Trump Government to Follow 20 Principles of Religious Liberty

The Government Will Now Follow 20 Principles of Religious Liberty

by Gene Veith       (article sent by Mark Waldeland)

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions, for the Trump administration, has issued a memo setting forth twenty principles of religious liberty that the government must abide by.  This document addresses nearly all of the current religious liberty controversies and rules in favor of accommodating religious beliefs.

In practice, this document means that the Christian baker could refuse to participate in a same-sex wedding, churches could advocate political positions from the pulpit, businesses could opt out of providing abortion and contraceptive insurance, religious organizations could limit their hiring to those who agree with the religion, and the government could not refuse contracts or benefits on the basis of religion.

The twenty principles include summaries of existing federal law, such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993), as well as interpretations and applications that are to guide government agencies.

Read the document here.  Some highlights:

 “The free exercise of religion includes the right to act or abstain from action in accordance with one’s religious beliefs.”

“Except in the narrowest of circumstances, no one should be forced to choose between living out his or her faith and complying with the law.  To the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, religious observance and practice should be reasonably accommodated in all government action, including employment, contracting and programming.”

“Our freedom as citizens has always been inextricably linked with our religious freedom as a people,” Sessions said. “It has protected both the freedom to worship and the freedom not to believe. Every American has a right to believe, worship, and exercise their faith. The protections for this right, enshrined in our Constitution and laws, serve to declare and protect this important part of our heritage.”

Furthermore, the document says that religious freedom applies “not just to individuals, but also to organizations, associations, and at least some for-profit corporations.”

Some of the memo’s provisions do not have the force of law, as such, and are subject to legal challenge, but as official interpretations, government agencies–including the IRS –are obliged to follow them.

For more details, Jeff Sessions Just Issued New Guidance On Protecting “Religious Liberty”.  (Notice the quotation marks.)  Predictably, liberal groups are condemning the principles as allowing discrimination against LGBTs and as being anti-woman.

In separate but related actions, putting the principles into practice, the Trump administration has reversed the Obamacare contraceptive mandate, allowing businesses to opt out of providing birth control coverage on religious grounds.  Also, Attorney General Sessions has ruled that laws regarding non-discrimination on the basis of sex do not apply to transgendered individuals.

This places the Trump Administration squarely in favor of religious rights, coming down on the side of Christian conservatives on every one of the issues under contention.

The document is by no means as radical as it is being portrayed on the left.  The philosophical and legal controversy has to do with which is the most fundamental right, to which the other rights must defer, religious liberty or non-discrimination?  This document states that religious liberty is the most fundamental right.  The left insists that the most fundamental right is non-discrimination.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2017/10/the-government-will-now-follow-20-principles-of-religious-liberty/#89AGhgdwkz5zHBRB.99

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DONALD TRUMP, NOT the SOUR at HotAir, IS Our U.S. PRESIDENT!

Report: Against Mattis’s Advice, Trump Prepares To Decertify The Iran Nuclear Deal

by Allahpundit   at Hot Air:

“Are there any cabinet members who want to tear up the agreement? Tillerson obviously doesn’t. Mattis doesn’t. As of July, the last time the deal was recertified, both Joe Dunford and H.R. McMaster supported keeping it going although McMaster has criticized the terms harshlysince then. And remember, this is an administration full of Iran hawks. They know how Iran has tightened its grip on Syria. They know the threat it poses to Israel. If they don’t want to bail out of the deal right now, there must be pressing reasons.

SEE ALSO: If DNC hands Weinstein’s donations to Emily’s List is the money still tainted?

Actually, there is one cabinet member who supports ending the deal. Coincidentally, she’s in line to replace Tillerson, who’s about as far on the outs with POTUS as one can be without being fired……(Please read on:)

https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/05/report-mattiss-advice-trump-prepares-decertify-iran-nuclear-deal/

Welcome to Congress, Roy Moore! Our Donald Will Love You!…..and NBC’s Todd is a Chucklehead

CHUCK TODD IS A CHUCKLEHEAD TOAD

by Steven Hayward  at PowerLine:

“I confess to having a soft spot for Chuck Todd, NBC’s chief political reporter. Despite his liberal Democratic bona fides, he’s got a lot of insight into the day-to-day dynamics of politics that he relates fairly for the most part, and I found him to be very cordial and forthcoming the one and only time I ever met him in person at one of those infamous, uber-elitist Georgetown cocktail parties.

But he’s also an exhibit of why the media is shredding its credibility, and why reporters should stick to reporting the news rather than trying to think. Chuck Todd describes Alabama’s likely new senator, Roy Moore, as a “fundamentalist.” Todd showed a clip of Moore saying “Our rights don’t come from government. They don’t come from the Bill of Rights. They come from Almighty God.”

To which Todd gave this coda:

“First off, he doesn’t appear to believe in the Constitution as it’s written. . . Now, that’s just a taste of what are very fundamentalist views that have gotten him removed from office twice as Alabama’s chief justice.”

First off—as Todd might say—it wasn’t Moore’s “fundamentalist” views like this that got him tossed off the Alabama Supreme Court, but his act of defying federal court orders. (And in the case of refusing the federal court order to remove the 10 Commandments from the courthouse, it must be said that the Supreme Court case the order was based on is completely incoherent and unprincipled, but that’s a story for another day.) But beyond this, there is Todd’s abysmal ignorance about Moore’s views on the source of our individual rights according to the Founders.

To be sure, the Constitution does not mention God explicitly, but it is not necessary to share Abraham Lincoln’s view that the Constitution should be understood through the lens of the Declaration of Independence, which of course does back up Moore’s outlook.* More embarrassing for Todd would be to look at the state constitutions from the time of the Founding. They all begin like Maryland’s: “We, the people of the state of Maryland, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberty. . .” Ditto New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, as well as the early admitted states like Ohio, Louisiana, etc, etc, etc.

Actually, most modern state constitutions begin with an affirmation of Moore’s outlook. Lets look at the last two (written I suspect by Democrats)—Alaska and Hawaii. Alaska’s constitution begins: “We the people of Alaska, grateful to God and to those who founded our nation and pioneered this great land. . .” Hawaii: “We, the people of Hawaii, grateful for Divine Guidance. . .”

In fact, 46 of the 50 state constitutions begin with an explicit invocation of God, and in most cases directly or indirectly attribute God as the source of our liberties. If believing this makes Moore a “fundamentalist,” then I’m a fundamentalist, too, and probably a large majority of Americans agree.

Which is why I think Senator Moore’s first piece of legislation should be a mandate that all public school children recite the preambles to their state constitutions in school every week. Just to watch liberal heads explode. And to watch the comedy gold of the ACLU arguing in court that state constitutions are unconstitutional!

Meanwhile, everyone is hereby authorized to refer to NBC’s chief political analyst as “Chuck Toad.”

* Question for Chuck Todd: Does he believe Abraham Lincoln should be described as a “fundamentalist”? Because his view was exactly the same as Moore’s.

* Second question for Chuck Todd: William O. Douglas, one of the most liberal justices ever to serve on the Supreme Court, wrote: “We are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” Was Douglas a “fundamentalist”? Should he have been kicked off the Supreme Court for this fundamentalism?

P.S. Everyone knows “Moore’s Law” from computer science—chip speed doubles every 18 months. I propose a new “Moore’s Law” for liberals: Liberal panic and craziness doubles every 18 months in the Trump era….”

Comment:   There seems to be no doubt whatsoever Our Donald had no animus toward the Alabama Justice, Roy Moore recently elected to the U.S. Senate.   He hinted so the evening he celebrated for Alabama’s selected Republican Senator Luther Strange to replace Jeff Sessions whom the President chose for Attorney General.

That evening he also clarified why he wanted to endorse the Senator by organizing another Trump  night…..I believe President Trump wanted to attend another one of these terrific gatherings as President.   He wins so many friends doing so!

Senator Strange welcomed Our Donald’s  visit and support with no strings attached….and Our Donald was impressed.   Rumor spread before and after Moore’s election to the Senate that the President had a great ally to help “Drain the Swamp’ Trump style.

How Reporters Confessed OUR DONALD WON FLORIDA, that special evening, Nov. 9, 2016

FBI Misses Third Deadline to TURN OVER SUBPOENAED DOCUMENTS!

Byron York: Showdown looms over Trump dossier; FBI misses third deadline to turn over subpoenaed documents

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by Byron York  at Washington Examiner:

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“A third deadline has now passed for the FBI and Justice Department to give the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed documents related to the Trump dossier. And for a third time, the bureau has not produced the material.The dossier is a collection of what former FBI Director James Comey called “salacious and unverified” allegations of collusion between Russia and Trump campaign figures in the 2016 campaign. The Russia allegations were compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who was commissioned by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which is thought to have been paid for the work by wealthy supporters of Hillary Clinton. The FBI reportedly considered taking over the dossier project in the fall of 2016, when the campaign was at its height, leading Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley to say the dossier matter raised “questions about the FBI’s independence from politics.”

Both Grassley and the House Intelligence Committee have been interested in learning if the FBI ever used the “salacious and unverified” dossier as a basis for requesting surveillance on anyone in the Trump circle. Those questions onintensified this week with reports that the FBI wiretapped Trump associate and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort during the transition period.

Four weeks ago, on Aug. 24, the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed the FBI and Justice Department, seeking all internal FBI reports “incorporating, relying on, or referring to” information provided by Steele, his sources, or Fusion GPS. The committee also asked for documents on any FBI or Justice “efforts to corroborate, validate, or evaluate” Steele’s information. And the subpoena sought any surveillance applications that included any information or were based on any information, provided by Steele.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes originally set a Sept. 1 deadline for production of the dossier documents. The FBI did not comply. Nunes then extended the deadline to Sept. 14. The FBI did not comply. Then Nunes extended the deadline again, to Sept. 22. Now, again, the FBI has not complied.

It is not unusual for deadlines to be extended. It is not unusual for feet to be dragged. But at some point, there will have to be a resolution to this standoff. A congressional subpoena is not something a government agency can ignore forever.

But it seems likely that the dispute will eventually rise to a higher level. Nunes is a committee chairman, but he does not speak for the entire House. In addition, he has been weakened by Democratic accusations that he leaked classified information — a matter that seems stuck in the Ethics Committee. Given that, if Nunes is to prevail in the subpoena affair, it seems likely he would have to have the support of Speaker Paul Ryan. If the speaker stands behind Nunes’ efforts, the subpoena will have more weight and be more difficult for the FBI and Justice to defy. If on the other hand, Ryan does not stand behind the chairman, the FBI and Justice might be emboldened to delay forever. (A spokesman for Ryan did not immediately answer phone and email inquiries.)

There’s a lot at stake. Nunes is currently traveling in the Middle East, so it is not clear what the next step will be, or when it will happen. But so far, the FBI and the Justice Department do not appear to be in the mood to comply with the subpoena.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-showdown-looms-over-trump-dossier-fbi-misses-third-deadline-to-turn-over-subpoenaed-documents/article/2635321?utm_campaign=Washington%20Examiner:%20News%20From&utm_source=Washington%20Examiner:%20News%20Fr

Trump’s Haters: Victor Davis Hanson At His Best!

Trump Haters, Supporters, Neither, and Both

by Victor Davis Hanson at National Review:

“Partisan conflict is not new, nor is GOP internal dissent. What’s new is in-fighting among the elites. The Left-Wing Trump Haters About a third of the Democratic party (15–20 percent perhaps of the electorate?) loathes Trump, from reasons of the trivial to the fundamental. The hard-leftist hatred is visceral; it is multidimensional; and it is unalterable. Trump is rich, crass, showy, a white male, and 70. As the anti-Obama, he punches every progressive button in existence. A candidate like Trump was not supposed to exist any longer in the 21st-Century Age of Obama, much less should he have ruined the anticipated progressive Obama-Clinton 16-year regnum. Trump’s accent is outer-borough and seems to exemplify for Trump haters the gaucheness of the golden trump name stamped all over New York. The Europeans have utter contempt for Trump, and that embarrasses leftists especially. 00:53Trump sets down in Texas to address Harvey victims Powered by Unlike some Republican politicians who wished to be admired by cultural progressives, Trump prefers baiting the Left and its media appendages, as if to remind them that he prefers to overturn the entire progressive project of the last eight years — if not on ideological grounds (Trump not so long ago voiced a number of centrist and liberal views), at least out of tit-for-tat animosity. Unlike a restrained presidential Bush or a sober Romney, the president answers in kind — and trumps — the boilerplate leftist charge of “fascist!” and “Nazi!” leveled against him. The Trump haters dominate our media and the universities, the entertainment industries, Silicon Valley, the billionaire green classes, the foundations and the brigades of professional foot-soldier activists, identity-politics operatives, and the Bernie Sanders shock troops. They are frenzied because they think their 1,000 cuts have finally hit arteries — only to see Trump revive in Nietzschean fashion, emerging stronger for the wounds. To come so close to ending this nightmare only to realize they are at the alpha and not the omega of their efforts intensifies their hatred. Ritually cutting off Trump’s head, blowing him up, stabbing him to death, hanging him, beating him to a pulp — these all are the rhetorical bookends of the Left’s efforts to subvert the Electoral College, the Russian-collusion mythologies, the impeachment and 25th Amendments psychodramas, and Trump’s hoped-for physical collapse under the stress of pure hatred.

The calls for Trump’s assassination or maiming, if, mutatis mutandis, aimed at Obama would have earned long jail time for dozens; now assassination porn becomes an object of emulation. Yet Trump hatred only solidifies the Trump base. It also reminds independents and wavering centrist Republicans that in a Manichean fight (and the Trump haters seem to envision the current landscape as just that), one inevitably chooses sides. If the choice is reduced to a crude rant at a public Trump rally or the rioters at Claremont, Berkeley, and Middlebury, a screaming Madonna, the “pigs in blanket” chanters of Black Lives Matter, and the masked marauders of Antifa, the Trump haters probably lose. The Loyal Opposition, Sort Of Mainstream Democrats in politics are bewildered as much as repelled by Trump.

They find him scary because their party that professes contempt for wacky Trump supporters somehow finds conservatives in control of all the traditional levers of political power, from the local to the state to the national level. There is no more Blue Wall, and Democrats know why. Trumpism is insidiously predatory and picks off Democratic working constituencies like wolves do wandering sheep from the herd — with nocturnal howls to fair trade, reenergized industrialization, energy production, immigration enforcement, realism aboard, and infrastructure investment. Likewise, savvy Democrats fear Trump because they had long preached that “demography is destiny” only to learn that lots of minority bloc voting in solidly red or blue states was not as electorally potent as a riled working white class in key swing states. The knowledge that the outsider and supposed fool Trump grasped that truth while both his Republican primary rivals and Hillary Clinton did not proves especially irritating. Hillary is now reduced to daydreaming about what a tougher Hillary might have said to Trump during the debate, incoherently bragging she was not intimidated as she proves that in fact she was.

What also scares mainstream Democrats is that Trumpism may have exposed an existential vulnerability of the contemporary Democratic party, heretofore known but rarely voiced: It is now a rich man’s, bifurcated party of the two coasts. It hates the culture of the middle classes (who lack both the romance of the poor and the refinement of the rich) and cynically relies on promises of never-ending entitlements for the underclass. It offers boutique issues for the affluent who, with winks and nods, are assured that they will have the clout and money to navigate around the messy ramifications of their own policy positions. In other words, it is tailor-made to empower a figure like Trump. Democratic establishmentarians fear that their own identity politics are feeding Trump’s rise. But they’d rather lose elections than forfeit a decade’s worth of race and gender investments. Progressives do not mind being called starry-eyed, utopian, impractical, or even socialist; they do fear being tagged as elitists by populists and economic nationalists, especially by a Manhattan billionaire. Trump has leveled that charge as no other Republican has since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Like addicts who know that their fix is both killing them and yet cannot be kicked, so too Democratic establishmentarians fear that their own identity politics are feeding Trump’s rise.

Nevertheless, they would rather lose elections than forfeit a decade’s worth of race and gender investments. For now, they fool themselves into thinking that the latest Trump outrage is the longed-for final straw that crushes the presidential back. Yes/No Trumpers Ten to 15 percent of the electorate are pure pragmatists. In general, they like neither politics nor controversies. They have enough moral figures in their lives without requiring their president to be an ethical icon. Their idea of a good president is one rarely seen or heard, but evident on autopilot when we have a robust economy, quietude overseas, and unity at home. Independents liked Obama’s last year when he vanished from view and let candidates duke it out — as the abstract idea of Obama was always preferable to the reality. Yet independents also notice that an incompetent and haughty Obama left havoc in his wake, though they nod that at least he was “presidential,” which means presentable to elites abroad. If American under Trump hits a 3 percent rate of GDP annual growth, unemployment dips below 4 percent, a soaring stock market does not crash, and the administration makes some progress on lowering the deficit, carefully raising interest rates, and reducing taxes, the fence-sitters become Trumpers. If not, they are loud anti-Trumpers repulsed by his tweets and Make American Great Again rallies. Right now, they sense — but are not quite convinced — that it is more likely for a while that Trump’s negatives will be overshadowed by good economic and foreign-policy news.

The Republican Never Trumpers About 10 percent of Republicans — overrepresented among the coastal intellectual, political, and affluent strata — despise Trump every bit as much as do their hard-core progressive counterparts. For some, to be fair, the loathing is entirely principled: After damning progressives for being uncouth, reckless in their personal lives, loose in speech and behavior, how can they now excuse Trump, the messenger, just because his message is often convenient? This species of Never Trumpers sees support for Trump as abject ethical treason. They would even rather live with a Clinton Supreme Court for 30 years than be stained by Trumpian enablement and hypocrisy (“wrong with Hillary is preferable to right with Trump”). They prefer catharsis to governance with Trump and dream that they will be ready to rebuild the party of George H. W. Bush and Paul Ryan after the fires of such ritual cleansing have incinerated the Trump yahoos. Other sorts of Never Trumpers are schizophrenic and even somewhat remorseful. After a bad Trump week, they exuberantly brag to friends or write “I told you so” columns. When good Trump news lingers for a few days or so, they grow sullen in fear not merely that others are fooled by Trump and amoral in their utilitarianism, but that they might be fooled as well: They hate Trump the man, in the abstract, while they’re relieved that Trump the message, alongside his concrete actions, is almost what they wanted. A final Never Trump cadre is neither ideological nor political, but more careerist. They had bet that the outrageous Trump candidacy was a joke that had no chance of winning, and so they made the necessary careerist adjustments. They wrote him off and bet their reputations for wisdom on their opposition to Trump, and in some cases they even ventured to support the sure-thing Clinton administration. After November, they became orphaned for their wrong-headed wagers, without a constituency among their own, and increasingly deemed less useful by the Left, MSNBC, or NPR. When Trump won, they doubled down and swore that he would implode from sheer incompetence or crudity, or would finally reveal his Manhattan liberalism, in league with Senate Democrats………..”   There’s more of the reality below….Please continue reading!

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450903/trump-haters-left-right-versus-trump-supporters-civil-war-field-guide

The Stupid Left at ESPN

ESPN IS AS STUPID AS WE THOUGHT

By Ben Domenech  at the Federalist:

 

“It was a story too dumb to be real: reports yesterday emerged from ESPN critic Clay Travis at Outkick the Coverage that ESPN had pulled an Asian announcer named Robert Lee off a University of Virginia college football game to avoid offending idiots. I have to admit, I didn’t think it could be true. How unbelievably stupid do you have to be to think that someone whose name is similar to a Confederate general – albeit absent the all-important middle initial – would lead to triggering and upset viewers if he called a Charlottesville-based sporting event.

Apparently, this stupid: they really did pull the announcer from the Virginia football game because his name is ‘Robert Lee.’ ESPN’s statement: “We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name. In that moment it felt right to all parties. It’s a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play by play for a football game has become an issue.” More here.

I cannot fathom how incredibly stupid you have to be to think this is an issue. Additional reporting today suggests that ESPN brought this up internally, weighed it in discussions with Lee, and ultimately decided to switch him to a presumably inoffensive Pittsburgh game instead. But he’s still going to be right there, with that troublesome name, and since announcers aren’t onscreen for most of the games, you’ll be hearing that name without the knowledge that he’s a pleasant-looking Asian fellow instead of a white-bearded steel-eyed gray-clad racist monster on a horse. As Iowahawk notes:

Would someone have made a guy named Robert Lee calling a UVA game a meme of some kind? Potentially, but it wouldn’t have lasted more than a day, and ESPN’s real concern as their statement and reporting show was “insensitivity” more than walking into a joke. Except now they are the joke – they are an absolute laughingstock, and their defenders have been totally undermined by a move so stupid that it will be an item of ridicule for months to come.

Of course, now the search is on for other Civil War figures with names similar to those announcers who irritate the fans. I can inform you I have found a Confederate of note named John Buck, but not a Joseph Buck, so you should keep looking. This is an incredibly stupid age, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to get something good out of it. Happy hunting!

http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/23/confirmed-espn-stupid-thought/