Hobby Lobby Wins SCOTUS Decision

It has been a tough week for President Obama at the Supreme Court!  The Obama administration lost 4 out of 5 decisions and 2 were rare 9 to 0 decisions, and today ObamaCare’s loss to Hobby Lobby was added to tally.  However, today’s decision was very narrow and some pro-life and religious groups question whether it was a win in the long run in their battles. You be the judge…

By Marion Algier – Ask Marion

Attorneys Who Defended Hobby Lobby Celebrating

American Thinker: Hobby Lobby 1, Obamacare 0

The Supreme Court upheld the religious freedom rights of Hobby Lobby, the closely-held corporation owned by believing Christians who objected to being required to supply the abortion pill to their employees.

Steve Ertelt of Life News reports:

…the U.S. Supreme Court today issued a favorable ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their deeply held religious convictions.

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Samuel Alito handed down the decision for the high court, saying, “The Supreme Court holds government can’t require closely held corporations with religious owners to provide contraception coverage.”

“HHS’s contraception mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion,” the decision reads, adding that the “decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion saying that government itself could provide the coverage for contraception and the abortion-causing drugs if a company declines to do so.

The Hobby Lobby decision only applies to companies. Non-profit groups like Priests for Life and Little Sisters are still waiting for a ruling about their right to opt out of the mandate.

Note that this ruling only applies to closely-held corporations, but does not rule out applying the same religious freedom reasoning to publicly-held firms and nonprofits.

Ed Lasky points out:

The fact that both these decisions [Hobby Lobby and the forced union dues case] were 5-4 points out the danger of Obama picking the next SC Justice with Reid in control of the Senate. If the opportunity present itself, he will abolish the filibuster for SC nominees, too.

Memo.com: The Supreme Court Gets It Right

Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court has stepped up to defend Americans' most basic freedoms from the full-frontal assault by the rampaging band of leftists running America. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, a Christian business that objected on religious ground to Obamacare's mandate that they must cover certain contraceptives.

Hobby Lobby is among about 50 businesses that have sued over covering contraceptives. Some, like Hobby Lobby, are willing to cover most methods of contraception, as long as they can exclude abortifacients.

Justice Samuel Alito said the decision is limited to contraceptives. "Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer's religious beliefs," he said. He suggested two ways the administration could deal with the birth control issue. The government could simply pay for pregnancy prevention, he said. Or it could provide the same kind of accommodation it has made available to religious-oriented, not-for-profit corporations.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was part of the majority, also wrote separately to say the administration can solve its problem easily. "The accommodation works by requiring insurance companies to cover, without cost sharing, contraception coverage for female employees who wish it," Kennedy said. He said that arrangement "does not impinge on the plaintiffs' religious beliefs." Everyone's rights respected and problem solved. Easy peasy.

Of course, Obamacare was never about health care or health insurance. It was only and always about government power and control. Over you. That's what the contraceptive mandate was all about: social engineering, abortion made even easier to get, and with the government holding the strings of control over all of it.

Thank goodness the Supremes ruled on the side of religious liberty. It's about time. But that 5-4 split is too close for comfort. As we head into 2016, don't forget that the Supreme Court---like all of our courts---hangs by a thread, and with it, our most basic freedoms.

Huffington Post:  If Hobby Lobby Wins, Pro-life Christians Lose

We now know with certainty that the Supreme Court will announce its Hobby Lobby decision on Monday. This weekend, the craft and home décor store, along with numerous evangelical institutions that have filed briefs in its support -including my former employer the National Association of Evangelicals--are hoping and praying God will favor them with a whole new expansion of religious freedom and the protection of human life. I'm praying for the opposite.

Along with nearly 50 other for-profit corporations, Hobby Lobby is demanding the same religious freedoms and protections that each of us has. Hobby Lobby was not endowed by its Creator with certain unalienable rights. It does not have a soul. It cannot have faith. Yet its owners (and their lawyers) insist that it should not have to comply with the contraceptive coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act on religious grounds. The Obama Administration reasonably granted an opt-out to houses of worship and other religious nonprofits. Hobby Lobby wants similar treatment.

Evangelical intervention on behalf of the multi-billion dollar corporation, which donates generously to their causes, is wrong for many reasons but here are two major ones: If you are pro-religious liberty and pro-life and family, you can't support allowing a for-profit corporation to use religion to deny contraceptive coverage.

First, supporters of Hobby Lobby think they are helping the Christian faith but are actually harming it. In fact, a ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby weakens religious freedom.

When anyone can use religion to claim an exemption on anything, religion loses meaning. Rather than a personal belief embedded in our souls, faith would become a set of arbitrary rules any corporation could choose from to skirt the law.

Is this what evangelicalism needs? I spent nearly three decades in governmental relations at the National Association of Evangelicals defending the free-exercise of religion and the right to life, among many other traditional values. Coming to the aid of for-profit corporations who want to ride on the backs of religion is not one of these honored principles.

Indeed, it is a kind of corporatism invading the body of Christ -- concern not for the "least of these" but the richest of those among us. Is this what Christ would do?

When corporations are allowed the same exemptions that have always been reserved just for churches--whether on health benefits, hiring, or land use--those special protections become less clear and more open for interpretation.

If a for-profit corporation is eligible for legal exemptions on grounds of religious freedom, it puts government in charge of deciding what is or isn't religion. You can just imagine the lawyers who will find work forever litigating these claims. I know, from experience, that their concern for what should be "legal" is not the same as what is "spiritual" or truly serves the interests of the Church.

What if a corporation owned by Jehovah Witnesses refuses to cover blood transfusions? If Christian corporations are allowed to use faith to refuse contraception coverage to women who work for them, what's to stop a Christian Scientist business from refusing to cover any health benefits?

Second, the supporters of Hobby Lobby think they are being "pro-life." They are wrong. A massive study conducted in 2012 showed that contraception coverage without a co-pay could dramatically reduce the abortion rate.

That study, conducted by the Washington University School of Medicine, of 10,000 women at-risk for unintended pregnancy found that when given their choice of birth control methods, counseled about their effectiveness, risks, and benefits, with all methods provided at no cost, about 75 percent of women in the study chose the most effective methods: IUDs or implants. Most importantly, as a result, annual abortion rates among study participants dropped up to 80 percent below the national abortion rate.

Well, you might ask, based upon some of the charges being made, aren't the contraceptive methods being funded through the Affordable Care Act, abortifacients? Not if you believe medical science.

In the words of Jeffrey F. Peipert, M.D., Ph.D., the Robert J. Terry Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine, "these contraceptive methods work by preventing pregnancy (fertilization) from occurring in the first place. For instance, the intrauterine device works primarily by preventing fertilization. Plan B (or the progestin-containing, morning-after pill), along with Ella (ulipristal acetate), delay the release of a woman's egg from her ovary. The egg does not get fertilized, which means the woman does not become pregnant."

In sum, Evangelicals supporting Hobby Lobby at the Supreme Court are not actually being pro-religious freedom or pro-life. If they win at the Supreme Court, these causes will be damaged in the long run

Technorati Tags: Hobby Lobby,Contraception,Christianity,SCOTUS,Religion,Religious Freedom,ObamaCare,Sebelius,Abortifacients,Pro-Life,Evangelicals,Small Victories,Supreme Court

Sebelius' Shameful Legacy

Outgoing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will be remembered by most for the insanely botched roll-out of ObamaCare, but her most shameful legacy to those of us who remember it, will always be her disgraceful tenure as Governor of Kansas because of her unwavering support for illegal late term abortions, and her role in vilifying the attorney general who was trying to put a stop to them.

By Debra Heine – Breitbart.com  -  Cross-Posted at AskMarion: Infamous late term abortionist,  Dr. George Tiller, who practiced his shady, sordid business in Wichita, was able to game the system through strategic donations to Democrat politicians, most particularly, Kathleen Sebelius.

Kansas City resident Jack Cashill remembers the history well, and wrote about it today at the American Thinker.

During Sebelius’s six years as governor, women came from 48 states and points beyond to have late-term abortions in Kansas.

They came not because Kansas had uniquely liberal abortion laws.  They came because Sebelius was uniquely hostile to the law’s enforcement.  The state’s most efficient practitioner of this dubious art, the late Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, boasted on his website of having “more experience in late abortion services with fetuses over 24 weeks than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere.”

What Tiller’s website did not say is that during the six years of Sebelius’s reign as governor, he ended the lives of thousands of healthy babies ready to be born, in full violation of state law.  Nor did the website tell how Sebelius personally intervened to let the carnage continue.  This was no small task.  To succeed, she had to destroy her Republican attorney general, Phill Kline, who was hot on Tiller’s trail.

Local Democrats and their media accomplices vigorously engaged in the "othering" of Kline.

Othering is a way of defining and securing one’s own positive identity through the stigmatization of an “other.” Whatever the markers of social differentiation that shape the meaning of “us” and “them,” whether they are racial, geographic, ethnic, economic or ideological, there is always the danger that they will become the basis for a self-affirmation that depends upon the denigration of the other group.

As Andrew Stiles recently noted at The Washington Free Beacon, liberals are in the process of trying to destroy Ted Cruz by "othering" him.  

But before the othering of Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, there was the particularly vicious othering of another effective conservative, Phill Kline.

The story could begin in any number of places, but a likely starting place is 2002, the year Sebelius ran for governor and Kline ran for attorney general.  As a state representative five years earlier, Kline had helped draft legislation to check the state’s then thriving late-term abortion business.  The new law allowed for a late-term abortion on a viable baby only “to preserve the life of the pregnant women” or to prevent her from suffering “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”

Tiller poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a variety of PACs and cut-outs, making what should have been an easy win for Kline in 2002 into "a nail-biter." 

Four years later, he invested close to $2 million to Democrats.  

He had to.  For the three previous years, Kline had plied an unsympathetic state judiciary to get access to Tiller’s case file, and he was finally poised to succeed. 

Tiller and his political patrons, chief among them Sebelius, resisted at every step.  To block Kline, Sebelius persuaded  popular Republican district attorney Paul Morrison to switch parties and run against Kline on her ticket.  The Democrats, Tiller’s paid proxies, and the media then launched a vicious campaign to portray “Snoop Dog Kline” as a “panty-sniffer” with no greater interest than invading the privacy of Kansas women.

So relentless were The Kansas City Star’s attacks on the “anti-choice extremist” Kline that he lost the election, and the Star won Planned Parenthood’s top media honor, the “Maggie Award,” named for its eugenicist founder, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. 

Margaret Sanger’s ideas are live and well in the Obama White House! Here is Ultra Left Wing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ Spin (Remember, Sibelius was an ardent supporter of murdered partial birth abortionist, Tiller and her extreme record on abortion has sadly been ignored (or hidden) by the media.) Sebelius has also been exposed as a major player in the Obama War on Religion.

Three months after Kline was forced out, Sebelius hosted an elegant but extremely discreet soirée at Cedar Crest, the governor’s mansion, for Tiller and his staff.  What made this event newsworthy was that just a few months earlier, Kline had filed 30 counts against Tiller for performing illegal late-term abortions.

Photos from the "soiree", include Sebelius proudly holding up a tee shirt given to her by Tiller which reads “Trifecta 2006: Sebelius, Parkinson, Morrison.”

Cashill has much more at The American Thinker with this biting conclusion:

I cannot imagine that Ms. Sebelius is having much fun this week, but if she is known going forward only for the humiliation of ObamaCare, she will have a better legacy than she deserves.

Agreed. And the most disturbing aspect of the sordid tale is the fact that she was chosen by Obama to be his HHS Sec. not despite this shameful legacy - but because of it.

And only in Obamaland, where Progressivism runs wild, could this women entertain running for the Senate with a record and history like hers!!

*Lucky for us there are 3 numbers that show a Sebelius Senate run is all but doomed.

Technorati Tags: Sebelius,ObamaCare,Tiller,Late-Term Abortions,ObamaCare Rollout,Kansas,Progressive,Abortions,Kathleen Sebelius,Obamaland,Phill Kline

It's Scapegoat Time In ObamaLand - Sebelius 'Resigns'

It’s Official…

Joshua Pundit – Cross-Posted at AskMarion: It's official. The foul Kommissar in charge of dismantling America's health system and imposing ObamaCare is 'resigning' effective immediately and President Obama is going to nominate Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to replace her.

But wait a minute. Here we were being told ObamaCare was going so well! Of course, if you believe that, you deserve to.

Just the numerous changes the president illegally made to the law to keep it from imploding ought to tell you all is not well when it comes to ObamaCare. Politicians don't change something that's working, or kick the person in charge out on the streets. I'm being generous when I estimate that those '7 million sign ups' President Obama was thumping his chest about the other day probably equals something like 3 million actual customers, and most of those are medicaid patients 'buying' free care anyway. Meanwhile, something like five million Americans have lost their coverage entirely.And just wait until after the midterms, when the real carnage kicks in as the waivers end.

Sylvia Mathews Burwell is a loyal clintonista and Democrat functionary, and unlike Sibelius she's apparently bright enough not to lie so obviously in public. Her ability to conjure numbers out of thin air regardless of reality (based on what the Obama OMB has projected in the last year or so) should be a useful talent as well.

As for Sebelius, she deserves a special reward for her part in this. I'm certain she'll receive it, in this world or the next.

Peddle your bicycle back to Kansas, creep. But given how unpopular ObamaCare is in the Sunflower State and across the nation, you might be better off staying in DC.

Miss Gulch… I can see a bit of resemblance

Technorati Tags: Kansas,ObamaCare,Sebelius,Scapegoats,Obamaland,Burwell

So, the person who wrote Obama’s budgets (which failed to win even Dem support) will replace Sebelius. What can even possibly go wrong?

Yep you heard that correctly, the person who wrote Obama’s budgets (which failed to win even Dem support) will replace Sebelius. What can even possibly go wrong?

AP Photo Susan Walsh

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will resign from her post following a rocky rollout for the president's healthcare program.

By Juliet Eilperin and Amy Goldstein, Updated: Thursday, April 10, 7:59 PM - E-mail the writers -  WaPo – Cross-Posted at AskMarion

Video: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is resigning, ending a tumultuous tenure as the public face of the Affordable Care Act. President Obama will nominate his budget director on Friday as her successor, according to White House officials.

Sebelius entered the Cabinet in 2009, three months into Obama’s presidency, as a well-regarded former governor of conservative Kansas. She is leaving after months of intense criticism over the botched rollout in the fall of the insurance marketplace.

During the firestorm, Obama made clear to his aides that he would not seek the resignation of his health secretary, and her departure is timed to brighter news for the White House as enrollment soared late last month.

Still, some White House allies said Thursday night that the troubled launch of HealthCare.gov had heightened tensions between Sebelius and the president’s staff members, who had become increasingly mistrustful of the department she led. Some Democrats, meanwhile, had argued privately that someone should be held accountable for the problems with the federal insurance exchange.

According to federal health officials, Sebelius approached Obama in early March and told him that, with the insurance enrollment period ending that month, the time had come for new leadership at HHS, the government’s largest domestic agency. A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Sebelius told the president that “she felt confident in the trajectory for enrollment and implementation of the Affordable Care Act.”

According to White House officials, Obama will nominate Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell to take Sebelius’s place. Although Burwell does not have an extensive background in health-care policy, she is known for her strong management skills and has experience in issues of poverty and global health issues from her time at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Moreover, she is popular on Capitol Hill. The Senate confirmed her as OMB director 96 to 0 almost exactly a year ago. Her nomination to lead HHS will require Senate confirmation as well.

Sebelius and Burwell

The news of Sebelius’s resignation, first reported Thursday night by Bloomberg News and the New York Times, caught Washington and health-care policy circles by surprise. Even the administration’s closest allies on health-care issues said they had no clue that her departure was imminent.

Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill also appeared to be caught off guard by the announcement. But they rushed out praise for Sebelius. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in a statement: “From day one, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has remained laser-focused on a single purpose: to make health care a right, not a privilege, for all Americans. Her leadership has been forceful, effective, and essential.”

One former administration official, speaking, like others, on the condition of anonymity about behind-the-scenes working relationships, said Thursday night that Sebelius maintained a warm relationship with the president.

A health policy specialist close to the White House said that Obama’s staff had long preferred to be “running the show” on the health-care law but that Sebelius and her aides were increasingly “cut out of the process” after the launch of HealthCare.gov escalated into a political disaster for the president.

Other senior administration officials played central roles in helping repair the Web site and steer the law’s implementation after the rollout. Jeffrey D. Zients, a former OMB official who directs the National Economic Council, rejoined the administration to spearhead a team of federal employees and contractors who worked to repair HealthCare.gov. Meanwhile, Phil Schiliro, who served as Obama’s chief legislative liaison during his first term, returned in December to oversee the policy side of the law.

Sebelius was not part of the group of White House aides who recently told Obama in the Oval Office that health-care enrollment had surpassed 7 million. While she sat in the front row as the president told the nation on April 1 about the law’s success, he did not mention her in his speech.

Yet Sebelius remained a tireless promoter of the health-care law over the past six months, urging uninsured Americans to sign up on state and federal exchanges. Traveling to major cities such as Miami, Phoenix and Houston to reach residents whose Republican governors opposed the law, she held 43 local events and more than 100 local interviews over the past several months.

Sebelius was confirmed on April 28, 2009. Her tenure — 1,808 days as of Thursday — is about 500 days longer than the average for HHS secretaries, dating to the Carter administration. Federal health officials said Thursday night that she has not set a departure date but that her plan generally is to remain until her successor is confirmed. As for her next professional role, she “is considering other options,” the officials said.

Although Sebelius is best known as the public face of the Affordable Care Act, her work spanned issues from the H1N1 virus to childhood obesity to parity for mental health treatment.

With the equivalent of 77,000 full-time employees, she has had a sprawling domain at HHS. The department oversees Medicare and Medicaid as well as the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and many smaller agencies. For that reason, the department’s work touches the lives of more Americans than most other parts of the government.

Congressional Republicans seized on Sebelius’s resignation to criticize the Affordable Care Act as unworkable.

“Secretary Sebelius was asked to promote something unready, poorly structured, and unpopular,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) said in a statement. “She was given a law that was just about written in pencil the way the deadlines changed all the time. That put her in a position of having a strained relationship with Congress. It’s disingenuous for the White House to distance itself from the problems and attribute them to partisan sniping at one member of the Administration. The next secretary might have a fresh start with the public and Congress but the flawed law is still the law.”

Despite the troubled launch of HealthCare.gov, which left many consumers unable to access the federal exchange for nearly two months, the administration managed to meet its goal of enrolling 7 million Americans during its initial sign-up period. On Thursday, Sebelius said that about 7.5 million consumers had enrolled, although those who don’t pay their premiums will not be insured.

In the fall, Sebelius proved steely under harsh congressional questioning, telling her Republican critics that they could blame her for the Web site’s problems.

“Access to HealthCare.gov has been a miserably frustrating experience for way too many Americans,” she said in her opening statement before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in late October. “So let me say directly to these Americans: You deserve better. I apologize. I’m accountable to you for fixing these problems. And I’m committed to earning your confidence back by fixing the site.”

Technorati Tags: Sebelius,ObmamaCare,Changing Winds,Kathleen Sebelius,HHS,Sylvia Mathews Burwell OMB

Obamacare’s Tough Day in Court

Divided Supreme Court Hears Hobby Lobby’s Challenge to the Contraceptive Mandate

By: Roger Aronoff  -  Accuracy in Media  -  Cross-Posted at the NoisyRoom

Since its passage, a number of lawsuits have attempted to undermine Obamacare as a law, with varying degrees of success. The individual mandate challenge failed before the Supreme Court in 2012, despite what seemed like positive reception to the challenge during oral argument. Hobby Lobby went before the Supreme Court on March 25 to challenge the religious liberty implications of the contraception mandate portion of the law.

While the media have largely focused on the Hobby Lobby challenge, a few blocks away, the D.C. Court of Appeals was hearing another argument about Obamacare—one that, if passed, could well have the effect of ending this law as we know it. And it has liberals running scared.

In the piece “Forget Hobby Lobby. The Bigger Legal Threat to Obamacare Still Has Life,” Alec Macgillis writes for the New Republic, “If the contraception challenge succeeds, it just means that that one sliver of Obamacare is struck down. If this other challenge succeeds, both sides agree that it would blow up the entire law.”

The argument for the plaintiffs is as follows: In order to provide the 60th vote, which was necessary to get the bill through the Senate, Ben Nelson, the then-Democratic senator from Nebraska, insisted on a clause that said that federal subsidies could only go to people who signed up on exchanges set up by the states. The purpose was to incentivize states to actually set up exchanges.

Then, the plaintiffs argue, the IRS wrote a rule in 2012 which reinterpreted the law to say that federal exchanges could give out subsidies as well. “The alternative policy under the IRS’ rewriting of the rule creates a bizarre circumstance where it’s almost impossible to fulfill the Act’s purpose of having state-run exchanges, because it eliminates any tangible incentive for these people to go ahead and adopt the exchanges,” argued Michael A. Carvin, the plaintiffs’ attorney, before the Court of Appeals on March 25. “So they’ve created a situation which has predictably resulted in only 14 states doing what Congress clearly wanted 50 states to do, which is to set up their exchanges.”

Arguably, however, the mostly Republican governors who have refused to set up exchanges also did so for political reasons.

Carter-appointed Judge Harry Edwards had a Hillary Clinton moment during the oral arguments. He demanded that Carvin “forget the subsidies” argument and explain why it was important whether the federal government or states control the exchanges. He demanded loudly, twice, “What difference does it make who does it? Forget the subsidy.”

But we can’t forget the subsidies. They are at the heart of the law, and its practice. The Washington Post has reported that “About 85 percent of those signing up for insurance in federal-run exchanges have qualified for financial assistance to purchase coverage.” In other words, this amounts to a massive federal redistribution of wealth for millions—85% of enrollees. (Let’s ignore for a moment that we have no idea how many enrollees actually purchase their insurance after “selecting” it. If they know, the federal government isn’t telling us.) “Without those subsidies, the insurance would be less affordable, leaving those with the greatest health needs with more motivation to purchase coverage,” writes the Post. “That makes for a worse risk mix, driving up the cost of insurance to cover the sicker pool of people, creating what’s known as an insurance ‘death spiral.’” The federal exchange is already at risk of a death spiral if it cannot entice enough of the young and healthy to sign up.

The case could also undo the individual mandate. “Were the case to succeed, it would mean that dozens of state governments opposed to Obamacare could significantly narrow its scope by refusing [to] set up exchanges, thus preventing residents from claiming subsidies,” explains the Washington Examiner. “In those states, employers wouldn’t be penalized for failing to offer qualifying insurance (which is triggered by workers seeking federal subsidies), meaning that anti-Obamacare states could become more attractive to businesses trying to get around the employer mandate.”

“It would also increase pressure on Congress to undo the individual mandate.”

Judge Edwards said that this was a transparent attempt by Carvin and his plaintiffs to “gut” the law. Indeed, those opposed to the lawsuit seem more concerned with saving the law than looking at the Act’s original language. MacGillis cites Clinton-appointed Judge Paul Friedman in his earlier ruling that “Plaintiffs’ proposed construction in this case—that tax credits are available only for those purchasing insurance from state-run Exchanges—runs counter to this central purpose of the ACA: to provide affordable health care to virtually all Americans…Such an interpretation would violate the basic rule of statutory construction that a court must interpret a statute in light of its history and purpose.” “Under the challengers’ logic, Judge Friedman added, the exchanges administered by the federal government ‘would have no customers, and no purpose,’” writes Macgillis. Is it really the Courts’ purview to decide whether a government program should survive, as opposed to whether the law is being executed constitutionally and legally?

Indeed, according to The Wire, without federal subsidies, “Many of those people would fall in to the hardship gap and not have to buy insurance or pay the individual mandate.” There are two other cases besides this one “challenging the authority of the IRS to rewrite the statute and allow subsidies to flow through the federal exchanges,” according to Forbes.

Never afraid of punditry, MSNBC abandoned all pretense of journalism and called this discussion of the Senate’s original intent a “drafting error.” Adam Serwer writes that “The Affordable Care Act managed to have two bad days in court on the same day,” adding that the argument means that “Congress was handing Republicans an Obamacare self-destruct button.”

But, he offers hope to his liberal readers: “If the government loses before the panel, it can ask for the D.C. Circuit to hear the case ‘en banc,’ before the judges on the D.C. Circuit.” Then it could go to the Supreme Court.

Why is the ‘en banc’ ability important? Because President Obama has stacked the court, of course. “After the Democrats nuked the filibuster, Obama was able to make four appointments to the court,” writes Serwer. “Though judges’ opinions don’t always track with those of the party that appointed them, thanks to the changes to the filibuster, more Democratic appointees than Republican appointees would rule on the matter.” In other words, partisan politics would play out if the entire bench were to hear the case.

A decision is supposed to come in late June, and looks like it will be in favor of the plaintiffs. But, the Washington Examiner warns, oral arguments can be misleading. “As always, it’s hard to predict judicial outcomes based on oral arguments, a lesson that was made abundantly clear when many observers predicted that the Supreme Court would strike down the individual mandate only to see it upheld,” Philip Klein writes.

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

Hobby Lobby vs Sebelius Goes Before the Supreme Court

INFOGRAPHIC: What Exactly This Hobby Lobby Case Is About

If the contraception mandate passes, it will ruin a core U.S. ideology

 

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,Affordable Care Act,Contraception,SCOTUS,Supreme Court,ACA,PPACA Medicare,Mandates,Religion,Christianity,Sebelius,Ideology,Americana,Rick Warren,Thoughts,Constitution,Founding-Ideals,Freedom,Hobby Lobby

Propaganda: HHS Claims 3 Million Have Signed Up For Obamacare, Refuses To Say How Many Have Paid For Their Plans…

No, three million people did NOT enroll, this figure couldn’t be more misleading if they tried. These people simply chose a plan on the exchange (in their shopping cart), the back end system is still a mess and that’s what needed for someone to fully enroll by paying their first month’s premium. Sadly, the low-information voters will be at least somewhat swayed by this bogus statistic.

Washington Examiner:

About 3 million Americans have now signed up for insurance through President Obama’s health care law since the debut of the law’s exchanges on Oct. 1, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Friday.

HHS did not specify when the exchanges hit the 3 million mark. Department spokeswoman Joanne Peters replied by email: “We hit 3 (million) this week, don’t have an exact date.” [...]

But there’s also an important caveat. HHS still hasn’t disclosed how many of those who have selected a plan through the health care law have actually paid for it, which is how insurers typically define enrollment.

Technorati Tags: HHS,Lies,ObamaCare,ObamaCare Rollout

ISSA Warns Sebelius That She Could Face Perjury Charges Over Obamacare Testimony - Rep Trey Gowdy

 

Video: ISSA Warns Sebelius That She Could Face Perjury Charges Over Obamacare Testimony - Rep Trey Gowdy

Washington Examiner: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius could face perjury charges over her congressional testimony on Obamacare, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., warned in a letter calling for Sebelius to correct the record.

“Witnesses who purposely give false or misleading testimony during a congressional hearing may be subject to criminal liability under Section 1001 of Title of 18 of the U.S. Code, which prohibits ‘knowingly and willfully’ making materially false statements to Congress,” Issa wrote in a Wednesday letter. “With that in mind, I write to request that you correct the record and to implore you to be truthful with the American public about matters related to Obamacare going forward."

Issa focused on Sebelius' testimony about launching the healthcare.gov federal exchange website despite the existence of technical problems that marred the Obamacare rollout.

“Providing false or misleading testimony to Congress is a serious matter,” Issa writes. “Documents and testimony obtained by the Committee, including information provided by Teresa Fryer, the Chief Information Security Officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the MITRE Corporation, a contractor hired by HHS to conduct security assessments of healthcare.gov, show that your testimony was false and misleading.”

HHS promised to respond to the letter. "Regarding the issues raised in the partial transcript excerpts referenced in the letter—as we have said repeatedly, including when these issues were first reported several weeks ago—the HealthCare.gov components that are operational have been determined to be compliant with the Federal Information Security Management Act, based on standards promulgated by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology," Joanne Peters, the national press secretary for health care at HHS, told the Washington Examiner in an email.

Sebelius' claim that MITRE conducted "ongoing testing" of the Obamacare website was false, Issa said, citing Fryer's testimony to committee staff that the company only did testing by rounds, with the last pre-launch round taking place on Sep. 20. The next round did not begin until Dec. 10.

Issa also said that Sebelius' claim that MITRE recommended HHS proceed with the launch of the website was also false, because MITRE says it was never consulted.

The Republican investigator also disputes Sebelius' statement that “no one… suggested that the risks outweighed the importance of moving forward."

"[Fryer] was very concerned about the problems raised by MITRE during its security testing of the system," the letter states.

Issa also quotes from a Sep. 24 memo written by Fryer, who concluded that the health care website "does not reasonably meet the CMS security requirements," adding that "there is also no confidence that Personal Identifiable Information will be protected."

"There have been no successful security attacks on Healthcare.gov and no person or group has maliciously accessed personally identifiable information," Peters countered in her email. "An independent security control assessor tested each piece of the Healthcare.gov system that went live Oct. 1 prior to that date with no open high findings. All high, moderate and low security risk findings listed on the SCAs for the portions of the website that launched Oct. 1 were either fixed, or have strategies and plans in place to fix the findings that meet industry standards."

Related:

Is This the Alarming Reason Kathleen Sebelius Hasn’t Been Fired?

Eleven AGs slam Obama's healthcare fixes; Greg Abbot says Obama is acting like a king

Greta with Texas Attorney General Abbot:

Video: Eleven AGs slam Obama's healthcare fixes; Greg Abbot says Obama is acting like a king

Published on Jan 2, 2014

Eleven attorneys general slammed Obama, saying that he is breaking the law by repeatedly making changes to Obamacare without going through Congress. The AGs specifically criticize President Obama's executive action that allowed insurance companies to keep offering health plans that had been canceled for not meeting ObamaCare's more rigorous standards.
"We support allowing citizens to keep their health insurance coverage, but the only way to fix this problem-ridden law is to enact changes lawfully: through Congressional action," the attorneys general wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "The illegal actions by this administration must stop." They say the healthcare fix was "flatly illegal under federal constitutional and statutory law."

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey wrote the letter, which was signed by his counterparts in Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia.

Signatories include Gregg Abbott of Texas — who's running for governor this year — and Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia.

James D. "Buddy" Caldwell of Louisiana was previously a member of the Democratic Party, but switched to the GOP in 2011.

The change, the Republican attorney generals argue, exceeds precedents set by Supreme Court decisions.

The officials point to the 1985 Heckler v. Chaney case, in which the Supreme Court concluded that some enforcement actions of laws might be subject to judicial review first.

Rep. Suzan DelBene’s Husband, Kurt DelBene, Chosen to Fix HealthCare.gov

The Forge:  Good news! The Obama administration just hired on former Microsoft executive Kurt DelBene, who coincidentally is also married to Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA)12%, to fix HealthCare.gov.

He’s certainly qualified for the task. HHS Secreatry Kathleen said, “Kurt has proven expertise in heading large, complex technology teams and in product development.”

He will be an “unpaid senior adviser,” but with a wife who is a strong Obamacare supporter, it’s clear he has an incentive to help Obamacare to have some semblance of workability, an impression Americans are swiftly losing. In November, his wife put out a press release stating:

One of our top priorities must be ensuring that the Affordable Care Act works for Washingtonians, and I’m committed to doing what it takes to make sure that all of my constituents have access to affordable, comprehensive health coverage.

But Obamacare won’t accomplish that.

It will, however, cause immediate and long term damage to millions of Americans. People are losing the plans they liked and watching helplessly as their premiums and deductibles skyrocket. Nothing Mr. DelBene accomplishes as a government bureaucrat will improve Obamacare itself, though he may help to salvage the healthcare website.

For years, conservatives have accurately predicted the adverse effects of the government take over of healthcare by the left known as Obamacare. From the sweeping reality that it diminishes our freedom of choice by putting decision making in the hands of government bureaucrats, to the nitty-gritty of losing the plans we liked.

Kurt DelBene, accomplished and top-notch tech guy that he is, may be able to help Democrat members of Congress, like his wife, save face, but he won’t be able to help those Americans losing their freedom, choice, and affordable healthcare, because Obamacare will remain fundamentally flawed.

Health Care Fukushima: 129 Million To Lose Their Plan

IBD: Meltdown: A health care scholar estimates that if ObamaCare is fully implemented, including the employer mandate, 129 million people will not be able to keep their plans. The train wreck has become a nuclear meltdown.

The never-ending and ever-changing story line emanating from the damage control room at the White House has morphed from you can keep your plan, period, to we said you could keep the plan you liked at the rates agreed upon only if we decide it's not substandard.

That, we were told, would only apply to some 5% of Americans. They would get a better plan whether they liked it or not.

It's as if the government decided the car you drove to work was "substandard" and forced you to drive a "better" car like the government-subsidized Chevy Volt.

ObamaCare is kind of like "cash for clunkers" only with fines and penalties thrown in. We fork over more cash in the form of higher premiums and deductibles and get the clunker known as ObamaCare.

The story has changed again as commentators try to split the hair between "intentional deceit" and "lie."

"Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really like that plan, what we said was you could keep it, if it hasn't changed since the law was passed," President Obama said Monday night. Oh, so that was what you meant by "period," Mr. President.

Every insurance plan changes as risk pools and claims vary over time. That's why people have had to renew their policies every year or so.

That is the ultimate Catch-22 of ObamaCare, one that will snare an astounding number of Americans in ObamaCare's tangled web of lies and deceit.

Those who thought their plans were exempted under the "grandfather" clause were sadly mistaken and ignored that phrase throughout ObamaCare — "the Secretary shall determine." Well, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius determined unless your plan was carved in stone tablets for all time, they had to go and changed the regulations.

Now, as the Daily Caller reports, an analysis by health care economist Christopher Conover at the Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research at Duke University, shows just how wide that web will extend when ObamaCare is fully implemented in 2014.

It also helps explain the delay in the employer mandate — an attempt to cushion the blow.

When ObamaCare is fully implemented, Conover finds, an estimated 129 million people — that's 68% of the 189 million Americans with private health coverage — could lose their previous health coverage due to a combination of factors including the cancellations of existing plans as well as changes and "improvements" to existing coverage that will be required under the new health care law.

Kathleen Sebelius Senate Hearing Obamacare 11.6.2013, Sebelius Admits: It Is possible for convicted felons to become Obamacare navigators

Greg GutFeld: “There have now been more hearings on ObamaCare than people who have signed up for the program”

Below is the full hearing 3 hours - skip to 25 min 55 sec and that’s when the hearing beings.

Enzi questions are shortly before Cronyn.

Cornyn is speaking at 1:53 asking about the navigators possibly being convicted felons. Sherrod Brown follows.   At 1:59:40 is Thune ‘ who explains it is flawed legislation based on the outcome so far.  Predicated on promises which are broken.

She goes into a response that is evasive and misdirecting his question.

Most Americans would forgive it if you said you didn’t tell the truth.Just before 2:05 minutes you see her sitting there very thoughtful looking at her hands. This is a response not seen before – whether someone was talking in her ear or she had a small dose of conscience who knows?

Senator Roberts from Kansas, Sebelius’ home state, asked her to resign.

Video: Kathleen Sebelius Senate Hearing Obamacare 11.6.2013

That’s right folks… ObamaCare navigators could be convicted felons who would access to your personal information…

Video:  Kathleen Sebelius: It's possible for convicted felons to become Obamacare navigators

Video: Kathleen Sebelius Refuses To Answer Whether Obama's Keep Your Plan Promise Was True Or False

Video: Thune at Finance to Sebelius: You've Been Misleading the American People

Video: Senator Roberts Calls For Secretary Sebelius' Resignation in Finance Committee Hearing

Obama Now "Lying About Lies”

Obamacare, Deconstructed [video] 

The Dirty Secret Behind ObamaCare No One's Talking About

Obamacare Hype - ' The Land Of Oz ' Lies! - Judge Jeanine Pirro Opening Statement

Video: Judge Jeanine Pirro - Opening Statement - Obamacare Hype - ' The Land Of Oz ' Lies! - 11/2/13 

Video: Wizard of Oz Jokes Dominate Kathleen Sebelius Obamacare Hearing

Video: What Did Obama Admin Know? - House Oversight CMTE Investigates Obamacare Judge Jeanine Pirro

Sebelius, ObamaCare and More Spin…

Probably the most disappointing part of the entire Congressional Committee Hearing on the PPACA (ObamaCare) Implementation Failures was when HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was questioned, more than once, about if it were possible for her to drop her first class federal healthcare coverage and go into the exchanges under ObamaCare, would she… She refused to answer directly… She refused to say, “Yes”. Like the restaurant where the owners, chef, workers and their families refuse to eat… but now you are forced to…

The Blaze: Things didn’t go well for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during a congressional hearing Wednesday, and it became pretty clear when she was caught muttering, “Don’t do this to me”:

It’s unclear the exact context of the remark. Washington’s CBS station says it was said to an aide, but it’s unclear if she was speaking to the aide or about someone else.

Sebelius’ unscripted comment came immediately after an intense exchange with Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.) who repeatedly asked her if she planned to enroll in the health care law she oversees.

The secretary avoided answering the answer head-on, saying she would “take a look at it.”

She also stated that it would be illegal for her to enroll in Obamacare because of her status within the federal government. This is inaccurate; Sebelius is eligible to enroll, she just is not eligible for specific subsidies.

When Sebelius muttered, “Don’t do this to me,” it was after conferring with one of her colleagues. It seems pretty clear she wasn’t addressing Long, but it’s unclear what, exactly, was said to prompt her flustered muttering.  You can here the entire exchange HERE

Video: Mike Rogers Slams Secretary Kathleen Sebellius At Obamacare Hearing - 10/30/13

10/30/13 - On his radio show this afternoon, Rush Limbaugh criticized the Republicans for what he believed to be a lackluster performance during Wednesday morning's hearing with Health & Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius. "It's very frustrating for me," Limbaugh said. "[Sebelius] was clearly the punching bag" but "I don't know that the Republicans did much damage. It's like they're afraid to. It's like there's still a fear of going after Obama."

He wondered whether there is instruction "from on high" within the GOP instructing Republican committee members to "not be mean" and not tear into Sebelius.

"That's such a mistake," he lamented, "because with every day of chaos, Obama and the Democrats are getting closer to what they want and that is single-payer."

Limbaugh also suggested the Republicans are "afraid of success" and perhaps "talk themselves out" of being more aggressive "because they don't think they can win."

Video: Rush Limbaugh: Republicans Seemed 'Afraid' to Go After 'Punching Bag' Sebelius

 

Video: Full Congressional Committee Hearing - "PPACA Implementation Failures: Answers from HHS Secretary Sebelius" Oct 30, 2013 (3:34:01)

Obamacare Website Company CGI Federal Contributed to Obama Campaign

The fun just doesn’t stop… not only did the contract for the $634 Million Dollar website ObamaCare website that doesn’t work go to a non-American company (guess we don’t need the jobs?) and a sorority sister of Michelle Obama’s (cronyism) that was already under investigation… but now we find out that they also contributed to Obama’s campaign…

Freedom Outpost: Have you heard of CGI Federal? It's the company that received a $678 million no-bid contract to develop the disaster that is healthcare.gov. It is also the company whose officials are now coming under scrutiny for the roll out of the Obamacare exchange web portal. But it also seems like those officials are also buddy-buddy with the Obama administration.

According to The Daily Caller, Toni Townes-Whitley, a senior vice president at CGI Federal, is a Princeton classmate of First Lady Michelle Obama. Townes-Whitley and Mrs. Obama are both members of are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

As reported by the Washington Examiner in early October, the Department of Health and Human Services reviewed only CGI's bid for the Obamacare account. CGI was one of 16 companies qualified under the Bush administration to provide certain tech services to the federal government. A senior vice president for the company testified this week before The House Committee on Energy and Commerce that four companies submitted bids, but did not name those companies or explain why only CGI's bid was considered.

According to Federal Election Commission Records, Toni Townes-Whitley gave $500 in 2011 and 2012 to Obama's reelection, and another $1,000 to the Obama Victory Fund.

The Washington Examiner reports that senior officials at CGI Federal had White House access. Before being granted the no-bid contract, CGI Federal officials attended several invitation only addresses by President Obama. White House visitor logs show that "CGI Federal President Donna Ryan visited the White House six times prior to her company being selected to do the IT design work behind the high-profile website."

Two of the meetings attended by CGI executives were with Vivek Kundra, Obama's chief information officer. Kundra was a key figure in Obama administration information technology initiatives across the government.

Ryan met Kundra on June 21, 2010, in the latter's Old Executive Office Building office, according to the White House visitor logs.

In addition to the $88 million contract awarded to CGI Federal for the health-insurance exchange website, the company has received a total of $422 million in contracts related to Obamacare since the legislation was signed into law, according to Bloomberg News.

Fox News reported a number of occasions in which the company had failed to meet deadlines or experienced botched launches similar to that seen with the launch of healthcare.gov.

"In projects stretching from Canada to Hawaii, parent company CGI Group and its subsidiaries ran into complaints about its performance," Fox reported.

"The morning I heard CGI was behind [Healthcare.gov], I said, my God, no wonder that thing doesn't work," said James Bagnola, a Texas-based corporate consultant who was hired by the Hawaii Department of Taxation (DOTAX) in 2008, to Fox News.

Bagnola suggested that CGI has been shrewd politically, giving to both Democrats and Republicans at both the state and federal levels. In the case of Hawaii, Bagnola said the company was able to continue to work on the DOTAX contract despite repeated complaints from management and a "corrosive" environment in which government employees felt pitted against CGI staff. This was noted in the final 2010 audit.

"I don't have an ax to grind here, except I was just trying to do my job for this team and stop the state of Hawaii from being ripped off," he said.

According to campaign records at OpenSecrets.com, CGI Group contributed $345,600 to federal candidates and parties — both Democratic and Republican — during the 2011-12 cycle. Some $147,000 went to the Republican Governors Association; and $35,000 to the Democratic Governors Association. The company spent $400,000 in lobbying expenditures between 2011 and 2012.

Technorati Tags: Sebelius,PPACA,ACA,CGI,Affordable Care Act,Linbaugh,Rush,Congressional Hearing,Wake-up America,HHS,Obamaland,cronyism,double standards,ruling elite

Kathleen Sebelius: I Don't Work For The People Calling For Me To Resign Over Obamacare… Really? That Is You and Me She Works For!

Video:  Judge Jeanine Pirro - Sebelius: I Don't Work For The People Calling For Me To Resign - Obamacare

 

Video: Kathleen Sebelius Refuses To Take Personal Responsibility

Judge Jeanine Pirro – Opening Statement – DESTROYS Obama Administration on Obamacare Disaster – 10/26/13 [video]

Technorati Tags: Kathleen Sebelius,HHS,ObamaCare,ObamaCare Lies,ObamaCare Rollout,Repeal and Replace ObamaCare,Socialized Medicine,Single Payer,Fox News,Manipulation of the public,Lies,Doctor Shortages,Death Panels,ObamaCare Costs,ObamaCare Surprises,Megyn Kelly,Judge Jeanine Pirro,Obamaland