It was encouraging to read Michael Gerson’s column in The Washington Post recently on scientific advances which raise the prospect of “Putting AIDS on the road to extinction.” He is right to say, “Religious conservatives have no objections to treatment and are neither shocked nor alarmed by circumcision.”

However, he ignores two huge “elephants in the room.” The first is the role of behavior change in reducing infections. A Ugandan AIDS prevention official wrote in the Post in 2008 about his country’s success in dramatically reducing AIDS prevalence through use of the “ABC” message—“Abstain” from sex until marriage, “Be faithful” to your spouse, and “use Condoms” only if you fail at A and B. Gerson celebrates that the cost of treatment is now less than $350 per person; but Sam L. Ruteikara noted, “Our successful ABC campaign cost just 29 cents per person each year.”

Gerson noted that circumcision has reduced “the risk of transmission from women to men,” and that early treatment reduced “transmission to a heterosexual partner.” This may be encouraging for Africa, but is less so at home, where the CDC reports that “more than half (53%) of all people living with HIV” are men who have sex with men (MSM), “the only risk group in which new HIV infections have been increasing steadily.” Discouraging anal intercourse and sex with multiple partners—practices not unique to homosexual men, but more prevalent among them—are part of “the only morally acceptable strategy” to help America share in the end of AIDS.

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Diana Furchtgott-Roth, economist and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, concluded a recent column on Obamacare: “Yes, health care will be affordable for low-income Americans – but only if they’re unmarried.”  Her column doesn’t appear to have received a great deal of attention, but Furchtgott-Roth was describing one line of analysis from an October 27^th hearing conducted by the House Committee on Government Reform.  The hearing was entitled “Examining Obamacare’s Hidden Marriage Penalty and Its Impact on the Deficit.”  The details are a bit complicated, so I recommend reading the Furchtgott-Roth article.  (A committee staff report is also available.)  Suffice it to say that there is much to learn about Obamacare as Mrs. Pelosi once told us.

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“The cost for businesses to buy health coverage for workers rose the most this year since 2005 and may reach $32,175 for a family in 2021, according to a survey of private and public employers.”  So reports Bloomberg News.

This is not news any family wants to read.  The last thing our recession-bound country needs are rising health care costs, particularly when we know these costs will be augmented dramatically should the Obama health care plan go into effect.

Buried within the Bloomberg article is a story that is underreported but finally seeping-out into the mainstream press: “Contributing to the rise in premiums are … fewer young and healthy people in the insurance pool.”  This assertion is being made by the respected insurance association president Karen Ignagni, but it is verified by cold data.  The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the following:

Continue reading »

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Check out our new video:  “Why a Federal Judge Ruled Obamacare Unconstitutional.”  Ken Klukowski, Director, Center for Religious Liberty, at Family Research Council explains the reasoning behind the judge’s ruling.

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President Obama’s decision this week not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court demonstrates both contempt for the law itself and a disturbing arrogance concerning his own authority.

This action is not unique.  As today’s Wall Street Journal notes, “The White House has apparently decided that it won’t enforce the unpopular parts of its health-care plan until after the 2012 election. The latest evidence is its decision not to slash Medicare Advantage, the program that Democrats hate because it lets seniors choose private insurance options.”

And this week’s decision regarding DOMA is not a new departure from allegiance to the law.  As George Will wrote in 2009, “The Obama administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness.”

The President of the United States takes an oath when he assumes office, assuring us that he will “defend the Constitution of the United States.”  That Constitution makes Congress the legislative body, not the Executive branch.  Thus, when Congress passes legislation that is signed into law by the President, it becomes incumbent upon the President — as the chief constitutional law enforcement office in the nation — to defend it.

When this or any President refuses to defend any given law, he is placing himself above it.  How, in principle, this distinguishes the United States from any tin-pot autocracy, where law is made by the fiat choices of an unaccountable dictator, escapes me.  For that matter, why bother with having legislative (Congress) or judicial (the Supreme and other federal courts) branches if the President can simply choose to ignore defending laws he dislikes?

Family Research Council’s Senior Fellow Chris Gacek (JD, Virginia) notes that DOMA “affirms the power of each state to make its own decision as to whether it will accept or reject same-sex marriages created in other jurisdictions … The Defense of Marriage Act preserves the right of the states to govern themselves with respect to family law and domestic relations. DOMA impedes judicial activism regarding marriage and provides needed uniformity in federal law. It is an essential part of preserving traditional marriage in America.”   In other words, as Quinn Hillyer writes in The American Spectator, “Without DOMA, state and local decision-making would be nil. In fact, the decisions of 49 states could be superseded by the decision of one state to allow such ‘marriages’.”

The rule of law is essential to the future of representative self-government in the United States.  The future of marriage hinges, in large measure, on DOMA.  President Obama has succeeded in undermining both this week.

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If you’re interested in a legal presentation on what’s wrong with Obamacare, FRC’s own Ken Klukowski delivered a lecture to The Federalist Society of Syracuse University — which is now online in four parts:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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Check out this new video from the Population Research Institute showing a factual explanation of how President Obama’s health care plan will expand abortion coverage in the United States.

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On Tuesday, October 5, Christians here in D.C. and across the country will be focusing on the issue of helping support pregnant women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of a disability. As Christians we believe that every person is willed and loved by God, and has inherent gifts and dignity. However, with new technologies in prenatal testing, this dignity is being called into question. Upon receiving an unexpected prenatal diagnosis and in the absence of comprehensive information and resources that promote the option of carrying to term, up to 90 % of women decide to terminate their pregnancies. We uphold that all human beings have infinite value regardless of any medical conditions or disabilities, and seek to support families during this time.

From 1:00-2:30 p.m., the National Catholic Partnership on Disability (NCPD) will host a national training for ministers, medical personnel and others in the Washington, D.C. area who are interested. This will be followed by the Archdiocese of Washington’s Affirming Life Symposium starting at 2:45 p.m., also for ministers, pastoral workers and medical staff. Register at www.ncpd.org. For more information, contact Peg Kolm, Department of Special Needs Ministries at 301-853-4560.

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In the wake of the controversy surrounding ella, the abortion drug produced by Watson Pharmaceuticals, MSNBC today is reporting new and serious allegations that another Pharmaceutical giant, Johnson and Johnson, has been withholding critical information about the health side effects of another reproductive medication, ortho evra, commonly called “the patch.”

The patch has reportedly caused at least 23 deaths in women who have taken it since FDA approval in 2003. This is in part likely due to the fact that the patch allows for a large amount of estrogen to enter a woman’s body (60% more than “the pill”). MSNBC is claiming that Johnson and Johnson have known about the deadly risks, but have hidden this information. Apparently the FDA has also been looking into these allegations for two years, but have not taken any action…

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My (relatively) new FRC colleague Ken Klukowski has the lowdown over at Townhall.com:

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied the Obama administration’s motion to dismiss Virginia’s lawsuit against Obamacare. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed one of the three major lawsuits against President Obama’s healthcare law, focusing on the issue that the individual mandate, requiring every American to purchase health insurance, is unconstitutional.

For the reason my coauthor and I explained in the Wall Street Journal in January and last month, the Obamacare individual mandate is clearly unconstitutional. In researching this issue for our book, The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, Ken Blackwell and I found that commanding Americans to buy insurance is not authorized by even the most liberal precedents of the Supreme Court interpreting the Commerce Clause, the Taxing and Spending Clause, or the General Welfare Clause.

Read the whole thing…

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Last week we learned that President Obama made a recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Berwick, a man who has been called “a one-man death panel,” repeatedly has stated his support for rationed healthcare.

What will this appointment mean to those of us who believe that every life has dignity, regardless of its stage or health status?  One clear concern, in addition to rationed healthcare, is assisted suicide.

A recent letter to the editor written by an Oregon doctor drove home this critical connection between assisted suicide and rationed healthcare.

“…remember the names Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup. Wagner was an Oregon resident who died in 2008. The Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid) refused to pay for a cancer drug to possibly prolong her life and offered to pay for her suicide instead. This position saved the plan money. Stroup had a similar experience. The plan would not pay for a drug to prolong his life and ease his pain, but would pay for his suicide.  He said:  ‘This is my life they’re playing with.’ In both cases, the Oregon Health Plan’s position was only possible because assisted suicide is legal in Oregon. With assisted suicide now at issue in Idaho, will you and your families be the next Randy Stroups? Will you be the next Barbara Wagners?”

The decision regarding the legality of assisted suicide in the U.S. currently resides with the states. A number of states have chosen to make it legal, among them Oregon, Washington and Montana. Idaho currently is considering similar legislation.

Advocacy groups have waged strong campaigns in areas that potentially could legalize assisted suicide. In Pennsylvania, a group recently has been posting controversial billboards advocating for the legalization of assisted suicide. Another such advocacy group is “Compassion and Choices,” which has been lobbying in Idaho.

Every person, regardless of race, age, health, etc., has an inherent right to life.  Sadly, it is becoming more and more obvious as we begin to see the new healthcare law rolled out that the President’s health care regime is not about respecting a person’s dignity or inherent rights, especially that most basic right to life from conception to natural death.

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On April 15, President Obama issued a “memorandum” to the Secretary of Health and Human Services instructing her to prepare regulations that will protect the right of homosexual partners (and other non-family members) to visit their loved ones in the hospital.

In a series of interviews the next day, I emphasized that the Family Research Council does not have any objection to such visitation in principle, as long as it is premised on the patient’s personal choice rather than on a redefinition of family or marriage. However, I also pointed out that the main reason this is even a topic of discussion is because it is used as a political talking point by the advocates of same-sex “marriage,” who see it as a golden opportunity to tug at people’s heartstrings and generate emotional sympathy for their cause.

I further asserted my belief that the frequency with which homosexuals are barred from visiting their partners in the hospital is grossly exaggerated. As I pointed out in an online chat on the Washington Post website,

The idea that homosexuals are regularly denied the right to visit their partners in the hospital is one that has only one source–homosexual activists who want to change the definition of marriage. Where are the media surveys of hospital administrators to determine how many hospitals actually have such restrictive policies?

In the reporting on the Obama memorandum, however, many media outlets cited the case of Janice Langbehn, a lesbian who sued a Florida hospital claiming that she was denied the right to visit her partner Lisa Pond when Pond was dying from an aneurysm. Langbehn’s story is apparently a familiar one in the homosexual activist community, thanks in large part to a sympathetic New York Times article last year.

In fact, Langbehn’s story was instrumental in moving Obama to act. According to the Washington Post:

Officials said Obama had been moved by the story of a lesbian couple in Florida, Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond, who were kept apart when Pond collapsed of a cerebral aneurysm in February 2007, dying hours later at a hospital without her partner and children by her side. Obama called Langbehn on Thursday evening from Air Force One as he flew to Miami, White House officials said.

The New York Times story last year did report that the hospital disputes some of Langbehn’s charges, but media reports on the Obama memo last week, like that in the Post, did not even bother mentioning that. They were content to repeat the storyline of the homosexual activists verbatim, without even stopping to ask if there was another side.

There is, however, another side. On the website of the Miami Herald, I discovered that the hospital which Langbehn accused of mistreating her has sent its own letter to President Obama. Here is part of what the hospital said:

We would also like to take this opportunity to provide you with some clarification on the allegations being made by Janice Langbehn, whose partner was treated at Jackson’s Ryder Trauma Center in 2007. From the beginning, JHS has vehemently denied that Ms. Langbehn was denied visitation due to her sexual orientation. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida dismissed Ms. Langbehn’s lawsuit against Jackson Memorial Hospital in September 2009.

Ms. Langbehn’s allegations and those made by published articles, blogs, etc., are inaccurate and have damaged the reputations and deeply hurt the feelings of the personnel in our trauma center. They have devoted their careers to all who come through our doors, from all walks of life.

JHS grants hospital visitation to all individuals equally, regardless of their relationship to the patient, as long as doing so does not interfere with the care being given to the patient or other patients in the area. With that said, our first priority when a patient is brought to our trauma center is always to stabilize the patient and save their life. As the only adult and pediatric Level 1 trauma center in Miami-Dade County to support a population of more than 2.3 million people, our facility is one of the busiest – and most renowned – in the nation.

The Trauma Resuscitation Unit in Ryder Trauma Center, where Lisa Pond was treated when airlifted to Jackson, is more like a large operating room with multiple beds separated by glass partitions rather than a traditional hospital floor. Sometimes, visitors are not able to see a loved one in the trauma bay as quickly as they would like or they may have to wait until the patient is moved to the ICU or to another area of the hospital that is better suited for visitation. This all depends on the circumstances of the situation, how busy the unit is at the time and the medical conditions of the patients in the unit at the time. The patients in this area are facing life-threatening injuries or illnesses and are extremely vulnerable.

The most important piece of information to consider from our side of this story is that the charge nurse on duty the night Ms. Pond was in our care – and the person who made all visitation access decisions that evening – is herself a lesbian with a life partner. In addition, numerous members of the medical team working in our trauma unit are openly homosexual. We can assure you that Ms. Langbehn was not treated differently because of her sexual orientation.

When homosexuals complain that they are “denied the right to visit their partners in the hospital,” they may give some people the impression (I suspect deliberately) that in some hospitals they are never able to visit their partners, simply because they are not legally recognized as family members. I pointed out that for ordinary patients in ordinary hospital rooms (the vast majority of hospital patients), there are few if any restrictions on visitation. You don’t go through security, no one checks your ID—you just walk up to the room and visit. Some hospitals have even done away with the tradition of “visiting hours,” and instead allow visitors to come in at any hour of the day or night.

I did acknowledge that there might be exceptions to these liberal visitation policies, such as when a patient is in intensive care. But there was one point so obvious that I did not bother making it (until now)—and that is that in situations of emergency, trauma, or intensive care, hospitals may sometimes keep away all visitors from a patient for medical reasons—not for reasons of “discrimination.” If the hospital’s account is accurate, that is what happened to Janice Langbehn.

Is the thought of a person “dying without their loved ones at their bedside” an agonizing one? Of course. But it is an agony that is probably experienced by many people, regardless of sexual orientation or marital status, every day, for one simple reason—their beds are surrounded by doctors and nurses fighting to save their lives.

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She called in to Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday. Sean gave her extra time. Good thing.

The lady identified herself as “Bridget,” and what a story she told. She is a medical speech pathologist, one who works with stroke victims and those who, for one reason or another, have speech impairment. She is also a military wife, familiar with TriCare, the military’s health care system (which, of course, is government-run).

Most interestingly, she described her two years working in the British National Health System. There, the doctors’ and nurses’ education is completely underwritten by the taxpayers. With free medical education, young people with a desire to serve others pursue their studies just as any other college students elect their majors. For them, free education and job security afterwards are not a bad deal.

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According to Reuters, White House Secretary Robert Gibbs is unconcerned with the reports today by two leading American manufacturers that the newly enacted Democratic health system legislation will hit them hard financially.

John Deere and Caterpillar report a combined anticipated earnings loss of $250 million given the new tax provisions of President Obama’s just-imposed regime of federal health care management.  This will affect their ability to hire, promote and provide benefits.  It will affect the cost of the goods they sell and their ability to compete in domestic and international markets.  It will hurt their ability to work with subcontractors and pay for retirement benefits.

In fact, Business Week notes the business consultancy of Towers Watson estimates a loss of $14 billion in corporate profits due to the Obama health regime-change (“Obama Tax’s $14 Billion Charge Starts at Caterpillar,” March 25, 2010).

But, hey – to Robert Gibbs, all of this is worth one modest shrugging of his shoulders.  Here’s what he said on Air Force One when asked about the hit Deere and Cat will have to take due to his boss’s new medical system overhaul:

So basically, they get a subsidy and what amounts to two deductions.  They get the subsidy that’s not counted as income, then they get to write off the spending. This bill, our bill, simply closes the loophole.

Similarly, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke responded, “The rules…and a lot of the regulations on how this will affect large businesses haven’t even been published yet.  So for them to come out, I think, is premature and irresponsible.”

I see: The Obama people are just closing tax “loopholes,” but it’s irresponsible for companies to estimate what the de facto taxes will cost them.  How silly – a company ponders the affects of a tax hike and it’s irresponsible for letting its investors know its cost estimates.  Guess I missed that lucid economic principle somewhere along the way.

Ask the families of people who are about to lose their jobs because President Obama and his congressional allies couldn’t care less about the private sector.  Many of the President’s senior aides and appointees (including Mr. Gibbs) have never held jobs in the open market.  They have never actually created a job, met a payroll, worried about opening a new store or burned the midnight oil experimenting with a new product.

In showing contempt for individual and corporate taxpayers, Robert Gibbs and Gary Locke reveal the true heart of the current Administration: Elitist, dismissive, arrogant and fundamentally ignorant of the American system of entrepreneurship, enterprise and market-based competition.

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Congressman Paul Ryan, a respected Wisconsin Republican and self-described “numbers guy,” writes the following in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Premiums in the individual market would rise from 10% to 13% for families. Our debt and deficit crisis —- driven by $76 trillion in unfunded liabilities —- would accelerate from the creation of a brand new entitlement and an increase in the federal deficit by $662 billion, when the true costs are factored in. National health expenditures will increase by an additional $222 billion over the next decade, according the president’s own chief actuary, and $2.4 trillion in the decade after the new entitlement is up and running.

Ryan himself calls these “mind-numbing numbers,” but their vastness only emphasizes how serious they are. To bring it down to family level, what the Obama-Democratic plan means is that you and your loved ones will obtain poorer quality of care at higher cost. Medical innovations generated by private sector research will contract as companies have fewer financial resources with which to make them. Market-driven competition will decline as the number of insurance companies shrinks due to heavy new mandates and regulations. The ripple effect on the broader economy will mean that there will be fewer jobs in the private-sector as companies lay-off employees to pay for both higher taxes and cost of newly imposed health insurance rules.

The world works in a certain way. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The world turns from east to west. And the more centralized political power becomes and the greater the mandates and costs imposed on those governed, the less freedom and prosperity there will be.

These propositions are axiomatic because they are immutable. And it is difficult to believe that whatever their protestations, President Obama and his allies — intelligent men and women, all — did not understand them very well from before the start of their health care “reform” campaign.

Less quality, high cost health care. Fewer jobs. Lost freedom. That’s change I’d rather not believe in, but it’s here. And conservatives will keep fighting it as long as our liberty endures.

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From FRC Action’s press release:

Washington, D.C. – Today the House of Representatives passed the Senate health care bill with a multitude of abortion funding provisions and passed the reconciliation bill to increase funding for one abortion funding program. Neither contained conscience protections previously approved by the House.

Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins responded with the following comments:

“Passage of this partisan government takeover of health care with all of its Medicare cuts, tax increases, a continued marriage penalty, individual mandates, and abortion funding shows the extreme leftist orientation of this Congress.

“The American people, regardless of their view of its legality, should not be forced to pay for someone’s abortion. Those who voted for this legislation cannot legitimately claim to be even neutral on the issue of abortion. This legislation accomplishes this abortion mandate in spades.

Read the whole release here.

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Abortion is mandated over a dozen times in the healthcare bill. For more, read this.

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Amnesty International released a report today on Maternal Mortality in the United States. I was enthusiastic to see a subheading for a “right to life” until a little further into the report I read that abortion (the procedure that destroys innocent little lives) was included as part of a woman’s “right to life.”

From page 14 of the report:

“The right to life is protected in a number of international human rights treaties including the ICCPR, which states that every human being has the inherent right to life and that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of their right to life…the need to employ a broad interpretation of the right to life, which includes public health measures, and has called on states to reduce preventable maternal mortality, including by ensuring access to family planning and abortion, as part of their obligation to protect the right to life under the ICCPR.33 Like all human rights, the right to life must also be guaranteed without discrimination.”

Sadly, Amnesty International defies their own words by discriminating against those who are in the womb.

To put the “right to life” issue in context, approximately ½ million women die worldwide each year from complications in childbirth (i.e., maternal mortality). In comparison, approximately 42 million children are denied the inherent right to life through abortion every year worldwide.

Additionally, according to the WHO, Maternal Mortality is not listed among the top ten health causes of death anywhere in the world – in developing or developed countries.

While we can all agree that expectant mothers should have access to good health care, the issue of “maternal mortality” should not be a cover for abortion.

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“War is God’s way of teaching Americans history,” goes a cynical old European taunt. I don’t agree with that, entirely. But they have a point. Who among us knew where Fallujah was before 2003? Or where Kandahar was before 2001? Who among us does not know where Gettysburg is and what it means. Or, at least, what it used to mean.

Living through history has a way of making an impact on our lives. We are living through a great moment in our history. Glenn Beck regales Americans nightly with stories and quotes from the Founding Fathers. It’s as if this eager, emotional fellow has just discovered them. He’s that enthusiastic. Legal writer Mark Levin holds forth nightly as well. His book, Liberty and Tyranny, rocketed to the top of the bestseller lists. It’s an essential primer in the theory and practice of limited government.

Liberals are, predictably, horrified by the likes of Beck and Levin. But they would have been horrified by Thomas Paine, too. Paine was a hard-drinking, failed tax collector and corset maker from England who came to America with no money and even fewer prospects. His book, Common Sense, sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It electrified the American colonists and helped mightily to move them to demand independence. His Excellency General George Washington had Common Sense distributed to his ragged soldiers.

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You’ve gotta love Bart Stupak, the brave Democrat from Michigan who is standing athwart the Obama-Abortion-Care Juggernaut, yelling, “Stop!”

Here are some choice quotes (to use a pun) from Representative Stupak from a recent interview with the Weekly Standard:

When the reporter mentioned speculation that Stupak was ready to cave and vote for a health care bill that would force taxpayers to fund abortion, his response was clear: “Obviously they don’t know me,” he said.  “If I didn’t cave in November, why would I do it now after all the crap I’ve been through?”

President Obama’s attempt to get Stupak’s vote is both ridiculous and revealing:  Apparently the President invited Stupak to the Russian opera last week.  (This is reminiscent of candidate Nelson Rockefeller at the working man’s bar ordering beers all around and a Courvoisier for himself.)  The Weekly Standard writes:  “Asked if he was a big fan of the opera, Stupak, who represents a district encompassing the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, laughed and said:  ‘No, I’m not a fan of opera, especially not Russian opera because I wouldn’t understand a thing.’”

Stupak isn’t afraid to call out his own Party, saying that White House officials are “trying to get face time with members to convince them to vote for a bill that no one has seen in writing.”

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