January 10, 2012

Gay marriage is a threat to humanity, claims Pope

Pope Benedict XVI was making a new year address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican

Last updated at 1:18 PM on 10th January 2012

Gay marriage is one of several threats to the traditional family unit that undermines 'the future of humanity itself', Pope Benedict XVI warned yesterday.

The pontiff told diplomats from nearly 180 countries that the education of proper of children needed proper 'settings' and that 'pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman.'

The Pope made his comments, some of his strongest yet against gay marriage, during a new year address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican.

New year address: Pope Benedict, pictured arriving for an audience with the diplomatic corps at the Vatican yesterday, where he warned gay marriage is one of several threats to the traditional family unit

During his speech, he touched on some economic and social issues facing the world today, including gay marriage.

He said: 'This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society.

'Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself. The family unit is fundamental for the educational process and for the development both of individuals and states.

'Hence there is a need for policies which promote the family and aid social cohesion and dialogue.'

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The Vatican and Catholic officials around the world have protested against moves to legalise gay marriage in Europe and other developed parts of the world.

One leading opponent of gay marriage in the U.S. is New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who the Pope will elevate to cardinal next month.

Dolan fought against gay marriage before it became legal in New York state last June, and in September he sent a letter to President Barack Obama criticising his administration's decision not to support a federal ban on gay marriage.

'Policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself'

In that letter Dolan, who holds the powerful post of president of the U.S. Bishops Conference, said such a policy could 'precipitate a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions'.

The Roman Catholic Church, which has some 1.3billion members worldwide, teaches that while homosexual tendencies are not sinful, homosexual acts are, and that children should grow up in a traditional family with a mother and a father.

Gay marriage is legal in a number of European countries, including Spain and the Netherlands.

Some Churches that have allowed gay marriage, women priests, gay clergy and gay bishops have been losing members to Catholicism, and the Vatican has taken steps to facilitate their conversion.

In 2009, Benedict decreed that Anglicans who leave their Church, many because they feel it has become too liberal, can find a home in Catholicism in a parallel hierarchy that allows them to keep some of their traditions.

The Vatican has since set up "ordinariates," structures similar to dioceses, in Britain and the U.S. to oversee ex-Anglicans who have converted and be a point of contact for those wishing to do so.

GAY MARRIAGE THREATENS ‘THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY ITSELF’

POPE BENEDICT: GAY MARRIAGE THREATENS ‘THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY ITSELF’

Posted on January 10, 2012 at 11:48am by Billy Hallowell
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Pope Benedict XVI has a warning for all mankind: Gay marriage is one of a number of threats to the family unit that holds the potential to undermine “the future of humanity itself.” This warning, which is sure to cause angst and pain among those who disagree with its sentiment, comes as other Catholic figures are using strong language to condemn pro-same-sex marriage policies.

During an address to diplomats from nearly 180 nations, the pope discussed the importance of education and the need to reinforce the traditional man and wife paradigm. According to the Daily Mail, these were some of the pope’s strongest comments yet about gay marriage, as he said that the family unit is necessary to sustain both education and development.

“This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society,” he said. “Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself. The family unit is fundamental for the educational process and for the development both of individuals and states.”

Benedict went on to call for policies that promote the family. While these statements are bold, the pope isn’t the only Catholic leader speaking out against gay marriage. El Pais is reporting that Demetrio Fernández, the Bishop of Córdoba (Spain), recently claimed that UNESCO has crafted an elaborate program that will make half of the world’s population gay in the next 20 years. Fernández‘s comments came during a sermon he delivered on Spain’s Boxing Day, a holiday held on December 26.

“The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual,” Fernández is quoted as saying. “To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools.”

Madrid Archbishop Antonio Rouco Varela (AP)

And while railing against the pro-choice and same-sex marriage policies of Spain’s previous Socialist Party-led government, Madrid Archbishop Antonio Rouco Varela reportedly claimed that abortion and euthanasia constitute a bigger crisis in Spain than the economy and politics.

“The family is under attack in Spain,” Varela maintained, also stating that ”Life is a sacred right that humans have been given by God.”

(H/T: Daily Mail)

Obama’s Arrogant Authoritarianism

Morning Bell: Obama’s Arrogant Authoritarianism

Posted By Lachlan Markay On January 10, 2012 @ 10:05 am In Rule of Law | 6 Comments

^[1]
Last week, President Barack Obama took the latest step on his road toward an arrogant, new authoritarianism with four illegal appointments that entirely trampled on the Constitution’s requirements. More troubling still, the President chose to shred the Constitution all in the name of serving his Big Labor agenda while killing jobs in the process.
The President’s actions once again gave voice to his animating view of governing: doing so is much easier when one isn’t constrained by the Constitution and its checks and balances. “We can’t wait,” the President exclaimed after unilaterally appointing Richard Cordray as director of the newly inaugurated Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). He also appointed three officials to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), two of whom had been nominated less than a month before.
The policy implications of the President’s appointments? The CFPB will now have unmitigated authority to issue regulation upon regulation, contributing to the already-crippling red tape that is strangling business in America. And the NLRB will have the power to advance the President’s agenda to bolster unions across the country at the expense of job growth in a smarting economy.
For what, exactly, can’t the President wait? Quite simply, constitutional republicanism — the system of checks and balances integral to American government and political freedom. He grew impatient with the delays that inevitably accompany any legislative action an acted outside the Constitution’s mandated process. But the American people should ask, “Is such action really preferable to a deliberative, if slower-moving, constitutional republic?”
The President’s appointments last week, troubling as they are, are but the next steps on the road to a despotic form of governance that has come to characterize his Administration — and all of liberalism in America today — what authors Fred Siegel and Joel Kotkin termed in City Journal this week Obama’s “New Authoritarianism.” ^[2]Frustrated by the unwillingness of the people’s representatives to enact his agenda wholesale, Obama has, from early in his Administration, sought to enact a series of proposals through administrative fiat, not the legislative process:

The Democrat-controlled Senate rejected his cap-and-trade plan, so Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency classified carbon dioxide ^[3], the compound that sustains vegetative life, as a pollutant so that it could regulate it under the Clean Air Act.
After Congress defeated his stealth-amnesty immigration proposal, the DREAM Act, the Department of Homeland Security instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ^[4] to “adopt enforcement parameters that bring about the same ends as the DREAM Act,” as Heritage’s Mike Brownfield explained.
When the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act–explicitly designed to bolster labor unions’ dwindling membership rolls–was defeated by Congress, the NLRBannounced a rule ^[5] that would implement “snap elections” for union representation, limiting employers’ abilities to make their case to workers and virtually guaranteeing a higher rate of unionization at the expense of workplace democracy.
After an innovation-killing Internet regulation proposal failed to make it through Congress, the Federal Communications Commission announced — on Christmas Eve, no less — that it would regulate the Web anyway, despite even a federal court’s ruling ^[6] that it had no authority to do so.
In its push for national education standards, the Education Department decided ^[7] to tie waivers for the No Child Left Behind law to requirements that states adopt those standards, shutting Congress out of the effort.
Rather than push Congress to repeal federal laws against marijuana use, the Department of Justice (DOJ) simply decided ^[8] it would no longer enforce those laws.
DOJ made a similar move with respect to the Defense of Marriage Act: rather than seeking legislative recourse, DOJ announced ^[9] it would stop enforcing the law.

While these efforts are all aimed at circumventing the legislative process, none was so brazen as his four illegal appointments. Last week, Obama went one step further: He violated not just the spirit of the Constitution, which vests in Congress the power to make laws, but the letter of the law as well.
The move is “a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers,” explain ^[10] former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese and Heritage colleague Todd Gaziano, a former attorney in DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, in a Washington Post column. “[N]ever before has a president purported to make a ‘recess’ appointment when the Senate is demonstrably not in recess,” they note. “That is a constitutional abuse of a high order.”
Dr. Matthew Spalding, vice president of American Studies and director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics at The Heritage Foundation, explains ^[11] that this “new despotism” — a government where regulations and unilateral actions replace republican governance — runs entirely counter to the Founders’ vision of America:

The greatest political revolution since the American Founding has been the shift of power away from the institutions of constitutional government to an oligarchy of unelected experts. They rule over virtually every aspect of our daily lives, ostensibly in the name of the American people but in actuality by the claimed authority of science, policy expertise, and administrative efficiency.
If this regime becomes the undisputed norm — accepted not only among the intellectual and political elites, but also by the American people, as the defining characteristic of the modern state — it could well mark the end of our great experiment in self-government.

President Obama’s actions are exactly the kind that the Founders feared and sought to guard against. His illegal appointments usurp power from the American people’s duly elected representatives, and the regulations they will promulgate will, undoubtedly, contribute to the unabated growth of the undemocratic administrative state.
Now that the President has crossed the threshold of constitutionality, there really is no telling where he may stop. There is a clear trend here, however, and it leads further and further from the constitutional order. With these illegal appointments, the President has taken to new heights his disdain for the separation of powers. Whether it will stop here depends on Congress — Will lawmakers of both parties reassert the legislature’s constitutional authority and take a stand against Obama’s arrogant new authoritarianism?
Quick Hits:

The EPA needs to be stopped. Nixon gave us this agency but Obama is giving them WAY TOO much power.

Constitutional right of due process at stake in EPA case

By: Examiner Editorial | 01/09/12 8:05 PM

Oral arguments were heard Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a potentially landmark case. The justices will determine whether the bureaucratic convenience of a federal agency supercedes due process, the fundamental individual liberty guaranteed to every American citizen by the Constitution. The case presents such a clear-cut choice about what it means to be an American that it will be a deadly blow to political liberty if the justices decide for the bureaucrats against individual Americans.

Here are the basic facts of the case, as described in The Washington Examiner's Jan. 8 Sunday Reflection by Mark Hyman: "In 2005, Chantell and Michael Sackett purchased less than two-thirds of an acre of land near Priest Lake in northern Idaho for the modest sum of $23,000. They were nearby small-business owners and wanted to become homeowners. They planned to build a three-bedroom home. The property was located in a platted residential subdivision with water and sewer hookups and was bordered on either side by existing homes. There were community roads in both the front and back of the property.

"The couple was savvy enough to have conducted regulatory due diligence before they purchased the land. The previous owner informed them he had consulted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding any building restrictions. There were none. After buying the property, the Sacketts applied for and received all of the pertinent local permits to build a residential dwelling as local zoning ordinances permit. In the spring of 2007, they began preparing the lot for construction."

So far, so good, right? Wrong. Somebody at the EPA decided, incorrectly, that the Sacketts' private property was actually a wetland, so only the federal agency could decide what, if anything, would ever be done on the lot. The bureaucrats then ordered the Sacketts to remove foundation work that had been completed, plus much more. The EPA's decree, according to Hyman, directed the Sacketts "to plant new vegetation and specified what to plant ('native scrub-shrub, broad-leaved deciduous wetlands plants and seeded with native herbaceous plants') and how to plant ('approximately 10 feet apart'). Additionally, they were ordered to fence the property, monitor plant growth for three growing seasons and to permit unfettered access to the property by EPA agents."

Through it all, the EPA fined the Sacketts $37,500 daily for noncompliance with its order (the fines totaled nearly $40 million as the case was argued Monday). Worst of all, EPA claimed in federal district and appellate courts that respecting the couple's due process rights by granting them judicial review of the order would be a "disservice" to the agency.

If the court fails to stop EPA in its tracks for flagrantly violating the Constitution, it will free federal agencies to proceed at will to erect "a multitude of new offices" and send "hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." The last time a government tried to do that to us, we had a revolution.