Who Decided Not To Save Tyrone Woods?

Via Powerline: 

Charles Woods, the father Tyrone Woods, who was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, reveals details of meeting Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at the publicly broadcast memorial service for the slain Americans at Andrews Air Force Base only days after the attack. And, in a recent radio appearance, Woods questions who made the call not to send in back-up forces to possibly save his son’s life, as well as the three other Americans killed in Benghazi (which includes the American ambassador to Libya) . . . .

“Well, this is what Hillary did,” Woods continues. “She came over and, you know, did the same thing—separately came over and talked with me. I gave her a hug, shook her hand. And she did not appear to be one bit sincere—at all. And you know, she mentioned that the thing about, we’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video. That was the first time I had even heard about anything like that.”

Allahpundit focuses on what I too found to be the most troubling aspect:

What I found significant about this wasn’t the “movie protest” versus “preplanned attack” element, it was the fact that Hillary’s promise of vengeance to the father of a fallen SEAL wasn’t that we’d get the jihadis who killed him but that we’d punish the filmmaker. That’s perverse, but in keeping with the fact that she decided to run ads on Pakistani TV apologizing for the film while Islamist cretins menaced American diplomats across the region. Even if you give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she had no intention of prosecuting the filmmaker but was merely telling Woods something she thought would console him, why on earth would she zero in on the filmmaker as the target of blame instead of the degenerates who actually shot his son? She and O need to answer. Let’s see how much they really value free speech. Simple question for both: Is Woods a liar or not?

Catholic Bishops Speak

Joe, you lied.

Sadly, this administration only seems to worry about religious freedom when adherents turn violent.

Thanks to Google . . .

a corporation, with stronger free-speech values than the United States government is willing to support.

Why We Need The First Amendment

Michael Totten:  Why can't the President of the United States bring himself to defend free speech in front of a murderous mob? Because apparently he doesn't respect it.

This past week has proven that to be true of many on the left.

Pro-Obama media — so far beyond bad it’s almost indescribable.

Jacobson: 

An American Ambassador and three American security guards were butchered, anti-American riots broke out across the Middle East, a U.S. Embassy both before and after being stormed issued apologies for the exercise of our constitutional rights, our Secretary of State practically prostrated herself, the President had a good night’s sleep through it all and then went to Vegas for a fundraiser, and Mitt Romney commented intelligently on the absurdity of it all.

So on whom did the media collectively and in unison lash out? Mitt Romney.

Read the whole thing.  Every time I think the legacy media can sink no lower, they manage to exceed my expectations.

Ryan = Clinger

Paul Ryan: “Hey, I’m a Catholic deer-hunter. I am happy to be clinging to my guns and my religion.”

This Ryan will second that.

Obama's Risky Campaign Strategy

James Taranto: 

Mr. Obama cultivated an image as a unifier able to transcend partisan, ideological and racial divides.

Four years later, he is a divisive incumbent defending a grim status quo of his own. Having lost the broad appeal he enjoyed in 2008, he is making narrow appeals to particular voting blocs with the apparent aim of shoring up support and turnout. . . .

To appeal to single women, he picked a fight with the Catholic Church by refusing a conscience exemption from the ObamaCare birth-control mandate. For Hispanics, there was the promise of lax immigration enforcement against illegal aliens who arrived in the U.S. as children. His "evolution" on same-sex marriage seemed designed to appeal not just to gays but also to young voters, whose attitudes on the subject tend to be liberal.

But these calculated overtures carry risks. In appealing to particular demographics, the president may be alienating other Democratic or swing voters.

Read the whole thing.

The Church Against Obamacare

FNS host Chris Wallace interviews Cardinal David Wuerl, the Archbiship of Washington on the 12 lawasuits brought by 43 Catholic institutions against contraceptive mandate.  Among other things, they discuss the First Amendment issues involved and the lack of news coverage from other media outlets.

Today Is Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day

Graphic Stolen from Michell Malkin's site

This post is a bit off topic for this site, but I felt it was necessary to take part in "Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day," an effort to defend free speech and, in particular, bloggers that have been  (or will be) targeted by harassment and intimidation. 

For those who don't know who Brett Kimberlin is, I refer you to this story in the Washington Examiner for some background:

Brett Kimberlin, [is] an activist and the founder of the group Velvet Revolution who was convicted in 1981 of exploding eight bombs in 1978 in Speedway, Ind. One of his bombs blew off the leg of a man who subsequently committed suicide.

Nowadays, Kimberlin targets conservative bloggers like Aaron Worthing and Robert Stacy McCain in Maryland, and Patrick Frey of Patterico's Pontifications in California. Why? For publishing facts about Kimberlin's criminal record.

Kimberlin harasses his targets by, among many other ways, filing false charges in courts that require expensive, time-consuming litigation, disrupting his targets' workplaces, and dropping dark hints about spouses and kids.

Because McCain blogged about Kimberlin, his wife received threats that have forced them to leave their home for an undisclosed location.  For the same reason, Patrick Frey suffered through a month's long harassment campaign that included a SWAT team, guns drawn, being falsely sent to his family home.

I refer readers to each of their websites to read more about their individual experiences with Brett Kimberlin.  I also refer people to Michelle Malkin's site, where you can find a roundup on "Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day."

Would Obama Have Forced Mother Theresa to Supply Contraceptives and Sterilization Services?

It would appear so.  Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., made this point n an open letter on Monday and in a videotaped message observing that:

the Obama administration would not have considered the work of Mother Teresa as “religious” and thus would not have exempted her charitable organizations from a new federal regulation, issued under Obamacare, that will force Catholics to act against their faith.

“Under the mandate, even the work of Mother Teresa wouldn’t be qualified as religious,” said Cardinal Wuerl in the video.

“Contrary to America’s great tradition of religious freedom, embodied in the First Amendment, Catholic institutions will now be forced to act against their conscience and provide coverage for drugs and procedures they believe are morally wrong, simply because they serve people of all faiths or no faith equally,” said Cardinal Wuerl.

Mother Teresa founded a hospice in Washington, D.C., where members of her order, the Missionaries of Charity, care for people with advanced AIDS.

The administration’s new regulation includes a “religious” exemption, but that exemption is narrowly drawn and does not extend to Catholic lay persons or to Catholic hospitals, schools or charities.

Much more at the links above.

Obama vs. Catholics

Today, dozens of Catholic institutions, including the Archdiocese of New York and the University of Notre Dame, filed lawsuits against the Obama Administration challenging its attack on religious freedom via the contraception mandate.  As the University of Notre Dame explains in its complaint:

This lawsuit is about one of America’s most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one’s religion without government interference. It is not about whether people have a right to abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. Those services are, and will continue to be, freely available in the United States, and nothing prevents the Government itself from making them more widely available. But the right to such services does not authorize the Government to force the University of Notre Dame (“Notre Dame”) to violate its own conscience by making it provide, pay for, and/or facilitate those services to others, contrary to its sincerely held religious beliefs.  American history and tradition, embodied in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, protects religious entities from such overbearing and oppressive governmental action. . . .

If the Government can force religious institutions to violate their beliefs in such a manner, there is no apparent limit to the Government’s power. Such an oppression of religious freedom violates Notre Dame’s clearly established constitutional and statutory rights.

The First Amendment also prohibits the Government from becoming excessively entangled in religious affairs and from interfering with a religious institution’s internal decisions concerning the organization’s religious structure, ministers, or doctrine. The U.S. Government Mandate tramples all of these rights.

More here.  And here.

In a Bold Move

Obama adopts a position on gay marriage that Dick Cheney articulated twelve years ago.  Gay marriage, birth control, dogs . . . .  It seems Obama is willing to talk about anything as long as it's not the economy.  I wonder why?

The Obama Adminstration's Top 15 "Achievements"

To counter conservative claims that the Obama administration has failed to achieve anything in three plus years, The Lid has compiled an entire list of notable achievements:

• Going to war in Libya without first seeking congressional approval.
• The administration's screwing of the primary GM investors so he could give the company to his buddies in the UAW.
• Offering Joe Sestak a White House job to drop out of the Senate race against Arlen Specter 
• Offering Andrew Romanoff a White House job to drop out of the Senate Race against Michael Bennett.
• Dropping an already won case against the New Black Panther's.
• Refusing to prosecute African Americans for Civil Rights violations. 
• Ignoring a court order to ease up on restrictions against deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, instead issuing tougher restrictions.
• Circumventing the Senate by setting up a "shadow cabinet" of Czars.
• Obama's Justice Department’s refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Ignoring his constitutional responsibility to defend laws passed by Congress.
• Firing (and slandering) AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin after because he was investigating Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson a friend of the Obamas.
• Practicing crony capitalism and wasting taxpayer money with Green energy loans to Solyndra and other failing companies. 
• No bid contract given to a company owned by major Obama donor for a small pox vaccine that doesn't work.
• Fast and Furious: Giving guns to Mexican drug cartels in an attempt to take away guns from law abiding Americans. 
•  Making recess appointments when congress was not in recess.
• Trampling on the Catholic Church's first amendment rights by forcing them to pay for procedures and drugs that their faith bans.
• The GSA and Secret Service scandals neither of which should be blamed on Obama directly, both of which show his poor management of the federal government.

Hat tip to the Astute Bloggers.

The "War on Women"

Looking at the White House/media's phony "war on women."

Are We Living In a Post-Constitutional America?

The Alcohol Mandate

Legal Insurrection observes, "There’s a lot of talk today about imposing a coffee mandate on employers, including Mormon institutions which oppose the use of caffeine, because of the health benefits of coffee."

Personally, I think we need an alcohol mandate.  Study after study shows the health benefits of moderate drinking.  So why shouldn't the government just mandate free alcohol?  Clearly, anyone that would oppose this common sense mandate is just a new age prohobitionist.  And to those who say it would violate the religious freedoms of Muslims, for whom the Koran forbids alcohol, I ask, but how can you argue with science?  People's lives are at stake.

Who Stands to Benefit from Obama's Contraceptive Mandate?

Big Pharma. That's who.

Forget for a minute the religious question and look at who wins big here: Big Pharma. This mandate is not really about condoms or generic versions of “the pill,” which are available free or cheap in lots of places. This is about brand-name birth control drugs and other devices that some consumers swear off because they are too expensive. The Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requires health-insurance companies provide contraceptive coverage for all “FDA approved contraceptive methods.” It does not insist on generics. And it does not offer any cost containment.

What’s more, the mandate prevents health-insurance companies from having copays or deductibles for the benefit. This is the perfect set up for Big Pharma. Since the drugs will be paid for by a third party (insurance companies, who will pass the cost on to employers and the rest of us), the consumer won’t worry about the price. Expensive brand names will no doubt see demand rise. Ask more health-care analysts why the cost of medical services continues to rise so rapidly and near the top of the list is the fact that a third-party payment system won’t contain costs.

Back in 2009, many observers were surprised when Big Pharma came out in favor of President Obama’s health-care reform bill. The industry spent millions running television ads in favor of the law and industry lobbyists pushed hard for it.  One important reason they did so was the promise that with the new law they would have a new market of millions of new customers. The contraceptive mandate is a perfect example.

It’s important to point out that among President Obama’s biggest financial backers are precisely the Big Pharma companies who benefit from the mandate.

What's a little thing like the First Amendment when there are cronies to pay off?   Via Instapundit.

This is the Compromise?

In response to the backlash from his mandate that employers, including religious institutions, offer health plans that cover both birth control and abortion-causing drugs, Obama has settled on a compromise:  I'll just mandate that employeres contract with insurers to cover contraception for free, and hence employers cannot be said to be paying for it.  This leaves Ace of Spades asking the only obvious question.  "Has he gone insane?"

Obamacare vs. the First Amendment

Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sibelius, recently announced that Obamacare would require nearly all employers, including the Catholic Church, to offer, free of charge, insurance coverage for  "preventive services," which her department has defined to include contraception, abortion drugs, and sterilization services.  As Red State explains, the problem, at least in part, is that:

Catholics are bound by the Law of Moses expressed in The Decalogue not to commit murder. The Catholic Church considers an unborn child a fully-corporate, living human being. Abortion, kinetic or chemical, terminates this life and hence violates the Sixth Commandment of the Ten. Paying for this act to take place (by buying insurance or paying the penalty fee for not providing the insurance) would make the Church morally culpable for every one of these murders that occurred under the auspices of an ObamaCare-approved employer insurance plan. Sec. Sibelius has just ordered the Catholic Church to directly violate a fundamental precept of their faith.

 And so violated the First Amendment, which provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religioin, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ."  Sadly, the Catholic Church has itself to blame to the extent that it puts its trust Obama and previously supported Obamacare.