“This is a stunning power for an agency to arrogate to itself when there is absolutely no mention of it in the statute.”

“This is a stunning power for an agency to arrogate to itself when there is absolutely no mention of it in the statute.”

The agency is the EPA, and the words were written by an Obama-appointed judge in her ruling that told the EPA it had no right to unilaterally cancel already approved permits.

As I’ve said, the law is such an inconvenient thing for this administration.

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The reckoning

The reckoning.

Today, it’s the Catholic Church whose free-exercise powers are under assault from this cascade of diktats sanctioned by — indeed required by — Obamacare. Tomorrow it will be the turn of other institutions of civil society that dare stand between unfettered state and atomized citizen.

Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state — grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness. Little wonder the president barely mentioned it in his latest State of the Union address. He wants to be reelected. He’d rather talk about other things.

Remember, the power of the state is not always wielded by those you agree with. From the right or the left, fear that power, because it will come after you both when it finally has the ability to do so.

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The testimony of the fired JPL employee who is claiming religious discrimination continued on Monday.

The testimony continued on Monday of the fired JPL employee who is claiming the science center fired him because of his religious beliefs.

[David Coppedge] trial’s started last week, and on Monday [he] testified that his supervisor Gregory Chin had wrongly accused him, threatened his freedom of religion and created a potentially hostile working environment. “You are pushing your religion in this office and harassing people with this religion,” Chin said, according to Coppedge, who added: “He was angry and he got angrier.”

Coppedge said he asked Chin why he considered intelligent design anything but science. “Dave, intelligent design is religion,” Chin replied, according to Coppedge. Chin warned him against discussing religion or politics with colleagues, he said.

“I felt threatened .. I said: ‘Greg, this gets into issues of free speech and freedom of religion … this could be construed as creating a hostile work environment’,” he added.

Real scientists should never feel threatened by anything Coppedge was saying, and should in fact enjoy debating the issue. Unfortunately, I have learned that such open-mindedness is found with increasing rarity in modern intellectual society, especially when it comes to Judeo-Christian beliefs. This is why I tend to believe Coppedge’s story.

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A business in Missouri has become the first secular and private company to bring a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.

Bring it on! A business in Missouri has become the first secular and private company to bring a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.

Most of the discussion about the Obama administration’s mandate has revolved around whether specific religious organizations, such as the Catholic Church, should be exempted from it. To me, that misses the point. In a free society, anyone who objects to this mandate on the basis of personal belief should have the freedom to ignore it. Or to put it another way, the government has no right to order free citizens to buy contraceptives for others.

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The TSA at work

The TSA at work.

A toddler in a wheelchair is stopped by the TSA at ORD (O’Hare Airport in Chicago) and forced to into a sequestered area. On his way to a family vacation in Disney, this 3 year old boy is in a body cast for a broken leg. Despite assurances from his father that “everything is ok”, he is physically trembling with fear while he watches his two siblings, mother, father, grandfather and grandmother pass through along with everyone else…only to be singled out.

Here’s the video. You decide whether this makes any sense in the real world.

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