Arguing About Who Decides That Which Is Beyond Humans To Decide, part four

Although most Catholics, including the relatively few who read this site (which includes, at least on some occasions, attorneys for those seeking to disparage truth, something that happened this past week in a Nevada court when an attorney tried to use an article on this site that had been written by Dr. Paul Byrne against him in cross-examination, an experience that did not go well for attorney in question), permit themselves to get agitated by the absolute farce that is electoral politics in the framework of a Protestant and Judeo-Masonic nation.

Hundreds upon hundreds of articles on this site have been written to discuss the actual facts of what the adherents of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” have done when holding the White House and/or one or both branches of the Congress of the United States of America.

I have explained, for example, how the cause of the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn was advanced, not retarded, by the administration of President George Walker Bush, sober facts that those who saw him as the supposed “lesser of two evils” did not want to disturb the soft illusions that they had created themselves.

Similarly, I explained the Republican takeover of the United States House of Representatives after the November 2, 2010, midterm elections would not result in any serious efforts to repeal ObamaDeathCare would be unsuccessful as the careerists in the organized crime family of the naturalist “right” knew that then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) would never permit repeal legislation to reach the floor of the Senate. The careerists in the Republican Party, ever concerned about how “controversial” legislation would be viewed by “moderate” voters in “swing districts” and “swing states,” went through the motions, knowing ultimately that the reigning caesar, Barack Hussein/Barry Soetoro, would never sign any legislation to repeal his “signature” takeover of the American death care industry even if all of the Democrats in the Senate had a “mass conversion” on the matter, which was as unlikely at the time as Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI admitting that his “hermeneutic of continuity” was nothing other than the principle of “dogmatic evolutionism” that had been condemned by the Fathers of the [First] Vatican Council, Pope Saint Pius X, and Pope Pius XII.

Moreover, the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the combined cases of National Federation of Independent Business, et al. v. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. and Department of Health and Human Services, et al. v. Florida, et al., June 29, 2012, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, meant that the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act had been institutionalized ObamaDeathCare beyond all efforts to repeal it. Something that provides “goodies” to “the people,” no matter its inherent unconstitutionality and the illegal manner in which it was “passed” and the false representations made about it both during and after its passage, creates powerful constituency groups who have a vested interest in maintaining what was given to them by the largesse of the monster civil state of modernity. I wrote at the time that is Here To Stay. The Court's decision in the case of King v. Burwell, which was rendered on Thursday, June 24, 2015, the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, makes it eminently clear that ObamaDeathCare is here to stay no matter what the hapless naturalists of the false opposite of the "right" say or do.

Just by the way, of course, the critical votes to uphold the ObamaDeathCare subsidies in violation of the plain language of the law itself came from Opus Dei’s John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, and none other than the infamous Associate Justice Anthony McLeod Kennedy, both of whom had been appointed by “pro-life” presidents (Roberts by Bush the Lesser and Kennedy by Ronald Wilson Reagan).

Sure, the three associate justices who dissented in the combined cases of King v. Burwell were appointed by Republicans (Antonin Scalia was a Reagan appointee, Clarence Thomas was appointed by Bush the elder, who also gave us the completely pro-death David Souter, and Samuel Alito was appointed by Bush the Lesser). With constitutional interpretation hanging on the slender threads of the whims of the legal positivists who sit on the Supreme Court, though, it is nevertheless an interesting commentary that the two decisive votes in the combined cases of King v. Burwell came from Republican appointees, one of whom, Roberts, continued to dissemble about the actual text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Action, and Kennedy, who was concerned about the fate of those who would lose their health insurance coverage if the court held itself bound to the actual words of the legislation as written.

Some might argue, for instance, that President Reagan did not “know” that Judge Anthony Michael Kennedy, who wrote the court’s opinion in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, the Feast of Saints John and Paul, was pro-death, something that is completely delusional and/or a rewriting of actual history:

To wit, here are Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s own words in his confirmation testimony before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary:

The CHAIRMAN. And this may save some time, because I had a  whole round of questions on this. Let me put it to you very bluntly. Do you think Griswold was reasoned properly? 

Judge KENNEDY. I really think I would like to draw the line and not talk about the Griswold case so far as its reasoning or its result. I would say that if you were going to propose a statute or a hypothetical that infringed upon the core values of privacy that the Constitution protects, you would be hard put to find a stronger case than Griswold.   

The CHAIRMAN. That doesn't answer the question. Is there a marital right to privacy protected by the Constitution?   

Judge KENNEDY. Yes—pardon, is there a   

The CHAIRMAN. Marital right to privacy. 

Judge KENNEDY. Marital right to privacy; that is what I thought you said. Yes, sir.   

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. (Questioning of Judge Anthony Kennedy by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., December 15, 1987)  

The then Judge Anthony Kennedy had been asked by Senator Biden the day before about a conversation he had had with United States Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina, now deceased), who drew the inference that Kennedy's calling himself a "practicing Catholic" and that he, Kennedy, "admired" Helm's pro-life position was an indication that Kennedy would use his religious beliefs as a foundation of judicial decision-making. This concerned the pro-abortion Catholic, Biden, who had just helped to torpedo the nomination of another "strict constructionist" positivist, Judge Robert Bork:

Judge KENNEDY: Now it would be highly improper for a judge to allow his, or her, own personal or religious views to enter into a decision respecting a constitutional matter. There are many books that I will not read, that I do not let, or these days do not recommend, my children read. That does not prohibit me from enforcing the first amendment because those books are protected by the first amendment. A man's, or a woman's, relation to his, or her, God, and the fact that he, or she, may think they are held accountable to a higher power, may be important evidence of a person's character and temperament. It is irrelevant to his, or her, judicial authority. When we decide cases we put such matters aside, and as—I think it was—Daniel Webster said, "Submit to the judgment of the nation as a whole." 

The CHAIRMAN. SO Judge, when you said—if it is correct—to Senator Helms: "Indeed I do, and I admire it, I am a practicing Catholic," you were not taking, at that point a position on the constitutional question that has been and continues to be before the Court?  

Judge KENNEDY. TO begin with, that was not the statement.   

The CHAIRMAN. Will you tell us what   

Judge KENNEDY. We had a wide-ranging discussion and those two matters were not linked.  

The CHAIRMAN. Those two matters were not linked. So the article is incorrect? 

Judge KENNEDY. In my view, yes.

The CHAIRMAN. That is fine. I thank you. My time is up. (Questioning of Judge Anthony Kennedy by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.)  

Anyone who believes in the delusion that the heresy of Americanism was "phantom" in nature, that is, that it never existed, ought to re-read Anthony Kennedy's testimony before the now Vice President of the United States of America, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., on December 14 and 15, 1987. Kennedy's answers reek of Americanism and Americanism's acceptance of legal positivism of one form or another as the foundation of law and jurisprudence.

Anthony McLeod Kennedy distinguished himself as a supporter of the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn long before he ruled in such cases as United States v. Windsor, June 26, 2013, the Feast of Saints John and Paul, and Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, two years to the day after the Windsor case. This is what Kennedy, joined by the President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s first Supreme Court nominee, Sandra Day O’Connor and by President George Herbert Walker Bush’s first Court nominee, David Souter, wrote in the case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v William Casey, June 29, 1992:

Although Roe has engendered opposition, it has in no sense proven unworkable, representing as it does a simple limitation beyond which a state law is unenforceable. P. 835.

(e) The Roe rule's limitation on state power could not be repudiated without serious inequity to people who, for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives. The Constitution serves human values, and while the effect of reliance on Roe cannot be exactly measured, neither can the certain costs of overruling Roe for people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case be dismissed. Pp. 855-856. (Text of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.)

Go ahead, try to argue that President Reagan did not know about Sandra Day O’Connor’s consistent support of baby-killing in the Arizona State Senate when he nominated. Try, try again.

Hey, wanna try to claim that “Pappy Bush” did not know about David Souter?

You got it. Try, try again.

To wit, the late Howard Phillips, late founder and longtime chairman of the Conservative Caucus Foundation, gave testimony before the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate against both the O'Connor and Souter nominations, as he explained in an interview. Although I disagreed with the late Mr. Phillips's support for the philosophy of the founders of the United States of America and his Calvinist view of the world, his work exposing the fraudulent nature of various "pro-life" Republican administrations was admirable and stands the test of time on its well-documented merits:

Let me put this into context. People say you can't tell how a Supreme Court nominee will turn out once on the bench. I respectfully disagree. In most cases, it'' very clear. I opposed the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor because it was very clear that she had a pro-abortion record in the Arizona state senate and as a judge in Arizona. She was also allied with Planned Parenthood. I opposed David Souter because I read his senior thesis at Harvard in which he said he was a legal positivist and one of his heroes was Oliver Wendell Holmes and that he rejected all higher law theories, such as those spelled out in our Declaration of Independence. In addition, he was a trustee of two hospitals: Dartmouth Hitchcock and Concord Memorial. He successfully changed the policy of those two hospitals from 'zero abortion' to 'convenience abortion.' I testified against Ruth Bader Ginsburg because her record was clear. She saw the Supreme Court as a Supreme Legislature. She was on the far Left of virtually every issue. Yet, only three members of the U.S. Senate voted in opposition to her confirmation. Only eight voted in opposition to Breyer. With respect to Judge Roberts, I'm in the midst of an extensive and intensive study of his record. Several things become clear, although I'm not ready to reach a final conclusion. It is clear that while he claims to have no overarching judicial philosophy he does have a point of view on most of the big issues. But that point of view is overshadowed by his pragmatism and his desire to stay within what is perceived as the mainstream. (Flynn Files - Howard Phillips Interview Part I.) 

Wasn’t that an accurate observation of John Glover Roberts ten years ago now?

Here is a brief excerpt from the late Mr. Phillips's actual testimony against Ronald Wilson Reagan's nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981:

As an Arizona State Senator, she voted twice for abortion on demand through the ninth month of pregnancy; she co-sponsored a proposal to permit abortion without parental consent; she promoted ERA; she opposed the Human Life Amendment; and she failed to oppose abortions at a taxpayer-funded facility." (The Supreme Court Watch - A Public Service of The Conservative Caucus.) 

Judie Brown, the founder and President of the American Life League, similarly testified against Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination in 1981, also documenting O'Connor's solid pro-abortion record as the majority leader of the Arizona State Senate. Anyone who claims that they were "surprised" by O'Connor's opinions, summarized below by a pro-abortion organization, is dealing in a world of fanciful delusions. Howard Phillips and Judie Brown documented Sandra Day O'Connor's pro-abortion record openly and publicly. The documentation provided by Mr. Phillips and Mrs. Brown meant nothing to Ronald Wilson Reagan or Attorney General William French Smith or to the "pro-life" Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee or in the rest of the United States Senate.

Here is that summary of the retired Sandra Day O'Connor's pro-abortion record a found on a pro-abortion website:

Justice Sandra O'Connor has played a very influential role on the Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. In both Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Stenberg v. Carhart (Carhart I), O'Connor's single vote in support of a woman's right to choose ensured the survival of Roe v. Wade.

Justice O'Connor, with Justices Kennedy and Souter, wrote the controlling plurality opinion in Casey which upheld a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion in a case many feared would overturn Roe v. Wade:

"After considering the fundamental constitutional questions resolved by Roe, principles of institutional integrity, and the rule of stare decisis, we are led to conclude this: the essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once again reaffirmed."

"Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that cannot control our decision. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code."

While Justice O'Connor's opinions have changed in the way abortion cases are analyzed, lowering the standard of review from strict scrutiny to an undue burden analysis, she has prevented the conservative members of the Supreme Court from destroying the central provisions of Roe.

In Stenberg v.Carhart (Carhart I), the Court's most recent decision concerning abortion rights, Justice O'Connor joined Justice Breyer's majority opinion affirming Roe and Casey:

"...[t]his Court, in the course of a generation, has determined and then redetermined that the Constitution offers basic protection to the woman's right to choose. We shall not revisit those legal principles."

In Hill v. Colorado, Justice O'Connor voted uphold Colorado's law creating a buffer zone around health facilities. Inside the 100-foot buffer zone, a patient cannot be approached within eight feet without consent for the purpose of leafleting, displaying a sign, or engaging in conversation. (National Abortion Federation: O'Connor's Legacy.)

Here is Howard Phillips’s actual testimony against David Souter before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 19, 1990, the Feast of Saint Januarius:

In considering David Souter’s suitability to cast what, in many cases, will be the deciding opinion on the Supreme Court of the United States, it is necessary to go beyond Mr. Souter’s intellectual capacity and his stated opinions, and to assess his character and moral courage in their relationship to the responsibilities of a Supreme Court Justice.

DAVID SOUTER His pro-abortion record was there for those who wanted to know the truth. One moment of truth for Mr. Souter came in February, 1973 when, as a member of the board of trustees of Concord Hospital, he participated in a unanimous decision that abortions be performed at the hospital.

Advocacy of, or even acquiescence in, such a decision is morally distinguishable from the judicial conclusion, profoundly incorrect in my view, that women have a constitutional right to destroy their unborn children.

It is also distinguishable from and far more troubling than the political argument by politicians who maintain that they are “personally opposed” to abortion, even as they advocate its decriminalization.

It is one thing to intellectually rationalize the case for permitting legal abortions, while still opposing the exercise of such legal authority. It is quite another - something far more invidious, morally - to actually join in a real world decision to cause abortions to be performed, routinely, at a particular hospital.

Those abortions whose performance was authorized by David Souter were not mandated by law or court opinion. In fact, laws have remained to this day on the books in New Hampshire which provide criminal penalties for any “attempt to procure miscarriage” or “intent to destroy quick child.” Indeed, section 585:14 of the New Hampshire Criminal Code establishes the charge of second degree murder for the death of a pregnant woman in consequence of an attempted abortion. Nor were those abortions which Mr. Souter authorized performed merely to save the life of the mother, nor were they limited to cases of rape or incest.

If the unborn child is human, and if innocent human life is to be defended and safeguarded, why did Mr. Souter acquiesce in those abortions? Why did he not speak out against them? Why did he, through twelve years on the Concord Hospital board, in a position of responsibility, help cause those abortions to be performed, and invest his personal reputation in clearly implied approval of those abortions?

The overarching moral issue in the political life of the United States in the last third of the 20th Century is, in my opinion, the question of abortion. Is the unborn child a human person, entitled to the protections pledged to each of us by the Founders of our Nation?

The issue is much more than one of legal or judicial philosophy. There are men and women in the legal profession, in elected office, and on the bench who acknowledge abortion to be morally repugnant, but who assert that, in present circumstances, it cannot be constitutionally prohibited.

Whatever Mr. Souter’s legal and judicial philosophy may be - and, on the record, it seems to be one which rejects the higher law theories implicit in the Declaration of Independence - it is a chilling fact which the Senate must consider that Judge Souter has personally participated in decisions resulting in the performance of abortions, where such abortions were in no way mandated or required by law or court decision.

By his own account, Mr. Souter served as a member of the board of trustees for the Concord Hospital from 1971 until 1985. Following service as board secretary, he was president of the board from 1978 to 1984.

In 1973, shortly after the Supreme Court’s January 22 Roe v. Wade decision, the Concord Hospital trustees voted to initiate a policy of performing abortions at Concord Hospital.

Similarly, Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, which is associated with the Dartmouth Medical School, of which Judge Souter has been an overseer, has performed abortion up to the end of the second trimester.

During the period of Mr. Souter’s tenure as a decision-maker of these two institutions, many hundreds of abortions were performed under his authority, with no indication that he ever objected to or protested the performance of these abortions. Even though the Roe v. Wade decision did, in fact, authorize abortions through the ninth month of pregnancy, nothing in the Supreme Court’s decision required or obliged any hospital to conduct abortions, whether in the ninth month, the sixth month, or even in the first month of pregnancy.

If Judge Souter is confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court, he will, in all likelihood, be given the opportunity to address not only the issue of Roe v. Wade, but broader issues involving the sanctity of innocent human life.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the 1986 Thornburgh case, “there is a fundamental and well-recognized difference between a fetus and a human being. Indeed, if there is not such a difference, the permissibility of terminating the life of a fetus could scarcely be left to the will of the State legislatures.”

Justice Stevens was wrong in a very deadly way. If an unborn child is not human, I would ask Justice Stevens, what is he, what is she? But as least Mr. Stevens was logical in defending his support for the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court said that, “If the personhood of the unborn child is established, the pro-abortion case collapses, for the fetus’s right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

As Notre Dame law professor Charles Rice has pointed out, “This is so, because the common law does not permit a person to kill an innocent non-aggressor, even to save his own life.”

Does David Souter believe that the unborn child - the fetus in the mother’s womb - is a human person, deserving of all the protections which are guaranteed to human beings after the moment of birth?

Seemingly, Mr. Souter’s answer is an unequivocal “no.” by agreeing that abortions be performed at institutions under his authority, Mr. Souter established clearly that he did not recognize the personhood of the unborn child. For surely, if he did acknowledge the unborn child to be a human person, Mr. Souter would not have agreed to authorize the extinguishment of so many precious lives at medical facilities for which he bore responsibility.

One must conclude that either Mr. Souter accepts the view that the life of the unborn child is of less value than the convenience and profit of those who collaborate in the killing of that child, or that, despite his recognition of the fact that each unborn child is human, a handiwork of God’s creation, he lacked the moral courage or discernment to help prevent the destruction of so many innocent human lives when he had the authority, indeed, the responsibility, to do so.

Either way, in such circumstances, unless there are mitigating factors or extenuating considerations which have not yet been brought to public attention, it is difficult to regard Mr. Souter as one suitable for participation in judicial decisions at the highest level of our Nation.

If, during his years of responsibility at Concord Hospital and Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, Mr. Souter believed each fetus to be a human person, and failed to act against the performance of abortion, he was morally delinquent.

If, on the other hand, he justified himself by denying the human qualities of the unborn child, then he placed himself in the ambit of those who have argued against the very philosophy which his sponsor, President George Bush, purported to embrace during his 1988 presidential campaign.

On the basis of the information now available, Mr. Souter, in my opinion, should not be confirmed. (Testimony of: HOWARD PHILLIPS Chairman, The Conservative Caucus Foundation.)  

Did this factual presentation matter to any of the "pro-life" senators, including two future Republican presidential nominees, Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., and John Sidney McCain III?

Not one little bit.

To this day, these craven careerists have hid behind the abject lie that they were "misled" by then President George Herbert Walker Bush's White House Chief of Staff, John Sununu, the former Governor of the State of New Hampshire, about David Souter. This is a lie. An abject lie. Howard Phillips presented incontrovertible evidence about David Souter's support for abortion. This did not matter one little bit to Bob Dole or to John McCain. Not one little bit. The facts were presented. They did not care. Not one little bit.   

Similarly, Antonin Scalia, who had been confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States of America in 1986, has a different brand of legal positivism than Anthony Kennedy, founded in a "respect" for the "original meaning" (originalism) of the words contained in the Constitution. He has on many occasions, including one time in my own hearing in a question-and-answer session at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, New York, following a "communion breakfast" talk in May of 1987, said that, although he believes in the Natural Law, he could not use the Natural Law in the process of judicial decision-making.

Scalia went on to state that it is was belief that abortion is neither permitted or prohibited by the words of the United States Constitution, a contention that is arguable solely on the grounds of a proper reading of the text of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. According to Scalia, therefore, as abortion is a matter "reserved" for the states to decide for themselves as baby-killing is neither prohibited or permitted by the Constitution itself. He would be duty bound, he said, to uphold the constitutionality of a state law permitting abortion as long as it had been passed legally and did not violate that state's own constitutional provisions. "You write it," he told the crowd, "and I'll enforce it." This prompted me to write an extensive critique for The Wanderer of the fallacy of this exercise in positivism entitled, "You write it, I'll enforce it."

Each of the Catholics who serve on the Supreme Court of the United States of America at the present time believe that the "people" have the final say as to what is considered legally acceptable, whether by means of the words of the United States Constitution, the provisions of state constitutions, the results of ballot initiatives at the state level designed to amend state constitutions or to overturn to revise state laws, or the language of state legislation. These Catholics (John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito) do not understand or do not accept that human beings may not, whether acting individually or collectively with others in the institutions of civil governance, permit grievous violations of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law or the Natural and/or seek to justify those violations of God's Law as matters that are "reserved" to "the people" to decide as they see fit.

Those who serve in institutions of civil governance have a grave obligation before God to uphold the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they have been entrusted to and explicated by Holy Mother Church, she who is the sole teacher and authentic governor of all men and all nations in all that pertains to the good of souls and thus the right ordering of men and their nations. This truth applies to all men in all circumstances at all times. Contrary to the contentions made publicly by Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, Catholics, in particular, do indeed have a grave obligation to use the Faith as the basis of each of their actions at all times.

Pope Leo XIII explained this very clearly in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

After all, did not a good deal of the English common law, which is still recognized at the Federal level as applicable in cases tried in Federal courts, have its origins as Catholic judges in Catholic England during the Middle Ages attempted to apply the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law in concrete circumstances without "statutory guidance" from any kind of legislature, at least until the emergence of the Magna Carta in 1215?

The careerists in the organized naturalist crime family of the false opposite of the “right,” though, believe in a variation of “winning is the only thing” and/or “win, baby, win.” That which is “controversial” must be avoided once it becomes clear that actually acting on campaign promises carries with it the possibility of some electoral risk at the ever-important “next” election.

Indeed, some Republicans, such as United States Representative Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma), reacted with a sense of “relief” that they would not be forced to “fix” the health insurance premium subsidies that were at issue in the case of King v. Burwell:

As a whole, Republicans were disappointed with the ruling. But Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said the ruling saved Republicans from the “short-term political danger” of having to decide whether to extend the subsidies for millions of Americans.

“We would have been able to act, but any action is gonna be controversial, so you avoid the controversy but I’m still unhappy with the decision,” Cole said to reporters. (Republican Lawmakers React to King v. Burwell.)

“Avoid the controversy.”

Well, that’s certainly a profile in courage, isn’t it?

“Avoid the controversy.”

Just by the way, of course, the critical votes to uphold the ObamaDeathCare subsidies in violation of the plain language of the law itself came from Opus Dei’s John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, and none other than the infamous Associate Justice

Well, it is to “avoid the controversy” that the members of the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” are breathing yet another sign of relief over the fact that Anthony McLeod Kennedy has rescued them yet again from another “controversial” issue as a result of the majority opinion he rendered ten days ago now in the case of Obergefell v. Kennedy:   

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says there's not much Congress can do in the wake of the ruling by the Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage.

In an interview Tuesday night on Kentucky television station WDRB, McConnell restated that he still holds to the traditional view of marriage.

"I’ve always felt that marriage is between one man and one woman and the Supreme Court has held otherwise. That’s the law of the land," the Kentucky Republican said.

When he was asked if there is anything Congress can do, he answered: "I don’t think so. I think the courts have pretty well spoken."

However, McConnell said he is now concerned about "the potential problems with regard to religious liberty." 

There are number of institutions, which in practicing their religion, may run up against this," which he predicts will result "in a lot of additional litigation, as this decision is weighed against the strongly held religious beliefs of a number of Americans."

The Senate leader said that lawmakers will be looking to see "if religious liberty needs to be enhanced by statute."

Following the Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage and Obamacare, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said that he is proposing a constitutional amendment subjecting Supreme Court justices "to periodic judicial-retention elections."

But McConnell said "it isn't going to pass ... we've only done that 27 times in the history of our country." (Mitch McConnell: Gay Marriage Is ' Law of the Land.)

“The law of the land.”

Well, there another profile in courage from the imperious Kentuckian.

One can be “personally opposed” to the abomination of “same-sex” marriage while being “reconciled” to the irreversible nature of its institutionalization as a matter of fact and as a matter of a constitutional “right” that was “found” and applied by Associate Justices Anthony McLeod Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

Isn’t this the same stunt that many Catholics in the Democratic Party have been using since January 22, 1973, to support the legal fact of the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn despite their alleged “personal opposition.”

The hypocrisy is phenomenal as one cannot be “personally opposed” to the display of the Confederate battle flag while supporting its historical importance to justify its being flown anywhere, including on private property. One must oppose all displays of the Confederate battle flag lest he be termed as a racist and/or as one who wishes for violence to be fomented on nonwhite Americans. One can, however, be “personally opposed” to two of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance while supporting them publicly.

Please, ladies and gentleman, do not hold your breath to wait for the great careerist brains of Addison Mitchell McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner to “look into” protecting the very heresy that brought about the mess that we are in today, namely, “religious liberty,” in order to protect Americans who oppose sodomite perversity on religious grounds. These two careerists know which way the popular winds are blowing. They have heard “the people sing,” and they have learned to sing the tunes that the “people” want sung despite all of their phony-baloney protestations to the contrary.

No bill that would seek to “protect” Americans who dissent from the decision of the Supreme Court in the United States of America in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges has a ghost of a chance of being passed in the United States Senate even if a Republican sits in the White House as of January 20, 2017, the Feast of Saints Fabian and Sebastian. Even if the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “left,” the Democratic Party, does not recapture control of the Senate in national elections on November 8, 2016, Republicans would not have sixty votes to stop a filibuster by the man who is likely to be the next floor leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus, United States Senate Charles Schumer (D-New York). Schumer will make Harry Reid seem like Little Bo Peep by way of comparison. Schumer is a street-fighting, in-your-face New Yorker who is committed to the protection of every evil imaginable.

What about a constitutional amendment?

Please, do you really think a constitutional amendment to reverse Obergefell v. Hodges can garner the necessary two-thirds of support in the United States House of Representatives (two hundred ninety votes) and in the United States Senate (sixty-seven votes) to be sent to the state legislatures or to state ratifying conventions (a process used twice in this nation’s history, starting with the ratification of the Constitution itself in 1787 and 1788 and when the Eighteenth Amendment was repeated by the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933)?

Do you really think that three-fourths of either state legislature or state ratifying conventions (Congress specifies which procedure will be used to ratify a particular amendment) would ratify such an amendment in the unlikely event one received the necessary two-thirds majority support in both houses of the Congress of the United States of America?

Please, come back down to earth. This is a different country now than it was in the years after the Supreme Court decision in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973. I was only twenty-one years old at the time, having commenced my graduate studies days before at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana. Most of the people who are my age now, sixty-three and one-half, are dead. Even many who were in their thirties, forties and fifties forty-two years ago are dead, replaced by generations of Americans who have come to accept chemical and surgical baby-killing as a matter of their own “constitutional rights.” Sentimentality reigns supreme, not the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.

Again, just by the way, whatever did happen with all of the agitation for the paramount, no-exceptions human life amendment that many of us supported in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton?

No such amendment ever reached the floor of either house of the Congress of the United States of America, and the morally flawed “Hatch-EagletonAmendment,” which would have given each state the “right” to “decide” whether to “permit,” restrict or limit the surgical execution of the innocent preborn in their mothers’ wombs, failed in a floor vote in the United States Senate on July 28, 1983, by a vote of 49 for and fifty against.

Do you really think that there is any kind of legislative support for a constitutional amendment to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges even by using the same kind of flawed moral judgment that hatched the Hatch-Eagleton Amendment (which I opposed at the time in the most vigorous terms as it would have rendered unto the “states” that which is not for humans to decide), that is, to let the “states” “decide” whether to permit “gay marriage”?

Moreover, the careerists in the hapless gang of thieves of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” do not care how many of us poor schnooks dissent from Obergefell v. Hodges. These gangsters want to “win,” and Americans, including a majority of Catholics, have made their wretched “peace” with sodomite and lesbian “marriages.”

Making the situation even more intractable, of course, is the fact that such “moral issues” are simply not on Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s plate, shall we say. The conciliar Vatican’s Green Hornet, who is now in Ecuador and will be visiting Bolivia and Paraguay in the next seven days (I will write on Jorge’s travels as time and strength permit), is making it clear that his top priorities are “saving the plant,” certainly not souls, and ending “income inequality.”

Marching in lockstep with their “pope,” the conciliar “bishops” in the State of Iowa, which holds the nation’s first “big tent” event in the presidential election circus next year, are seeking to pressure Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential nomination to accept Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s call for action on “climate change” and to end “income inequality” by means of the statist confiscation and redistribution of wealth:

Roman Catholic leaders in early-voting state Iowa implored presidential candidates Thursday to take up Pope Francis' call for “profound political courage” by focusing their campaigns as much on improving the environment and income inequality as they have on opposing gay marriage and abortion in the past.

The pivot from such traditional social issues marks the first time that Catholic bishops publicly have asked those seeking the White House to heed the admonitions of Francis' June encyclical, said Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines.

In the pope's teaching document, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics called for a “sweeping revolution” to correct a “structurally perverse” economic system that allows the rich to exploit the poor and has turned the Earth into an “immense pile of filth.”

“These are going to be difficult decisions that have to be made,” said the Rev. Bud Grant of Davenport, joined at a news conference by bishops from central and eastern Iowa. “Politicians have to have the courage to do the right thing, and not necessarily the politically expedient thing.”

The push from bishops threatens to disrupt the historically reliable alliance of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholic voters, putting pressure on Republicans who have leaned on religious faith to guide them on social issues.

The pope's call will focus attention on how the six Catholics seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination will wrestle with Francis' teachings on economics and climate change that clash with traditional GOP ideology.

While Francis has condemned abortion and upheld marriage as the union of a man and a woman, he has not done so with anything approaching the frequency of his two papal predecessors.

Instead, Francis has urged church leaders to talk less about such social issues and more about mercy and compassion, so wayward Catholics would feel welcome to return to the church.

“Pope Francis hasn't changed church teaching, but he has given greater salience to social welfare and environmental issues, which has put Catholic Republicans in an awkward position,” said John Green, director of the University of Akron's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, “particularly if they want to also claim, like many of them do, that religion is important to them.”

Francis is expected to highlight the issues in September when he makes his first visit to the United States, where he will address a joint meeting of Congress as well as the United Nations General Assembly.

Bishops beyond politically important Iowa plan to do so as well. Church leaders in Cincinnati and Richmond, Va., plan events related to the encyclical in August, according to the Catholic Climate Covenant, which works with American bishops on the environment.

In Florida, Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski is planning sermons and events to amplify the pope's call for action to curb global warming. Wenski is the U.S. bishops' point person on the environment.

“There is today broad consensus among scientists that climate change presents real threat to human flourishing on this planet,” Wenski said after the encyclical was released. “The church cannot be indifferent.”

The GOP candidates vary marginally in their approach to the issues Francis addressed in the encyclical, in which he criticized deregulated free-market economics and argued that climate change was predominantly caused by humans. To date, most have taken the approach that Francis crossed beyond spiritual matters and into public policy.

Jeb Bush, for example, said he agrees with Francis that human activity has contributed to global warming, but does not go as far as the pope, who holds people, not nature, mainly responsible.

“I don't go to Mass for economic policy or for things in politics,” Bush added.

Campaigning in Iowa on Thursday, GOP presidential contender Bobby Jindal said Francis' call to regulate the economy to assist the poor overlooks the principle that a less constrained economy can benefit the poor.

“The best way to lift people out of poverty and improve incomes for men and women is to provide more good paying jobs,” the Louisiana governor wrote in an emailed statement. And he said that's done with policies that help small businesses grow, not by government “edicts.”

Bush and Jindal are Roman Catholic.

Their opinion is echoed by many conservative Republican activists in Iowa and elsewhere.

“I think he's got it all wrong,” Loras Schulte, a Catholic and a state Republican committee member from northeast Iowa, said of Francis. “On matters of faith, I will certainly hear him. But these are not matters of faith.”

Steve Scheffler, a Republican and leader in the state's evangelical Christian community, said Francis' writings may peel some Catholics away from the coalition of evangelical pastors and conservative priests united by their position on issues like abortion.

While Scheffler said that would be unlikely to affect the state's GOP caucuses in February, it could impact how Iowa votes in November 2016.

“You see a lot of coalitions of Catholics and evangelicals working on the life issue together,” Scheffler said. “You could lose some Catholics to this. Some priests buy into that whole social justice, income distribution thing. But not all of them.” (Catholic bishops pressure presidential candidates.)

Gee, I just can’t seem to recall the conciliar “bishops” of the Hawkeye State, where I cast my last vote for a Republican presidential nominee in order to “keep Bill Clinton out of the White House” back in 1992 (my flawed efforts to support the “lesser of two evils” included The Wanderer publishing a commentary of mine, “Magic, You’re No Hero,” and the Sioux City Journal publishing “Character Is An Issue”), putting pressure on Catholic pro-aborts in public life.

(The now retired United States Senator Thomas Harkin, for instance, remains in good standing in the counterfeit church of conciliarism despite his open, foul-mouthed support for the execution of the innocent preborn and for perversity. Father Giuseppe Sarto put an end to the use of bad language and blasphemy in his first parish assignment in Tombolo, Italy, recognizing that a Catholic must speak with the lips of Christ the King, meaning that no profanity of any kind must issue from his mouth or be expressed in print. Harkin’s potty-mouth, which is shared by Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr, who was himself never criticized by the conciliar “bishops” in Iowa when he campaigned for the Democratic Party presidential nomination against Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John “Pretty Boy Floyd” Edwards. Those who do violence to language by profanity and vulgarity can find it pretty easy to support, if not commit, evils that flow all too logically from the use of words that have as their inspiration one and only source, the devil himself.)

Following in the demonic “tradition” of the late Joseph “Cardinal” Bernardin’s “consistent ethic of life” (aka the “seamless garment”), Jorge Mario Bergoglio has given his “bishops” the “green light” to go “green” on the hapless gangsters of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” with a zeal that not even Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, who opposed moral evils on humanistic and naturalistic grounds, demanded his “bishops” use against pro-death Catholics in public life. Indeed, each and every prominent pro-death Catholic who was vocal during Wojtyla/John Paul II’s 9,666 days as the conciliar “Petrine Minister” is either in “good standing” now or was so up to and including the moment of his Particular Judgment. The late Associate Justice William Brennan, United States Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Edward Moore Kennedy, Governor Mario Matthew Cuomo, House Speakers Thomas P. O’Neill and Thomas Foley, and, among so many others, United States Representative Geraldine Anne Ferraro-Zaccaro comet to mind in this regard.

The “new normal” in the counterfeit church of conciliarism under Jorge’s watch involves support for junk science (the ideology of environmentalism) and for junk social science (Marxism).

Yes, Obergefell v. Hodges is here to stay, and worse is yet to come. Much worse.

We must remember that this is all a chastisement for our sins and those of the whole world. Yes, things are only going to get worse, which is why we must remain steadfast in prayer to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, He Who is the King of all men and of all nations, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary while we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits and remember these words that Our Crucified and Risen King spoke to saint Margaret Mary Alacoque:

I will reign in spite of all who oppose Me." (Quoted in: The Right Reverend Emile Bougaud. The Life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, reprinted by TAN Books and Publishers in 1990, p. 361.)

Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and the hour of our death.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.