Let Lying Dogs Sleep

Do you remember Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak?  He was the rarest of rare birds, a pro-life, pro-gun Democrat who had the stones to stage a Custer’s last stand against the Pelosi/Obama health care bill in 2009.    

And for his trouble, former-Congressman Stupak got himself Custered.  He objected to language in the Patient Protection and Affordability Act – ObamaCare – that would permit abortion funding and force religious charities to fund contraceptive services in contradiction to their beliefs.           

Nancy Pelosi refused to amend the bill’s language to explicitly ban abortion funding and to protect the freedom of religious charities from government mandates.  She mocked opponents’ interpretation of the bill’s language, insisting they were hysterical demagogues too stupid to understand proper legislative phrasing.  

Then-Speaker Pelosi and President Obama assured us that the abortion truce - don’t fund it, don’t ban it, and don’t mandate it – which had held for three decades would not be affected by their health care reform bill.  Let sleeping dogs lie. Problem is, letting sleeping dogs lie only works if lying dogs sleep.  Last week, they woke up. 

If you recall, then-congressman Stupak’s rebellion was put down when President Obama personally assured him that an Executive Order would be issued which would disallow government abortion funding and mandates on religious organizations.  Mr. Stupak returned to the floor of the House from his meeting with the President to vote for the bill, reading a note explaining his flip-flop with all the conviction of a POW apologizing for war crimes while the out-of-frame guns are pointed at his head.

The President’s word of honor did not even make it to the end of Stupak’s successor’s first term; he managed to offend the Church, trample the Constitution, and sully his own character in one single act of stupidity when he broke his promise to Bart and ordered Catholic charities to buy contraceptive services for their employees. 

The most serious problem with the President ordering Catholic hospitals and clinics around is not the abortion part, or the separation of church and state part, or the freedom of religion part, although those are all very serious matters.  No, the danger to the nation arises from the lying part, the arrogance part, the petty emperor part.

It is now clear to all that the language giving the President authority to order a religious charity to act against its own beliefs was in that bill all along; the Democrat leadership lied to us the whole time they said it wasn’t.  They were not afraid of being exposed; they just didn’t care.  They stopped caring about us a long time ago.

It is clear to anyone with a hint of objectivity left in them that the Democratic Party’s liberal elites believe they are smarter than the Founding Fathers, morally superior to the Church, above the law, beyond the Constitution, better than the people they represent, and infallible in their judgments.  In fact, they are none of these things.

They believe a promise to us commoners is non-binding, a petition signature is just ink, and the rules of civil discourse and due process apply to someone else.  They think the ends justify any means when it is their ends in question, that contrary opinion is to be crushed at all costs, that those who still value freedom are the enemies of the state.  They are wrong about all of that, too. 

The Catholic Church should go on strike for a week.  Every poor person that comes to their inner-city hospitals should be sent over the offices of the Democratic Party or the unions that bankroll them. 

There you go, Debbie Wassermann-Shultz and Lena Taylor and Kathleen Falk - you fix ‘em for free this week.  Take that money you have skimmed off the top to rig your elections and use it instead to mend one of those broken persons you claim to speak for.  Shut up and pull a shift yourself instead of just telling someone else what to do. 

Let DNC or one of its ward bosses put the injured kids back together again, since they have all the answers on how to run a charitable clinic.  Or better yet, send the sick and injured over to Planned Parenthood - since they care so much about women’s health and all - and let them tend to women with fevers, or stab wounds, or festering boils.   

Let the SEIU and AFSCME spend their loot patching up the gunshot victims and rat bites for a week; and give the Catholic Church a turn riding in the stretch limos while it buys Rick Santorum ads and pays people to sign recall petitions for Tammy Baldwin. 

Let the Church fill its coffers through automatic payroll withdrawal and direct deposit while the unions have to pass the plate for cash in their hiring halls and teachers’ lounges.  Let the nuns find out how easy it is to be compassionate with someone else’s money in the self-congratulating, arms-length world of liberal do-goodery.    

For a smart guy, President Obama did a really dumb thing picking a fight with a nation of faith over freedom of religion in an election year.  And don’t kid yourself; he poked the whole nation in the eye this time – you don’t have to like religion to love freedom.  

It was dumb to try and sneak abortion funding into the health care reform bill in the first place, dumber yet to pull the pin before his re-election, and dumber still to try to con us with this absurd statement supposed to convey a change of policy on his part after the stuff hit the fan:     

    
“The change would allow religious organizations to refuse to cover contraceptive care. It would also require insurers to offer a plan that does not include contraceptive care in their contracts with nonprofit religious groups. But the insurers would be required to make contraception available free of charge to women anyway.”

What does that even mean?  Did his kids write that in separate rooms?  And is there a single human being on the planet gullible enough to read that and pretend that the President had changed his policy?  Apparently, there is one – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who said, "We think this is a very workable solution.” 

To what?  

It is a very workable solution to problem of advancing a lying dog agenda, if that’s what she is talking about. Beyond that, the President’s word-juggling means nothing because his word means nothing – just ask Bart Stupak.  

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”