’s conscience-trampling contraception mandate. The requirement went into effect January 1, but Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a New Year’s Eve injunction against enforcing it on the Little Sisters.They are Catholic nuns who follow the doctrinal teachings of the church and therefore oppose contraceptive and abortive drugs and sterilization, all of which Obamacare mandates that employers cover...

The US Justice Department on Friday asked the Supreme Court to throw out a challenge from a nuns' group against a birth control mandate in the Obamacare health reform law. The Little Sisters of the Poor had asked the US high court to exempt it from the controversial birth control clause, saying that providing birth control was contrary to its religious beliefs. The US government, in its written response, asked the court to lift the temporary block on birth control, arguing that the provision does not apply to the nuns anyway. The Little Sisters' lawsuit is "not about the availability...

A resident and a sister arrange flowers at the Little Sisters of the Poor's Mullen Home in Denver, CO in this undated file photo. Credit: El Pueblo Catolico/James Baca. Washington D.C., Jan 3, 2014 / 05:57 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite the claims of the U.S. Justice Department, the demands of the federal contraception mandate threaten the continued works of service performed by the Little Sisters of the Poor, their attorneys say. Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the religious sisters in court, charged that the government's claim amounts to “doublespeak” and...

ObamaCare: In bad news for a White House intent on shredding the First Amendment, a Supreme Court justice has exempted a group of nuns from the mandate to provide contraceptive coverage in health plans. Just hours before ObamaCare's birth-control mandate was to take effect, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday issued a last-minute stay in response to a case brought by the Denver-based Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged against the Department of Health and Human Services. The U.S. government is "temporarily enjoined from enforcing against applicants the contraceptive coverage requirements imposed by the Patient Protection...

First Amendment: A federal appeals court has reinstated lawsuits from two religious colleges against the HHS contraception mandate, saying promises to rework it aren't enough. Can a group of nuns helping the poor be protected? On Tuesday, a chink in ObamaCare's armor developed as a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., reinstated lawsuits by Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey College that had been dismissed by lower courts on the grounds the two schools had not yet suffered or demonstrated real harm by a law not yet fully implemented. The lower courts ruled the schools had to wait until the oncoming...

ObamaCare: A group of nuns dedicated to caring for the elderly poor is suing to prevent an uncaring administration from shutting down their compassionate order over their refusal to obey the contraception mandate. There is no clearer or sadder example of the Obama administration's war on the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty than the demand by the Department of Health and Human Services to violate their religious consciences or pay heavy fines. HHS has ruled that if the Sisters don't offer insurance policies to their employees that include free coverage for sterilization procedures, artificial contraceptives and abortifacients, these vowed-to-poverty...

From Politico: The Obama administration cannot enforce the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage requirements against a Catholic nuns’ order for the time being, if the nuns tell the government they object to providing that coverage, the Supreme Court ruled Friday afternoon. The Supreme Court’s action could defuse for the time being a showdown between religious employers and the federal government over the procedures for providing contraceptive coverage to employees of hospitals, nursing homes and other entities run by religious groups.

A Catholic religious order, the Little Sisters of the Poor, has filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration asking the courts to protect them from being forced to comply with the HHS abortion mandate. The mandate compels religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions. Yesterday, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order of Sisters dedicated to caring for the elderly poor. Without relief, the Little Sisters face millions of dollars in IRS fines because they cannot comply with the government’s...

This will make you angry. Via the Catholic News Agency: Baltimore, Md., Mar 8, 2012 / 12:34 am (CNA).- The Little Sisters of the Poor say the HHS contraception and sterilization mandate threatens their continued ministry to the impoverished elderly. They are “strongly objecting” to the federal rule and say it should be repealed as soon as possible. “Because the Little Sisters of the Poor cannot in conscience directly provide or collaborate in the provision of services that conflict with Church teaching, we find ourselves in the irreconcilable situation of being forced to either stop serving and employing people of...

Many of you have heard about the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of nuns providing care for the elderly, who  are now taking on the Obama Administration over the Affordable Care Act's (ObamaCare) contraception mandate. Religious exemptions from the ObamaCare contraception mandate are often made for government-approved entities, but the Obama Administration has deemed the nuns, who work exclusively with the elderly, unworthy of an exception. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently granted the Little Sisters of the Poor a temporary injunction, so they do not have to violate their religious beliefs by offering health insurance that...

Thousands of elderly poor have a home today because of one remarkable woman.Saint Jeanne Jugan grew up in a small town in the aftermath of the French revolution. Times were hard. The winters were brutal. To support her family, Jeanne worked from a young age as a shepherdess, kitchen maid, and tending the sick at a Civil and Naval Hospital. In this last position, she discovered her lifeÂ’s vocation: helping others.Confident in her Catholic faith, Jeanne set out to serve those most in need. She cared for the poor and the elderly as if they were her own family, even...

The Little Sisters of the Poor, the stand up nuns who’ve taken on the Obama administration over the HHS Mandate, are a bunch of tough customers. I mean that in the best understanding of the word “tough.” Providing frail elderly people with loving care on a 24/7 basis is work that would make the average Navy Seal turn weak in the knees. When I say 24/7, I mean twenty-four hours, right around the clock; every single day, right around the calendar. Caring for a frail elderly person is more demanding in a lot of ways than caring for a toddler....

Cwontheweb wrote: HEY: Townhall dummies... this site is owned and operated by your natural enemies... and they try to keep you fighting over welfare for workers who cannot afford to live on the wages paid by offshoring gangsters... multi national thieves... and robber barons. OF course they defend Chase, Dimon, all the boys on Wall St... this site is there to teach you that the gansters are the good guys... and the $7 an hour worker is the enemy...dum dum dum.;.... there will never EVER be another Republican president until and unless the GOP becomes the party of MAIN ST...

The phone rang at the Catonsville headquarters of the Little Sisters of the Poor just moments after a Dec. 31 televised news program reported on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s order to temporarily prevent the Little Sisters of the Poor from being required to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. A 12-year-old girl from Colorado had been watching the breaking news with her parents and wanted to call the Little Sisters to support their lawsuit against the federal government. The sisters object to having to provide contraceptives, sterilizations and abortifacient drugs within their employee health insurance coverage under...

.....Generally, for almost 230 years, the federal government left us alone to choose freely our religious practices and to worship as we believe. Until now. Today, the free exercise of religion is under attack by the government. When Congress enacted the Affordable Health Care Act -- I prefer to call it ObamaCare because it is President Obama’s brainchild, his signature legislation, and because there is nothing affordable about it -- members of Congress must have known that the law would impose obligations upon persons that would force them to engage in behavior in violation of their religious beliefs. snip His...

This is an update to our Jan. 3 report that Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued an emergency injunction against the Obama administration, ordering that it could not enforce Obamacare’s abortion pill mandate against a Catholic nuns’ charity until the Supreme Court decided how to proceed.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has blocked the administration’s mandate that the Little Sisters of the Poor contract to provide contraception coverage to their employees. That the case has gone this far illustrates the sickness of the left, the complacence of our popular media culture, and the weakness (partly self-inflicted) of President Obama’s political opponents. The Little Sisters of the Poor provide nursing home care to the elderly poor. They are giving the old, indigent, and isolated not only a place to live, but the care rooted in a kind of personal love that neither the government nor business...

After five years of an increasingly radical presidency, it comes to this: the Obama administration has released Lynne Stewart, convicted of abetting a notorious terrorist, but is litigating in order to coerce a group of nuns who embody compassion. Isn’t this what Communists used to do when they came to power — release the “political prisoners” and harass the deeply religious? President Obama’s supporters say he’s not out to get the Little Sisters of the Poor. To escape federal punishment that threatens to end to their charitable work they need only sign a piece of paper. But that’s also how...

Imagine if the government said to a religious employer, “We’re not going to require you to pay for abortions, but we will require you to provide employees with a document that entitles them to a free abortion at the Planned Parenthood clinic down the street.” Would anyone think for a moment that respected religious liberty? Yet that’s the essence of the government “accommodation” here. The Little Sisters object to providing an abortion/contraception voucher — a voucher that could be redeemed for free abortifacients at the discretion of a third-party administrator. So, no, this is not an argument about a form....