Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 29

Have you heard about the Saudi journalist who faces a potential death sentence under sharia?

You probably haven't, at least if you've been watching FoxNews.

Hamza Kashgari, as Nina Shea and yours truly have noted in recent days, is a Saudi journalist and blogger who took the occasion of Mohammed's birthday to tweet some uncomplimentary things about Islam's founding prophet. The Daily Beast recounts the three offending tweets: 

“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you,” he wrote in one tweet.

“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more,” he wrote in a second.

“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more,” he concluded in a third.

Doesn't sound too terrible, especially if you compare it to the sort of things the Obama Left has been saying about faithful Christians. Yet, it is a profound sin under classical sharia law, which happens to be the law of Saudi Arabia. The 23-year-old's tweets instantly touched off a firestorm. Kashgari desperately tried to delete the posts within six hours, but it was too late: the damage was done as Saudi clerics and thousands of Saudi citizens started baying for his blood.

Kashgari attempted to flee to New Zealand. But Saudi authorities issued a warrant for his arrest on blasphemy charges. In fact, the Daily Beast reports that the kingdom's leading news site says the warrant was issued by King Abdullah himself. Reportedly with the assistance of Interpol, Kashgari was apprehended in Malaysia and swiftly extradited to Saudi Arabia. In an interview with the Daily Beast prior to his arrest, Kashgari explained, "I view my actions as part of a process toward freedom. I was demanding my right to practice the most basic human rights -- freedom of expression and thought." These rights may be unalienable in Western thought, but they are unrecognized in sharia. Kashgari could well be executed. 

As I've related before, Reliance of the Traveller -- A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, is an authoritative translation of sharia that has been endorsed by, among others, the Islamic Research Academy of al-Azhar University in Cairo (the ancient seat of Sunni jurisprudential scholarship) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought, an influential Muslim Brotherhood think-tank. The manual instructs that, under sharia, the penalty for apostasy from Islam is death. (See, e.g., Sec. o8.1, "When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed.) The apostasy section goes on to describe "Acts that Entail Leaving Islam" (Sec. o8.7), and these include, "to speak words that imply unbelief"; "to revile Allah or His messenger [viz., Mohammed]"; to mock or deny faith; or to deny "scholarly consensus." In Islam, the consensus is that Mohammed is the perfect example whose life is to be emulated, not questioned or disparaged.

Mr. Kashgari's tweets have thus placed him in grave peril under the Saudi sharia system. Given the palpable jeopardy this poses for free speech globally -- particularly in light of Interpol's reported involvement in issuing a "red notice" based on the Saudi blasphemy charge, and the Obama administration's strange 2009 move to expand Interpol's legal immunity (see here, here and here) -- one would think his plight would be a big deal. But my friend Diana West has discovered that it is not a big deal on FoxNews. A word search for "Kashgari" on the Fox website turns up no hits.

As I mentioned a few weeks back, the number two shareholder at Fox (after NewsCorp) is Alwaleed bin Talal, a member of the Saudi royal family whose bottomless pockets back various American projects designed to cast sharia law in a favorable light -- such as Islamic studies programs at Georgetown and Harvard. In 2006, Accuracy in Media reported that Prince bin Talal had pressured Fox into downplaying the Muslim role in rioting in France. And it just so happens that, late last year, bin Talal plunked down $300 million for a stake in Twitter, the social media service that published the tweets that have Mr. Kashgari in such dire straits.

Probably just a coincidence.

Same Old GOP?

Well, we know the leadership is the same old GOP: As I noted last week, the Boehner Highway Boondoggle might as well be called "Obama Lite" -- and it's really not all that lite at $262 billion, which is about $70 billion more than dedicated fuel taxes will generate and $14 billion per annum more than House Republicans proposed just seven months ago. This is exactly the sort of recklessness that got the GOP booted from power in 2006 and 2008, and that they promised voters they had sworn off. 

As Erick Erickson points out, moreover, House Republican leadership is using the same sort of sleight-of-hand Obama Democrats employ to conceal their profligacy and bribe resisters: budget busting provisions are diverted into separate legislation, to be paid for out of general funds, to hide the fact that the Highway Trust Fund is being blown out; domestic energy production is purportedly ramped up (the Left will never go for it) to woo fiscally responsible conservatives into voting yea -- even though there is no reason why energy production should be linked to transportation, and if there is a surplus to be had from it, responsible lawmakers would use it to pay down some of the mountainous debt they are saddling our children and grandchildren with, not fund more "stimulus."

The vote is today. It's a very clear question for Republicans swept in on the 2010 Tea Party tide: Did you actually come to change Washington, or has Washington already changed you?

Yesterday, President Obama proposed an astoundingly irresponsible budget that doesn't just utterly refuse to deal with the reality of our bankruptcy but adds goo-gobs of new debt. House Republicans, despite their spendthrift leaders, have a chance today to say: We're different. Are they? 

Obama's Budget and Interest Rates

Maybe Vero, Kevin, Larry, Ramesh, Yuval or one of our other experts knows that answer to this one. What assumptions does President Obama's proposed budget make about interest rates? Does he assume we are going to continue record low rates throughout the next decade? The James Pethokoukis analysis that Larry referred to notes that the president is laughably assuming that economic growth will shoot up to 3.4 percent in 2015 and then hover around 4 percent for years afterwards. Is the administration similarly assuming that the artificially low interest rates will go on forever? What happens to the debt if, say, interest rates inched up closer to historic norms? 

Re: Old Fashioned But ...

Yuval, as appealing as I think your tongue-in-cheek proposal is, since it underscores how outrageous a violation the HHS mandate is, I'm afraid anything that relies on the federal courts for interpretation should be a non-starter. Very clear constitutional commands that, for example, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech", or that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed," or that "No state shall ... deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws", have not stopped courts from upholding campaign finance reform, prohibitions against gun possession, or racial preferences.

The federal courts are being reshaped by the Obama presidency, thanks to the disinclination of senate Republicans to block appointees. According to Wikipedia, 126 Obama judges now sit on the Supreme, Circuit and District Courts, and there may be as many as 101 more before his term ends in 2013.  I'm confident that the vast majority of Obama judges, maybe even all of them, would have no trouble holding that the HHS mandate (a) does not establish the Church of Obama as the state religion, and (b) being a neutral law of general application (i.e., it does not explicitly target religion in the text and applies to everyone equally), does not violate the First Amendment's free-exercise clause. (I am not here addressing Ed's arguments about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act; for now, I'm just talking about the Constitution. Also, while I believe that the mandate violates the First Amendment, we're talking now about what Obama judges are apt to do.)

My own humble suggestion is that Congress enact a very simple bill that says, "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed by the President on March 23, 2010, and all federal regulations promulgated pursuant thereto, are hereby repealed in their entirety." This proposal emphasizes two crucial facts. First, the problem is not merely the mandate but the broader Obamacare statute: as the editors point out today, and James Capretta argued here two weeks ago, Obamacare gives the HHS secretary sweeping powers -- often unreviewable powers -- to issue all manner of healthcare dictates. The contraceptive/abortifacient mandate is only the beginning of what we're going to see, especially if Obama is re-elected.

Second, as I've contended several times (see, e.g., here and here), Obamacare cries out for a political reversal -- I think it a very iffy proposition that the Supreme Court will invalidate all or part of Obamacare, and no Republican president will be able to reverse the law by executive order. It must be repealed by statute -- and there is no need to wait until a consensus is reached on what it should be replaced by, since repeal would just return us to the state of play on March 22, 2010, which was a lot better than what we're now facing. The mandate should be a wake-up call to congressional Republicans that they need to be far more aggressive than they have been in making the 2012 election a referendum on Obamacare by forcing the president to veto a repeal -- again and again. 

Israel blames Iran, Hezbollah for bombings at its embassies in India and Georgia

Reuters reports that bombs targeted staff at Israel's embassies in India and Georgia. No one was killed, but four were wounded in the New Delhi bombing; the Tblisi bomb was defused by Georgian police. The incidents come a day after the fourth anniversary of the killing of Imad Mugniyah, the Hezbollah leader, in Damascus -- for which Iran and Hezbollah blame Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran and Hezbollah of involvement in today's bombing and attempted bombing.

Moderate Malaysian Government: Valentine's Day Can Invoke Wrath of Allah

The next time you hear the familiar co-existence, religion-of-peace blather from some Saudi-purchased, Brotherhood canoodling hack (e.g., Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, under the direction of the Left's favorite Islam expert, John Esposito), keep this one in the back of your mind. It's not from al-Qaeda; it's from Malaysian widely proclaimed moderate Islamic government -- the same one that, with Interpol's help, has reportedly extradited a journalist to Saudi Arabia to face trial for insulting Mohammed, a death-penalty offense:

An invitation “to be my Valentine” on February 14 is against Islamic beliefs and would incur the wrath of Allah, Muslims were told today in the official Friday sermon prepared by the federal government.

The sermon warned Muslims against celebrating Valentine’s Day, which the federal Islamic authorities claimed was in breach of the tenets of their religion.

In the text of a sermon provided by the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (Jakim) titled “Awas jerat Valentine” (Beware Valentine’s trap), Muslims were told that asking someone to be his or her “Valentine” could lead to idolatry.

The text of a second optional sermon prepared by the Federal Territory Islamic Department (Jawi), titled “Butakah Cinta?” (Is love blind?), likened celebrating the global day of romance to celebrating the anniversary of “Islam’s fall at the hands of Christians”.

Citing a person named Ken Swiger who purportedly wrote an article titled, “Should Biblical Christians Observe It?”, Jakim in the text of its sermon said the word “Valentine” originated from Latin and means “The Bravest, The Strongest, The Most Powerful” to refer to ancient Roman gods Nimrod and Lupercus.

The federal Islamic authority said it was wrong to ask someone to be his or her Valentine.

“Whether they realise or not, if a person asks another person or his partner to ‘Be my Valentine?’ it is clearly an act that is against the Islamic faith and that would invoke the wrath of Allah SWT.

“This is because they are asking a person to be their ‘Most Powerful’ this is the same as reviving the culture of idol worship,” the sermon said.

It added that “love can only be to Allah SWT [and to] his prophet”.

A quick search online failed to turn up details on Sweiger’s identity or the alleged article he wrote that Jakim had referred to.

Jakim said that the National Fatwa Council had sat in 2005 and declared that Islam did not sponsor Valentine’s Day, as the spirit of the celebration was mixed with vice activities which Islam forbids.

It urged Muslims to strengthen their faith, family and community through five steps, namely for parents to teach their children Islam’s true path; to forbid Muslims, especially teens from copying pagans; to sow feelings of love for Allah SWT and his prophet; for unmarried Muslims to keep away from mixed company; and to leave celebrations that are not provided for under Islam’s laws.

In the text of the sermon prepared by Jawi, it claimed that February 14 was celebrated as Valentine’s Day to commemorate the victory of the Christian government in an offensive against the Muslim government in Cordoba, Andalusia, which is now modern-day Spain.

“Therefore, is it right for Muslims to celebrate the fall of Islam at the hands of Christians? Should we worship and celebrate the arrogant declaration of a Christian priest?” it asked.

“Are there no other prominent Islamic leaders for us to worship and follow?” it said.

Both texts of the government’s official sermon called on Muslims not to be influenced by Western culture and celebrate Valentine’s Day, which falls on Wednesday next week.... 

The Contraceptive Mandate's Shaky Justification

The first thing to understand about the Department of Health and Human Services’ birth-control mandate, and the last, is that it is an assault on both faithful Christians and the Constitution by leftists who consider themselves at “war” -- their word -- with bourgeois America. It has nothing to do with guaranteeing access to contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients.

Don’t think so? Are you buying the Obama party line that the administration is merely protecting people who work for religious organizations -- such as Catholic schools, hospitals, and charitable organizations? Ensuring they are not denied these “reproductive services” that are covered under health-insurance plans ordinary businesses arrange for their employees? These claims do not pass the laugh test. Nobody in America is denied access to abortion, let alone birth-control pills

#ad#Owing to its totemic status in the Kulturkampf, abortion is among the most heavily subsidized of medical procedures. In the first trimester, it generally costs less than $400. If the unborn child is in the second trimester, the price of ending his or her life is a bit steeper. Still, like life, death is cheap, generally under $600.

Abortion is alone on the top shelf at the Bang for the Buck Bar. The rest of the menu is cheap, cheap, cheap. The New York City Department of Health, for example, has a website dedicated to, er, disseminating “Free NYC Condoms” (“Get Some, Get Yours -- Grab a Handful and Go!”). It even has the toll-free 3-1-1 number you can call if, while away from your computer, the cupboard is bare in your time of need. And if you’re really interested in the subject, Big Apple taxpayers helpfully provide “A Brief History of Condoms in New York City.” Besides learning that “distribution of the NYC Condom topped 40 million” in 2009, you’ll revisit such milestones as Valentine’s Day 2007, when the health department “set a national precedent” with its “Lifestyles condom in a chic, branded Gotham wrapper.” Go New York, go New York, go!

Planned Parenthood reports that birth-control pills run as low as $15 per month -- and at the click of a mouse, PP will help you find a health center from which to get a prescription. Like the pill, diaphragms and the “Nuva Ring” start as low as $15 per month, and PP will work to get you set up with Medicaid or other state programs that defray costs -- just as it will if you prefer the cervical cap route, which will set you back about $70 (with the spermicide “kit”) but, like a diaphragm, lasts about two years. Starting at $400, Implanon, a thin implant inserted in the arm, sounds costly at first blush, but it lasts for three years. Injections of Depo-Provera, the “birth control shot,” go for about 40 smackers, and they last three months. If for some reason you’re not near one of Nanny Bloomberg’s Gotham wrapper stands but you’d still rather go over-the-counter, PP itself will supply you with a package of three sponges for about ten bucks.

More good news: You’re not like BP -- if there’s an accidental spill, you’ve got very affordable options. The “Morning After” pill -- which is actually a treatment course of four to eight tablets -- costs about $20 at the local drugstore, although, as PP points out, “we all like to be prepared. That is why it’s a great idea to keep some emergency contraception in your medicine cabinet or bedside table” just in case. If you wait too long, there’s always the “abortion pill,” RU-486. It starts at about $300, and PP assures you that “Planned Parenthood centers that do not provide it can refer you to someone who does.”

#page#At these prices, it’s absurd to suggest that anyone in America who wants birth control, pre- or post-conception, cannot get it at minimal cost and with minimal effort. Let’s consider for a moment some of the items that, unlike “reproductive health services,” government does not directly subsidize -- at least right now, though there’s always Obama’s second term.

Scouring Census data and other government reports about Americans categorized as “poor,” the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield uncovered some startling facts: 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning, and 92 percent have microwaves; 75 percent have a car or truck, and nearly half of those have more than one. It goes without saying that virtually everyone has television, but a third of poor households have at least one wide-screen TV, two-thirds have cable- or satellite-TV service, more than two-thirds have either a DVD or a VCR player, about a quarter have digital recorders like TiVo, and more than half have an Xbox, a PlayStation, or a similar video-game system. Half of poor households have at least one personal computer, and nearly 15 percent have more than one.

#ad#Furthermore, over 40 percent of poor households own their homes, and the average poor American enjoys “more living space than the typical non-poor person in Sweden, France, or the United Kingdom.” The poor in America are extraordinarily well fed, and “by their own reports, the average poor person had sufficient funds to meet all essential needs and obtain medical care for family members throughout the year whenever needed.”

Furthermore, consider this: It is a black-letter legal principle that the existence of a right, even a right of constitutional magnitude, does not imply a companion right to have the government or any third party pay for its exercise -- you don’t hear anyone claiming that Catholic organizations need to provide firearms for their employees. So, while the courts have invented a constitutional right to abortion and constitutional protections for birth control, there is no right to have subsidized birth control.

Yet Americans pay through the nose anyway, very much including Catholic organizations and people of faith who adhere to their creeds’ teachings on abortion and birth control. Thanks to our elected officials, federal taxpayers provide Planned Parenthood with a whopping $360 million per year -- more than a third of PP’s annual budget. Mind you, we are talking here only about PP and Uncle Sam. That $360 million does not count millions of dollars in state-government funding of PP, nor total funding by governments at any level for birth-control providers other than PP.

So to summarize, contraception is broadly and inexpensively available. Voluminous information about birth-control methods, prices, and comprehensive support services is free and easily accessible online, by telephone, and at hundreds of clinics that encourage the curious or needy to walk in. And though there is no constitutional right to public funding for abortion and contraception, they are nevertheless richly underwritten by taxpayers -- including religious believers whose contribution is coerced despite their profound moral objections to some or all of the practices at issue.

There is no crisis in “reproductive health.” There is not even inconvenience. Contraception and abortion services are readily, affordably accessible to anyone who wants them, including anyone -- Catholic or not -- who works at or otherwise gets health insurance through a Catholic institution. In fact, one suggested “compromise” solution to the HHS mandate dispute -- the so-called Hawaii Rule -- proves the point. In the Aloha State, religious organizations that choose not to provide birth-control coverage are required to tell their employees where and how they can obtain it. Putting aside the fact that this “solution” is blatantly unconstitutional, violating free speech as well as religious liberty, it is a rationally plausible alternative only because birth control is so pervasively available.

#page#Consequently, there was no access-related reason for the Obama administration to pick a fight here -- a fight the president well knew would be controversial given his years as a front-line soldier for the abortion (and infanticide) cause, the personal pleas made to him by top religious leaders, and the bickering the prospect of the mandate provoked within his administration. Obama dropped this bomb only because he is at war with America’s culture of individual liberty, of which religious freedom lies at the heart.

War is the right word -- and it’s not one conservatives invoked. Just a few months back, in October, Obama’s top field commander, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, spoke at a fundraiser for NARAL Pro-Choice America, the most rabid of Obama supporters. “We are in a war,” she told the crowd. As her remarks made unmistakable, the administration views believing Christians -- the bitter clingers of Obama lore -- as the enemy in that war. Sebelius, the National Catholic Register reports, “boasted of the regulation that forces religious objectors to choose between violating their religion and kicking their employees off of health insurance.”

#ad#And, again, think about the Hawaii Rule, which the administration that so welcomed the ongoing battle has reportedly floated as a potential truce. There would not be a United States without the Bill of Rights -- absent the understanding that a Bill of Rights would soon be added, the states would not have ratified the Constitution. There would not be a Bill of Rights without the guarantees of free speech and religious liberty enshrined in the very first amendment. This is the irreducible core of the social contract: Government may not compel an American to parrot the policy preferences of the executive branch, nor may it force an American to engage in or directly abet practices that are repellent to Christian doctrine.

The Obama Left is well aware of these things, for these things are basic. The president does not care. His doctrine, hard-Left doctrine, is government promotion of contraception and abortion on demand. On these tenets, he brooks no dissent. Regardless of what the Constitution says, you are commanded to obey. He has started the war against our liberties not because of any crisis, but because he can. That is tyranny. It is a rupturing of the American conception of sovereignty, in which the president is our servant, not our ruler. It cannot stand.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of  The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America .

Report: Interpol Helps Saudis Arrest Journalist in Malaysia for Insulting Mohammed

Speaking of co-existence, this is chilling. From the Guardian:

Interpol accused after journalist arrested over Muhammad tweet -- Saudi Arabia used Interpol's system to get journalist arrested in Malaysia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad on Twitter

 Interpol has been accused of abusing its powers after Saudi Arabia used the organisation's red notice system to get a journalist arrested in Malaysia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained at the airport "following a request made to us by Interpol" the international police cooperation agency, on behalf of the Saudi authorities.

Kashgari, a newspaper columnist, fled Saudi Arabia after posting a tweet on the prophet's birthday that sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats. The posting, which was later deleted, read: "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you … I will not pray for you."

More than 13,000 people joined a Facebook page titled "The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari".

Clerics in Saudi Arabia called for him to be charged with apostasy, a religious offence punishable by death. Reports suggest that the Malaysian authorities intend to return him to his native country.

Kashgari's detention has triggered criticism by human rights groups of Malaysia's decision to arrest the journalist and of Interpol's cooperation in the process.

Jago Russell, the chief executive of the British charity Fair Trials International, which has campaigned against the blanket enforcement of Interpol red notices, said: "Interpol should be playing no part in Saudi Arabia's pursuit of Hamza Kashgari, however unwise his comments on Twitter.

"If an Interpol red notice is the reason for his arrest and detention it would be a serious abuse of this powerful international body that is supposed to respect basic human rights (including to peaceful free speech) and to be barred from any involvement in religious or political cases.

He called on Interpol to stand by its obligations to fundamental human rights and "to comply with its obligation not to play any part in this case, which is clearly of a religious nature".

Interpol, which has 190 member countries, has a series of coloured notice systems that police forces around the world use to pass on requests for help. Contacted at its headquarters in Lyon, France, the organisation did not immediately reply to requests for comment on the Kashgari case.

In response to past criticisms of the red notice system, it has said: "There are safeguards in place. The subject of a red notice can challenge it through an independent body, the commission for the control of Interpol's files (CCF)."

Last year Interpol was accused by Fair Trials International of allowing the system to be abused for political purposes when it issued a red notice for the arrest of the Oxford-based leader of an Asian separatist movement, Benny Wenda, who has been granted asylum and has lived in the UK since 2003.

The Compromise -- The Justice Department Used To Call This Sort of Thing Fraud

Federal law makes it a felony to engage in "Frauds and swindles" (Section 1341 of Title 18, U.S. Code). A fraud is a "scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises[.]..."

In the scenario addressed by the Obama administration's cockamamie "compromise," religious organization employer (call it "A") wishes to purchase health insurance from B insurance company for C, its employees, but not cover birth-control services that violate A's religious principles and that the First Amendment protects A from having to subsidize.

Obama is telling A that it can pay B and that the payments will not cover birth control services for C; he is then telling B to cover the birth-control services for C -- but only because A is making the payments. A is thus deceived by Obama's representations into paying B for C's birth-control services.

That is fraud. If you tried to pull something like it, federal agents and attorneys would investigate and prosecute you. And if millions of dollars were involved, the sentencing guidelines would dictate many, many years of incarceration.

Like Ed, I'm with Yuval: We've gone from bad to worse. First religious organizations were being bludgeoned in violation of the Constitution; now, they're still being bludgeoned but they're also being fleeced.

WaPo Political Writer: 'Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion . . .'

From a self-described "left-leaning Catholic writer," the Washington Post's associate editor political writer Melinda Henneberger, this is what passes for a defense of faith against the HHS mandate. In an MSNBC interview, Ms. Henneberger told Chris Matthews: "Maybe the founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion in the First Amendment, but that is what they did and I don't think we have to choose here."

As the Blaze goes on to explain, she added that "what [the Obama administration is] doing is guaranteeing people, you know, these Catholic outfits and others, can't serve the populations that they were called to serve." That, of course, is true. Her commentary is bracing, though, on a couple of levels. 

First, there is the sheer unreality of it. As someone of Ms. Henneberger's sophistication must know, the Founders cannot have been wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion. Had they failed to do so, there would have been no nation to found. Free exercise was a deal-breaker for Americans, and the adoption of the Bill of Rights (in which free-exercise was among the core of individual liberties that had to be specified) was a deal breaker for skeptics in several states who believed the Constitution transferred too much power to the federal government.

Second is the tortuous progressive position on the Constitution. It so happens that Ms. Henneberger and I are in agreement on the HHS diktat. But what if the issue were, say, the "right" to abortion, or the suppression of political speech under the guise of campaign finance "reform"? I don't want to target Ms. Henneberger unfairly here because I haven't taken the time to research her positions on those matters. But of progressives generally, it can be confidently said that it would not matter what the founders had or had not guaranteed. In the spirit of Woodrow Wilson or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, they would argue that a modern country cannot be shackled by parchment frozen in the Eighteenth Century -- better that you consult the constitution of South Africa.

Just so we understand the game, then, if something the Left still likes is enumerated in the Constitution (e.g., recess appointments -- at least when a Democrat is in the White House), the Constitution is inviolable and its original intent must be enforced. If something the Left finds repugnant, or at least inconvenient, is enumerated in the Constitution (e.g., freedom of religion, freedom of speech, right to keep and bear arms), the Constitution is a living, breathing, organic Houdini.