Life in the Cheese Drawer

i love it when politics puts a hot button issue right in my lap. on top of that, i love examining laws and the constitution. in my alternate life, one that does not include forestry or blogging for a living, i would probably be a research lawyer or constitutional scholar.
there has been some brouhaha over sebelius v. hobby lobby lately – freedom of religion! birth control is bad! the ACA is bad! and you should feel bad! so i wanted to look into it a little further.

1. freedom of religion
we all know the freedom of religion line in the bill of rights: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.*
what many people DON’T know is the original thinking behind putting this line in the first – FIRST! – amendment. the british had gotten away from england – a church run state. Those discussions—recorded in the Congressional Records from June 7 through September 25 of 1789—make clear their intent for the First Amendment. By it, the Founders were saying: “We do not want in America what we had in Great Britain: we don’t want one denomination running the nation.”**
basically, the founders were protecting the government from being church run. it isn’t to protect the churches from the government. let that sink in.
now, on to…
2. the religious freedom restoration act
the supreme court held a tough test to laws that infringed on religious freedom up to about 1990. there was a case involving native americans smoking peyote and penalties. SCOTUS held that as long as the law can be applied generally to the population, it’s constitutional. congress went ballistic. in 1993, congress passed the religious freedom restoration act, which says that if a law imposes a substantial burden on free exercise of religion, there is a high threshold for justification.***
it should be noted here that this RFRA is applicable to people.
onward to …
3. the ACA birth control requirements and contraceptive mandate
excuse the lousy segue, but it’s important to know this before jumping into the next topic.
in early 2012, health and human services secretary kathleen sebelius put forth the contraceptive mandate, which said that fda-approved contraceptives and services were covered by health insurance coverage at no cost. this made a lot of people happy. providing birth control for women at no cost cuts down on unwanted pregnancies, which reduces the abortion rate. why wouldn’t this be good news?
for religious organizations, this is not good news (which i understand and don’t understand at the same time). there was instated a religious exemption for religious organizations but NOT affiliated nonprofit organizations, which don’t necessarily rely on same-religion people for employees (i.e., atheists can work for a catholic hospital).****
what do these fda-approved contraceptives include? oral contraceptives, injectable, the rung, implants, diaphragms, cervical caps, IUDs/IUSs, sterilization, and plan B. i keep seeing abortificients thrown around, but the only thing i can see that comes CLOSE is an IUD, and quite frankly, they don’t even really know how it works (does it slough out a fertilized egg before it implants? is it mucus? is it the copper?) – just that it does. plan B has been proven to not be an abortificient.*****
when the ACA went into effect, the contraceptive mandate was a part of it. let’s celebrate! less unwanted pregnancies! healthier women! PPMD will be less of a debilitating disease! huzzah!
except not for some…
3. hobby lobby’s substantial burden
hobby lobby is owned by some fairly religious people. they are not against birth control, per se. just IUDs, plan B, and ella, which they believe are abortifacients, despite research that says otherwise.****** but since they are not a company that cannot religiously pick and choose its employees, they have to offer contraceptives as part of the health insurance packages or pay a hefty fine. this hefty fine is to the tune of $26 million a year if they opt out of providing insurance altogether.
and because there are some insurance plans that have been grandfathered in, like life insurance for people over 75, hobby lobby is claiming that the law isn’t generally applicable as well as being a substantial burden.
but the rub here is that the law generally applies to PEOPLE. hobby lobby is a business.
this line from mother jones is a good summary of what this is all about: “But the Greens aren’t the ones who’d be providing the health insurance with contraceptive coverage. Their corporation, Hobby Lobby, would be.”
4. it’s a slippery slope you’re treading here.
so there are a lot of things happening here that need addressing. first of all we have to address this issue of corporations as people, which we’ve heard a lot of lately. presidential campaigns always get a lot coverage about corporations donating money, and recently SCOTUS has ruled that the same laws can apply to corporations as people when it comes to freedom of speech. that’s opening a whole can of worms.
elizabeth warren in september came out against SCOTUS, calling them pro-corporation.
“You follow this pro-corporate trend to its logical conclusion, and sooner or later you’ll end up with a Supreme Court that functions as a wholly owned subsidiary of big business,” Warren said.
warren wrote a VERY RELEVANT BLOG POST that you should read about the current supreme court and how it’s becoming increasingly pro-corporation. if hobby lobby wins this one, and we should know by summertime, it’ll be just another notch on the corporation/SCOTUS bedpost, and yes i mean that allegory like i mean it.
is this really a government of the people, by the people, and for the people?
another item that needs addressing is this extreeeemely slippery slope this would be opening up if they won. what if an owner of a large business decided vaccines were against her religious beliefs and didn’t want to provide them as part of the company’s insurance package? how about certain cancer treatments? sure, you may be saying, sheesh, just go buy your own health care separately, but a lot of people who work these minimum-wage jobs don’t have the money to buy additional insurance or pay out of pocket expenses (it’s times like this i am really grateful i am a state employee).
not only that, but the RFRA could start applying to OTHER items, especially if SCOTUS decides that corporations are in fact people in this case.
finally, this is a perfect – PERFECT – example of why the united states should go to a single-payer health system. instead of dealing with frivolous lawsuits, SCOTUS could be focusing on more important stuff, like what to do with all those crooked bankers who got off scot-free during the recession and working on anti-trust lawsuits instead of just throwing them out (because…they’re pro-corporations, remember?).
i do not think this is about birth control. this is a little about freedom of religion. this is a LOT about seeing corporations as people. this is a LOT about diminishing the value of the average joe who makes $10.25/hr versus corporation owners who make mad cash in bonuses.
what can we do? with congress, you could call and email and knock on doors, but SCOTUS is a whole other beast. with SCOTUS, you just kind of cross your fingers and hope for the best. what else can you do? you could boycott, because money does make a difference. also, inform and educate people about what’s happening. more knowledge is always better, in my opinion. *******
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
**http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/987191/posts
***http://www.npr.org/2014/03/25/293956170/hobby-lobby-contraceptive-case-goes-before-supreme-court
****http://www.nwlc.org/resource/contraceptive-coverage-health-care-law-frequently-asked-questions
*****http://www.nwlc.org/resource/contraceptive-coverage-health-care-law-frequently-asked-questions
******http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/hobby-lobby-supreme-court-obamacare
*******you made it! thanks for slogging through!

let’s talk about rochester again and my and my mom’s perception of it as outsiders coming in.
(it’s good to preface this by saying that we’ve decided to rename rochester “dumpyville”.)
in many larger towns throughout MN, you know what you’re getting from the town. st. cloud is mostly working class; mankato and moorhead (fargo) are pretty much the same. duluth is good looking and a tourist destination, and the cities are a mix of high-end destinations and shopping meccas.
rochester is an enigma.
on the one hand, this is the largest out-state city in the state, home to 106,000 people. it’s a destination for many people seeking high-end medical care, and those working for mayo definitely know it. on the other hand, this town has a lot of people who don’t work at mayo, and it seems like the town wants to sweep those people under the rug and not acknowledge them.
it’s my theory that this town is still mentally at a population of 25,000 in the year 1960 and doesn’t want to budge past that.
the downtown is pretty, filled with mayo buildings and some supporting high end restaurants and hotels. there are some clothing stores where the clothes cost more than my paycheck, specialty stores, and a drug store. Drive down the road to st. mary’s hospital, and you’ll find a lot of privately owned stores, restaurants, and hotels along the way.
then the bubble busts.
after downtown, it seems like everything is willy nilly all over the city. stores and restaurants where working-class chumps like myself would frequent are located in the oddest spots. the main thoroughfare through town is actually the 6-lane hwy 52, so you’d wonder if that had anything to do with the odd placement. but fargo has I-29 running right through it, and they manage to serve up a decent location of its stores, eating establishments, and destinations.
and it’s not for lack of stores. there are two walmarts, two targets, two menards, as well as additional home improvement stores, two barnes and nobles, a small-ish mall, a smattering of chain restaurants, and many differently owned grocery stores (unlike the coborns’ monopoly in st. cloud). but to get to them, you have to drive all over the dang town to get there. the targets are on the extreme opposite ends of town, and the walmarts are not far behind. the mall is pretty centrally located, which would be nice if there were anything worth visiting in the mall (well, there IS a pretzelmaker…YUM). the olive garden is on a frontage road tucked beside 52, about 1/4 mile from the exit and in a half a block. there are a few decent restaurants along hwy 63 on the south end of town, but that’s about as good as it gets. and on top of that, there is NO TGIFRIDAYS. (serious sadface when i learned that.)
it’s almost like rochester is trying to hide the fact that it does, indeed, have a working class that likes to go to olive garden and target rather than eat at michael’s and buy shoes at the shoestore downtown.
now, the DMC (destination medial center) is a big deal now that it got approved. the number one development area? “Livable City/Retail/Dining”. if that’s truly what they want to accomplish in the next 20 years, they’re going to have move their focus away from downtown for a little bit and realize that yes, there is something more to rochester than the mayo clinic, and people other than mayo employees do actually live and work here. maybe then we can move beyond dumpyville.

about a year ago i was compiling a backup to my journal posts and i KNEW that i had this post i’d written on our attorney general, eric holder. i had an idea of when i posted it, but i could not, for the life of me, find it. i did a search function on all my LJ backup excel files, ran a massive search through my now-defunct old wordpress files lost in the great host migration of 2012, and did a search through my old ibook files. NOTHING. i was annoyed because i knew i’d written it, and to think i’d done all that work to have lost it? ugh.
then about a month or so ago i brought up my google drive, and lo and behold! what should i find but my holder doc i’d been searching for. glorious day! anyway, here it is. heavy, political, and long, but it’s interesting.
For two months this lj entry has been stewing in my brain. Just so you know – it’s gonna be long (and capitalized, as I write these long ones in auto-cap Word).
I listen to MPR on my way home from work, when “Fresh Air” is on. Host Terri Gross had Jane Mayer on sometime in February, who wrote an article about how Eric Holder, the Attorney General, is fighting to hold terrorists’ trials in federal criminal courts instead of trying them as war criminals. The things she was saying about some of his opponents absolutely made my blood boil.
First, let you know: I am not a terrorist sympathizer. Give them a trial and throw them in prison for the rest of their lives. I am, however, really frightened at how easily people in this country throw away simple rights.
Every terror suspect that has been apprehended in this country has had a criminal trial, and Holder wants the mastermind behind 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to have a criminal trial as well. However, a lot of people want him to be tried as a war criminal. The republican who was elected in Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy? This was one of his major selling points.
Mohammed was apprehended in the US. The constitution applies to him just as it applies to everyone else in the country. There is no alternative legal system this country – it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL to not try him in criminal court.
Let me explain, for those clamoring to tell me about citizens and non-citizens and to whom the constitution applies. A large part of the US Constitution does not apply to citizens, or to non-citizens. It applies to the GOVERNMENT – what the government can and cannot do to people in the United States.
Amendment 5: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment 6: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Even though it would seems that while Bush was in office, he would’ve had many tried as war criminals, the Bush administration tried to try two terror suspects apprehended in the US in a military commission (as enemy combatants). Appeals courts ruled this to be overstepping boundaries, and the administration did not want this to go to the Supreme Court. The suspects were returned to the civilian court system.
Meanwhile, within the criminal court system, two terrorists (who had been arrested in the US) were given life sentences: the shoe-bomber and Zacarias Moussaoui. The shoe bomber was read his Miranda rights four times! When these sentences were released, the criminal court process was exalted by the same people who are now criticizing Holder.
In fact, military commissions held at Guantanamo were not that tough on terrorists. Even though it had more tougher rules when it came to evidence and laughed in the face of the fourth amendment, military commissions still proved to be easy on crime. One got life after boycotting his trial, one served 6 months (in addition to Guantanamo time) and one served 9 months after a plea bargain had been struck. Two other suspects were released to their home countries while Bush was still in office!
But how do they compare on an equal playing field – the criminal court system and a military commission? Two similar terrorists, one an American and one a Saudi-American, both captured in Afghanistan at the same time, were tried in the two different court systems. The American plead guilty in criminal court and is serving 20 years. The Saudi-American, who was tried as an enemy combatant, was freed after a court challenge.
So why does trying terrorist suspects in criminal courts make people so upset, especially people who would hold the US Constitution in such high esteem? (Glenn Beck.) Because under the Bush administration, Bush seemed to have more say than the court system when it came to terrorists, and now that Obama is bringing terrorists back under the legal and constitutional rules the country, it’s kind of like saying Bush was wrong all along (….which, wouldn’t be bad, IMO).
And that’s what it comes down to. If this country can’t try terrorist suspects in its criminal courts while upholding constitutional rights and law, what are we saying about our criminal courts? That the system is broken? How on earth can we try Timothy McVeigh and others in this system if we can’t try 9/11 terrorists, people who would be facing the toughest jury on earth?
But what really gets my goat, what had me banging my steering wheel and yelling at my radio on my way home, was how on earth we can throw people’s rights away if they’re terrorists, or foreigners, or not like us. For a group of people who is so hell-bent on screaming about their rights, opponents of this sure don’t care much about keeping them around.
When one person’s rights are being trampled upon, you’d better watch your back, because it’s the government the constitution is regulating, not you. And when the government is able to bend the constitution for one group, it’s possible that a group you belong to is not that far behind.
Attributing a lot of this post to: “The Trial: Eric Holder and the battle over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed” by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, Feb. 15, 2010