(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)
Does anybody, anywhere, believe that the HHS Mandate was ever intended to be anything other than a deliberate attack on the Catholic Church?
Anyone?
The duplicitous way that the Mandate was handled from day one should have convinced most Americans that shenanigans were afoot.
The Mandate was drafted in closed-door meetings of a committee of abortion industry insiders. It violated promises that the President of the United States made to Congress in order to pass Obamacare.
The administration rolled it out with an orchestrated apologia from the pandering press. Equally pandering organizations such as the ACLU joined in with assurances that the Mandate did not violate the First Amendment.
Sadly, the American people lined up on this issue according to their partisan predilections rather than the preservation of American liberties. Republicans picked at the HHS Mandate while Democrats fell face first into backing it.
Meanwhile, this Democrat found herself standing with the conservative Republicans who had the guts to go against it. I wanted Congress to find its spine and overturn the thing before it ever took effect. I was disappointed, but not surprised, when Congress spent their negotiating capital chasing financial gains for their big money donors instead of defending the Constitution.
While the Republicans spun political webs, stalwart Democrat true believers denied the plain truth of what was in front of them. They recited administration talking points without changing a comma. They followed the administration through all the ridiculous twists and turns it has made to defend this indefensible Mandate like a bunch of baby ducks, following a mop that they accidentally imprinted on at birth.
It was confounding, watching such willful stupidity. I am, after all, a Democrat. I held elected office as a member of the Democratic Party for 18 years. Despite being harassed and repeatedly challenged for my party registration, I’ve continued to stay a Democrat, right down to the present day.
It’s not easy being a pro Jesus, pro life, pro traditional marriage, Catholic Democrat elected official. Only somebody as stubborn as me could have done it.
But I have never acceded to party demands that bely the truth of what is real when it’s right in front of my eyes. I see party loyalists from both sides do that, and I wonder what kind of mushy little minds they must have to be able to do that to themselves. You’d think it would give them headaches.
I knew from jump street that the HHS Mandate was a backroom deal and that the administration was lying, lying, lying about it. I also knew that the Rs were playing politics with it. I also knew that the press and the organizations that backed it were acting as political operatives, not defenders of civil liberties or journalists.
This charade has been going on for years now, and the dumb-as-dirt party loyalists have kept right on mouthing the talking points, even as the talking points themselves change. Which leads me back to my original question: Does anybody, anywhere, believe that the HHS Mandate was ever intended to be anything other than a deliberate attack on the Catholic Church?
Do they?
I’m not talking about self-deluders who recite talking points as a reflex. I mean people who actually think. Does anyone who thinks believe that the HHS Mandate was ever anything other than what it was and is?
If they do; if someone out there is so unschooled in current events that they don’t know this thing for what it is, I may have the antidote to their confusion.
The Judicial Education Project filed an Amicus Brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of the Sisters of Life and the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. The brief cites emails between the White House and the IRS. These emails show that the administration crafted the HHS Mandate to attack missions of the Catholic Church, including, specifically, Catholic Charities, Catholic higher education and Catholic hospitals.
Administration officials and IRS officials worked together to draft the HHS Mandate in such a way that it would impact Catholic organizations all across the country. It was a bald-faced, deliberate attempt to force these organizations to either kiss Caesar’s ring or face government attack.
It’s no small thing, even for big organizations like Notre Dame and Catholic Charities, to find themselves reading court documents “The People of the United States of America vs …” and see their name on it. That will put the fear into anybody.
Except, it seems, nuns.
How does a prez defeat nuns following Christ? Cardinals and bishops have faced this question. Maybe President Obama should have learned the truth from them. They could have told him the answer.
The answer is, you can’t.
Photo Credit: The Atlantic (AP)