Sept. 18, 2013

Obama Censors the Declaration

Americans know that the Declaration of Independence proclaims as a matter of fact that they “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But when Obama recites this line, he omits the word “Creator.” Listen carefully to how Obama censors that famous line. Here are his own words: “all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights.” He didn’t say who endowed us.

Obama has done this so often that it can’t be a slip of the tongue or a glitch of the teleprompter. Changing the words of the Declaration of Independence is part of Obama’s determination to remove everything religious and every mention of God from every aspect of our public life in order to fundamentally transform us from “one nation under God” into one nation under the Federal Government, especially the executive branch, with no higher power recognized.

We should remind ourselves that the great Declaration of Independence is not only the proclamation of our independence and sovereignty, but is also the official affirmation of our belief and faith in God. The Declaration asserts God’s existence as a “self-evident” truth, and states that the purpose of government is to secure our God-given unalienable individual rights.

The Declaration contains five references to God — God as Creator, God as the Source of all rights, God as supreme Lawmaker, God as the world’s supreme Judge, and God as our Protector.

Shortly before we started hearing fireworks for this year’s Fourth of July, the movie For Greater Glory opened in local theaters. It is a compelling dramatization of the Mexican government’s persecution of Christians from 1926 to 1929, a bloody piece of history that has hitherto been ignored by historians and filmmakers.

This wasn’t in some faraway Muslim country; it was in our next door neighbor, just across the Rio Grande. It’s instructive for Americans, who have peacefully enjoyed religious liberty for more than two centuries, to realize the depth of hatred that some people have for religion in general and Christianity in particular.

The movie is a worthy addition to the genre of successful religious movies that portrayed Christian heroes who died for their faith, such as A Man For All Seasons (Thomas More), Becket, and The Robe.

In 1926, the Mexican president, Plutarco Elias Calles, brutally enforced laws to suppress religion. Soldiers on horseback broke into churches, vandalized church property, killed priests, and strung up dead bodies on posts to terrify the people.

Government officials, an elite openly admiring Soviet Communism, were determined to destroy all visible evidences of the Catholic religion, including the cross and other Christian symbols, the wearing of traditional garments by priests and nuns, and religious processions. Soldiers could order anyone to repeat “Long live the Federal Government,” with death the punishment for refusal.

Mexico’s Constitution required the schools to be active participants in the battle to secularize the country and suppress religion. The Constitution stated: “Education services should be secular, and, therefore, free of any religious orientation.”

About 90,000 Mexicans died in the fighting that ensued as the Christians, calling themselves Cristeros, resisted bravely. Our first reaction to the killings in this movie is “of course, this can’t happen here.” The bloody part may be improbable in the United States, but the contempt for religion here is already evident.

It’s not difficult to imagine the hateful words of the Mexican President being repeated in the United States by the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and various atheist litigators who are aggressively pushing supremacist judges to ban the Ten Commandments and crosses from the schools and from every public place.

One Nation Under Government

When Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally transform the United States” we could not have anticipated the extreme transformation he would seek. The evidence is rolling in that he is determined to transform America into a totally secular land where religion is permitted only within the walls of a church or house, but is banned in every public place, public gathering and public school. Through speeches and regulations, President Obama is trying to eliminate all public references to religion, to force religious worship behind closed doors, and to coerce religious institutions into financing drugs and procedures that violate their religious faith.

Obama tipped us off to his animosity to religious Americans when, campaigning in San Francisco in 2008, he insulted religious people in small towns. He said, they “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

One of President Obama’s first executive orders in January 2009 was to reverse the practice of previous administrations and start handing out U.S. taxpayers’ money to organizations that perform abortions in other countries. In February 2009 he announced the elimination of conscience protections that allowed pro-life doctors and nurses in federally funded hospitals to opt out of performing abortions or other procedures they consider immoral.

In April 2009, Obama delivered a speech at Georgetown University only after his staff had pressured the college to conceal the monogram for the name of Jesus that was always displayed above the podium. In May 2009, he cancelled the traditional White House event honoring the National Day of Prayer, saying that he would pray only in private.

Obama began censoring religious words out of important American documents. He repeatedly omits the word “Creator” from the Declaration of Independence. In a November 2010 speech, Obama pretended to quote the U.S. national motto, “In God We Trust,” but changed it to e pluribus unum (out of many, one). When Obama gave the traditional Presidential Thanksgiving Day address in 2011, it was not clear whom he was thanking on this uniquely American holiday, but it was not God.

The First Amendment guarantees Americans religious liberty, and for more than two centuries that has meant freedom in public and in private. The Founding Fathers were very public about their faith and about the necessity of maintaining religious liberty. But Barack Obama is trying to morph our traditional religious liberty to the lesser scope of freedom of worship, which means worship only inside a church, or maybe a synagogue, but not permitting any public affirmation of belief in God.

In July 2011, Obama’s Department of Veterans Affairs banned any mention of Jesus Christ during burials at Houston National Cemetery. The ban was lifted only after hundreds of demonstrators protested.

In September 2011, the U.S. Army revised guidelines for Walter Reed Hospital to read: “No religious items (i.e., Bibles, reading materials . . .) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.” The hospital rescinded this policy only after Congressman Steve King (R-IA) reported it to the House of Representatives. Also in September 2011, Obama, who is determined to defy the federal Defense of Marriage Act, ordered the Pentagon to authorize the performance of same-sex marriage ceremonies on military bases, violating traditional First Amendment rights that have always been accorded to military chaplains.

In February 2012, the Air Force removed the Latin word for God, Dei, from the logo of the Rapid Capabilities Office, and also removed the Latin motto which means “Doing God’s Work With Other People’s Money.” The new logo says, “Doing Miracles with Other People’s Money.”

Also in February 2012, the U.S. Army warned Catholic chaplains not to read from an Archbishop’s letter opposing the Obama Administration’s mandate that all employers, including religious hospitals, schools, and colleges, must pay for abortifacient drugs, contraceptives, and sterilizations for their employees. People were shocked by the military order telling chaplains what they cannot say to members of their own faith during a religious service.

A prime example of Obama’s hostility to religion is the Supreme Court case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. The church had fired one of its minister/teachers, and she sued to get her job back.

With the help of Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the case got up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Obama’s lawyer made the astonishing argument that the federal government could force the Lutheran church to rehire her, but the Obama Administration’s case was so ludicrous that in January 2012 it lost 9 to 0.

Obama’s first judicial appointment, David Hamilton, is typical of Obama’s many actions to secularize America. Hamilton had worked for ACORN as a fundraiser, as vice president for litigation for Indiana’s ACLU branch, and was known for blocking pro-life and pro-decency laws. Even the left-leaning American Bar Association called him “not qualified.”

Hamilton was most noteworthy, as a district court judge, for striking down a prayer in 2005 used in the Indiana Legislature that mentioned Jesus Christ, and ordering the Indiana legislature to “refrain from using Christ’s name or title or any other denominational appeal.” At the same time, Hamilton stated that it is permissible for the Legislature to use the word “Allah.” After that, President Obama then promoted David Hamilton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Another ACLU-type judicial appointment made by President Barack Obama was federal Judge Michael Urbanski. He suggested in court that the Ten Commandments be censored down to six commandments in order to make the posting of the Commandments legal under the First Amendment.

ObamaCare is one Obama’s most outrageous assaults on religion liberty and is a clear violation of First Amendment rights. It requires all employers, regardless of their religious or moral objections, to revise their health plans to obey ObamaCare’s mandate coercing them to provide abortion drugs, contraception and sterilization for all their employees at no cost. Obama claims that the religious exemption exempts only actual churches, not the thousands of institutions operated by religious denominations such as schools, colleges, hospitals, and various community services. If they don’t obey this mandate, they face fines that equal financial death for the institutions.

Barack Obama’s hostility to traditional marriage is not only further evidence of his animosity to religious values and religious people, but it is unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution makes it a prime duty of the U.S. President to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” and we all saw Obama, at his inauguration, swear an oath to uphold the laws of the United States.

In February 2011, Obama instructed his Justice Department not to defend the homosexuals’ court challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (known as DOMA), which was overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. Barack Obama has a record of hostility to religion that we have never before seen in any American President.

Most Americans now recognize that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several atheist organizations have been litigating for years to persuade supremacist judges to remove all recognition or mention of religion and of Christianity from public buildings, parks and schools. We’ve watched lawsuits against the Ten Commandments, crosses that honor our veterans, prayer in schools, student valedictory speeches that mention God or Christ, and Christmas songs.

The First Amendment does not require this nonsense; in fact the Founding Fathers, who wrote our Constitution and the First Amendment, invoked God’s name in public all the time and it never occurred to them that this might be unconstitutional.

The atheists’ long march to banish references to God has culminated at the door of President Obama’s White House. Obama is the one they have “been waiting for,” as liberals chanted about him in 2008.

The Dream Act Is a Nightmare

“Mr. President, why do you favor foreign workers over Americans?” That was the obvious question Barack Obama refused to answer when a reporter, doing his job, sought an answer rather than a canned teleprompter presentation. That is, indeed, the question that begs for an answer. And Obama simply wouldn’t answer that question, not in the middle of his remarks, or at the end of his statement, or at any other time.

At that June 15 news conference, Obama announced that he will grant amnesty to 800,000 young illegal aliens instead of deporting them as the law requires. No, he didn’t call it amnesty; he denied it was amnesty; but Americans recognize it as amnesty.

The 800,000 are aliens who were brought into the country in violation of U.S. law, and have already been rewarded with a free elementary and secondary education paid for by the American taxpayers. Now Obama wants to reward them further by allowing them to stay in America, giving them work permits, driver’s licenses, and other documents they lack. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that as many as 1.4 million aliens might be eligible for Obama’s new announcement. The big majority are Latinos, with about 70 percent born in Mexico.

The illegality of these young aliens living in our country is exceeded by the illegality of Obama’s action. Obviously, Obama thinks he, too, is above the law and can do by executive order what Congress has repeatedly refused to do. As the New York Times delicately reported, “He did not consult with Congress.” Obama’s action is much more outrageous and devious than “not consulting.”

Congress has refused, year after year, to pass the legislation, colloquially known as the Dream Act, that would allow these young aliens to remain in America, take U.S. jobs, and attend U.S. universities at preferential rates and/or even get financial aid. This is one more example of Obama thinking he can take action without the consent, indeed defying the opposition, of Congress, and do what he wants anyway.

American youngsters of comparable ages are directly harmed by Obama’s political gambit. According to a report from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, U.S. citizens of ages comparable to Obama’s newly advantaged aliens face a discouraging situation and a bleak future. Only one in six is working full time and three out of five still live with their parents or other relatives.

In the high school classes of 2009-2011, only 16% got full-time jobs, and an additional 22% could get only part-time work. They won’t show up on election pollsters’ reports because a large number have had their phones disconnected.

These kids are pessimistic about America. More than half — 56% — of young people with only a high school diploma said their generation expects to have less financial success than their parents, and only 14% said they expect to do better than their parents.

Another big problem with Obama’s executive decision is that it jacks up the magnet to encourage millions more parents to bring more children into the U.S. illegally and enter them on the road to amnesty.

Supporters of Obama’s plan keep referring to “kids” as the beneficiaries of this amnesty. But the kids only have to be under the age of 30.

Obama’s action is especially damaging to 18-to-29 year olds when compared to the last two summers. From April to May in 2010, the number of unemployed 18-to-29 year olds increased by 70,000; in the same months in 2011, they increased by 142,000; and in 2012 the number of unemployed 18-to-29 year olds increased by 256,000.

So, we’re back to the crucial question: Mr. President, why do you favor foreign workers over Americans? Are you trying to create jobs for anybody except Americans?

Grassley Asks the Right Questions

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a good friend of the Constitution and We the People, has sent President Obama a powerful letter co-signed by 20 Senators. The letter spells out many unlawful aspects of Obama’s recent announcement that he will not enforce U.S. laws against young illegal aliens and will reward their illegal status with residency and work permits.

Grassley doesn’t mince words in his letter. He accuses Obama of taking an action for which he lacks legal authority, is contrary to his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” is an affront to representative government and the legislative process in bypassing Congress, and is an inappropriate use of Executive power.

Grassley points out that Obama had full knowledge that his action was unlawful. Just last year, Obama stated, “This notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is just not true. . . . We live in a democracy. You have to pass bills through the legislature, and then I can sign it.”

Here are a few of the 29 questions which Grassley asked the President to answer.

• Why has your position on your legal authority changed?
• Did you consult with attorneys about this and get a legal opinion and, if so, please provide copies of those legal opinions and emails. How will you treat the parents and others who deliberately violated federal immigration law by illegally bringing these young people into the U.S.?
• What criteria will you use to decide who gets work permits and who doesn’t, and what will be the status of the illegal aliens after the expiration of the two-year span of your executive order? Will the implementation cost of this gigantic program be paid by those who benefit, or be loaded onto the U.S. taxpayers?

Obama supporters try to justify his illegal order by claiming that the young people were brought into the U.S. through no fault of their own. Then we must assume that the fault belongs to the parent or whoever brought the kids, so those persons should be deported and allowed to take their children with them.

Although Obama bragged that his executive order will make our policies “more fair” and “more just,” Grassley prefaced his litany of legal and fiscal questions about Obama’s executive order by citing its fundamental unfairness. American citizens of ages comparable to the illegals whom Obama is rewarding, ages 16 to 24, are suffering 17 percent unemployment, and another 32 percent of American citizens aged 18 to 29 are underemployed.

Grassley wrote: “It is astonishing that your administration would grant work authorizations to illegal immigrants during this time of record unemployment.” No wonder Obama wouldn’t answer a reporter’s question as to why he favors foreign workers over American.

Obama argues that he has the authority to stop deportations of illegal aliens and reward them with work permits because he was using “prosecutorial discretion.” But prosecutorial discretion is properly applied only on a case-by-case basis to deal with extenuating circumstances, not for cancelling prosecution of a million people.

Obama’s action is an open invitation to fraud and lies. For example, Obama says his plan is for illegal aliens who arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 and are still under the age of 30. Will the young illegal aliens Obama is favoring be required to prove their age with verifiable documents such as birth certificates, school records, W-2s or tax returns, or affidavits under penalty of perjury?

Obama’s pitch to illegal aliens is one more unlawful, unilateral, dictatorial action added to his Administration’s 21 specific violations of law that were itemized in an amazing document issued on March 5 by the Attorneys General of nine states.

http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/psr/july12.html