Arrogant Airs and Nonsensical Notions

By William L. Garvin

Trying to make sense out of nonsense that oozes out of Washington on a daily basis is a full time job. The Founding Fathers envisioned the press as being a ferocious government watchdog and teller of truth. Lately, they’re nothing more than another Democrat Super-PAC. They fit right in with the union leadership lapdogs that run in similar self-serving circles. Speaking of running in circles, how did the President rotate from declaring Super-PACs “a threat to democracy” to directing his cabinet secretaries to make personal appearances at demo Super-PAC fundraisers? In some circles, his “flexibility” would be called “flip flopping.”

One area where he is consistent is his unabashed belief that he can do whatever he wants. Despite his extensive record of policy failures, he continues full throttle down his ideological railroad in a relentless quest to transform America. If only the American Constitution and those imbecilic citizens “bitterly clinging to their guns and religions” would get out of his way! Neither is likely to happen.

It’s hard to keep a straight face when a “constitutional scholar” tells the Catholic church, Christian evangelicals, and similar believers in the sanctity of life that they must check their religious convictions at an institutional door. Not only must they forsake matters of conscience, they must actively participate in providing services contrary to cherished and fundamental beliefs. In the Sixties, people worried that the Pope would tell the President what to do: now we have to worry that the President will tell the Pope what to do! Predictably, presidential surrogates failed to explain what will happen to all the religious institutions that are self insured. The devil is always in the details. Another interesting detail in the current brouhaha is the connection between the pill and successful birth control. In 1960 (according to the National Center for Health Statistics), when the pill became readily available, the birthrate to unwed mothers was 5.3%. In 2009, the last year that figures are available, the rate was 41%. Hmmmm. Does anyone even care?


When mainstream media was finally forced to acknowledge and cover the backlash, the administration moved quickly into damage control mode. The subsequent pontification handed down from Washington high was that private insurance companies servicing religious institutions will have to provide contraception services (including the “morning after” pill) free of charge and “without hassles.” Why is paying someone else to violate their religious beliefs any sort of acceptable compromise? It’s another unconstitutional sleight of hand. Again they devilishly avoided self insured institutions.

As they are wont to do, the liberal lemmings of the left immediately tried to change the focus of the argument. When you can’t defend, then distract, diffuse, and dissemble. The shrieking harpies began to wail about the “war on women’s health.” These are the same intellectual giants who said conservatives want to put arsenic and mercury in the water, love dirty air, and want to throw old people off cliffs and pull the plug on grandma. Now they hate women too?! Of course these same ardent administration apologists strive valiantly (and futilely) to conjure up similarities between the Occupy protest and the Tea Party. Obviously they have forgotten that in their previous hysterical hyperbole, they labeled the latter as racist Nazis, corporate shills and astroturfers. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the Democratic National Committee continues to hyperventilate about “their” uncivil political discourse being the cause of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. Some people just don’t understand the connection between class warfare, irresponsible speech, intrusive government and inciting to riot. Or do they?

While it may be a step down from telling God’s servants which of His principles they can adhere to, dictating to private companies that they must provide “free” products is the same unconstitutional dynamic. It’s government arrogance, pure and tyrannically simple. Where in the Constitution is any president authorized to mandate that private companies must provide any service or product “free of charge”? Then again, where in the Constitution or the Oath of Office does it say that a president can choose which laws to enforce or that he can ignore the laws that he doesn’t like? Or does he care?