KUHNER: End of the Constitution

Obamacare birth-control mandate would defeat the First Amendment

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/10/end-of-the-constitution/

Is America sliding toward autocratic rule? This is the essential question of Barack Obama’s presidency. Mr. Obama vowed to “fundamentally transform” the United States. Despite his incompetence and economic failure, the president is making good on his central promise: the destruction of our constitutional republic. He is trying - piece by painful piece - to reverse the legacy of the Founding Fathers. Conservatives have underestimated him at their peril. For Mr. Obama is not simply an inept, liberal president in the mold of Jimmy Carter. He is an ideological revolutionary who seeks to sweep away traditional America.

The American war of independence did not just overthrow British imperial domination. The Founders forged something almost unique in history: a nation devoted to individual liberty, Christian civilization and federalism. The rule of men was replaced bythe rule of law. The linchpin was constitutional government based on the separation of powers and checks and balances. The American system is entirely predicated on the Constitution. Once the Constitution becomes meaningless or just an inconvenient piece of paper, the American experiment is over. The republic is dead.

This is what’s at stake. Mr. Obama is acting like an arbitrary tyrant. He is running roughshod over the Constitution, egregiously, repeatedly and deliberately violating its restraints and clear limits on federal power. He has publicly admitted that he finds Congress a nuisance, an “obstacle” to his secular socialist project. He has said that he often thinks about “going it alone.” In fact, this is what he has done - so far, largely with impunity.

He waged an illegal war in Libya. The last time Congress officially declared war was in December 1941. Yet Mr. Obama went one step further, something his predecessors - Lyndon B. Johnson, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush - never did: He refused even to ask Congress for authorization. Mr. Obama ignored the War Powers Act, flagrantly circumventing congressional authority.

Moreover, late last year, the massive National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was signed into law, which potentially allows for the military - not domestic courts - to indefinitely detain American citizens suspected of ties to terrorism. The vaguely worded NDAA undermines the rule of law and due process, enabling the government to abrogate the fundamental right to trial. It lends itself to abuse of state power - the very thing our Founders warned against. In the wrong hands, the NDAA could be used as a weapon to persecute - and imprison - political opponents under the guise of fighting terrorism. This is the same administration that has lumped anti-abortion and anti-illegal-immigration activists with radical Islamists as possible “threats” to national security.

Yet it is not just national security. Mr. Obama has created countless policy czars possessing Cabinet-like powers without the approval or consent of the Senate. Recently, he appointed Richard Cordray to be the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - despite the fact that he lacked needed support in the Senate. Mr. Obama’s response: Take a hike. He parachuted in Mr. Cordray as a recess appointment even though Congress was not in recess. The president has usurped congressional oversight - a clear and dangerous violation of the Constitution.

His greatest assault, however, is on religious freedom. Fortunately, his latest effort sparked a rebellion. Mr. Obama had declared war not just on the Catholic Church, but on the First Amendment. The administration ordered almost all religious organizations to provide health insurance coverage that includes free birth control and sterilization procedures - even the morning-after pill, which can induce abortions. Otherwise, under Obamacare, Catholic hospitals, charities and universities would face major fines totaling millions of dollars. The choice was clear: Catholic institutions must either abandon their fundamental tenets or go bankrupt. The contraceptive mandate denied the conscience rights of the church. It was state-sanctioned coercion of private entities to act against their explicit religious beliefs. This is why it triggered such furor among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. If such basic liberties could be trampled on, then nothing - and no one - is safe from big government’s crushing grip. Fortunately, a three-week outcry forced him to back off.

Like many on the radical left, Mr. Obama is an anti-Christian, anti-religious bigot. His goal is to purge Christianity from civil society, to marginalize religion from the public square. He essentially told the church that Washington, not the Vatican, will dictate how it must run its affairs and administer its social services. He demanded that Catholics sacrifice their beliefs on the altar of secular liberalism. The state - with him at its helm - is the new pagan church. Women’s “reproductive health care” trumps Catholic positions on birth control and abortion. The fact that most health insurers already cover contraception and that it is widely available and accessible to women - just go to your local Walgreens - means nothing to feminists or the powerful abortion lobby. The real aim is to smash the Catholic Church as a bulwark against the sexual revolution, reducing it to a quisling of the liberal regime.

Catholic leaders rightly stood up. The Church understood it was under siege. That may not be over. Mr. Obama could win a second term. Hence, Obamacare - along with its contraceptive mandate - might not be repealed and may even expand. If so, he will have succeeded in giving birth to his Frankenstein monster: a post-constitutional, post-American soft tyranny.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.

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Replies

  • If Obamacare is in conflict with the Constitution, how does it attain superiority to the Constitution,

    Conflict with the first admendment should have nullified its passing.

    • Allen,

      You do not seem to grasp the difinition of a government take over, do you?

      Take four Exlax tablets and lock yourself in the closet, that will be the kind of mess this country is headed toward.

    • Congress has the power to override Obama -- that they don't bother is what is most frightening to me. Are they all trying to change our nation? It sure seems that way.

  • Well, having accomplished that, the next Amendment they're aiming to override is our ability to have guns. Where's the surprise? This man is a tyrant -- a little thing like a Constitution or a Bill of Rights -- just a piece of paper to burn. Mr. Menoes is right -- this rule of his is nullified by the Constitution. If we can get the Supreme Court to recognize that and kill it. Actually, Congress has that power, but between too many Democrat Senators and wimps in the House, they sit and do nothing.

    • We have the right to nullify what this federal government is doing. We can refuse to participate in the take over being carried out by the present administration and force D.C. to shrink into the dark recesses from which it came. It will take our votes in local and state elections to rectify this situation. Simply ask the local politician their views on the current DC politics. If they will not stand against DC for your states rights, DO NOT VOTE FOR THEM. I know the problem here is finding people within your states that are willing to fight that monster but we must or all is lost. DC cannot be fixed from within or without and the sooner we face that fact the sooner we can start by fixing our state governments and removing our states from the rule of the broken contract that was our constitution, that bound our states together.

      • Yes, we do have the right to nullify this administration as it is completely illegal to begin with.  The problem is that we cannot count on Congress to lift a finger because in helping they will seal their own personal doom and they are too cowardly to do anything.  The media is in the pockets of Obama and, while conveniently not reporting on the current issue, they marginalize all those who actually do know what is going on.  And lastly, the courts are squarely in Obama's corner as demonstrated by Judges Carter and Malihi.

         

        And with the NDAA, anyone who stands up against this administration is obviously a terrorist and wil be forthrightly taken into custody and placed out of sight and mind. Only the sheeple will remain and they will blindly follow what our illegal government says.

  • Re: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/whom_the_gods_would_destroy_...

     

    Allowing BHO & his throne-licking cavalier dirt-bags to retreat after their display of criminal intent on criminal actions violates our common law/scriptural 'Hue  & Cry' duty to indict as embedded in 18USC4 'Misprision of Felony'  and Va18.2-481(5) 'Misprision of Treason'.  

    Given the range and capacity for voting fraud (Stalin - 'It does not matter who votes - It only matters who counts the votes') there is no real human remedy short of the cartridge box until Virginia's Governor McDonnell embraces ALL the reality-check, penance & PARDON ON PAROLE OATH required to do his sworn constitutional duty to "take care that [ALL the DULY AUTHORIZED] laws are executed" upon EVERY officer of the SCOVA (which includes EVERY federal judge in Virginia and EVERY lawyer in Virginia) . 

     

    The temporal responsibility for happiness, peace and prosperity of the people of this United States is resting squarely upon the shoulders of our Governor Bob McDonnell because NO other state has a statute like Va18.2-481(5) were “resisting the execution of the [duly authorized] laws under the color of its authority” is defined as the state felony of statutory treason.

     

    I recognize the Gov. Bob McDonnell is just a man.   Yet he can be a man so supported by the prayers of his people that  God surrounds and saturates him with the fullness of truth regarding his personal duty that is NOW squarely before him.

    PRAY FOR BOB MCDONNELL.

    Once Gov. Bob McDonnell accomplishes his Law obligated duty the courts in Virginia, including the federal courts,  will be competent to try a Constitutional Eligibility challenge applied to every POTUS candidate in 2012 and 2008.  

    BHO's presidency is likely so void from its beginning that it never was - short of fraud.

    See http://teapartyconstitutionalists.ning.com/forum/topics/preamble-th...

     

    If Bob McDonnell fails in his obligatory duty as temporal governor, there is still an effective recourse to our eternal governor by imprecatory prayer.  I have seen this work.  I have seen God find sufficient cause (presumptuous sin against the Holy Spirit of Truth) to recall the souls of Va. chief Justice Hassle and Va. Marine Resource Commissioner Ballard.  Both were 55 years old and at the peak of their worldly power when recalled into the fullness of truth - ready or not.  Proper prayer is a more elegant, just, efficient and law respecting solution than the proverbial 'cartridge box' .  

     

    BHO's overreach has provoked all those who remember and love God.  What could be better.  What could be a better example of how Romans 1:28  works : “And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient;”

  • I am more concerned with Republicans in office letting it happen. Venezuela here we come. Hugo Obama is in charge. Jews, line up for the gas chambers; Conservative Christians, in line behind the Jews.

  • I' so over all this "legal/smegal' BS going on.  (imho" it's beyond fixing.

    Can the obummer take it all over?  All I got to say is, he still has to get past me.

    • The minimal that needs to happen is to, once and for all, prove the term "natural born citizen" in the current courts of law.  It should not be hard, but it is.

       

      The historical precedence, SCOTUS rulings and the Congressional record all prove that the term NBC means "born of two citizen parents", however the current courts (i.e. judge Malihi's ruling earlier this month) are upholding an Ammendment 14 citizen as a natural-born citizen.  But if you look at the Congressional record in regards to the passage of this bill, the notion that is flitting about the courts is in direct violation of the recorded intet on passage of said ammendment.

       

      If you research the record, first off, this ammendment was created for the sole purpose, and no other purpose, to ensure that the newly freed slaves did not lose citizenship rights.  It was also clearly stated that this ammendment does not overrule other rules for citizenship, i.e. the natural born citizen.

      Also, it was not intended to be used to grant citizenship willy-nilly just because someone broke the law and popped out a baby.  An illegal immigrant is in this country as a person willfully living outside the laws, not within the laws as required by the 14th ammendment.

       

      After this term is solidified (again and again and again.....), it will be proven that all of Congress has abbrogated their oath of office and most are also chargeable with Treason.  At a minimum, the entirety of Congress needs to be brought up on charges and summarilly dismissed and sent to jail.  Let the Governors appoint a new Congress to serve until special elections can be held.  If the newly appointed Congress are found to be in violation of their Oath of Office, they will only be seated in a jail cell rather than in the Houses of Congress.  The simple fact remains that every single elected and apointed politician/Gov't official; Federal, state and local, is currently in violation of their Oath of Office except for a very few of them (maybe 12-20 in the whole nation)  The rest are unfit to serve within Congress.  If this minimum is not done, we will see a postponed death to the ideals of the United States of America and our freedoms themselves!

       

      BTW, there do not remain enough patriotic Americans who will sacrifice their all to see this country survive.  Apathy and ignorance abound; integrity, ethics and morals are the scarcest of resources today.

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