Obama’s National Preparedness order creates a ‘martial law matrix,’ author says

By Ben Johnson
Lifsitenews.com

A little-noticed executive order issued earlier this month would allow the federal government to seize all national resources (including food), draft civilians into the military or forced “labor,” regulate all communications, and ration health care to “promote the national defense.” Congress may be briefed on the government’s actions but lacks any power to alter them. This completes a “martial law matrix” that hands all national resources to Washington, a prominent author told LifeSiteNews.com.

Barack Obama issued the executive order, “National Defense Resources Preparedness,” on March 16.

Jim Garrison of The Huffington Post summarized its provisions:
• The Secretary of Defense has power over all water resources;
• The Secretary of Commerce has power over all material services and facilities,
   including construction materials;
• The Secretary of Transportation has power over all forms of civilian transportation;
• The Secretary of Agriculture has power over food resources and facilities, livestock
   plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment;
• The Secretary of Health and Human Services has power over all health resources;
• The Secretary of Energy has power over all forms of energy.

Each power includes all its component parts. For example, “Civil transportation includes movement of persons and property by all modes of transportation in interstate, intrastate, or foreign commerce within the United States, its territories and possessions, and the District of Columbia, and related public storage and warehousing, ports, services, equipment and facilities.” Similarly “Food resource” means all commodities and products, (simple, mixed, or compound), or complements to such commodities or products, that are capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals.”

“These are entirely illegitimate powers from a Constitutional perspective,” author and editor William Norman Grigg told LifeSiteNews.com. “There is not even a hint or a whisper or legitimacy here.”

“You’re dealing with someone who clearly doesn’t see the presidency as susceptible to any limits whatsoever, either legal or constitutional,” he said.

Grigg, who is managing editor of Republic Magazine, said, “What is especially troubling is that he shows no compunction at all about exercising all of the powers that have been claimed by his predecessors and adding to that corpus of extra-constitutional presidential powers.”

These sweeping new powers may be invoked “in peacetime and in times of national emergency,” whenever they are “deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense.” The president would determine when those circumstances apply.

Congress would be briefed on the agencies’ actions – annually – but could not alter policy.

The president’s defenders, including some Republicans, say the executive order only updates the Defense Production Act of 1950 and of Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 12919, written in 1994. The chief difference is the new order transfers functions from FEMA to the Department of Homeland Security.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air wrote, “Barack Obama may be arrogant, and the timing of this release might have looked a little strange, but this is really nothing to worry about at all.”

But Grigg says the change from a wartime to peacetime emergency alone is troubling.“When you’re dealing with semantic engineering that is that finely tuned, that ooks very much like evidence of bad intent,” he said. “They have dispensed with the idea that there needs to be a discrete event that would trigger a national emergency is significant.”

The reliance on previous executive orders also troubles Grigg. “Obama has…spoken about the supposed virtues of the domestic regimentation of the entire civilian population along military lines,” he said. “That goes right back to Bernard Baruch,” chairman of the National War Industries Board under President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. He wrote in 1918, “We are living today in a highly organized state of socialism. The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state.”

“That is an aspiration that has been alive in the bosom of pretty much every collectivist since time immemorial,” Grigg told LifeSiteNews.com.

Some who support the order are troubled by its reliance on a 62-year-old law. Doug Mataconis, who believes the executive order is nothing to worry about, wrote, “The fact that the President of the United States is still exercising authority granted during the Korean War and the height of the Cold War is yet another reflection of how power, once assumed by the Imperial Presidency, is never surrendered.”

The president’s defenders in both parties say the order is merely a worst case scenario in the event of a nuclear strike or catastrophic disaster that would disable the normal flow of daily life. This would let the federal government maintain order.

“There really is no strategic or tactical case to be made for executive dictatorship as an emergency management strategy,” Grigg said. “The problem here is the assumption that the best way to deal with that kind of tragedy is to centralize power and thereby give one convenient target to our enemies. In a strategic sense, that makes no sense.”

On the contrary, widely defusing and localizing power would make it more difficult for an enemy to completely disrupt national life.

“I think there really ought to be an element of humility being displayed by the same govt that conveyed the benefit of toxic FEMA trailers to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina,” he said.

However, the greatest loss is the loss of liberty, they say. Chuck Norris wrote, “enacting this martial law even during a time of peace is an unprecedented and out-of-control abuse of executive power…Our Founding Fathers never would have allowed it, and we shouldn’t, either.”

Some say that is doubly true under the current president. “By his actions he’s displayed a disposition that can be described as dictatorial,” Grigg told LifeSiteNews.com. “It’s a case of the man and the moment having met. They created this institutional architecture of executive dictatorship. Now the dictator is taking residence therein.”
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Obamacare’s Dreadful Anniversary

Mike Brownfield
The Heritage Network


Two years ago today, President Barack Obama signed into law Obamacare, a 2,700-page bill that will radically alter America’s health care system and wreak havoc on medical costs, quality of care, and fundamental rights in ways that are beyond the scope of our imagination.

Much of what was contained in Obamacare was hatched behind closed doors where not even the slightest ray of light could find its way in. Even the men and women in Congress who were entrusted to represent the people cast their votes blindly, not knowing what lay in store. As even then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) famously admitted, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”

The American people have already spoken, however. They want this law repealed and tossed out, as we have seen in poll after poll for the past two years. None of the activities being planned by the White House to gussy up this law will likely make a dent on the unpopularity of Obamacare.

Though even today, two years later, much of Obamacare remains to be written by unelected bureaucrats in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), we know some of what’s contained in the law and the ramifications for the American people. Most broadly, Obamacare rips vast powers from the hands of individual patients and their families, and it vests control in Washington bureaucrats. And the costs are far greater than the Administration claim — heading as high as $2.134 trillion with millions Americans dependent on government for their health care.

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that under the President’s health care law, 20 million Americans could lose their employer-sponsored health benefits and the individual and employer penalties related to the mandates could hit $221 billion. At the time of passage, many people warned as much.

But wait, there’s more.

For the last two years, Heritage has continued to dissect Obamacare and its poisonous side effects. Like a virulent disease spiraling out of control, Obamacare inflicts harm on all that it touches.

Seniors will suffer as Obamacare robs savings from Medicare in order to fund new government spending while threatening seniors’ access to care and ending Medicare as we know it. On top of that, as Heritage’s Alyene Senger writes, Obamacare makes extreme cuts to Medicare Advantage, which allows seniors to receive their Medicare benefits through a private health care plan of their choice. And it puts a group of 15 unelected officials in charge of finding cuts in Medicare to meet new spending limits.

Young Americans will suffer as well. Though the President brags that his law allows young adults to stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26, they ultimately will face higher premiums, perverse incentives to stay uninsured, and the burden of paying the extraordinary costs that the law brings with it.

There are even more consequences under Obamacare: families will pay higher taxes; businesses will face new mandates and costs; investment income will get hit with new taxes, discouraging investment and harming economic growth; Americans who purchase medicine with Health Savings Account or Flexible Savings Accounts will face new limitations; those who purchase medical devices will face higher taxes; and marriage is penalized as a result of the new subsidy scheme.

There are significant moral implications, too. Heritage’s Sarah Torre wrote yesterday of news about an abortion surcharge, which follows the HHS mandate that insurance plans must cover on abortion-inducing drugs and contraception:

These episodes are rapidly becoming the status quo of Obamacare implementation, with a familiar and predictable plot line: an unaccountable bureaucracy releases complicated rules on morally fraught healthcare decisions, runs roughshod over Americans’ moral concerns and personal freedom, and then tries to obscure the flaws of the legislation with accounting legerdemain and limited disclosure.

Last week, a CBS/New York Times poll on the HHS mandate showed strong support for religious liberty, with 57 percent of respondents saying that religious employers should not be coerced to violate their doctrine and conscience by providing coverage for abortion-inducing drugs and contraception in their health plans, compared to 36 percent who thought they should. A sizable majority — 51 percent to 40 percent — favored a religious and moral exemption for all employers.

Today at noon Americans will rally in 140 locations across the country to protest Obamacare’s trampling of religious liberty. In Washington, D.C., they’ll gather right in front of HHS and demand that the moral compass for personal health decisions be pried out of the hands of unelected bureaucrats and put back in the hands of the people.

And on Monday, the Supreme Court will begin hearing three days of oral arguments on the constitutionality of Obamacare’s controversial individual mandate, which for the first time ever forces Americans to buy a product — health care — against their will. This provision is the core of the President’s health care law, and it is a direct attack on individual liberty. Unless the Court strikes down Obamacare in its entirety, Congress must stand ready to finish the job. The American people should continue to make their voices heard, demand a repeal of Obamacare, and insist on real health care reform that increases access without forcing Americans to fall under government control.

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‘The thing that frightens our opponents most’ is ‘an evangelical-Catholic alliance’

By Ben Johnson

Lifesitenews.com

Politicians usually calculate every action to maximize their popularity among future voters, especially during an election year. But a prominent leader of the nation’s second largest denomination says President Barack Obama’s HHS mandate has the potential to unite Catholics and Protestants into a coalition that will turn him out of office in November.

Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said, “The thing that frightens our opponents the most is the specter of an evangelical-Catholic alliance – because they can count.” He told listeners of his radio program, Richard Land Live, “You take evangelicals, and you take Roman Catholics, and you are over 50 percent of the population of the country.”

Land said, while two-thirds of Baptists voted for “born again” candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976, the vote began to turn against Democrats in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount that Catholic voters are turning against the president as the election nears.

On Thursday Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, cited a new poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that found the number of white Catholics who saw the Obama administration as “hostile” to religion climbed from 17 percent in 2009 to 31 percent. In a press release e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com, he said, “It is not hard to fathom why the Obama administration is having a hard time with Catholics.” In addition to the HHS mandate, “the administration recently denied funding to a Catholic social service agency that helps women and children merely because it is pro-life.”

Looking ahead to the election Donahue said, “Everyone knows that Protestants vote Republican, and Jews vote Democrat. It’s Catholics who are up for grabs.”

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The Obamacare Second Anniversary: No Gift for Women

By Alyene Senger
The Heritage Network

This week, Obamacare will have its second birthday, but there’s little reason to celebrate. Throughout the week, Obamacare advocates will be emphasizing the law’s supposed benefits on specific groups of Americans, but as Heritage’s research over the past two years has shown, Obamacare harms Americans—even the groups showcased by the left.

Today, the focus is on the law’s impact on American women. Advocates will be highlighting better benefits and free preventive care, but Heritage research shows that the health law’s new requirements will reduce patient choice, increase costs, and violate religious liberty—for women and everyone else, too.

Less Choice
Obamacare determines which preventive services must be covered by all insurers, with no cost-sharing, using the recommendations made by the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). The USPSTF uses a rating system of A through D (or I for insufficient evidence) to recommend services. Under Obamacare, services that receive a rating of A or B will be required coverage and those with C, D, or I will not be. This turns otherwise harmless and good-intentioned recommendations into requirements, distorting the USPSTF’s original purpose.

Though these requirements are intended to create a “floor” for Americans’ covered benefits, they may have the opposite effect. The mandated benefits could instead create a “ceiling” because of their high cost, which will place pressure on insurers to cover only the preventive services required. This could lead to the exclusion of services that are “recommended” but are nevertheless crucial for specific patients.

For example, in 2009, the task force changed its recommendation for breast cancer screenings for women between the ages of 40 and 50 from B to C. Controversy ensued, which led Congress to overturn the recommendation in 2010. Prior to Obamacare, a change in recommendation ranking might have carried little weight; under the health care law, it may be the difference between coverage and no coverage.

In addition, the USPSTF is one of few government agencies legally allowed to take cost into consideration when deciding whether to recommend a medical service. As health care costs rise and the government’s role in health care grows, this may mean that cost will more strongly influence coverage.

Higher Costs
In addition, mandated coverage of preventive services with no cost-sharing will increase health care costs, since cost of services will simply be passed from the insurer to the patient through higher premiums. Moreover, as Heritage expert Ed Haislmaier explains, “Prohibiting enrollee cost-sharing for specific services will stimulate greater use of those services, further increasing premiums.” Even the Administration admits that these mandates will increase premiums on average by 1.5 percent.

A Violation of Religious Freedom
Among the women-specific preventive services required by Obamacare is a mandate that insurance cover, with no cost-sharing, abortion-related drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization. The mandate has a very narrow exemption for churches but does not exclude religious hospitals, schools, and charities that find such products morally objectionable on religious grounds. This violates the First Amendment right to freedom of religion for all Americans—regardless of gender or faith.

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U.S. Bishops Launch Religious Liberty Prayer Campaign

by EWTN NEWS/CNA 03/20/2012 

The U.S. bishops have launched a nationwide prayer campaign to defend religious liberty against recent threats such as the federal contraception mandate.

The campaign centers around a newly released “Prayer for Religious Liberty,” which asks God to grant “a clear and united voice” to all who gather to defend rights of conscience “in this decisive hour in the history of our nation.”

At a Washington administrative committee meeting March 13-14, leaders of the U.S. bishops’ conference called for the campaign in response to imminent threats to religious liberty, including the Obama administration’s controversial contraception mandate.

Bishops from every diocese in the country have spoken out against the mandate, which was announced by the Department of Health and Human Services on Jan. 20 and will require employers to offer health insurance plans that cover contraception, sterilization and early abortion drugs, even if doing so violates their religious beliefs.


In a March 14 statement assessing the threat to religious freedom posed by the mandate, the bishops urged all people of faith to engage in “prayer and penance” for the protection of conscience rights in America.

“Prayer is the ultimate source of our strength,” the bishops said, observing that “without God, we can do nothing; but, with God, all things are possible.”

The bishops’ conference website offers campaign resources, including suggested prayers of the faithful for religious liberty and more information on the mandate.

It also offers a bulletin insert with instructions on how to contact members of Congress and ask them to support legislation to protect religious freedom and conscience rights under the health-care law.

The new “Prayer for Religious Liberty” can be downloaded in both Spanish and English on the website, and prayer cards featuring Mary Immaculate and Our Lady of Guadalupe can be ordered in bulk.

The prayer acknowledges that man’s “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” comes from the “provident hand” of God the Creator.

It recognizes both “the right and the duty” to worship God by living out one’s faith “in the midst of the world.”

“We ask you to bless us in our vigilance for the gift of religious liberty,” says the prayer, which requests “strength of mind and heart to readily defend our freedoms when they are threatened.”

It also asks for “courage in making our voices heard on behalf of the rights of your Church and the freedom of conscience of all people of faith.”

The prayer asks God for help to overcome trials and dangers so that future generations may continue to experience the greatness of America as “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Prayer for Religious Liberty
(text of National Prayer Cards)
O GOD OUR CREATOR,
from your provident hand we have received
our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
You have called us as your people and given us
the right and the duty to worship you, the only true God,
and your Son, Jesus Christ.

Through the power and working of your Holy Spirit,
you call us to live out our faith in the midst of the world,
bringing the light and the saving truth of the Gospel
to every corner of society.

We ask you to bless us
in our vigilance for the gift of religious liberty.
Give us the strength of mind and heart
to readily defend our freedoms when they are threatened;
give us courage in making our voices heard
on behalf of the rights of your Church
and the freedom of conscience of all people of faith.

Grant, we pray, O heavenly Father,
a clear and united voice to all your sons and daughters
gathered in your Church
in this decisive hour in the history of our nation,
so that, with every trial withstood
and every danger overcome —
for the sake of our children, our grandchildren,
and all who come after us —
this great land will always be “one nation, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Copyright © 2012, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC. All rights reserved.

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Evangelical leaders urged to mobilize against administration contraception policy

Chuck Colson is urging evangelicals to join with Catholics in a fight against a contracpetion mandate.

By Jessica Yellin, CNN
An influential Christian leader is calling for the evangelical community to match the Catholic church's efforts mobilizing against the Obama administration's policy on contraception coverage.

"I'm asking evangelical churches to get as involved as the Catholic church has," said Chuck Colson, founder of the Prison Fellowship and the Christian radio broadcast Breakpoint. "Catechize members. If it's from the pulpit, that's fine. If by pastoral letter, that's fine. If by announcements at Bible studies, that's fine. The church in America is a sleeping giant. On an issue like this, it will be aroused."

Colson e-mailed more than 500,000 people of faith Thursday afternoon and called the contraception policy "the greatest threat to religious liberty in the history of this country."

The e-mail added, "We evangelicals need to take a page from the Roman Catholics. ... It would be difficult for a Catholic attending mass to avoid reading or hearing about this battle. ... I don't want to impugn anyone's motives, but the New York Times reported last week that the Obama administration is preparing a major campaign. It has programmed one million letters to influential women across America, energizing them over this issue."

The letter urges followers to frame this as a debate about religious freedom, not contraception, because it's a more effective way to sway public opinion.

Colson concludes, "Brothers and sisters, let me tell you bluntly that if we don't win this battle, we lose not only religious freedom, but every freedom guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. When freedom of conscience is lost, history teaches that the rest follow quickly. So let's all join together. Contact your constituents and supporters. Why shouldn't every evangelical leader do what the Catholics are doing—start circulating to our own mailing lists explaining why this issue is NOT about contraceptives; it is about religious freedom. It's unprecedented. We must not stand idly by while our most precious freedom is imperiled."

In the coming weeks, Colson and other evangelical activists will participate in events designed to educate supporters to write letters to their members of Congress, attend rallies or support lawsuits on the policy.

Speaking to CNN, Colson invoked the Manhattan Declaration, an interfaith statement of unity defending pro-life and traditional marriage positions. "The 525,000 people who signed the Manhattan Declaration said we'll render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar but not what belongs to God."

He added, "We're headed for the biggest constitutional clash between government and church in my lifetime, and it will hurt us both, and we cannot do that."

Colson spoke the same day the Obama administration released updated rules to its contraception policy. The update effectively restates the administration's position that women who work for religious institutions with moral objections to contraception can get birth-control pills and other reproductive health care directly though their insurers.

The policy also begins a process of public comment for religious institutions that fund their own insurance plans.
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What the media doesn’t want you to know: Americans hate the HHS mandate



by Chuck Colson
The most important talking point used by those who support the HHS contraception mandate is that the Catholic Bishops and their allies are “out-of-touch” and represent a minority view.

You have no doubt heard things like “98 percent of Catholic women use contraception” and “most Americans, especially women, support the HHS mandate.”

Well, it’s not true. The first assertion is based on a study by the Guttmacher Institute, which as an affiliate of Planned Parenthood, is hardly an objective observer. Even the Washington Post compared the media to Pinocchio for using these statistics.

In fact, the most that can be concluded is that many sexually-active Catholic women have, at some point in their lives, used contraception. That says nothing about whether they and other Americans support the HHS mandate.

Speaking of which, the claim that most Americans, especially women, support the HHS mandate is equally bogus. I know that will surprise you, given what the administration and the media are constantly telling us. But repeating a falsehood doesn’t make it true.

For example, a recent New York Times story told readers that, according to its latest poll “women were split as to whether health insurance plans should cover the costs of birth control and whether employers with religious objections should be able to opt out.”

As Mickey Kaus at the Daily Caller put it, “if the Times says women were ‘split,’ you know that must mean they were actually narrowly against the [Times’] preferred position.” And that’s precisely so. By a 46-44 margin, women favored a religious exemption for all employers. The gap widened to 53-38 in the case of religiously-affiliated employers.

Men, who do vote after all, were even more supportive of opt-out provisions. Overall, Americans, by a 57-to-36 margin favor allowing religiously-affiliated employers to opt out. Remember that statistic.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed similar results: by 49-to-34 percent, Americans oppose requiring “religious institutions” to provide contraception and abortion-inducing drugs.

Now like I say, this may surprise you. It certainly comes as a surprise to the media. While, as Kaus says, the president “appears to be losing the public debate” on the HHS mandate, the media, which overwhelmingly supports the mandate, can’t see it. When the president’s approval ratings drop, they cite gas prices instead.

Well they may not be able to see it, but I can, and you should too. This is a battle that is both crucial and winnable. The important thing is to keep the focus on where it belongs: religious freedom. The early polls were a reaction to the media’s initial announcement that this was all about contraception, but the Catholic bishops and everybody else has been working hard to educate them.

And you need to continue to educate people that this is about religious liberty. This battle won’t be won in the pews — it will be won over the backyard fence and during kids’ baseball games. It’s getting warm outside, so break out the grill, throw on some burgers and hot dogs, invite your neighbors over, and start talking. And then phone and email your legislators and the Administration.

As Mark Twain once said, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

Okay folks, put on your shoes, we are winning.
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James Madison: Father and Defender of the Constitution

By Julia Shaw
March 17, 2012

George Washington has a monument; Jefferson has a memorial; and even James Buchanan has a spot in Washington, D.C., dedicated to his legacy. But there’s no slab of marble in honor of James Madison.

Yesterday was James Madison’s birthday, so today let us then remember his legacy as the father of our Constitution.

Madison conceived the basic outline of the Constitution before the Constitutional Convention even met. He came to the Convention steeped in the histories of ancient republics, well-versed in the political theory of the ages, and prepared with a plan for the new government. The Convention took an oath of secrecy but did not remain shrouded in mystery, because we have Madison’s detailed notes.

After the Constitution was drafted, Madison teamed up with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to write the Federalist, which in Jefferson’s words was “the best commentary on the principles of government, which ever was written.” The key phrases we associate with the Constitution—federalism, checks and balances, and the separation of powers—appear not in the document itself, but in the Federalist. It’s James Madison who writes, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” And Madison who concludes: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men… you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Once the new Constitution was implemented, Madison served in Congress. As chairman of the House conference committee on the Bill of Rights, he was the principle author. This position enabled him to look after a cause dear to him throughout his political career—religious liberty. Madison’s original draft of the First Amendment read: “the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship… nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed…” Though somewhat less expansive in its protections, the final version bears Madison’s mark: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Joe Loconte argues that thanks “largely to Madison, free exercise replaced toleration as the national standard for protecting religious liberty.”

Madison is sometimes invoked as the father of nullification, too. But, as Christian Fritz expertly lays out, Madison may deny paternity. Madison maintained that single states lacked constitutional authority to nullify national laws. But interposition refers to various state actions designed to arouse public opposition, challenge federal actions, and ultimately change or stop the objectionable action. Through public opinion, protests, petitions, or even the state legislatures acting as an instrument of the people, the interposer would focus attention on whether the government’s actions were permissible under the Constitution. Though often confused with nullification, Madison’s understanding of interposition was consistent with the Constitution and encouraged states and citizens to remain vigilant against federal encroachment.

We don’t need a slab of marble to remember James Madison. Instead, we have the Constitution that created the framework for ordered liberty and more than 200 years of stable, peaceful republican government. We have the Bill of Rights that singles out specific individual liberties that all Americans possess, especially the right to religious liberty. And, most importantly, we have his legacy on how to defend this document.

Posted in First Principles

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Obama Administration Partially Caves on Abortion/Contraception Mandate

by Jimmy Akin
From the National Catholic *Reporter* (not Register):

Taking a conciliatory tone and asking for a wide range of public comment, the Obama administration announced this afternoon new accommodations on a controversial mandate requiring contraceptive coverage in health care plans.

Coming after a month of continued opposition from the U.S. bishops to the mandate, which was first revised in early February to exempt certain religious organizations, today’s announced changes from the Department of Health and Human Services make a number of concessions, including allowing religious organizations that self-insure to be made exempt.

Also raised is the possibility that the definition given for religious employers in the original mandate could be changed.
. . .

News of the changes also came as a separate ruling on student health insurance coverage was announced by the Department of Health and Human Services this afternoon. Under that ruling, health care plans for students would be treated like those of employees of colleges and universities—meaning the colleges will have to provide contraceptive services to students without co-pay.

Religiously affiliated colleges and universities, however, would be shielded from this ruling, according to a statement from the HHS.

“In the same way that religious colleges and universities will not have to pay, arrange or refer for contraceptive coverage for their employees, they will not have to do so for their students who will get such coverage directly and separately from their insurer,” the statement said.

In the 32-page proposal on the broader health care mandate published in the Federal Register today, the Health and Human Services Department says it is not yet making final rules on the contraceptive mandate, but is instead issuing questions and suggestions for a 90-day comment period to begin today.

Repeatedly, throughout the document, the federal departments involved in the ruling—which include Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury—ask for advice on how best to address several issues raised by the mandate.

The federal departments, the document says, “seek input on these options, particularly how to enable religious organizations to avoid such objectionable cooperation when it comes to the funding of contraceptive coverage, as well as new ideas to inform the next stage of the rulemaking process.”

Among the suggestions made in the document, known as a “proposed rulemaking,” is that self-insuring employers with a religious affiliation be given several options to ensure that they will not have to cover contraceptive services. Included in the possibilities is the use of a system of third-party administrators to administer the coverage.

While the original version of the mandate defined religious employers as those which primarily serve or hire those of their faith, the rulemaking acknowledges that federal law in other areas define religious employers more broadly.

A few thoughts:

1) Note that this was in a Friday news dump from the administration, to have minimal news impact.

2) The provisions, while welcome, do not go far enough. Nobody should be required to pay for abortion and contraceptive services against their will. Religious freedom matters for everybody, not just the minimum number that the Obama administration thinks it must grant religious freedom to.

3) This is a sign of weakness. The Obama administration has begun to realize how badly it has burned itself by its thuggish, totalitarian move to restrict freedom of religion to freedom of worship in this country.

4) This is not the time for the bishops or others to go soft. It’s time to press further and demand full respect for religious liberty. Caving at the first opportunity would be a grave mistake.

5) Ignore analysis about tone (e.g., taking a conciliatry tone, dialing back rhetoric, etc.). Tone is just the wrapping on the package. What’s inside the package is what counts.

What do you think?

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America's Crossroads