Thursday, February 16, 2012

More on HHS mandate, and related insanity

100% of Catholic bishops in US oppose the (illegal) mandate.

Secretary Sebelius was testifying before a House panel today about the process of the mandate. She admitted some astonishing things:

Under questioning from Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sebelius further admitted that HHS never subjected the religious liberty issues to a legal analysis, as requested by 27 senators. She also admitted that she never asked the Justice Department to consider this issue.

It gets worse. Today’s New York Times reports today that the administration announced the Obama mandate “before it had figured out how to address one conspicuous point: Like most large employers, many religiously affiliated organizations choose to insure themselves rather than hire an outside company to assume the risk.” As the Times points out, this is not a slight issue: 60 percent of all workers with health insurance are covered by a self-funded plan, and the figure jumps to 82 percent for large companies. And no one bothered to address this?

So not only is it illegal, but they didn't even bother to do the most basic sort of homework before they rammed it down everybody's throat. That's not even enlightened despotism, guys; you have to at least pretend to be more than hired goons.

I'm not sure if that's the same hearing the Democrats so maturely "stormed out of" because they couldn't get their way:

So because Issa wished to hold a hearing on how the contraceptive mandate infringes on religious liberty, the Democrats, angry that they couldn’t transform it into a hearing on how religious liberty infringes on the right to contraception, stormed out.

In other news, Rome burns while Nero fiddles... This doesn't specifically relate to the mandate, but it shows again (in case we weren't paying attention) the manipulation, dissimulation, and will-to-power of those who are in favor of it.

Pro-life demonstrators against the mandate get arrested at the White House.

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