Most journalists live in a bubble

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue 

A recent Gallup poll found that only 16 percent of Americans have a great deal, or quite a lot, of confidence in newspapers. Just 11 percent have some degree of confidence in TV news. Among Republicans, just 5 percent have confidence in newspapers, as contrasted to 35 percent among Democrats.

Of course Democrats are less critical—most journalists are liberal Democrats; they give them what they want. This is not debatable. A large survey published in April that was authorized by three political scientists found that 8 in 10 journalists who cover politics identify as liberal Democrats.

"On average, the journalists in our samples are far to the left of the average Twitter user and even to the left of prominent liberal politicians like former president Barack Obama." Yet both the journalists, and the political scientists, believe this has no effect on their stories.

The political scientists contend that "journalists are just as likely to cover 'conservative' candidates as they are to cover 'liberal' candidates." Thus they conclude that "In short, despite being overwhelmingly liberal themselves, journalists show a great deal of impartiality in the types of candidates that they choose to write about when a potential story is presented to them."

The bubble these people live in is gargantuan. It is not the subject of a news story that counts the most—it is what is said about it. Jim Acosta covered President Trump. Did that make him impartial?

Similarly, a Pew survey published a few weeks ago found that 55 percent of journalists say every side does not always deserve equal treatment. However, the public sharply disagrees: 76 percent say journalists should always strive to give all sides equal coverage. This obviously accounts for why journalists are held in such low regard.

To be fair, there are times when covering both sides is not justified. Are there two sides to rape? Also, covering both sides can sometimes show partiality, not impartiality. Consider two recent stories affecting Catholics.

On July 27, a news story in the Press Herald, a Maine media outlet, said that Rev. Robert Vaillancourt, who had been placed on administrative leave for an entire year, is being returned to ministry following an investigation that concluded that allegations that he sexually abused two girls in the 1980s could not be substantiated. Records and documents were checked and 30 people were interviewed.

Where's the slant? In a vain effort to show "both sides," a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) was given much coverage, saying he believes the women. Not only did he not offer a single piece of evidence to support his position, SNAP has been totally discredited as a monumental fraud. It exists on paper only. Take away this guy's cell phone and it doesn't exist.

Real journalists would dig deeper seeking to see if these women made up their stories to shake down the Catholic Church.

Real journalists would also have reported this week that the majority Canadian schools that housed and taught Indigenous persons were not run by Catholics. They were run by the government and Protestant denominations.

Make no mistake, there are still good journalists who strive to be objective. Sadly, they are in a minority—most of them function more like activists than true professionals. That they live in a bubble is incontestable.

 

Right to work organization supports religious liberty

Iowa Catholic Radio – Faith On Trial

Episode 324 – July 28, 2022 – Right to work legal foundation supports religious liberty in court.

Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix  

https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/

Faith On Trial airs every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on IowaCatholicRadio.com.

Chemical Abortion Is Next Pro-Life Battlefield

By Thomas Jipping with Isaac Bock, The Heritage Foundation

The Supreme Court’s June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that “the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion” returned “the authority to regulate abortion … to the people and their elected representatives.”

That effort will be more complicated than when the court took that authority away 49 years ago in 1973.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the three-decade trend of declining abortions in the United States is over, primarily because a majority of abortions are by chemicals, rather than surgery.

Killing a child in the womb no longer requires traveling to an abortion clinic, but can be accomplished without even leaving home with a two-drug combination approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000.

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After the Dobbs decision, President Joe Biden vowed to keep this new trend going by protecting access to chemical abortion pills approved by the FDA.

Abortion advocates, of course, prefer the misleading term “medication abortion.” The Cambridge Dictionary, however, defines “medication” as “medicine … used to improve a particular condition or illness.” The “condition” in pregnancy is simply the existence of a living human being. Abortion destroys, rather than improves, that condition. When, as every drug commercial states, “used as directed,” abortion chemicals will kill and then expel an unborn child from the womb.

Such poisons are no more “medication” than the chemicals used in lethal injections in capital punishment.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League and later a pro-life advocate, once said that fewer women would have abortions if wombs had windows. So, here’s a peek into what happens during a chemical abortion.

The first pill, mifepristone, blocks progesterone, a natural hormone necessary for pregnancy. The lack of progesterone cuts off oxygen and nutrients, starving the child to death. Mifepristone results in the death of the child in 75% of pregnancies when it’s used.

Mifepristone is approved by the FDA for use up to week 10 of pregnancy. At that stage, a child’s heartbeat is detectable and his or her brain and lungs are forming. The child already has a clearly identifiable human shape.

If the first chemical does not kill the child, the second (misoprostol) will, stimulating uterine contractions and expelling the dead child.

Abortion chemicals, however, do not simply kill a child in the womb. Women die, and hundreds experience serious adverse drug experiences, every year. For that reason, the FDA instituted in 2007 a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, which involves more restrictions than otherwise required for FDA-approved drugs.

This is the point where the politics of abortion make casualties of children and women. Abortion advocates once emphasized the relationship between a woman and her doctor. In Roe, the Supreme Court said that “the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient’s pregnancy should be terminated.”

The shift from surgical to chemical abortion, however, will steadily remove doctors from the picture and leave women isolated.

Last December, for example, the FDA removed a critical Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy  requirement that mifepristone had to be dispensed by a health care provider in person. The chemical may now be prescribed through telehealth appointments and shipped by mail without any face-to-face interaction between a woman and her doctor.

In response, 19 states have prohibited chemical abortion through telehealth, and some have introduced legislation that would ban the practice entirely. The power of states in this new area, however, is unclear. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said that states “may not ban mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.”

There will no doubt be litigation, however, over the broader effect of the FDA’s conclusion about safety and efficacy.

In Mississippi, for example, a manufacturer of generic mifepristone, GenBioPro, has already sued the state based on the claim that FDA regulations take precedence over the state’s ban on telehealth dispensing of the drug.

While issues like these complicate states’ effort to combat abortion drugs, Congress can and should step in. Congress creates executive branch agencies and gives them authority to implement federal legislation.

Abortion drugs not only kill babies in the womb, and can harm their mothers, but are isolating women and undermining the necessary relationship between patients and doctors.

In the 118^th Congress, pro-life legislators must tackle this problem and limit the damage.

Samantha Bee's Obscene Legacy

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

TBS is pushing Samantha Bee to the curb, which is not a strange place for someone who has spent her entire professional life in the gutter. After seven seasons, "Full Frontal" will not return in the fall.

Bee is one of the most filthy-mouthed entertainers in American history. She is also a relentless anti-Catholic bigot.

In 2018, she showed how low she can go when she called Ivanka Trump the "c-word." After being blasted by critics, which did not include the National Organization for Women or the Feminist Majority, she issued an apology. "I crossed the line and I do apologize for that." She added that "A lot of women do not want to reclaim that word. They want it gone and I don't blame them."

A few nights later, she said that while she will refrain from using the "c-word," she admitted that it was her goal to "reclaim" it. As I said at the time, "Why would she want to normalize a word that if used to describe her own mother she would recoil?"

When this episode happened, Ben Weiss, an opinion writer for the New York Times, defended Bee and TBS. "TBS hired Sam Bee to be...Sam Bee. She's an edgy late-night comic. That's what she does."

Weiss is correct, though his observation is incomplete. Bee was chosen because she is a filthy-mouthed, anti-Catholic bigot. That's what she does.

Proof that Weiss is correct can be gleaned by considering her "comedic" content prior to starting her TBS show in 2016.

In 2010, she told NPR that she went to a Catholic school, even though her father is an atheist and her mother practices Wicca. She boasted that in her school, we "didn't have big gory Jesuses everywhere...couldn't see the blood dripping from the wounds." When asked why she likes to mock Catholicism, she answered, "That is pure pleasure for me."

In 2013, she talked about cardinals assembling in Rome to elect a new pope. She called the gathering a "grope," likening it to "molestation," saying the process was not complete until the cardinals reached "fellatio," or an "oral consensus" culminating in "white smoke rising from the chimney."

Three years later, she obscenely attacked an archbishop who had raised concerns about the pro-abortion ties of the Girl Scouts. She replied, "if you don't want girls knocked up, and you won't let them have contraception, you better teach the Boy Scouts to use some of those fancy knots on their "d***."

In October 2016, on her new TBS show, Bee took aim at Catholic healthcare policies, as defined by the bishops. She said these "decisions affecting millions of American vaginas are being made by people who have never owned one or touched one." After showing a robed Catholic priest explaining healthcare directives, she said, "Thanks, Friar Suck. When I need reproductive advice from a virgin in a bathrobe, I'll let you know."

Many more examples could be provided. In 2017, she defended legislation that discriminated against the Catholic Church in New York by exclusively holding it accountable for alleged sexual abuse offenses, giving a free pass to the public schools. When I objected, she made me the object of her condemnations.

In 2018, I started a campaign to get sponsors of her show to stop advertising on it. It worked. By providing the email addresses of her most prominent sponsors to our members, and our list of email subscribers, we were able to pick off seven sponsors: Verizon, Proctor & Gamble, Wendy's, Ashley HomeStore, The Wonderful Company (maker of pistachios), Popeyes, and Burger King.

TBS and Bee got the message and she stopped bashing Catholics.

Really talented comedians don't have to descend to the gutter to make people laugh. Bee does. That's because she's not capable of rising above it.

This week on FOT: a surprising guest!

A surprising guest this week on Faith On Trial. Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work legal Defense Foundation on the foundation’s efforts to support employee religious liberty rights. He discusses the case of a Southwest Airlines flight attended who was fired, at the urging of the union, for her objections to the union’s promotion of abortion. Join us Thursday July 28 at 9:30 a.m. CT on IowaCatholicRadio.com.

See the video preview below.

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation protecting religious liberty

There’s no business like “Know” business

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – From the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” department:

Last September, President Biden nominated one Saule Omarova to be the Comptroller of the Currency. The Comptroller is to ensure safety and soundness of the national banking system. It is a pretty important position in the government and to say otherwise would be an understatement.

There was just a few problems with Omarova’s credentials for the job: her alma mater was Moscow (as in Russia) State University and she had no previous banking — or even business — experience. She also believed that the government should assume the role of the private banking system and had called for the bankruptcy of the U.S. oil and gas industry. Comptroller of the Currency? Now who would think that would go well?

Of course it didn’t go well and in December she had to withdraw her nomination.

But according to a recent report, this is “emblematic of what has happened throughout the Biden administration. How does someone so lacking in professional experience and with such views so way outside the mainstream of American opinion get tapped for such a powerful position?”

That was the conclusion in a report issued this month by Stephen Moore and Jon Decker for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

In the introduction of the report, the authors laid out their concerns:

“Americans are deeply divided on the Biden administration’s progressive economic policy priorities: the focus on redistribution of income, higher tax rates on the rich, more social welfare programs, pro-union policies, a heavier hand of regulation of business, government-directed investment, and climate change remedies aimed at a dramatic altering of America’s energy mix.

“But putting ideology and partisan leanings aside, a new concern of voters has emerged: Do the top decision makers in Congress and the Biden administration have the basic skill sets and business/management experience and acumen to oversee a $6 trillion federal government and to regulate our multi-trillion dollar industries?”

Thus they examined the backgrounds of the top 68 officials of the Biden administration, starting with the president and including cabinet members, regulatory agency officials, and White House advisers. What they found was that:

“Sixty-two percent of Biden appointees who deal with economic policy, regulation, commerce, energy and finance have virtually no business experience; only one in eight has extensive business experience; average business experience of Biden appointees is only 2.4 years; median years of business experience is zero; the vast majority of the Biden economic/commerce team members are professional politicians, lawyers, community organizers, lobbyists, or government employees.”

In contrast, the Trump administration’s figures for its similar administrators contained an average of 13 years business experience for cabinet members with an eight-year median.

Some of the specific officeholders that were singled out were Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg who is the government official who oversees “the dealings with intricate supply chain issues at our ports and other vital parts of our transportation infrastructure” as well as being the governmental administrator of over a $1 trillion industry. His qualifications for the job was as mayor of a small college town, South Bend, Ind., and failed presidential candidate.”

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm “says that she doesn’t have ‘a magic wand’ to deal with rising gasoline and home heating costs, even though her Department has helped kill vital pipelines and energy production and drilling facilities that could be increasing the supply of oil and gas and helping alleviate the crisis. She has had a hard time with reporters even citing very basic energy statistics that calls into question her familiarity with the critical national energy issues she is overseeing.”

Among others, similar digs were raised against Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra who was an attorney with no healthcare experience; and Michigan State University economics professor Lisa Cook, who was nominated to the FED and whose area of expertise is racial and gender equity issues, none of which have anything to do with the job.

Not escaping criticism was Lina Khan, a 32-year-old college professor with no business experience who was appointed chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, an agency having oversight over multibillion dollar companies. She will determine how much profits these businesses can make even though she has never earned a profit for a business in her life.

And then, even though he is not a Biden official per se, House Budget Chairman John Yarmuth, whose committee is to try to balance the nation’s revenue and expenditures, has said, according to the report, “the government can afford to spend and borrow whatever it wants and that Congress can spend like they are the banker in the board game Monopoly.”

Moore and Decker noted that in this time of economic uncertainty several key findings stood out: “The total number of years of business experience of these top 68 policymakers is 161. This means the average number of years of business experience for these policymakers is 2.4 years. The median years of business experience is closer to one year of experience. Forty-two of the policymakers have virtually no business experience whatsoever. Only one in six top Biden appointees has extensive business experience. The [research] shows that the Biden team has over 1.5 times more experience in law, over 1.25 times more experience in politics/government, and only slightly less experience in academia/policy than they do in business.”

In their conclusion, Moore and Decker chided the Biden administration for its emphasis on diversity rather than on familiarity with the administrative issues at hand. The one area that the Biden officials are missing are “talented and experienced” appointees trained in business, commerce, and finance.

“When it comes to the government: Ignorance is not bliss. These skills are sorely lacking in the Biden administration. The cascade of policy and management mistakes that are piling up in the Biden government are at least in part a consequence of this lack of basic skills and competency. Biden should fix the problem by replacing those chosen for their ideology, not the skills and talents our government needs and taxpayers rightly demand,” they concluded.

There is a lesson here for to all future presidents: Forget ideology and checking boxes when you choose your team. Your only true guideline is subject matter competence — that and a bit of common sense will go a long way to achieving a successful outcome.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

Southern New Hampshire University forbids students from inviting ‘controversial’ speakers to campus, claims to promote ‘diverse ideas’

By Sabrina Conza

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

When new president Kyle Urban of the Southern New Hampshire University College Republicans asked the university how to invite conservative speakers to campus, the response was not what he expected. 

Instead of providing a policy detailing the mechanics for the chapter to invite speakers, SNHU told Urban the university must substantively review and approve all proposed speakers to ensure they “are not so controversial that they would draw unwanted demonstrators” to campus. The university explained it “invite[s] discussion as long as it is friendly.”

But that’s not what SNHU’s free expression promises say, as FIRE pointed out in a May 18 letter to the university. SNHU unequivocally promises students an environment which sustains the “ideals of freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of the individual.” Having made those strong promises, the university may not lay them aside when the expression in question could lead to controversy.

When university officials determine which views are worth sharing, as SNHU administrators claim the authority to do here, students and faculty will invite fewer speakers to campus.

In responding to FIRE, SNHU paid lip service to its free expression commitments but continued to stand by its insistence on reviewing speakers before they’re invited, so as to prevent controversy. SNHU said it is “confident” its “policies for speakers and political events on campus are compliant with both state and federal laws and allow for the free flow of information and ideas.” 

FIRE is far less confident, as we explained in a second letter to the university yesterday. SNHU may believe its policies are legal, but they obstruct the free flow of information by allowing only subjectively non-controversial viewpoints on campus. SNHU thus betrays its own free expression promises by demanding prior review of speakers. To be clear, “expression is not free when authorities must approve of the speakers and viewpoints expressed.” As we went on to say in our letter: 

It is not the speaker’s responsibility to cabin protected yet controversial expression to prevent protests. Instead, it is up to the university to ensure a safe environment on campus when demonstrators object to speakers’ views. 

Shutting down expression due to controversy or the possibility of it improperly endorses the “heckler’s veto” — a form of censorship that shuts down speech due to the actual or potential hostility of recipients and/or ideological opponents. Capitulating to a heckler’s veto only incentivizes objections to the speaker’s presence and/or disruption of the expression, as those opposed know the university will shut down speech deemed controversial. This is impermissible at an institution like SNHU which promises students expressive rights and, worse still, the practice undermines viewpoint diversity and the free flow of information.

When university officials determine which views are worth sharing, as SNHU administrators claim the authority to do here, students and faculty will invite fewer speakers to campus. In turn, fewer controversial and non-controversial speakers will come, and fewer viewpoints will be shared, all to the detriment of the campus community. We once again urge SNHU to reverse course.

Biden’s New Title IX Rule Guts Protections for Women and Girls. Here’s How to Fight It.

A few days after the momentous golden anniversary of Title IX—the federal civil rights law that prevents sex discrimination in any educational institution receiving government funding—the Biden administration has proposed a new rule to radically rewrite that law by, among other things, adding provisions for individuals claiming to be transgender and gutting the protections for women and girls that were originally intended. But this simple law has provided a platform for a proposed rule from the Department of Education that is replete with problems. These problems, if left unaddressed, promise to fundamentally overhaul the state of American education as it exists today. See interview with Heritage expert below.

Iowa Catholic Radio – Faith On Trial

Episode 323 – July 21, 2022 – Biden’s new Title IX regulations

Sarah Parshall Perry, Legal Fellow, Meese Center for Law and Justice Studies, the Heritage Foundation

https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/

Faith On Trial airs every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM and 94.5 FM Des Moines; 88.5 FM Adel, and 90.9 FM Creston, or catch it streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com.

Ari Fleischer is Wrong — the Media Are, in Fact, Your Enemy - The Stream

Ari Fleischer is Wrong — the Media Are, in Fact, Your Enemy - The Stream: The media should always be treated as what they are: demons, your enemies, and the enemies of the truth.

Disturbing new Title IX regulations from Biden Administration – Next FOT

This week Sarah Parshall Perry, senior legal fellow with the Heritage Foundation, rejoins us to discuss some new regulations the Biden Administration is proposing which will affect every school that accepts ANY federal funds, no matter how small. These regulations center on the rights of “trans” students. Join us this Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Iowa Catholic Radio.

Faith On Trial airs every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM and 94.5 FM Des Moines; 88.5 FM Adel, and 90.9 FM Creston, or catch it streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com.

Student candidate denied position after opening speech with Bible verse

Student candidate denied position after opening speech with Bible verse: Mya Little was reportedly denied a student government position for opening a speech with a Bible verse.

Searching for a hobby

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – I’ve decided I need a hobby.

Well, it’s not like I never had one before, it’s just that the things I liked to do weren’t suited for a retirement-aged gentleman. I had a real fun hobby several decades ago. I took up auto racing, took a driving class, which qualified me for an SCCA license, and bought a little Formula Vee racing car. I did that for about nine years, and four broken bones.

When I quit, that I wrote two mystery novels. In my first I killed a nun. The culprit was caught and a new romance blossomed between a ditzy young reporter with a good heart and the state police detective who solved the case. I moved them to a new venue for the second book and all was going well.

Then I decided to become a deacon. My law practice, teaching, and becoming a deacon left little time to develop a good new hobby, so I spent more time reading…not mysteries, mind you, but history, religion, and politics.

Then I had my stroke and lost my ability to read, and drive, in case I ever wanted to go back to the racing route. My service at church has been a bit limited, too. I can no longer read the Gospel or lead the Prayers of the Faithful; the priest and the lector do that for me. I’m toying with the idea of trying a homily again, but the eyes still aren’t letting me read my notes.

Now my wife, Luanne, has a great hobby. We remodeled our basement a few years back and put in a room for her to do her crafting. She goes down there for hours of enjoyable crafting. We call it her craft cave.

So what do I do? Well, as you know I’m a news junkie and can still write; I can’t read what I write but Luanne happily (I hope) does a fine job of editing and reading my words back to me.

So how to I combine all this into a new hobby? Simple. I’m going to start drafting impeachment articles for self-amusement. I think that will work for me and calm some of my frustration. I know it has in the past: One of the deans I worked for really got me out of joint and out of a job. I translated his name to German and killed him off in the first chapter of Book 3 which is still under construction – work in progress, we call it. Maybe I haven’t got it finished because the beginning was so satisfying.

Anyway, I thought I’d start with the president, the Devout Joe Biden. I’ve thought about forgetting the impeachment and trying him for heresy, but I thought a book about that would be too narrow to attract a publisher, so I’m settling for impeachment.

Now there are a lot of things I can throw into impeachment articles for Mr. Biden, and I hope they will be more substantial than those used for Mr. Trump, or even for Mr. Clinton.

Of course, the first obstacle is his understudy. I remember the joke that went around when Mr. Bush I was president. It went something like this: If anything happened to him the Secret Service was to shoot Dan Quayle. Of course it wasn’t true and there is nothing to suggest that Mr. Quayle would not have made a fine president. But Kamala?

Well, that’s a problem right off the bat, and maybe that is why the Republicans in Congress have not tried it already. Now we’ve never impeached a vice president before, although history does produce some fine examples that might have been worthy of such an honor, and I don’t think inappropriate giggling would be the proper grounds for such an action.

So I think to myself, can they both be impeached in the same proceeding? Now that would be an interesting topic to explore. I should look that up, but then poor Luanne would have to leave her cave to read all the research to me. That probably wouldn’t work very well. Besides she is so fun to be around when she gets her regular craft-cave fix.

So maybe this won’t work as I wanted it to, so I think I should think of impeaching a lower official. Perhaps St. Nancy. Of course this presents another problem. The Constitution allows for the impeachment of any officer of the government. Members of Congress are not considered “officers” of the government, and while they can be removed by the house in which they sit (House or Senate), they cannot be impeached.

But hold on a second. The speaker of the House holds a constitutional office in the government and is third in line for the presidency. Might that count? But that would require more research and I don’t know how long I can keep Luanne from her cave.

Okay, if all else is failing, how about some cabinet officials? They certainly are fair game. The attorney general, Mr. Garland, might be a good place to start. There are some nefarious activities going on in the justice department — I know, I’m a lawyer. People complaining about their kids’ schools would love to take him on. That may be a good place to start.

But wait. If I write something about that would the FBI come to “visit” me? Would I ever see Luanne again? Then how would I read? Scratch that.

Now I might be pretty safe impeaching the secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Mayorkas. He’s opened the border to just about anyone who wants to come. I’m suspecting I might have found some fertile ground here, especially since I haven’t ridden a horse since Boy Scout camp when I was 13. Those horses are probably dead by now anyway.

That would provide me with a hobby that would truly give me some satisfaction.

I’m now starting to think a little too much. After all, if we get rid of the secretary, who would replace him? Why, the same person who already gave us this guy, only this time it might be worse, much worse. The new appointees could even be real Communists this time, not just those who only play one on television.

Maybe this won’t work like I planned. Wonder what kind of vision SCCA requires to give me my license back?

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning at 9:30 on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

This week's Faith On Trial program

Iowa Catholic Radio – Faith On Trial

Episode 322 – July 14, 2022 – What is the proper legal standard of review for new abortion laws?

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel John Bursch:

https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/

Faith On Trial airs every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM and 94.5 FM Des Moines; 88.5 FM Adel, and 90.9 FM Creston, or catch it streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com.

Paying for workers' abortions is a minefield

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

In light of some states electing to pass restrictive abortion legislation, woke corporations, and that includes dozens of the most powerful companies in the nation, have said they will pay the travel expenses for an employee's abortion. To see a list of some of the most prominent ones, and what they will cover, click here.

The ruling class, which has lined up in jackboot fashion behind the left-wing agenda, is very proud of its virtue signaling. They will soon change their tune once they are faced with the realities of their decision. Make no mistake, they have created an ethical and legal minefield for themselves.

On the ethical front, how do these companies explain their total lack of interest in paying women to access adoption services? If they are truly pro-choice, why is this option not being funded?

Peter Rex is founder and CEO of Rex, a Florida-based entity that builds and invests in tech companies. He, along with the Texas-based insurance company, Buffer, is paying for adoptions, "as well as covering the full costs of birth for employees who keep their children." He chides the woke companies. "These businesses are ignoring the possibility that many employees may simply need a little more help to carry their baby to term."

Rex is putting his money where his mouth is, saying that "my business has decided to give up to $7,500 to employees who want to have their baby and give it up for adoption." But adoption is not something that moves the ruling class the way aborting children does.

Some of these companies are in a race to show how courageously woke they are. For example, of the 101 companies we list, 11 also offer to pay for "gender-affirming care" (they are highlighted). Patagonia is even offering to pay for the "Training and bail for those who peacefully protest for reproductive justice."

How this is going to play out legally remains to be seen.

Peter Bamburger, a business professor at Tel Aviv University, sees lots of problems on the horizon. "Even before dealing with the bigger issues—reputational harm, political retribution and exposure to legal liability—associated with using employee benefits to help employees access abortion services, employers are going to have to be prepared to face off against a byzantine mix of bureaucratic, legal and tax challenges."

The minefield is actually worse than what he describes.

Will workers sue for discrimination saying their decision to explore adoption services are not being funded? What if those who "transition" to the other sex decide they want to detransition, citing mental health issues? If pro-abortion protesters who are locked up are entitled to bail benefits, how can pro-life protesters be treated any differently?

If an employee wants to travel to another state to obtain an abortion, how can she protect her privacy interests? How can the company insure that her co-workers won't find out? Will her boss know the reason for her absence?

How will the company know she is really pregnant, and not just seeking to get a vacation on their dime? Will they demand she submit to a pregnancy test? Will she be entitled to "loss of pregnancy" benefits (Vox Media does) if she is depressed after her abortion? Can part-time workers get this benefit?

Will a Texas man who claims to be a woman be given money to travel to his hometown in New York for his abortion? Or will he be denied funding on the basis that a man can't get pregnant and therefore cannot have an abortion? What a sweet lawsuit that would be.

This is hardly an exaggeration. In 2020, the Association of LGBTQ Journalists awarded Samantha Schmidt an Excellence in Journalism award for her 2019 story in the Washington Post. The online title of her piece was, "A Mother, But Not a Woman." The man she wrote about insisted on being called "they."

Companies should stay out of politics and just attend to business, providing for basic healthcare services. But if they insist on doing otherwise, workers should demand what Impossible Foods says it will cover: in addition to travel, it pays for lodging, meals and child care for employees who travel out of state to get their abortion. Employees should not settle for fast food—go to the best steakhouse in town and enjoy a fine bottle of wine.

One final piece of advice. After the worker has enjoyed her stay she should go home and tell her boss she met a pro-life activist who convinced her not to kill her kid. If the company demands to be reimbursed, she should sue them for violating her pro-choice rights.

This Thursday on Faith On Trial

This week our guest is John Bursch, senior council and vice president of appellate advocacy with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Mr. Bursch and his team are representing Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in attempting to set the proper legal standard of review for courts to use in assessing abortion laws. The case, Planned Parenthood v. Reynolds, has been sent by the Iowa Supreme Court for hearing in the Johnson County district court. Stay tuned as news updates occur.

Faith On Trial airs every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM and 94.5 FM Des Moines; 88.5 FM Adel, and 90.9 FM Creston, or catch it streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can find podcasts of our older programs that you may have missed.

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Religion Clause: Arizona Law On Rights Of Unborn Is Unconstitutiona...: In Isaacson v. Brnovich ,  (D AZ, July 11, 2022), an Arizona federal district court issued a preliminary injunction barring the application ...

Trusting your privacy to government

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – I was recently reminded of a column I wrote several years ago. It was about a court case that involved the potential of an accidental release of private information. And, in the legal arguments surrounding the case, there were strong suggestions that those accidental releases might have been done on purpose.

In the case, a Michigan nonprofit, the Thomas More Center, was suing California over a rule it was attempting to enforce that required nonprofits that sought to raise money in the state to provide to the attorney general the names and addresses of certain donors to the organization. Now if you have been a reader here for any amount of time, you probably know about the Thomas More Center. It is a nonprofit law firm that is dedicated to pro-life and religious liberty causes.

Over the years, it has been very successful in representing clients that we would consider mainstream, but to the “woke” it would appear ultra-conservative, or as now used, MAGA. In other words, Thomas More was a pain in the neck for liberal officeholders who were tired of its ability to protect the rights of pro-life workers, free speech advocates, church independence, and other “deplorable” causes.

So the state decided to collect the information on its donors, but why? The state claimed that it was to prevent consumer fraud, but Thomas More and its attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom saw it otherwise. To them, citing the long history of “woke” cancellations in California, as well as numerous other leaks from the attorney general’s office, which could represent a pattern of behavior involving disfavored groups, they saw the attempt to collect the information as a curb of Thomas More’s ability to raise funds.

Of course the enlightened folks who run the state — most of whom are still in office, or moved up — argued that the information, when collected, would be in safe hands and could not be disclosed to the public because the state had a rule against that. And even if something was leaked those leaks are usually inadvertent and rarely happen. Nope, sorry, Thomas More, this is only a matter of keeping these nonprofits honest and to eliminate fraud.

The trial court found for Thomas More, holding that a blanket disclosure rule violated the organization’s privacy rights as well as the privacy rights of the donors. California appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who promptly reversed. The Ninth Circuit held that the disclosure rule was “substantially related” to the state’s interest in policing nonprofits fraud. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of Thomas More.
In the event the court went the other way, well, there was really no harm because there were rules and laws protecting privacy, thus the organization and its donors had nothing to worry about. After all, you can trust your government.

Then, at the end of June comes a news story about how the California attorney general announced that thousands of gun owners’ private information, including names and home addresses, had been “inadvertently” released to the public. There were records of people who had applied and were approved for gun permits, as well as those whose applications had been rejected. The information also revealed the type of guns that were owned.

The “leak” came only days after the United States Supreme Court struck down a New York ban on possession of certain guns outside a person’s home. The California Rifle & Pistol Association questioned the accidental nature of the leak.

Unfortunately, there are many citizens who for many legitimate reasons need to keep a gun handy, notably for self-protection. Included in that number are hundreds of women who have been stalked and have moved to avoid their intimidators. They now know where you live, is the message.
I remember several years ago when reporters from a local Gannett newspaper combed the local records in New York and published a list of names and addresses of people holding valid gun permits. In that case the information was, according to state law, a public record which could be accessed by any member of the public. Of course, not all people wanting to harm another or who have had a no-contact orders entered against them knew that they could find out the information by checking public records.

That naturally caused a fire-storm of reaction, especially from those who recognized that many with gun permits have substantial reasons to keep that information secret. But it did do one good thing: It provided home burglars with a list of places not to burgle. The Des Moines Register here is a Gannett paper so at the time I decided it might be a safe step to get a gun permit in case our paper did the same.

My house would be safe and I didn’t even need to purchase a gun. That came only a couple of years later when I thought Hillary Clinton might be elected president. A nice, nifty Smith and Wesson snub-nose .38.
Speaking of guns, there is a lot of talk these days about so-called red flag laws. Of course a couple of places that have them recently suffered mass shootings. So why don’t they work? Let me venture an answer.

For years I practiced in the area of mental health commitments. In Iowa it doesn’t take much to begin. Basically a doctor, certain officials, or two citizens can file a complaint with the clerk of court containing affidavits stating the facts that have caused the filing. That then goes to a judge or magistrate who will review the filing and if it shows that a person is a threat to himself or others, the judge can order the individual picked up and taken to a mental hospital for evaluation.

A hearing is scheduled for within a few days, an attorney is appointed for the respondent – that’s where I usually came in. In many cases where our county attorney’s office was conflicted or there was some reason it could not prosecute, I was named a special prosecutor and would take on the prosecution of the individual. In fact, there were certain cases filed under a special section of the code that for the longest while, I was the only attorney that could be appointed. Needless to say, I’ve had a lot of experience in this area.

Here is what I can tell you from personal experience: While red flag laws are good ideas in and of themselves, they won’t work. It is because the family does not think their loved ones are “that bad.” In fact, for most of the cases I remember, family members were only reluctantly able to acknowledge the problem, and far too many only saw the problem after they sat through the hearing, and listened to the physician and other mental health care workers testify.

In short, it was usually the family that was the last to recognize the seriousness of the problem. All too often the problem was brought to the surface by bystanders, others who saw something and called DHS, or the individual was picked up for some criminal activity and the arresting officer took his charge to the hospital instead of jail, and the hospital made the referral.

Red flag laws may seem simple and workable on paper. Unfortunately their weak link is the people closest to the individual who are in denial, especially the family.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

"The Playboy Philosophy" at sixty

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

Hugh Hefner founded Playboy in 1953 and cleverly sought the support of the ruling class. He wanted to break new ground, creating a girly magazine that featured distinguished public figures, including those in government, law, education, finance, the arts, the media, music, entertainment, acting, sports, and the corporate world. By drawing on celebrities, business tycoons and the literati, he made Playboy respectable.

If the magazine was seen as respectable, Hefner was anything but. He had sex with men, women and dogs. He was accused of raping multiple women, forcing some to have an abortion, and got "Deep Throat" star Linda Lovelace so high on alcohol and drugs that he and his Playboy Mansion guests got her to perform oral sex on a German Shepherd.

If all Hefner did was to live the life of a pervert, that wouldn't have had such a societal effect. What did have a lasting effect were the several installments of "The Playboy Philosophy." It was launched almost 60 years ago in December 1962.

Hefner came from what he called a "very repressed" Christian family, blaming his Protestant parents for this condition. He set out to rectify the problem by attacking religion, using "The Playboy Philosophy" as his weapon.

Hefner believed that man was born free and without original sin. He prized the individual, calling him "the all important element in our society." Christians, of course, believe that the family is "the all important element in our society." Predictably, he believed that "Group good should not be allowed to overshadow individual good."

We get a closer look at what motivated Hefner to found Playboy when we learn what he thought the goal of society should be. He could have chosen justice, the common good, liberty or equality, but instead he said, "the primary goal of society should be individual happiness."

By happiness, not surprisingly, he meant pleasure. "Happiness and pleasure are mental and physical states of being and society should emphasize the positive aspects of both." It would be hard to find a more anti-Christian philosophical statement than this.         

Hefner was prone to caricature his foes, especially people of faith. "This nonsense about the body of man being evil, while the mind and spirit are good, seems quite preposterous to most of us today." But whoever said the body was evil? It is true that his Christian critics often said he debased the human spirit with his fixation on sex, and indeed degraded men and women in the process, but that is a far cry from saying they believed the body was evil.

The founder of Playboy also attributed to his critics the belief that "nudity and obscenity [are] nearly synonymous." This was typical of "The Playboy Philosophy"—passing off baseless assertions as truth. He further maintained that "a satisfactory definition of obscenity can never be established." Spoken like a man who was a master of moral relativism. No wonder he spoke with utter derision about laws based on Christianity and Judaism that forbid incest and bestiality [this may explain his interactions with Fido].

Hefner rightly saw in Christianity, especially Catholicism, a sexual ethic that is the antithesis of "The Playboy Philosophy." He claimed there was not enough separation of church and state and that freedom from religion was being neglected. As usual, he was given to overstating reality. "Church-state legislation has made common criminals of us all." His proof? Alfred Kinsey, the sex creep who allowed children to be sexually abused in his research undertakings.

Finally, "The Playboy Philosophy" treated selflessness as a sin. "We oppose the tendency to meaningless selflessness in our present society"; he singled out self-sacrifice and self-denial for condemnation.

Hefner's obsession with satisfying primordial individual appetites did not allow him to appreciate that selflessness is a virtue, one that is best expressed when we sacrifice for the good of others. Mother Teresa exemplified this virtue better than anyone.

For Hefner, there was nothing more important than happiness, which he defined as pleasure. Therefore selflessness was seen as irrational. This juvenile understanding of the human condition colored much of his thinking.

Moral decline in America is the result of many factors, but only a fool would conclude that "The Playboy Philosophy" did not contribute to it.

ADF launches roadmap for parents to understand, defend their rights

‘Promise to America’s Parents’ empowers parents, policymakers to protect their rights in education, health care

WASHINGTON – Responding to the growing number of government officials who are imposing harmful ideologies that usurp the fundamental rights of parents, Alliance Defending Freedom, The Heritage Foundation, and the Family Policy Alliance formed a coalition to launch the PromiseToAmericasParents.org website on Thursday. The Promise provides a roadmap for parents, community leaders, and lawmakers to understand and defend the rights of parents through law and policy.

“Parents—not the government—have the right to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Advocacy Strategy Emilie Kao. “Yet we are seeing a wave of government policies that usurp parents’ fundamental rights by imposing destructive ideologies that politicize education and health care for children. The ‘Promise to America’s Parents’ equips parents, community leaders, and lawmakers with the tools needed to ensure that local, state, and federal government officials respect and protect parental rights.”

ADF’s “Promise to America’s Parents” provides guidance on parental rights and responsibilities to school boards, policymakers, and state and federal lawmakers. The initiative empowers parents, policymakers, and lawmakers to “ACT” to…

• increase Accountability for the government in conflicts between parents and the state.
• increase Choice for parents in their child’s education and health care.
• increase Transparency for parents in their child’s education and health care.

The Promise coalition consists of local, state, and national community groups and policy organizations that defend parental rights in the court of law and in the court of public opinion. Together, they represent the concerns of racially, religiously, and politically diverse parents.

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

National Public Radio promotes sex engineering

By Michael P. McDonald, the Catholic League 

While National Public Radio's (NPR) decision to break with its thirty-plus-year tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July to discuss Critical Race Theory has drawn the ire of many commentators, on the very same day, NPR, using the taxpayers' dollars, ran a more pernicious segment on "the importance of inclusion in sex education." 

In the course of its reporting, NPR assaulted parental rights, promoted pleasure-oriented sex education, and downplayed the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases (STD). Any radio station advocating for such harmful ideas should run the risk of losing its broadcast license, but for NPR to do so with public funding goes beyond the pale. 

To frame this conversation, NPR host Leila Fadel began by attacking parental rights. Fadel noted that on July 1st Florida's Parental Rights in Education law went into effect. Rather than using its proper name, she labeled it the "don't say gay law." Moreover, Fadel said the whole point of the Florida law, and similar legislation proposed in other states, is "to restrict the rights of LGBTQ youth." 

A fairer analysis would have pointed out that the Florida law aims to protect young children from inappropriate instruction about sex while also empowering parents to have more control over what their children learn about this subject. However, these facts only get in the way of rehashing trite partisan talking points. 

NPR's "Life Kit" reporter Lilly Quiroz spoke with "sexuality educator Milena Gioconda Davis," who told the audience that sex "would be, like, pleasure-oriented experiences or interactions that involve some sort of arousal." 

Quiroz also interviewed Ericka Hart, "a sexuality educator with a focus in racial, social, and gender justice." She, too, believes that sex education should be pleasure-oriented. She argued that "young people should explore their genitals" so that they can "say, like, this is what feels good for my body—right?—and this is what doesn't feel good for my body." 

If this was not harmful enough, the segment ended with an effort to remove the "stigma" associated with STDs. For this, Quiroz brought back Gioconda Davis to explain that the idea that STDs "make you dirty...is just a terrible lie. And also...if you get an [STD], your sex life is over. Like, no—most [STDs] are curable or treatable, and it doesn't have to be, like, this mark of shame." 

This is not even sound advice, and nothing about it is educational. Rather than teach children that STDs can cause irreparable harm—even death—and the best way to avoid STDs is to practice abstinence, NPR would rather focus on removing the stigma associated with these diseases.     

NPR grew out of a movement in the early 20th century to use radio broadcasts to help educate local communities and provide a public service. Today, it appears that NPR has entirely abandoned this calling. 

At no point in this segment did NPR offer anything of educational value. Instead, it used the American taxpayers' hard-earned dollars to attack the rights of parents, promote pleasure-oriented sexual education, and downplay the dangers of STDs. It did all of this on our dime. It is past time to defund NPR.

This week on Faith On Trial

Iowa Catholic Radio – Faith On Trial

Episode 321 – July 7, 2022 – Coach Joe Kennedy’s victory and its meaning

First Liberty Institute Senior Counsel Jeremy Dys

https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/

Faith On Trial airs every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM and 94.5 FM Des Moines; 88.5 FM Adel, and 90.9 FM Creston, or catch it streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com.

This week on Faith On Trial

This week Jeremy Dys, senior counsel with First Liberty Institute discuss their recent victories in the Supreme Court including that of Coach Joe Kennedy and their affect on religious liberty. This Thursday at 9 a.m. CT on IowaCatholicRadio.com.

And The Secret Word Is…

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – There was a game show on television during the 1950s, actually it started in late 1947, called You Bet Your Life, and was hosted by the cigar-chomping Groucho Marx from the movies’ Marx Brothers fame. The show centered on Groucho and his wise-cracking, but the gist of the game was for the contestants, who played, two at a time, to win points by answering correctly the questions asked by Groucho.

At the beginning of the program, before the guest contestants were introduced on stage, a silly-looking duck would drop from the ceiling with the secret word for the day. If one of the contestants said the word during the broadcast the pair would win an extra prize. “Say the secret word and win a hundred dollars,” Groucho would tell each pair of contestants. If they did, the duck would drop, along with confetti and the lucky contestants would walk away with the money.

Secret words abound all over the place, I am sure, and Groucho was not the only person to capitalize on one. I realized that the other day when talking with, of all folks, my barber. We were both fretting over the state of the news media — I often fret over the state of my former profession — and I used the word, inadvertently, but I soon realized it was appropriate for the state of the news media today.

We were talking about stories, and I opined that today’s journalists were not interested in stories, but in the narrative. In my mind the duck and confetti dropped and I won the prize. “Narrative” is the secret word with the current crop of journalists today.

Now I didn’t make this up, so I can’t take any credit for thinking of it. So I went through my current stack of books on the media, none of which I can still read (stroke, remember?) and found where the term was set out very succinctly. It was in a book by a true journalist, Sharyl Attkisson: Slander: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism.

In her introduction, she opines, “The Narrative refers to a story line that influential people want told in order to define and narrow your views. The goal of The Narrative is to imbed chosen ideas so deeply within society that they are no longer questioned — scratch that — so questions are no longer permitted.”

In short, she suggests, this means the reporter’s own opinions become “more valuable than facts” and the reporters themselves are often driven by propaganda themselves. These Narratives, she argues, are linked to the “death of the news as we once knew it.” And it determines what facts you get, and those that run counter to it are dismissed as partisan spin.

“When furthering a narrative is the goal, truth, accuracy, and reliability take a back seat,” she writes. This is done through the use of George Orwell’s 1984 doublethink which allows one to hold two conflicting facts without recognizing the internal conflict they present.

As examples of today’s doublethink she points to: “Fact-checkers codify slanted opinions; myth busters dispel truth; online knowledge is shaped by agenda editors; free speech is controlled by censorship.”

Of course all this fits nicely with the current concept that free speech requires censorship, and all “misinformation” must be corrected. And who is better to correct that misinformation than current government officials? However, you’d better not refer to this as a Ministry of Truth, no, sir. That in itself would be disinformation.

And, necessarily all those who do not comply, be they corporations, publications, networks, politicos, academics, and even judges, automatically become disfavored because they do not adhere to the official narrative, which, as we all know, is pure truth.

Now we know this takes some silly turns, and at the risk of committing disinformation and falling into the disfavored class, let me give you a few current examples of what disinformation and doublethink have wrought:

Of course the most obvious and stupid was two years ago when CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez, while covering the civil unrest and riots occurring in the wake of George Floyd’s death, stood in front of a burning building and assured his listeners that the event he was covering was a mostly peaceful demonstration. Now honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.

And there is the oldie but goodie that abortion is healthcare. Sure it is.

Currently, the recent Supreme Court decision on abortion is a great place to start. First, remember what the court said. It did not say that abortion was illegal, but simply that it was the legal province of the states, most of whom already had state legislation permitting abortion, although with differing restrictions as one would move from state to state.

Of course what the decision was and how it should have been reported did not fit the narrative. Instead the truth tellers in our national media told us that the court had taken away a woman’s right to “reproductive healthcare.” Remember, abortion must be considered healthcare, thus women will now die.

We were also told that the court had overruled a settled precedent which should not be touched. This, the narrative tells us, is unprecedented and never happens because, as we all know, settled precedents cannot be changed.

And judges who once recognized the fact that it was a precedent should be impeached for lying to Congress because they must have indicated that they would not change it. Overturning a precedent almost never happens, especially when it involves a specific right for “birthing persons” that come right from the Constitution itself.

The Constitution never mentions or even refers to abortion, but shhhhh, we can’t deviate from the narrative or we become liars, too.

Left unanswered by liberal doublethink is why Plessy v. Ferguson — “separate but equal” — is not still good law. It was once a settled precedent for 60 years. Or why is the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford — a slave is always a slave — not still good law? Or Korematsu v. United States — Japanese internment? The answer to it all is: It violates the narrative.

The same holds true for the Coach Joe Kennedy case, where he was fired for saying a brief prayer after games. The court said he had a constitutional right to do so, but the chattering class from the left, in holding to the narrative and the principle of doublethink have classified that decision as akin to declaring the United States a theocracy.

But the current hypocrisy of the progressives is on full display when they critiqued the Trump-era stay in Mexico policy as inhumane while winking at the death of 53 migrants in a semi-trailer; after all the border is closed.

So as you follow the news, remember: It’s all about the narrative, doublethink and all. And if you don’t believe it, you’re an insurrectionist and a danger to the nation. You’ve been warned. And now I’ll sit and wait for the Ministry of Truth to come and take me away.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)