Commentary

A dysfunctional federal government; a Republican Legislature cooperating with the Obama Administration in imposing ObamaCare upon the citizens of Idaho; a culture in which abortion, pot smoking and homosexuality have been “mainstreamed” by a relentless media and corrupt political class.

Every sit back and wonder if you are the crazy one?

David Kupelian has a provocative column running on WorldNetDaily which is well worth your time:

“How America Morphed Into Bizarro World”.

Regular prayer is in order during these days of profound moral confusion.  Despair and silence are not.

We’re now about two weeks from the official launch of Obama’s health care revolution. It is anyone’s guess as to what will actually transpire when the enrollment period begins. But the last couple of weeks have not been pretty.

A review of the headlines shows that public opposition is growing, while the nation’s political class – particularly Republicans – continues to fiddle. Organized Labor has risen up to raise serious objections to ObamaCare and the devastation it will wreak upon existing health insurance plans they fought so hard to secure. But their friends in the White House have rejected pleas for an extra-legal fix of the problems caused by Obama and Democrats in Congress.

Instead, Obama has spent his time figuring out how to help members of Congress and their staffs get special exemption from the provisions of the very law they are imposing upon the American people. The greed and self-seeking of our national political class is simply disgusting.

Meanwhile, we learn that health care rationing is being implemented as an essential part of ObamaCare. The state of California, which seems to have a more advanced system in place to implement this “obamanation” than other states, has announced a package of plans to be available on its insurance exchange. Insurance companies are severely restricting the doctors and hospitals they will cover as part of their “networks”.

One doesn’t have to be rocket scientist to figure out that pushing more people to fewer health care providers will increase wait times and discourage people from seeking health care until problems become acute.

And then there is the news that Sebelius will order doctors and hospitals to collect “behavioral and social” data on patients. This data will become part of our permanent “Electronic Health Record” , stored and maintained by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Such data records will be linked to public health departments. In addition to data on gun ownership, this database will seek to track sexual patterns.

The more we learn about this scheme, the worse it gets. In fact, it seems a kind of madness has gripped has gripped our political class. The corruption of our Constitution and the ensuing threat to our privacy and personal liberty is so very painful to witness.

It would seem that the only clear option for the average American is to resist ObamaCare by refusing to participate in Obama’s exchanges. Perhaps Idahoans can “vote with their feet” next month when Governor Otter reveals his version of ObamaCare. If few people cooperate, maybe we can force an admission by the ruling class that Americans will not be hogtied.

The Dean of the Conservative Movement in America took time on his show this morning to challenge the prevailing humanitarian superiority of Obama’s Administration following the presidential address last night to the nation. President Obama rightly called upon America’s attention to the outrage of a government using chemical weapons against civilians – including children.

But Limbaugh pointed to Obama’s stark hypocrisy on the use of chemical weapons by recalling the permanent American war against babies in the womb, largely financed by unwilling taxpayers. Millions of America babies are killed each year through the use of chemical weapons in the form of RU-486 and the “Morning After Pill”; yet few voices of outrage are raised in alarm.

(Where is Senator Huff & Puff – a.k.a., John McCain – on this issue of huge moral import?)

Perhaps the difference is that we don’t have handy pictures of those American babies, bundled in piles for the world to see.

It is too easy to turn away from the American slaughter of the innocent. They pass silently and privately into death, shrouded by a conspiracy so that we don’t have to confront our own holocaust.

Please read Limbaugh’s powerful commentary for yourself.

As the world watches Obama succumb to the superior diplomatic skills of Vladmir Putin, the federal and state bureaucracies grind on with their blind mission to animate the monster of ObamaCare. Over 10,000 pages of new regulations, in addition to the hills of paper being created by Idaho’s own health insurance exchange bureaucracy.

We now learn that virtually every company in America is being forced to help Obama implement his mad scheme: A company with even a single employee must notify – in writing – each employee about the health insurance exchange and the availability of federal subsidies. Failure to do so could result in a $100 per day fine. So, at the point of a bayonet, private employers will join the ranks of Hollywood and the NFL in a high-stakes propaganda effort in selling the Obama Exchanges as they launch early next month.

Welcome to the new America.

Even as more bricks fall upon the private sector, Republican leaders in Congress continue to shy away from a direct confrontation with Obama over the menace of his health care scheme. Rather than use the power of the purse to shut down ObamaCare, Speaker Boehner and his cohorts intend to finance ObamaCare through a continuing resolution. But to appease their conservative base, Republicans in Congress will pass yet another piece of legislation to repeal ObamaCare – safe in the knowledge that such legislation will not become law, will not interfere with the grinding forward motion of the federal government’s plan to consume the nation’s health care system.

One is tempted to pronounce such GOP stratagems pure cynicism.

The last line of defense against ObamaCare will be the American people themselves. Long before the next election, the public will get its best shot at derailing the president’s scheme by avoiding the insurance exchanges altogether. In about a month, we will begin to see whether the public is participating in the exchanges in large enough numbers to make ObamaCare anything close to functional.

A wholesale avoidance of the Obama exchanges might be enough to embolden the House Republicans to use the power they have under the Constitution to defend our birthright of liberty.

Boomers Too “Special” to Die Naturally?

By Wesley J. Smith

Oh good grief. We Baby Boomers are such a pain. It’s always about us: Me. Me. Me.

And now, according to Time, we are supposedly going to change “how we die.” (“A Good Death: How Boomers Will Change the World a Final Time.”)

For eons, folks grew old, endured the symptoms, and died when it was their time-according to God’s will, some would say, even if it involved fighting through lingering illness, pain and suffering, or years of mental or physical incapacitation. A “good” death was about having lived long enough to see grandchildren, put one’s affairs in order, and pass away surrounded by a loving family.

Well, that’s because earlier timesdid not have the medical means to do otherwise. But supposedly, nowwe are different:

Boomers don’t see it that way. To them, a good death is more about a good life. When they can’t have that any longer, it’s time to pull the plug. This will be the first generation to broadly eschew painful life-extending procedures and make the most of palliative care to live better in fewer days, and then die with dignity.

But that’s not true. Hospice, which allowed for this approach, has been with us for more than forty years. My dad died in 1984 under hospice care, eschewing life-extending treatment and dying pain free from metastatic colon cancer. We Boomers aren’t pioneering this approach in the least!

But here is where things could get dangerous. Apparently to “die with dignity” is to kill ourselves: Boomers are supposedly going to lead the way into assisted suicide:

Suffering people have long sought an early end, of course, and many have done so quietly-or not so quietly in the case of patients of euthanasia advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian. But we are now seeing the beginnings of a broad movement that will change the game for good. “People are starting to think about aid-in-dying as the next civil rights movement,” says Goldstein. “Death with dignity is the final frontier of human rights and freedom of expression.”

So what was once a taboo subject-how to die-is now in open discourse. The “death café” movement encourages people to meet and discuss the concept of a good death. This dialogue is being fed in part by less rigid adherence to organized religion, which has strong views surrounding death and dying, and advances in medicine and technology that make it easier to feel you can control pain and symptoms and the way you die.

Okay. I get it. Nothing new here. Just tired advocacy for assisted suicide masking itself as the newest news about the Boomers.

Boomers are not a great generation. To the contrary, we did shamefully little considering how much we were given.Too busy patting ourselves on the back, perhaps, and breaking the china.

Frankly, I think we are going to leave quite a mess. And if we do open the spigots to assisted suicide, it will be to our everlasting shame.

The now notorious abortionist Kermit Gosnell is in prison for the rest of his natural life. Given the difficult judgment facing him, one could imagine that he is hoping that prison time lasts for a long, long time. He was held accountable for but a fraction of the crimes committed, but we can give thanks for the fact that a jury of ordinary men and women had the strength of character to endure a horrific trial to render a guilty verdict.

Imagine for a moment the dire social consequences had they failed to find such a man guilty.

Now our attention can turn to the possible fallout from the Gosnell trial.

Many on the Left would have you believe that he was an evil aberration. Some would have you buy the notion that abortionists are simply kind, gentle souls rendering a public service. But abortion is, by its very nature, a grisly and bloody business. Gosnell is no by means an “outlier”. (In fact, several abortion operations have come in for public scrutiny since the Gosnell trial began – Texas and Delaware come to mind).

What is genuinely unique about the Gosnell case is that it has forced the public to see and hear the sordid details of America’s abortion culture. The nation, including media personalities impersonating journalists, have been cornered into actually seeing behind the dark curtain which surrounds abortion mills. We are collectively nauseated, our hearts hurt over the evil we silently tolerate.

Will the revulsion last? No. The nation is all too anxious to move along, to think of more pleasant things. But a deep crack in the foundation has nevertheless developed. For all our denial, somewhere in our minds the images and descriptions of industrialized child murder linger. Seeds of doubt have been planted in even the most virulent defenders of abortion. Some abortion supporters have even publicly changed their minds on the matter.

The fact that Gosnell was even tried proves that the nation’s conscience still exists, that there are boundaries of decency left.

We must take encouragement from this demonstration of decency and nurture the seeds into mighty shade trees of relief from this national scourge.

Update:

As further demonstration that the violence on display in the Gosnell matter is inherent to the Abortion Industry, see the story running about an abortionist in Texas:  Link

U.S. Federal Judge Edward Korman (New York) issued an order on Friday making “Emergency Contraception” available to girls without restriction. His order was a direct answer to the Obama Administration’s attempt to limit easy access to girls 15 and older.

By the terms of Korman’s order, girls of any age can purchase the potent drug without identification or prescription from the shelves of any drug store. By the terms of his order, parents will, of course, be cut out of the process. And so will medical personnel, including pharmacists. Girls will have easier access to “Plan B” than adults do sinus headache medicine.

As we’ve noted before, this imperious social engineering will have devastating implications for the health and safety of America’s daughters. Allowing grade school girls to ingest these dangerous and powerful hormones without adult supervision is simply madness. Which is to say nothing about the deaths of untallied preborn children and the further erosion of parental authority.

Nearly every profound social ill is on display with this story: the abuse of power by our federal judiciary; disregard for the family; and an evil agenda by the American Left to destroy the lives of America’s youth by imposing a dysfunctional and degrading sexual ethic upon the culture.

With our federal and state authorities so compromised by this whole dynamic, pro-Lifers must focus significant prayer time on behalf of our nation’s vulnerable daughters.

The unrelenting campaign to allow children free and unaccountable access to the “Morning After Pill” is nothing short of an effort by evil to destroy the innocence of children, particularly female children. The manufacturer of “Plan B” has been pushing for years to allow unsupervised and unrestricted access to their deadly product in the cause of greater profits. They have been joined by zealots in the Abortion Rights movement who seek to unfetter America from any moral concerns about sex or its consequences. Those forces have recently gained invaluable allies in the Obama Administration and the federal courts.

The first victims of their campaign to make Emergency Contraception as easily available as Luden’s cherry cough drops will be the new human beings destroyed by the drug’s powerful chemical make-up.

But the collateral victims will be the girls who use their new “Green Cards” to engage in premature sexual activity. By order of the federal government, these children will now have official permission – even encouragement – to engage in self-destructive sex before they could ever possibly appreciate the emotional, spiritual or physical consequences. Parents will be officially banned from interfering in the matter. Even doctors won’t be allowed to obstruct access to the pills painted by the media as the “solution” to whatever consequences might follow premature sexual activity.

Could anyone concoct a more heinous plot to destroy innocence and future well-being?

Sadly, the dire consequences of this policy shift don’t end there. Not by a long shot.

Official permission to access the Morning After Pill – which, again, acts as an abortifacient – will almost certainly lead to higher rates of sexual activity among the nation’s children. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that this increased rate of premature sex will lead to higher numbers of STD’s, and higher rates of teenage pregnancies. With each destructive sexual encounter, innocence is wounded. Denigrated self-esteem and guilt is sure to follow, leading to other sexual encounters as a band-aid for the spiritual and emotional pain.

And we haven’t even touched upon the ‘predator dynamic’ – the easy availability of this deadly drug without medical and parental supervision is cause for celebration among those family members or neighbors who would prey upon the vulnerable and innocent.

And then there is there is the deadly matter of the health impact of the Morning After Pill itself. No long term studies have been performed on the consequences of ingesting these mega-dose hormones into the bodies of girls right in the midst of the most profound developmental changes. During the very period when they are maturing into women, the abortion-drug cabal would allow girls to freely add powerful hormonal cocktails into their bodies.

That cocktail contains mega-doses of the standard contraceptive pill, already shown to produce heart problems and even cancer in women who use the pill for extended periods of time. What happens to a young girl who uses “Plan B” on a repeated basis? No one knows. And no one – at least in official Washington circles – seems to care.

One could go on and on about the dire implications of this movement to normalize sexual activity among children. But be assured that countless future mothers, sisters, daughters, spouses will be forever changed by this sinister plot.

But there is one more dynamic which must be added to your consideration: the Idaho Legislature.

Last month we sought to insert a “Religious Liberty Amendment” into the language creating Idaho’s new Obama Insurance Exchange. It would have prevented the exchange from forcing any employer or individual from paying for insurance covering abortifacients – like the “Morning After Pill” – if that employer had moral or religious objections to participating in the destruction of the innocent(s).

Our efforts failed. A majority of Republican senators were more interested in helping Blue Cross build an insurance monopoly in Idaho than they were in protecting human life or our religious liberties.

As a result, it is entirely possible that not only will a 12 year old child be able to walk into an Idaho Falls Wal-Mart and purchase Plan B off the shelf – she may be able to do so without a dime in her pocket. Those deadly drugs may be “free” to her under the terms of her father’s group health insurance plan.

Lord have mercy upon those children we are publicly and willfully betraying.

The Gosnell trial in Philadelphia is coming to a close. But the trial is no longer just about a murderous abortion doctor who long ago abandoned any pretense of the Hippocratic Oath. The public revelations of what happens behind the heavy dark curtain has put the abortion industry on trial.

And make no mistake: Gosnell’s horror show is not some aberration.

Planned Parenthood has long fought for abortion at any place, anytime. They fought President Bush tooth-and-claw when he supported the Born Alive Infants Protection Act some ten years ago. It was their public policy to ensure that a doctor should have as many swings at the defenseless baby as necessary in order to guarantee a corpse is produced.

And don’t be deceived that the unhealthy, contaminated, barbaric treatment of women at Gosnell’s shop is unique. As a by-product of the Gosnell trial, nurses at a Planned Parenthood clinic have come forward to describe that an abortion factory in Delaware to describe their operation as “ridiculously unsafe”. Former Planned Parenthood employee Joyce Vasikonis told reporters, “They were using instruments on patients that were not sterile.”

This is the way that these supposed “advocates for women” treat those they claim to serve; imagine the barbarity they use in treating those innocent babies, deemed “enemies” of their world view.

The Gosnell trial has also put members of the media on trial. They have been weighed and found wanting. Most of the main stream media simply turned its back on the story. Liberal writer Marc Lamont Hill admitted as much in a posting on the Huffington Post:

“I do think that those of us on the left have made a decision not to cover this trial because we worry that it’ll compromise abortion rights… there’ a direct connection between the media’s failure to cover this and our own political commitments on the left… I think it’s dangerous.”

Yes, dangerous for women and babies, certainly. But the failure of our nation’s 4th Estate to perform its basic function is dangerous to the nation on a very basic level.

But despite that unspoken conspiracy, the truth is leaking out. The conscience of the nation is being challenged. Even the ethics of journalists are being challenged by the facts of this Gosnell trial, hearts are being reached. (See the heart-moving interview of a journalist by Governor Mike Huckabee on his Fox News Show).

The truth shall set us free.