This post is a direct response to a piece that appeared on the Huffington Post titled “My Evangelical Church Is Gaslighting Me, But I Refuse To Fall For It Anymore.”

The article linked above is chock full of dishonest accusations and talking points that typically appear on MSNBC which cannot withstand five minutes of serious cross examination. I was content to let it go and simply blow it off as just another smear from the left that most anyone with access to an internet search engine could debunk for themselves within minutes, until I came across a section that enraged me personally:

In the summer of 2017, when the Republican Party began trying in earnest to repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut Medicaid funding, I cried out in protest. I have a medically fragile child, and insurance that covers his multiple pre-existing conditions as required by the ACA, as well as Medicaid, is one reason he is still alive today. But, for the most part, the Christians I pleaded with ignored me or made flimsy excuses for supporting the Republicans’ efforts to destroy the ACA.

There is a laundry list of directly implied lies in this paragraph that angered me personally and to understand why I first need to explain something about myself.

My adopted daughter had her first heart surgery when she was eight days old. To put it simply most of the plumbing that connected her heart and lungs was defective. My daughter went on to have multiple heart surgeries as well as multiple eye surgeries by the best eye surgeons in the world. My daughter has multiple severe to catastrophic medical conditions including being special needs.

My wife and I had good private insurance that was affordable, which was a blessing because the medical bills amounted to millions. We had occasionally encountered some resistance in getting everything paid for in a timely manner, so I went to Indiana insurance school and passed the state insurance exam on the first attempt so that I could become an expert in the insurance policy and laws. That expertise helped me to navigate an at times complex billing system, but in the long run, private insurance served our needs better than most anyone could have hoped for…….that is, until Obamacare passed the Congress by the slimmest of margins.

President Obama and Democrats en-bloc promised, “If you like your health care plan you can keep it”:

President Obama promised that health insurance would cost less than a phone bill:

The promises made by Democrats were so outrageous that they even made the left leaning Politifact’s Lie of the Year in 2013.

The affects on my family proved disastrous. We received a letter stating that in order to comply with the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) our employer based health plan was being canceled, the new ACA compliant plan, subsidized by my wife’s employer, was quite a bit more expensive and had larger deductibles, but we could still afford it.

Every year the premium increases and deductible increased jumped significantly, every year the money out of pocket for my daughter took more and more away from us, until eventually we could no longer afford the insurance and our daughter had to go on Medicare. We were not alone. Countless millions of Americans were put in the same boat:

Why didn’t we just buy an “affordable” Obamacare plan for our daughter? Because both my wife and I worked we did not qualify for the subsidy. Affordable meant premiums in access of $700 per month with deductibles up to $6,000.

My wife and I were forced to deal with a disturbing new realization. While we had private insurance we had access to the best doctors in the world for our daughter, but a great many doctors do not take Obamacare or Medicare, so the choice and quality of doctors became drastically limited.

More people lost insurance than gained it with Obamacare. What did the Democrats have to say? They said that it was a good thing because private plans like I had “are phony plans” (their words) and we were better off without it… well no we weren’t.

But what about pre-existing conditions Democrats shout?

MY DAUGHTER HAD PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS THAT WERE ALREADY COVERED BY LAW WITH OUR PRIVATE EMPLOYER PROVIDED HEALTH PLAN.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Employer based health plans are group plans. Group plans by law, according to Public law 104-191 also known as HIPPA – Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act – of 1996 outlined in sections 2741, 2742 and 2744 the role that both health insurers and state regulators must play in ensuring coverage for those with preexisting conditions. That law was supported by both Democrats and Republicans for more than a decade before Obamacare.

The vast majority of Americans with insurance, my family included, already had coverage for pre-existing conditions with insurance bought through their employer. Plans that the so called Affordable Care Act took away from them. The simple fact is that it is Democrats who took pre-existing condition coverage away from countless millions of Americans, not Republicans. Millions more people lost their insurance than gained it with Obamacare plans and my family is among them.

In-spite of outrageously dishonest Democrat campaign ads this past election season, the Republican plan to replace Obamacare, the AHCA, includes $100 billion to insure coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The Huffington Post article goes on to blast Republicans for cuts in Medicaid funding. The Affordable Care Act only increased funding to state Medicaid programs for a set number of years until it incrementally sunsets, so Medicaid subsidies were already set to be cut by the Affordable Care Act, a law that passed without a single Republican vote.

At least the Huffington Post writer was careful enough not to mention the $716 BILLION the Affordable Care Act cut from Medicare in order to help pay for itself.

There is so much more in the Huffington Post smear piece that is easily debunked and all it would take is space and links to verifiable evidence, but for the sake of brevity I will pick just one other part to respond do.

Under the section marked “Purity and Politics” the Huffington Post writer states:

The church’s obsession with sexual purity defined my adolescence. The ethics of sexual behavior limited physical intimacy to the marriage of man and woman. And at the time, the political values of Christians lined up with this teaching. Bill Clinton’s infidelity was unforgivable as well as evidence of a political party embraced by Satan.

But when the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape leaked to a shocked nation in 2016, Christian Republicans doubled down on their support of a man who openly bragged about sexual assault.

“I don’t even wait,” Trump told the show’s co-host Billy Bush. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

I cannot read those words without having a visceral physical reaction. I am sickened by Trump’s words themselves…

It is certainly no secret that Donald Trump has a past of being a near stereotypical billionaire playboy. He was one and he acted like one. No one disputes this. My objection is the drawing a moral equivalence, or even presenting Trump’s behavior as morally inferior to the Clinton’s.

I hate to split hairs Miss Huffington Post writer, but “if they let you do it” it is not an assault. No one is saying or has said, “Donald Trump raped me.” In fact, Trump’s ex-girlfriends, in spite of the lies published by the New York Times, have defended (2) him.

Bill Clinton has multiple, credible allegations of rape and genuine sexual assault against him. Two of the dozens of women who have spoken out are Juanita Broaddrick (2) and Kathleen Willey.

In the case of Kathleen Willey the Clinton’s hired thugs like Anthony Pellicano to threaten and silence various Clinton accusers. Willey was followed one day when she went jogging. A jogger ran up to her, threatened her, mentioned her children’s names in a threatening manner and spoke the name of her cat in the past tense. When she came home she found her cat dead on her front porch. While Donald Trump has a record of being a playboy in years past this occurred while Clinton was President of the United States.

Willey is not alone in reporting such incidences. According to Disk Morris, who was the Clinton’s closest political advisor for years, Hillary was the Chief of what he called the “Clinton Secret Police” that routinely threatened and intimidated those who could do them political harm. Morris really liked Bill Clinton, but has always said that Hillary is too corrupt to be President:

 

People are losing faith in the government and it’s legitimacy, due in no small part to the fiasco that is our federal judicial system.

The courts and appeals process are overworked and have a huge backlog of cases largely in part to lower court judges who make decisions that they full well know have no basis is law or established legal tests and guidelines. Aside from political hacks, some judges are lazy, some have questionable mental health and some are just bad lawyers.

According to the SCOTUSBlog Statistic Archive the majority of lower court rulings as well as appeals rulings are overturned if they can make it to the Supreme Court. The following is the reversal rate for the ten judicial circuits:

6th Circuit – 87 percent;

11th Circuit – 85 percent;

9th Circuit – 79 percent;

3rd Circuit – 78 percent;

2nd Circuit and Federal Circuit – 68 percent;

8th Circuit – 67 percent;

5th Circuit – 66 percent;

7th Circuit – 48 percent;

DC Circuit – 45 percent;

1st Circuit and 4th Circuit – 43 percent;

10th Circuit – 42 percent.

This list does not even include the outright legal malpractice coming from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) that not only approved federal wire taps on political campaigns for clearly political reasons, it also approved search warrants covering millions of Americans at once with no probable cause, no accusation of a crime, and no due process, in spite of the fact that the 4th Amendments is clear that search warrants are to be specific to the time, place,  as well as specific items and persons to be searched, with probable cause, based on oath or affirmation by a law enforcement official.

This is why great legal minds should be nominated to all federal court positions, not just donors and political hacks.

Today’s ruling on CNN’s White House Pass goes against everything a law student is supposed to learn in a First Amendment case-law course.

Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, ruled that Acosta’s First Amendment rights overruled the White House’s right to have orderly news conferences, Kelly also ruled that he agreed with the government’s argument that there was no First Amendment right to come onto the White House grounds. But, he said, once the White House opened up the grounds to reporters, the First Amendment applied. Judge Kelly also ruled that the White House violated due process.

Nothing in Judge Kelly’s ruling can pass long-standing constitutional tests as established by the Supreme Court and quite frankly, these rulings can not even pass the snicker test. Here is why.

1 – Acosta’s First Amendment rights overruled the White House’s right to have orderly news conferences…

This goes against long-established Supreme Court precedents that says that government can restrict time place and manner of speech if the reasons are compelling and make common sense.

For example, one cannot put a sign in the middle of a highway at rush hour or stage a mass protest on Interstate 5, because the primary impact of such “speech” is to disrupt, not to speak. In that same regard one cannot engage in a “heckler’s veto” – meaning one cannot stand up in the middle of class at school and start reciting the Declaration of Independence because it disrupts the class, prevents the teacher from doing his/her job and affects the other student’s ability to learn.

CNN’s Jim Acosta essentially does the same thing, he yells out things in the middle of events, he hogs the microphone and stages his protests in a presser so that other reporters cannot get a turn to quarry the President or one of his officials. OANN, a competitor of CNN’s filed a brief with the court stating that they agreed with the White House because there have been times when Jim Acosta’s antics prevented OANN from having a chance to ask any questions at all.

2 – Judge Kelly agreed with the government’s argument that there was no First Amendment right to come onto the White House grounds. But, he said, once the White House opened up the grounds to reporters, the First Amendment applied…

So, I can’t break into a movie theater, but once they open their doors to the public the First Amendment lets me shout my protests once inside….and all I have to do is claim that I am a journalist.

If there is anyplace on Earth where government has a compelling interest to maintain an orderly environment it is the White House.

The First Amendment is not a license to disrupt, never has been, and the courts throughout the decades have ruled so time and time again.

3 – Judge Kelly also ruled that the White House violated due process…

Due Process rights apply when one is charged criminally, or in cases where one is the target of an administrative punitive action like an IRS ruling against you or an Article 15 if you are in the military.

The government, specifically the President, gets to decide who has access to highly secured areas of sensitive government buildings. If a grade school bans me from coming on their grounds do I get to claim due process rights? Of course not. Who has access to secured government buildings is determined at the pleasure of those in charge of such buildings and secured areas. Judge Kelly’s opinion is even more silly than those who said that former CIA employees have a constitutional right to a security clearance and access to confidential information. In short, it’s nuts.

The White House should file an appeal immediately and Republicans should make certain that Judge Kelly never gets appointed to a higher court. His ruling is breathtaking in its idiocy and would receive a failing grade in most any First Amendment case-law course.

UPDATE:

This case is quintessential example of why it is important to have good defense lawyers who understand bogus arguments and are ready for them. The President’s lawyers seem to have dropped the ball.

1 – CNN’s lawyers said that Acosta had his credentials yanked because of the CONTENT of his reporting, therefore it was the President Trump trying to regulate the content of CNN’s speech which would be a violation of the 1st Amendment.

This argument is easily refutable. CNN has plenty of reporters with government press passes, did they have their passes removed? The other CNN reporters put out the same content as Jim Acosta. Acosta is typical of the reporting at CNN. This was not about what Jim Acosta says, it is the fact the he disrupts, calls names, filibusters and prevents other reporters from having a turn. IF CNN’s lawyers are so confident that Acosta’s conduct is not the issue then why don’t they behave the same way to the judge and see what happens? If Jim Acosta had behaved that way in a church or a city counsel meeting etc he would be thrown out in a heartbeat, rightfully and legally so.

2 – Should the court decide who gets a white house press pass and who does not? What gives one reporter priority over any other? Rush Limbaugh, who does news and opinion from a different angle than CNN, has a many times the audience of CNN. Should he get a guaranteed White House Press Pass by the court? This is why Separation of Powers matters.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Article II of the Constitution states “The Executive Power rests with the President of the United States of America.” Who has access to secured government and military facilities is clearly an executive function.

There is no way to honestly make the case that the 1st Amendment or the 5th Amendment somehow gave the courts some magical power to violate Separation of Powers and dictate to the President who gets a security pass to the White House (his residence) and who does not.

Jim Acosta and CNN can publish all they want and broadcast all the fake news they like. They can protest President Trump all they like, but nothing in the Constitution mandates that Jim Acosta be able to do so within the President’s residence. The last I checked there is no judicial supremacy clause in the Constitution. All too often these judges outright deny reality, create their own construct, then demand that we acknowledge their artificial creation as absolute proof.

The judiciary is out of control. It needs to be reigned in and straight up defied when Constitutionally appropriate. This is one of those times.