Nonprofits' contraceptive cases next for justices

WASHINGTON (AP) — How much distance from an immoral act is enough?
That's the difficult question behind the next legal dispute over religion, birth control and the health law that is likely to be resolved by the Supreme Court.
The issue in more than four dozen lawsuits from faith-affiliated charities, colleges and hospitals that oppose some or all contraception as immoral is how far the Obama administration must go to accommodate them.
The justices on June 30 relieved businesses with religious objections of their obligation to pay for women's contraceptives among a range of preventive services the new law calls for in their health plans.
Religious-oriented nonprofit groups already could opt out of covering the contraceptives. But the organizations say the accommodation provided by the administration does not go far enough because, though they are not on the hook financially, they remain complicit in the provision of government-approved contraceptives to women covered by their plans.
"Anything that forces unwilling religious believers to be part of the system is not going to pass the test," said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents many of the faith-affiliated nonprofits. Hobby Lobby Inc., winner of its Supreme Court case last month, also is a Becket Fund client.
The high court will be asked to take on the issue in its term that begins in October. A challenge from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, probably will be the first case to reach the court.
The Obama administration argues that the accommodation creates a generous moral and financial buffer between religious objectors and funding birth control. The nonprofit groups just have to raise their hands and say that paying for any or all of the 20 devices and methods approved by government regulators would violate their religious beliefs.
To do so, they must fill out a government document known as Form 700 that enables their insurers or third-party administrators to take on the responsibility of paying for the birth control. The employer does not have to arrange the coverage or pay for it. Insurers get reimbursed by the government through credits against fees owed under other parts of the health law.
Houses of worship and other religious institutions whose primary purpose is to spread the faith are exempt from the requirement to offer birth control.
The objections by religious nonprofits are rooted in teachings against facilitating sin.
Roman Catholic bishops and other religious plaintiffs argue that filling out the government form that registers opposition to contraceptives, then sending the document to the insurer or third-party administrator, is akin to signing a permission slip to engage in evil.
In the Hobby Lobby case, the justices rejected the government argument that there was no violation of conscience because the link between birth control coverage and the outcome the employer considers morally wrong was slight.
Just hours after the Hobby Lobby decision, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta granted a temporary reprieve to the Alabama-based Eternal Word Television Network. Judge William H. Pryor Jr. said in a separate opinion in that case that the administration "turns a blind eye to the undisputed evidence that delivering Form 700 would violate the Network's religious beliefs."
But the Supreme Court could draw a distinction between subsidizing birth control and signing a document to deputize a third-party to do so, said Robin Fretwell Wilson, a family law specialist at the University of Illinois College of Law.
"Think about how thinned down that objection is," Fretwell Wilson said. "The court might say that is a bridge too far."
Judge Karen Nelson Moore of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said the document is a reasonable way for objecting organizations to inform the insurer, but that the obligation to cover contraception is in the health law, not the form.
"Self-certification allows the eligible organization to tell the insurance issuer and third-party administrator, 'We're excused from the new federal obligation relating to contraception,' and in turn, the government tells those insurance companies, 'But you're not,'" the judge wrote.
People on both sides of this argument are looking to the Hobby Lobby case for clues about how the justices might come out in this next round.
In a Supreme Court filing, the Justice Department said the outcome strongly suggested that the court would rule in its favor when considering the nonprofits' challenge.
"The decision in Hobby Lobby rested on the premise that these accommodations 'achieve all of the Government's aims' underlying the preventive-health services coverage requirement 'while providing greater respect for religious liberty,'" the Justice Department wrote, quoting from Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion. The legal filing was in opposition to an emergency plea from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, to avoid having to fill out Form 700. Wheaton is one of only a few nonprofits not to have won temporary relief in its court fight.
Rienzi, who also represents Wheaton, wrote in reply that the government is wrong to assume that the Hobby Lobby decision "blessed the accommodation." He noted that Alito specifically said the court was not deciding whether the administration's workaround for nonprofits adequately addressed their concerns.
On Thursday, the court, with three justices dissenting, allowed Wheaton to avoid using the form while its case remains on appeal. Instead, the college can send written notice of its objections directly to the Health and Human Services Department rather than the insurer or the third-party administrator. At the same time, the government can take steps to ensure that women covered by Wheaton's health plan can get emergency contraception the college won't pay for.
Several legal experts said that perhaps a simple revision to the government document at the center of the dispute could resolve matters.
"I think the question will come down to does the government really need them to tell the insurance companies or can you reword the form," said Marc Stern, a religious liberty specialist and general counsel for the American Jewish Committee. The faith-affiliated charities "might win a redrafting of the form. I don't think they can win an argument that says we can do absolutely nothing," Stern said.
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Zoll reported from New York.

President Obama's pity party

Say this for President Obama: He’s got an uncanny ability to block out distractions and keep his eye on the ball.
Facing a horrific expansion of terrorism in the Mideast, a meltdown of public support at home and major rebukes by the Supreme Court, the president remains fixated on No. 1.

President Obama is right about one thing. His presidency and the country are at a crossroads. The problem is that his response — woe is me — means things almost certainly will get worse before they get better.

“I’m finding lately I just want to say what’s on my mind,” he told a Minneapolis audience Friday, and then ticked off a series of complaints about — surprise — Republicans.
“They don’t do anything, except block me and call me names,” he said. “If they were more interested in growing the economy for you and the issues that you are talking about instead of trying to mess with me, we would be doing a lot better.”
He wasn’t finished: “The critics, the cynics in Washington, they’ve written me off more times than I can count. But cynicism doesn’t invent the Internet. Cynicism doesn’t give women the right to vote.”
There you have it: the presidential mind in Year 6. Don’t cry for Argentina — cry for me!

Nevada sheriff says Cliven Bundy must be held accountable for standoff

A Nevada sheriff has said that rancher Cliven Bundy must bear responsibility for actions that led to a standoff between federal agents and militia members earlier this year, but added that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) must reconsider some of its methods used prior to the confrontation.
Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie told the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board Thursday that he had warned Bundy prior to the April standoff that any protests over the BLM's attempt to round up more than 500 of the rancher's cattle must be peaceful. 
The BLM says that Bundy owes over $1 million in fees and penalties for trespassing on federal property without a permit over 20 years. Bundy, whose ancestors settled in the area in the late 1800s, refuses to acknowledge federal authority on public lands.
A federal judge in Las Vegas first ordered Bundy in 1998 to remove "trespass cattle" from land the bureau declared a refuge for the endangered desert tortoise. Bureau officials obtained court orders last year allowing the roundup.
Milita members descended upon the ranch after a video showing one of Bundy's sons being stunned by a Taser was circulated widely. Gillespie said that Bundy crossed the line by allowing his supporters onto his property to aim guns at law enforcement. 
"If you step over that line, there are consequences to those actions," Gillespie said. "And I believe they stepped over that line. No doubt about it. They need to be held accountable for it."
Gillespie blamed the BLM for escalating the conflict and ignoring his advice to delay the roundup after he had a confrontational meeting with Bundy's children a few weeks before it began.
"I came back from that saying, `This is not the time to do this,' " the sheriff told the Review-Journal. "They said, `We do this all the time. We know what we're doing. We hear what you're saying, but we're moving forward."'
Gillespie also claimed that the BLM lied to him by saying that they had a place to move Bundy's cattle after the roundup. The sheriff said he later discovered that was not the case.
The bureau backed down during the showdown with Bundy and his armed supporters, citing safety concerns, and released some 380 Bundy cattle collected during a weeklong operation from a vast arid range half the size of the state of Delaware.
A statement made to the Associated Press by the BLM Saturday said the agency continues to pursue the matter "aggressively through the legal system."
BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington also criticized Gillespie for claiming that the agency mishandled the operation and claimed that the bureau acted in "full coordination" with the sheriff's office. 
 "It is unfortunate that the sheriff is now attempting to rewrite the details of what occurred, including his claims that the BLM did not share accurate information," she said. "The sheriff encouraged the operation and promised to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us as we enforced two recent federal court orders."
"Sadly, he backed out of his commitment shortly before the operation - and after months of joint planning - leaving the BLM and the National Park Service to handle the crowd control that the sheriff previously committed to handling," she added.

The Statue of Dependence

Calif. town becomes flashpoint for national immigration debate

America Lost?

The Southern California town of Murrieta that gained national prominence when a crowd of protesters blocked buses carrying illegal immigrants being flown in from overwhelmed Texas facilities has become a flashpoint in what has become an intense national debate over immigration.
Earlier this week, approximately 200 protesters blocked buses carrying 140 illegal immigrants sent from a Texas to a US Border Patrol station, where they were to be processed before being moved to await deportation or asylum.
Days later, residents packed into a fiery town hall meeting, expressing their objections to the government sending any more illegal immigrants to Murrieta.
Rumors had swirled among anti-immigration activists near a U.S. Border Patrol station in Southern California that the agency would try again to bus in some of the immigrants who have flooded across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Instead, by late Friday afternoon, they got dueling anti- and pro-immigration rallies.
The crowd of 200 outside the station in Murrieta waved signs and sometimes shouted at each other. One banner read: "Proud LEGAL American. It doesn't work any other way." Another countered: "Against illegal immigration? Great! Go back to Europe!"
Law enforcement officers separated the two sides, leaving enough space for a bus to drive into the station.
Because of security concerns, federal authorities have said, they will not publicize immigrant transfers among border patrol facilities.
"This is a way of making our voices heard," said Steve Prime, a resident of nearby Lake Elsinore. "The government's main job is to secure our borders and protect us -- and they're doing neither."
Immigration supporters said the immigrants need to be treated as humans and that migrating to survive is not a crime.
"We're celebrating the 4th of July and what a melting pot America is," said Raquel Alvarado, a high school history teacher and Murrieta resident who chalked up the fear of migrants in the city of roughly 106,000 to discrimination.
"They don't want to have their kids share the same classroom," she said.
"What we're saying is right now [illegal] immigration needs to stop," Patrice Lynes, a retired nurse from neighboring Temecula who has organized the protests, told The Wall Street Journal.
"This is not just a Murrieta situation. This is a national situation," she said.
In recent months, thousands of children and families have fled violence, murders and extortion from criminal gangs in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Since October, more than 52,000 unaccompanied children have been detained.
The crunch on the border in Texas' Rio Grande Valley prompted U.S. authorities to fly immigrant families to other Texas cities and to Southern California for processing.
Burke Hinman, who has lived in the city for over 22 years, told The Wall Street Journal he wants to protect his community from being a "dumping ground" for migrants. As vehicles drove past the station, and Mr. Hinman raised his fist or shouted "U.S.A."
Protester Melinda Ward says Murrieta's processing station isn't equipped to handle such a large group of people, and worries that costs of housing and medical care will eat away at tax revenue.
"It all comes down to the tax dollars. We're paying for it," she said. "The government has dropped it on us and now we have to pay for it."
The crunch on the border in Texas' Rio Grande Valley prompted U.S. authorities to fly immigrant families to other Texas cities and to Southern California for processing.
The Border Patrol is coping with excess capacity across the Southwest, and cities' responses to the arriving immigrants have ranged from welcoming to indifferent.
In the border town of El Centro, California, a flight arrived Wednesday without protest.
In Nogales, Arizona, the mayor has said he welcomes the hundreds of children who are being dropped off daily at a large Border Patrol warehouse. Residents have donated clothing and other items for them.
In New Mexico, however, residents have been less enthusiastic.
At a town hall meeting this week, residents in Artesia spoke out against a detention center that recently started housing immigrants. They said they were afraid the immigrants would take jobs and resources from U.S. citizens.
Click for more from The Wall Street Journal

Biz executives pay fines for Florida vet facing eviction over flower pot flag

In an act of patriotism this Fourth of July, a pair of business executives has paid the fines for a Florida veteran who faced foreclosure for displaying a small American flag in a flower pot on his front stoop.
The two senior executives for Los Angeles-based Lear Capital had read the story of 73-year-old Larry Murphree, of Jacksonville, whose homeowners association at Tides Condominium at Sweetwater began hitting him with fines of $100 a day last year for violating his homeowners association’s flag display rules, and have offered to pay the bill which has climbed into the thousands.
“When we read his story  it offended our sensibilities,” Scott Carter, CEO of Lear Capital said to FoxNews.com. “The thought of him losing his home, we felt it was wrong. We wanted to help.”
Along with Lear Capital founder Kevin DeMerritt, the executives paid the $8,000 plus another $2,500 for tax adjustments.
“They [homeowner’s association were using the strongarm of money to get him to get rid of the flag,” Carter said. “They were skimming the money from his [paid] dues to pay the fines which created a lien on his house.”
“What was a small contribution from a company was a significant gesture in his eyes,” Carter added.
Instead of paying the fines for violating the association’s rules, Murphree let them pile up -- and kept his flag on display owing thousands.
FULL COVERAGE: PROUD AMERICANS
“The flag is worth fighting for,” Murphree, who served six years as an Air Force air traffic controller during the Vietnam War, said to FoxNews.com in June.
“If they want to foreclose, bring it on. I’m getting calls from all over the county to stand up. That’s what I'm going to do.”
The flag battle between Muphree and the association started back in 2011 and landed in court a year later where the two sides reached a settlement. Murphree had agreed to display his flag in compliance with association rules. But two weeks later, the board changed the rules, saying flags could only be displayed and that flower pots were only for flowers.
Murphree ignored the new rules and, in 2013, he started getting fined. He took the board to court again, this time to federal court where he claimed he had a right to fly his flag under the 2005 Freedom to Display the American Flag Act. A judge dismissed the case last March on technical grounds.
The board claimed Murphree owed $8,000 and had attached a foreclosure lien for nonpayment. 
An attorney for the condo board, Michelle Haines told FoxNews.com last month under Florida law the homeowner's association can fine a condo owner $100 a day, but the maximum amount is $1,000. She said the board is foreclosing on Murphree for being delinquent on his monthly assessment.

Ellis Island Immigrants to America

Jack E. Kemp
This Independence Day, my thoughts return to a tourist visit I made over decades ago to Ellis Island, the place where new immigrants were examined and processed roughly twenty million immigrants from the late Nineteenth to the early Twentieth Century in New York Harbor.

The most startling thing seen on that visit was the peeling paint of the main building, a problem not based on years of  age but on more recent neglect of the plumbing system. The old pipes had broken and flooded the building before anyone could realize what happened. The Ellis Island museum was then asking American citizens for - and they did receive - voluntary funds to fix the pipes and other structures as well as repaint the water damaged walls.

Ellis Island is, of course, a National Park Museum and if you go to the website http://www.nps.gov/elis/historyculture/people.htm ; you can read about inspectors, doctors, nurses who did a quick check of potential immigrant's paperwork to enter the U.S. and their health condition. Some were quarantined on the Island and would later enter into the United States. Others were sent back to their home country, failing to gain entry to the U.S. because of their poor health for such conditions as tuberculosis. The left keeps screaming about "white privilege" but if you contrast Ellis Island to the Central American illegal immigrants now flooding over the U.S. Southern Border, it is these Central Americans who are being allowed entry and the ability to move around the U.S. in a privileged state, with neither legal paperwork (as was required on Ellis Island) nor being required to pass any health inspection requirement of not having communicable diseases. The Central Americans should now be given the same "privileges" as the European and British Isle immigrants who came to Ellis Island around a century ago.

In the tour, our guide told us a funny story of an Eastern European Jew who was flustered by his meeting with stern looking uniformed immigration inspector. When asked his name, he said in Yiddish, "Shoen Fargessen" which means "(I) already forgot." The immigration inspector, wrote down what he heard - "Sean Ferguson" - and that was the new immigrant's legal name in his new country!

The large Ellis Island complex of inspection stations and employee housing and quarantine hospital facilities was not placed on Governor's Island, which was an actual nearby New York Harbor military base and Civil War prison in the Nineteenth and - in the Twentieth Century, it was a Coast Guard base. There was ample housing space on Governor's Island, but in those days the government felt they should keep immigrants, some of them quite ill, far away from the military base and its housing.

So if someone tells you that you are "old fashioned" to want the sanitary and legal safeguards of the Nineteenth Century, ask them if they think disease conditions, such as those that cause tuberculosis, are operating in an "enlightened, modern" way today or whether they operate very much like they did in earlier times - and would operate in that "outdated" fashion when the children carrying those diseases are given "temporary" asylum and placed in public schools and walk in the shopping malls where their own children congregate. Although some people will make an angry face and walk away, others will listen. Over a decade ago, there was a news story in New York City about a school bus company working for some fancy private schools had hired the lowest cost immigrant drivers, some of whom had tuberculosis. And the children who rode those buses had to be tested for the disease because apparently the disease did not have any regard for the family wealth or political convictions (be it liberal or conservative) of the children involved.

There is a similar immigration center on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, now a museum, a place ofter referred to informally as "The Ellis Island of the West Coast." The immigrants arriving there between 1910 and 1940 were largely from Asia (mostly China). And they  were processed in the same manner as those on Ellis Island in a center with its own hospital. You can read about it at http://aiisf.org/

So on this Independence Day, it is worth taking a moment to consider what it took, in the last steps of their journey, for many of our ancestors to be officially allowed to enter the United States. Last week Lower Manhattan in New York City was full of tourists standing in line in Battery Park to get on the tourist boat going to both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, all to retrace the steps of perhaps their own ancestors who first saw the Lady in the Harbor and then had to pass her agents' inspections on Ellis Island before being allowed into the United States. No society can care for the health and well being of its citizens - and their children - by relying solely on the sentiments of Emma Lazarus' poetry written on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty's base.Would Lazarus write the same poem if new immigrants with tuberculosis were walking around her neighborhood coughing on Emma and her family?

Uncle Sam Cartoon