Where to begin with these people? It is exhausting and frustrating to try to keep up with bad-faith actors who intentionally lie for political gain, which is precisely what liberals are doing to confuse and distort the current debate over religious freedom and healthcare mandates. As we reported yesterday, the Democrat-controlled Senate killed a Republican amendment that would have restored religious liberty exemptions to the pre-Obamacare status quo. Its language was similar to both Hillarycare's conscience protections, and 1993's Ted Kennedy-authored and Bill Clinton-signed Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Despite these facts, Democrats and their allies have been lying their asses off, pretending that the effort they squelched was a "ban" on contraception. The Obama campaign has now dragged this false narrative to a new mendacious low with this mock-up employer/employee "permission slip:"
Business Insider's Michael Brendan Dougherty counts the ways Team Obama lies its collective ass off in this pathetic item:
Lie #1 The idea employers have creepy discussions with individual employees about their sex lives when discussing their health insurance compensation. This does not happen. New hires usually get a packet with their insurance information just like everywhere else.
Lie #2 That employers currently (or under any law) would be granting or revoking permission to even use birth control. This is just not true. Currently many schools and hospitals just refuse to pay for it because they believe it directly implicates them in a sinful act. But employees are absolutely free to follow their own conscience and do what they want with their wages.
Lie #3 That there will be more ongoing creepy discussions and that a person's health insurance will be constantly changed and reviewed according to changeable moral standards. This is not the experience of anyone working at a religious hospital or school, nor would it be.
Lie #4 That these decisions even get this personal. These institutions typically write up an agreement with a health insurer–or they self-insure. It's an impersonal contract, not an inquisition.
Lie #5 Implicitly this makes it seem like it is also about women and their most common birth-control choices. It doesn't mention sterilization or "morning-after" drugs that are part of the mandate. And it doesn't mention most health-policies that don't cover birth control also don't cover elective-vasectomies for men.
That's a lot for one tiny slip of paper. The big lie behind all this is that somehow allowing some employers not to pay for this kind of coverage amounts to a "contraception ban." And we recognize this principle everywhere else. My employer, Henry Blodget, doesn't pay me in prayer books or altars. But that is not an infringement on my free exercise of religion. He isn't banning my faith.
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Sen. Chuck Schumer has also been lying his ass off about contraception "bans" throughout this debate. The Washington Post's fact-checkers have awarded him "Three Pinnochios" for his trouble:
...The Blunt Amendment said nothing about banning or criminalizing birth control. Schumer’s comments ooze hyperbole and alarmist language. Beyond that, he has to rely on legalistic interpretations to defend them. As for the senator’s slippery slope argument, we find that accepting such reasoning is a bit of a slippery slope itself. It’s a favorite of politicians who want to draw loose connections rather than debate the merits of a proposal as it stands.
Meanwhile, the National Organization for Women's president is lying her ass off, too:
Terry O’Neill, head of the National Organization for Women, says that the Catholic bishops are “demanding that the government step in and use the force and power and police power of the state to prevent women from taking birth control because the bishops have failed.” Other groups represented at the press event where O’Neill spoke included such mainstays of the Obama coalition as NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood.
False. Totally and completely false. In fact, it's the government that is "stepping in and using the full force and power and police power of the state" to force religious employers to pay for other people's birth control, which is already eminently available and affordable. Nobody is "preventing women from taking birth control." Some people just don't want to pay for it, for religious reasons or just because it's ridiculous. These women chant "keep your laws off our bodies," yet insist that government mandate "free birth control" while labeling anyone who objects on First Amendment grounds a misogynist.
Finally, we have our beloved president maintaining his "laser-like focus" on jobs by phoning the Georgetown law student who bent over backwards to land an invite to testify before Congress to push her demand that other people be forced to buy her birth control -- which she needs, you see, because she's going broke from having so much sex:
President Obama on Friday called a Georgetown University law student who has publicly backed the administration’s regulations mandating that employer-provided insurance plans offer free contraceptives, thanking her for standing firm against withering criticism and an escalating battle between Democrats and Rush Limbaugh. The president made the call just before Sandra Fluke, who last month supported Mr. Obama’s policy in informal testimony on Capitol Hill, was to appear on MSNBC. “What was really personal for me was he said to tell my parents that they should be proud,” she told Andrea Mitchell, the host of the cable news program.
So very proud. This woman is a hero, really. Should Rush Limbaugh have called her a "slut"? No. But does that in any way validate her selfish, statist, unconstitutional testimony? No. Keep your greedy -- and apparently rather busy -- hands off religious employers' wallets, Sandra.
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