government

September 11, 2001, brought out the worst and the best of humanity, in the evil perpetrated and the service to one’s neighbor to the point of self-sacrifice.

Twelve years after the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., we continue to delude ourselves about who is the real enemy. We hamstring ourselves into not reacting to patterns of behavior for fear that we might appear to be reacting to race or creed. We took an attack on our freedom, and we continued the attack, taking away some of our rights and tying us up economically. We have gone from taking out the people who did this to us to taking out the opponents of the regimes sympathetic those who harmed us.

We’re told to remember September 11, but what we’ve taken away is that we’re at fault and that if we punish ourselves and appease our enemies enough, they will leave us alone.

The justices rejected two of the administration’s three arguments in support of the insurance requirement. But the court said the mandate can be construed as a tax. “Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness,” Roberts said.

So what are we taxing? A sales tax taxes sales, an income tax taxes income, a property tax taxes property…all of which are things that if we don’t do, we don’t incur the tax.

But does the ObamaCare / Health Care Tax tax health care?  No, we are told, it taxes you.  Either pay the tax, or get fined.

This isn’t a tax. Let’s get our terms straight. This is tribute — enforced and exacted payment.

The Left says there’s a war on women, and the Right says there’s a war on religious liberty. They’re both right.

Declaration of Independence

The war on religious liberty is very clear. With the ObamaCare mandate that religious institutions provide a service that goes against their religious tenets, whether paying for it themselves or paying for insurance that provides it, we are traveling into unprecedented invasion of the state into the behavior of the church. Jehovah’s Witnesses, their doctors, and their insurance aren’t mandated to provide transfusions, because transfusions are a violation of that religion. The courts have ruled that some religious sects have rights to use drugs otherwise considered illegal because those drugs are integral to their religion. We do not force conscientious objectors to go to war, even when they are drafted. The state shall not violate people’s consciences. We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. The ObamaCare mandate goes against all the freedom we have fought for since the Revolutionary War.

The war on women is a lot murkier, and that’s desirable by some.

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Probably the creepiest government office in central Ohio is the Office of Vital Statistics in downtown Columbus. I have the utmost respect for everyone who works there, and it’s mostly not their fault. I had to go there this afternoon to get a copy of a birth certificate.

It took me a while to figure out why, but here goes:

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