The Little Sisters of the Poor, first recognized as a Pontifical Institute by Pope Pius XI on July 9, 1854, is a religious congregation dedicated to the care of the elderly poor. According to their website, this mission means that the sisters “welcome them into our homes, form one family with them, accompany them from day to day and care for them with love and respect until God calls them home.”

In the United States alone, the Little Sisters operate 33 homes where the elderly poor are cared for. They also carry out their apostolate in some additional 30 countries around the world. The Sisters are mendicant — they beg for their funding and resources — and yet despite the financial difficulties inherent in such a charism, the order continues to carry out its important work. They make no distinction among those they care for. They are of every race and creed. They also employ support staff from across the spectrum of belief.

Which means that they have no chance at an exemption from the HHS mandate. They will be forced to provide health insurance that covers contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortifacient drugs, or face crippling fines.  Neither option is viable for the Little Sisters, so those who will be penalized are their employees, and more importantly, the elderly so in need of their care.

This past Sunday, the Little Sisters of the Poor were invited to speak at Masses in our area. Their message? If something doesn’t change, they will be forced to leave the United States, as they have left other countries (such as China) where religious persecution has made it impossible for them to operate ethically.

When the sister speaking at the Mass I attended mentioned this, it both made me angry and broke my heart. When did we become a country mentioned in the same breath as nations known for oppression, human rights violations, and an environment hostile to freedom of conscience?We’ve all been fighting this battle against the coming darkness for quite some time, but something about this small, unassuming nun telling the parish that they would be forced to discontinue their care for the elderly poor, and even worse, to leave the country altogether, really drove it home. This is what it has come to. We are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. We have become something else.

This is not the America I grew up in. This is not the America I want for my children. I want to recommend a course of action, some concrete thing that people can do to put a stop to this madness, but like the relentless evil of legal abortion that came before it, there’s only so much that can humanly be done. The only thing for it is to keep praying, keep fighting, and keep teaching our children what America was, and should be again.

Please remember the Little Sisters of the Poor in your intentions, as well as the elderly poor in their care who have no place else to go. If you have the means to do so, I encourage you to support their efforts financially. The work they do is not only an essential corporal work of mercy, it is a bright spot in a dark and troubled world. It is my fervent hope that they will be able to continue to provide comfort, care, and aid to the elderly poor. What a tremendous blessing it is for them to be present at the hour of death for so many who would otherwise be alone, singing the Salve Regina, praying with the dying, and giving to them, as sister called it, “a celestial sendoff when God calls them home to Himself.”

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder

In contrast to the Tea Party, union members protesting in Michigan’s capital city of Lansing Tuesday were hailed by many as modern day heroes, even though they physically assaulted a Fox News contributor and tore down an Americans for Prosperity tent near the capitol building. Because, you know, that’s what democracy looks like. Or something.

The left is understandably outraged over the passage of Michigan’s right-to-work legislation, as statistics show unions in right-to-work states are significantly weakened. But they brought this upon themselves. The moderate Republican Governor Rick Snyder has repeatedly said right-to-work legislation was “not on my agenda,” and has done a praiseworthy job of working with both Republicans and Democrats during his first two years in office. But labor unions forced his hand when they sought to enshrine collective bargaining rights into Michigan’s Constitution with a ballot proposal last month. The proposal failed by a 15 point margin, so conservatives made a bold decision to take up right-to-work legislation, even though most polls show Michiganders are split on the issue.

Whether or not Governor Snyder will pay a political price for his acquiescence is unknown. He isn’t up for re-election until 2014, and there is talk that boisterous Senate minority leader Gretchen Whitmer will run against him, but other Midwestern Governors who battled the unions, most notably Scott Walker, came out on the winning side.

Not only has Michigan been a hotbed of activity for economic conservatives, it has quietly become one of the most socially conservative states in the country. Just last week, state Senators passed a set of bills that will prevent insurance plans in Michigan’s Obamacare exchange, as well as private plans, from covering elective abortions. Coverage for abortions can still be included in the plans, but the policyholder will have to pay an additional premium for the service. The Senate also passed expanded conscience protections for institutions and individuals who have moral objections to providing or performing services that violate their deeply held religious beliefs.

Ed Rivet, legislative director of Right to Life of Michigan, noted the significance of the legislation: “We’ve lived for 40 years with abortion being built into most benefit plans, and you have to opt the coverage out of the plan. Now, it’s reversed. Now, if it’s abortion coverage, you can still have it, but you have to add it.” The bills, once signed into law, would make Michigan the 18th state in the union with restrictions on abortion coverage in the looming Obamacare exchanges.

The implementation of ObamaCare requires either the states to set up insurance exchanges for people to buy coverage, or for the federal government to step in and do it for them.

It will take a long battle marked by little victories, but ObamaCare can still be washed away.

A host of states with Republican governors—Wisconsin, Ohio and now New Jersey—have either publicly stated they won’t set up the exchanges, or in the case of New Jersey governor Chris Christie, vetoed legislation aimed at accomplishing such. Furthermore, Speaker John Boehner has said that the funding of ObamaCare is something that needs to be on the table in deficit reduction talks.

This law is going to require a broad national consensus to implement, and when the opposition party controls the branch of Congress that authorizes expenditures, plus thirty governorships, implementation can only happen through Republican capitulation. So far that isn’t happening.

Furthermore, implementation can only happen with public support and the reality is that the American public is not behind this law. Exit polling on November 6 showed a majority of Americans did not like ObamaCare, and were re-electing its namesake for other reasons. In several states, ballot initiatives tied to ObamaCare were on the ballot—and they all lost.

Let’s take it back a step further to early 2010 and recall the Republicans won a special Senate race in Massachusetts—for the late Teddy Kennedy’s old seat no less—because Scott Brown promised to be the 41^st vote against health care (the number required to block legislation from coming to the Senate floor, until the defeated Left decided to re-write the rules). When Brown’s political career hinged exclusively on opposition to ObamaCare he won. When the focus of Massachusetts voters broadened this past November, he lost.

The message? Even in the most Democratic of states, voters will still cast their ballots against ObamaCare if that’s all that’s on the ballot. That’s why there should be no hesitation among Republicans, nor among conservative Democrats, who were bullied and overrun in their own party by the Obama-Pelosi alliance in early 2009 when the law was first being written, in going into full-scale opposition on implementation.

There’s still the messy task of constructing a new system for financing health care, one based on individual ownership of health insurance (i.e., not through one’s employer) and then using Medicaid to cover those who, through no fault of their own, can’t afford needed services.

The biggest failing of ObamaCare was not that it robbed America of a great system—in reality, the battles between the insurance industry and government resembled a war for turf among mafia dons, with the foot soldiers just kicking their percentage upstairs regardless of who was in charge.

No, the biggest failing of ObamaCare was that it wasted time in getting us to a better system. That’s why it needs to be resisted now, eventually overturned and finally replaced. The last I checked, November 6, 2012 was not the end date of history.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com

Are abortion-inducing drugs or insulin more important?

That’s a question I have found myself asking in the last few weeks.  Last week, my family filed suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  Using authority created by President Obama’s health care legislation, the Affordable Care Act, Kathleen Sebelius and other HHS officials have created an unjust, arbitrary mandate that violates my faith and common sense.

The HHS mandate requires my family, through the health care plans we provide to our associates, to pay for drugs, procedures, and counseling that violate our beliefs. These beliefs are founded not only in our faith but also in reason and what science tells us about when human life begins.

Even if you don’t share my beliefs, the mandate requires coverage for the wrong drugs and procedures.  It does nothing to decrease cost or improve access to drugs like insulin or heart medication and forces employers to pay the full cost of products like abortion-inducing drugs.  Why is the Obama administration prioritizing controversial life-ending drugs over life-saving drugs?

Unlike a Type 1 diabetic’s decision to continue using insulin, the decision to use contraception, sterilization, or abortion-inducing drugs is a personal choice.  These are purely elective services.  In fact, our plan already covers medically necessary contraception, that is, oral contraceptives prescribed to treat conditions like endometriosis.

Simply put, the mandate in the Affordable Care Act now compels me to offer, free of charge, non–medically necessary drugs and procedures that violate my religious beliefs.  If a diabetic has to pay co-pays and deductibles for insulin, is it truly just to force nearly all employers to provide free abortion-inducing drugs?

[The following is the video (television commercial) that Kennedy and CatholicVote produced to inform and educate voters about the lawsuit, and the HHS Mandate. It is currently running on television in 5 battleground television markets]:

Now, after Wednesday night’s debate, we’ve shifted into overdrive into declaring the Obama campaign dead and the Romney campaign roaring. Over the next couple days, as more polls come in, we’ll see how much of this translates into a real change in the landscape.

I didn’t watch Wednesday’s debate, opting instead for a trip to the Brewers-Padres baseball game in Milwaukee, near where I live. In retrospect, maybe it would have been more fun to watch Obama potentially cough up his lead than it was to watch the Brewer bullpen cough up their 6-0 lead, but after watching presidential debates since 1984 when I was a freshman in high school,  and my tolerance level for political spin has maxed out. But in reading the recaps, the candidates broached one topic that merits a more in-depth conversation, and it’s Independent Payment Advisory Board.

President Obama might not intend health care rationing, but the structure he put in place easily allows for just that.

You might recognize the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) as the “death panels”, that dominated the health care debate in the summer of 2009. Conservatives charged that the panels would ration health care and deny grandma the treatments she needed to stay alive for the sake of keeping within budget. Liberals furiously charged that this was a lie, that there were restrictions on what the IPAB could and couldn’t do.

Is it too bipartisan to say both bring a reasonable point? The IBPA has been granted the power to propose cuts in spending if health care dollars exceed a certain level, although Congress would have the option to come back with its own cuts. As a general rule, when Obama says he doesn’t intend that grandma be denied her health care, I’m inclined to believe him.

But what the president fails to grasp is that with the IPAB he has implemented a structure which can do just what his critics charge, regardless of original intent. And given the debate that goes on in the United States over end-of-life issues, is it really some huge stretch to suggest that a future panel might decide it’s best to save health care money by denying treatments to the elderly?

The fact the panel is unelected fits the needs of the cowardly politician perfectly. What better way to cop-out then by either claiming helplessness in stopping the evil IPAB, or even better, portraying themselves as outraged by the IPAB decisions.

And the mere existence of the IPAB is an example of why a market-driven approach to solving health care should be preferred. If you open up competition, put policies in place that allow people to own their own health coverage—as opposed to having it owned for them by their employer or the government, the competition for their business can produce more humane results. The government can then step in with Medicaid to pick up the slack where the market leaves off, rather than attempting to drive the whole process itself.

The IPAB is unlikely to have an impact on anyone’s life in the next few years, meaning it won’t get nearly the attention it deserves. But it is likely to have a major impact on everyone’s life 10-15 years from now. And if this sort of health care infrastructure is not what Americans want, the time to stop it is right now.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com

The one on the left already will raise taxes on the middle class. The one on the right has pledged to assure that tax cuts don't unduly favor the wealthy.

One of the consistent charges leveled against Romney in the comments ’round these parts has been that he will raise taxes on the middle class while reducing taxes on the wealthy.

Problem is, the study the folks who make that charge have been relying upon is terribly flawed and utterly ignores important parts of Romney’s plan. Romney, for instance, sets as a goal that the overall distribution of how the tax burden falls will not change. In other words, if the wealthiest 10 percent are paying 80-some percent of all income taxes right now his plans will actively try to maintain that ratio. Tax cuts, then, would be available for all who pay taxes, but the “fairness” of the distribution would not change.

The same cannot be said for the taxes set to be imposed by Obamacare. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT):

CBO and JCT now estimate that about 6 million people will pay a penalty because they are uninsured in 2016 (a figure that includes uninsured dependents who have the penalty paid on their behalf ) and that total collections will be about $7 billion in 2016 and average about $8 billion per year over the 2017–2022 period.

Those estimates differ from projections that CBO and JCT made in April 2010: About two million more uninsured people are now projected to pay the penalty each year, and collections are now expected to be about $3 billion more per year.

So starting in 2016, on top of any taxes already due, six million Americans will have to cough up seven billion more dollars in taxes (that’s more than $1,000 on top of one’s tax bill per person) and that figure will rise to eight billion dollars for the years 2017-22 (or $1,333 more per person).

Mind you: this is not a health insurance premium; this is the tax penalty for failing to have your own insurance. So if you’re one of the six million Americans saddled with this new tax, you still won’t have insurance.

• The Inspector General reported that, contra Eric Holder’s assertions, top Justice officials in Washington *did* have damning knowledge of Fast and Furious, the gun-walking scandal that has left at least one American law enforcement official, and hundreds of Mexicans, dead.
• Our ambassador to Libya, who was barely guarded, was murdered in Benghazi in a coordinated assault; and our embassy in Cairo was breached in an attack by a mob that we pretty much knew were coming.
  • Despite the warnings we had, which the President didn’t hear since he had skipped so many intelligence briefings, our government insisted it was all caused by a film trailer on YouTube.
• A filmmaker was taken from his home by a cadre of sheriff’s deputies for producing a film that the government didn’t like (please, drop the pretense that the midnight visit, on that day, from that many deputies, surrounded by TV cameras, downtown to answer questions from the FBI, was strictly because of a probation violation).
• Our embassies have come under attack throughout the Middle East and are seeing loud protests in Europe and Asia.
  • While this was happening, the President of the United States was hopping a jet to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, avoiding a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister (he later changed course, after being duly embarrassed publicly), and prepping for an appearance on Letterman.
    • During this appearance the head of the executive branch of the federal government played dumb about the size of he federal debt. He didn’t lie, precisely, when Dave asked if it were around $10 trillion, but “$16 trillion or something like that” or even, “more than that, Dave, and that’s too much,” would have been an acceptable answer.
• Our military has temporarily suspended conducting joint operations with Afghan forces because, well, the Afghanis have this tendency to shoot our guys.
  • Sidenote: more than twice as many Americans have died in Afghanistan in the three-plus years since Obama took office than did in the seven years we were there before he took office.
• We found out that Obamacare will cost 6 million taxpayers an additional $7 billion in taxes in 2016. And it rises to $8 billion the following year.
• A video has emerged that shows Barack Obama committing himself to the idea of wealth redistribution. (Not that this is news, but it bears repeating.)
• Obama held a fundraiser at a place with a $280,000 sculpture constructed with golden champagne bottles worth $300 each. Because nothing serves to underscore your opponent’s out-of-touch richness like raising money next to a stack of golden champagne bottles.
• Emails secured under a FOIA request have proved that officials at the Department of Justice colluded with Media Matters for America to target and discredit journalists who were covering scandals at the DOJ

But none of that appears to be as important as Mitt Romney’s 47% comment.

Now. Romney’s comment has plenty of problems—the 47% of Americans who do not pay income taxes cannot be uniformly characterized as lazy moochers who will all vote for Obama no matter what. Likewise, the remaining 53% are not all perfectly virtuous, industrious, assured Romney voters.

I’m not defending the comment. It was tin-eared. It was wrong. I wish he hadn’t said it and I wish he didn’t think it. Even if there is some truth to it as well: there is, statistically speaking, about 47% of the voting public that will definitely vote for Obama. Perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less, but right around there. That 47% definitely has some overlap with the 47% who do not pay income taxes, but not perfect coincidence. The task of political campaigns is to identify who is in that group who are unpersuadable and not waste resources on them. So from an electoral perspective he wasn’t wholly wrong: he doesn’t need to worry about them, for good reason. But I still wish he hadn’t said it.

That said, I’m wondering why that comment has been *so* dominant in the news cycle with all these other things going on. Perhaps it’s a rhetorical question. I’m sure some of our august commenters will have ideas.

You got it: the world is burning and I'm yukking it up with Dave and hob-nobbing with Jay-Z and Beyonce!

Transcript of the one sentence to rule it all:

We’re going to be gifted with a healthcare plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don’t, which purportedly covers at least ten million more people without adding a single new doctor (but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents), written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it (but exempted themselves from it), and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a Treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke.

“So,” she concludes, “what…could possibly go wrong?”

Oh, that's good. She nailed it alright! And there's not a thing you can do about it! LOL!

It will, however, be followed by what I’m most interested in: Cardinal Dolan’s closing prayer. THAT. could be the highlight of the conventions season if the Dems continue their anti-God, anti-Jerusalem, anti-life, anti-woman, anti-religious liberty ways.

But before you listen to Obama, or even after (if you bother), you owe it to your Catholic martial spirit to check out this homily by the normally reserved Most Reverend Gilbert Sheldon, bishop emeritus of Steubenville, delivered here at Franciscan University at the Mass in Finnegan Field House held at the beginning of this year’s new student orientation—the Mass at which new faculty and administrators took the Oath of Fidelity to the Magisterium.

His Excellency’s delivery was staid and straightforward as ever, but his content was, to put it mildly, stirring. You can watch it here, with the transcript below.

The text, as delivered, with my emphases:

A year ago I had the privilege of addressing this assembly and receiving the Oath of Fidelity on behalf of the Church. I thought it would be the last time that I would have the honor of doing this in this august event. However, due to the inscrutable processes of episcopal appointments, I stand before you again.

Last year I pointed out that we are in a culture war. A war that is reducible to, on the one hand, one between those who believe in a Supreme Being who created us, who has a definite plan for our well-being now and into eternity, and to whom we are responsible; and on the other hand, those who believe in themselves as supreme beings and architects of their own destiny, with responsibility only to themselves. In their view there is no such thing as right and wrong, there is only individual choice. One choice is as good as another, and if there is a conflict between choices the choice of the majority prevails. I call attention this time to the latest battle that has been joined in that culture war: the battle for religious freedom.

A call to arms has been issued on behalf of believers by the Catholic bishops of the United States. Our antagonists are the liberal secularists in government and elsewhere, who would erode away our religious freedom. They’ve just won the first skirmish in that battle—the acceptance by the U.S. Supreme Court as constitutional the comprehensive health plan offered by the present administration in Washington.

Pope Benedict said in his statement recently to American bishops, quote, “once more we see the need for an engaged, articulate, and well-informed laity, endowed with a strong critical sense, and with courage to counter a reductive secularism which would delegitimize the Church’s participation in public debate.” The Pope’s words are reflected in the battle plan that has been outlined by the U.S. bishops committee on religious liberty. It calls for study, catechesis, and prayer.

Prayer is the equipment of all believers. Study and education are further arms that we must furnish them—that is, you as faculty members, I and my colleagues from the pulpit. The high spots of the bishops’ call should be familiar to us all. It points out specific efforts in the federal and state level to curtail our religious freedom. And among them, for example, first of all would be the requirement we’ve already mentioned in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It requires that organizations offering health insurance to their employees must provide for contraception and, by implication, abortion, as so-called “reproductive health services,” or otherwise face substantial fines.

In the state of Alabama, for example, there was an effort to forbid services of any kind including spiritual services to undocumented immigrants. In effect it treats these people as worse than wartime enemies, to whom any aid and comfort is considered treasonous. It would forbid a priest from administering the Last Rights to an undocumented immigrant.

There was an effort in the state of Connecticut to intrude into the internal government of the Church by reintroducing the flawed practice of trusteeism.

And in some state universities there is an attempt to force religious organizations on campus to open their membership to all individuals, including those with contrary religious or moral convictions.

And finally there was a requirement by several states that Catholic social service agencies offer services contrary to their own stated religious and moral principles, for example in adoption and counseling services.

This secular liberal agenda would redefine the First Amendment to the Constitution so as to restrict Freedom of Religion to Freedom of Worship. And that distinction is crucial. The Bill of Rights reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Freedom of worship would restrict religious practice to worship services, presumably done in a house of worship or in private. However, the exercise of religion derives from religion itself and its own definition of its activities.

Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, includes a great many activities which are public. Not the least of which is bringing the Gospel to non-believers.

The secularist opposes any public religious display, whether public prayer or in the display of a religious symbol.

And of course we have a taste of this here in Steubenville as a proposed logo for the city is being attacked, incidentally by a group from another state, because it includes a well-known landmark—the chapel here at Franciscan University. The objection, supposedly, is that it is an involvement by the city government in religion. So how ridiculous can you get?

Our Founding Fathers were very much aware of the public dimension of religion. George Washington, in his famous farewell speech said, quote, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” He well understood that lending support to religious and moral principles must be made part of the public and political discourse. Something to which the liberal secularist is very allergic. Like many of the Founding Fathers, Washington was a deist, who derived his philosophy from John Locke. Locke, himself not a Christian, however, believed in natural law—a concept that’s firmly embedded in Catholic moral theology. The current liberal secularists would have us believe that human rights are conferred on its citizens by the State, much like welfare. But that’s not what the Declaration of Independence says. Quoting again, “we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that all are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. That among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Constitution of the United States guarantees that statement in the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights which we heard before.

This call to arms by the Catholic bishops implies, if need be, civil disobedience. However, it is not saying, “if this be treason, let us make the most of it.” Civil disobedience is not disloyalty to one’s country. It is, and especially in this case, a form of patriotism, that calls upon the government to be true to the Constitution and to walk the narrow line that the Constitution lays out for it. Nor should the loyalty of Catholics in the United States ever be called into question. The blood that Catholics have shed through all the wars in past history speaks loud and clear. And admittedly there were only a handful of Catholics that fought in the American Revolution but by World War II fully a third—one out of three—men and women in uniform had “C” for “Catholic” on their identification tags—the so-called “dog tags.”

Civil disobedience is in fact a virtue when it opposes unjust law, as is the case here. Let me quote a well-known proponent of opposition to unjust law. He said, quote, “I would agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all. Now what is the different between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.’” You might be wondering what pope said that. It was no pope at all: it was Martin Luther King.

Coincidentally, or, perhaps, not so coincidentally, this battle will be contemporaneous with the Year of Faith that Pope Benedict announced; and the year of faith begins, also, marking the 20th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Again: coincidence, or divine providence?

The year of faith and the Catechism give us the logistical support that our battle requires for the faithful and for us to use. The year of faith is a call to prayer; the Catechism is an ideal tool for presenting the Catholic position. All that is needed now is the will to use them to fight. May God bless us in our struggle.”

A republic means the people rule through their elected representatives. Laws are written in the deliberative bodies of Congress. Laws are enforced by the President and the necessary officers of the executive branch. Laws are interpreted by the judiciary.

A republic does not mean unelected bureaucrats get to tinker with laws to see how much liberty they can snatch away before the courts stop them.

And yet, that is exactly what is happening with the HHS mandate. The mandate was written under the authority of Obamacare, which Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid passed with a shocking dearth of actual policy details for what all those new agencies and panels should do. That was by design—they had to keep the details vague lest the law be even more unpopular and even the ugly, underhanded trick they used to jam it through be unavailable. No worries: they left all those details to the HHS to write. Spectacular.

The original mandate, announced last fall and made law in February of this year, dictates that all health insurance plans must cover abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization procedures, and contraceptives. The mandate was met with such a backlash from anyone who cares about religious liberty that the Obama administration came as close as it ever has to admitting a mistake—they issued what they considered a rather good compromise.

Of course, the compromise and later “accommodation” essentially amounted to, in Cardinal Dolan’s excellent phrasing, “giving us a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.” In other words, they delayed the full flowering of the problem without uprooting it.

Lawsuits were filed, including by my employer, Franciscan University of Steubenville. The administration, naturally, does not want this thing to be litigated, so rather than argue the merits of the case they have filed motions to have the cases tossed out of court.

They claim two things primarily: Firstly that the lawsuits do not at present have merit because thus far the mandate has not gone into effect for the plaintiffs, so no actual injury has been incurred. I heard one person describe this argument as the administration basically saying, “hey, sure you’re walking through a minefield, but it isn’t like you’ve gone ‘BOOM!’ yet!” Further, the University of Notre Dame, who filed a lawsuit similar to that filed by Franciscan University and 41 other Catholic institutions on May 21, has claimed immediate harm from the HHS mandate, which, if the judge agrees, puts the lie to this argument by the administration. Secondarily the administration claims that the lawsuits are inappropriate because they have issued and will issue further accommodations.

Indeed, the administration has made a succession of small adjustments to the mandate—adjustments that have caused a couple of the lawsuits to be tossed, in particular those by Belmont Abbey College and Wheaton College.

And that, folks, is the crux of the matter.

A few officials in the White House and the HHS wrote rules in accordance with the hard-left ideology they cherish concerning “women’s reproductive health” (a horrid euphemism for the anti-human practices it encompasses). These officials did not debate the laws in Congress or any other open forum; they did not hold a vote on them available for public scrutiny; and these officials are not subject to voters and reelection. They simply wrote this law which ignores the conscience rights of millions of Americans because they wanted to. But then it gets worse.

Now that the rule is being credibly challenged in court by more than a dozen separate lawsuits filed by some of the most powerful law firms and dedicated defense funds on behalf of 50 or so of the nation’s most recognizable Catholic and other Christian institutions they are simply tweaking the rule on the fringes in various ways to try to appease the plaintiffs, or at least find the magic combination of words that will get the judges to toss the various lawsuits. But since there is more than one lawsuit in more than one court making slightly different arguments, the administration peeps have to continuously make changes to the law based on the different scenarios. A patchwork of tweaks and accommodations.

Folks, this is not the commissioner of your fantasy football league unilaterally changing the way trades are approved during the season—this is the federal government curtailing one of our foundational liberties, severely and brazenly, and then simply rewriting the law by executive fiat more than once to see how much it can get away with.

Executive fiat is not how a republic handles such a foundational liberty as the free exercise of religion. This is the behavior of a tyranny.