FGF OP-ED
A Voice from Fly-Over Country
April 7, 2016

Little Sisters of the Poor

"SCOTUS": An Acronym Likely To Go Down in Infamy
by Robert L. Hale
fitzgerald griffin foundation

MINOT, NORTH DAKOTA  — The Supreme Court of the United States is often referred to as SCOTUS. SCOTUS seems determined to make itself the institution that single-handedly destroys what has been the greatest nation on earth.

 

If SCOTUS is to be saved, it must rise above the mindless arrogance it dishes out as American justice and critical legal thought.

   

The American judicial system was once regarded as the model of fairness and justice by the world. This is no longer the case. The institution may already have sullied itself beyond repair. If SCOTUS is to be saved, it must rise above the mindless arrogance it dishes out as American justice and critical legal thought

The majority of SCOTUS members should be an embarrassment to any thinking and educated American citizen.

Running a close second to SCOTUS is the current occupant of the White House. While he clearly has no respect for the law, the Constitution, or America's citizens, he at least does not wrap himself in the robes of justice. He simply ignores the laws and his oath of office. He has bankrupted our nation and signed our name to the IOU. He has stirred up racial unrest with his knee-jerk reaction to police responses to criminal actions, such as those in Ferguson, Missouri.

In third place is our legislative branch. It is easy to make the case that we would have been much better off simply selecting 435 names at random from any phone book in America to fill the seats in Congress. It is difficult to imagine anyone doing a worse job of governing than our federal legislators over the past 30 to 40 years. They have allowed our government to operate for six years without approving a budget; they have approved trillions of dollars of deficit spending. They have done nothing to challenge or stop the President's actions that exceed his authority and invade Congressional power.

 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor …sees government as the modern god whose power is not to be challenged.

   

Why is SCOTUS more blameworthy than the President or Congress? Because it has violated its Constitutional directives most egregiously. Rather than interpret the Constitution, hold Congress and the President to their limited authority, and remain above the political fray, SCOTUS has ignited the fray.

Obamacare is now the law of the land. It consists of thousands of pages enacted into law without Congress ever having the opportunity to read and debate it. Then it was imposed on America by SCOTUS. Congress specifically said this law was not to be viewed as a tax. The Chief Justice of the Court ignored the letter of this legislation, declared it a tax, and imposed it on more than 350 million Americans.

 

A government that "functions" by forcing its citizens to comply with mandates in violation of religious beliefs is a dictatorship.

   

Included in Obamacare was a mandate that every employer be required to provide -- at no cost to employees -- contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. SCOTUS had already declared that the Constitution protects the right to abortion in 1973. No issue has been more divisive in America. With the Obamacare contraceptive mandate, those who believe the killing of babies in and out of the womb constitutes murder are now forced to pay the bill for this grotesque holocaust. This requirement is a direct attack on the religious beliefs of many people.

One group that is unwilling to compromise its religious and moral principles to comply with the Obamacare mandate is the Little Sisters of the Poor. The Little Sisters first filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Colorado; the case, with six co-petitioners, was argued before SCOTUS in March 2016.

During oral arguments, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made clear what she thinks of those who question government's unbridled power. She sees government as the modern god whose power is not to be challenged. Arguing that this mandate would violate the Little Sister's religious belief that contraception and abortion-inducing drugs are morally unacceptable, the Justice Sotomayor flippantly said: "But if that's always going to be substantial (burden on these women's strongly held religious belief), how will we ever have a government that functions? How will we ever have anything that the government can demand (its citizens) to do.…?"

This arrogant woman seems to have learned nothing in law school about the Constitution, nor does she have a grasp of what a free people should be free to do and not to do. A government that "functions" by forcing its citizens to comply with mandates in violation of religious beliefs is a dictatorship. Seems Justice Sotomayor believes such a government is her type of America.

 

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." — Thomas Jefferson

   

For more than 200 years, America did not have these types of problems. Why? Because we did not have a Supreme Court that allowed the government to exceed its limited authority. Only now do we have Justices who arrogantly take legislation brought before the Court and blatantly rewrite it to mean what Congress specifically said it did not mean.

This same Court created a Constitutional right and endowed itself with the power to define marriage. Clearly, this is not a task the federal government has been charged with undertaking. The fact that America was founded by men who believed in a Christian God and the values in which these traditional beliefs are rooted makes no difference to the gods sitting on the SCOTUS.

Watching this court brings to mind a prescient statement from the author of America's Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Toleration of the abuses heaped upon America's hard-working and honest men and women and their families by the President, the Congress, and SCOTUS may be coming to an end. That day, in fact, may be close. I now understand why Jefferson penned the statement.

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A Voice from Fly-Over Country is copyright © 2016 by Robert L. Hale and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. All rights reserved.

Robert L. Hale received his J.D. in law from Gonzaga University Law School in Spokane, Washington. He is founder and director of a non-profit public interest law firm. For more than three decades he has been involved in drafting proposed laws and counseling elected officials in ways to remove burdensome and unnecessary rules and regulations.

See a complete biographical sketch.

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