Saturday, September 08, 2018

No self-respecting woman US Senator would vote for Kavanaugh.

This is another example of a slow walk to create a theocracy from the USA democracy. Catholics can forget about their Saints, that won't happen under right wing extremist leadership.

Evangelicals classify Catholics as spiritists. That goes for Jews as well.

It is seen as contradicting the Bible's prohibition on contacting the dead. These are found most clearly in the Jewish Law, which is not binding on Christians, but is still considered to be solid wisdom in this case.

Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:31, NIV)

Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. (Deuteronomy 8:10-11)

For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 4:5)

Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. (Hebrews 7:23-25)

Still yet another more minor, argument is an argument from silence: this practice is not recognised as being taught or performed anywhere in the Bible.

This position ultimately arises from a different understanding of the Communion of Saints in Protestantism. Protestants would not deny the real union of living believers (the church militant) nor the union of believers who have passed away (the church triumphant), but they would generally not say that there is a functional union between those groups. We are united in our shared salvation state, our faith, our creed, our shared indwelling of the Spirit, our hope, and our inheritance, but we are not united with the dead in any relational capacity. There is much disagreement within Protestantism over the nature of the Intermediate State between death and resurrection, and many believe in soul sleep, that the dead are unconscious until the time of their resurrection. Others may believe that they are conscious, but that they do not have the means to hear our invocations and prayers.

We still know nothing about Kavanaugh, except, he sold his soul to the Federalist Society and is definitely married to those ideologies. That is a dangerous precedent. The US Senate Judicial Committee is virtually worthless in deciding if a judge is good for the country when on the Supreme Court or a soldier of fortune for the Federalist Society.

September 7, 2018
By David G. Savage

...Conservative scholars credited Kavanaugh (click here) with a strong, steady performance amidst the partisan squabbling. “He is an experienced, thoughtful and intelligent mainstream judicial conservative. I do not believe we learned anything new about him, but we have learned a bit about the new normal in terms of collegiality in the Senate and the depth of activists’ frustration with the administration,” said Notre Dame law professor Richard Garnett.

Women’s rights advocates and liberal scholars said they were not reassured by his testimony. “Our fears about the future of this country deepened this week when Judge Kavanaugh repeatedly refused to answer questions about his views on abortion, employment discrimination, immigration and healthcare. Our civil rights, dignity and autonomy will be in grave danger if he is confirmed,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center.

Elizabeth Wydra, president of the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center, pointed to the jarring contrast between Kavanaugh’s public praise for the Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation ruling and his private White House memos deriding affirmative action policies. “Seeing him use words like ‘naked racial set-aside’ and ‘racial spoils system’ to refer to race-conscious measures intended to redress entrenched systemic racism is upsetting,” Wydra said.

September 7. 2018

Washington - Brett Kavanaugh's views on birth control drew scrutiny in Washington on Thursday as abortion rights advocates charged that the Supreme Court nominee had referred to contraceptives as "abortion-inducing drugs...

...The controversy came as Kavanaugh was discussing a case involving the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (click here) to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The government's regulations included a requirement that all employers provide their employees with health insurance that covers all formed of FDA approved birth control including birth control pills, IUD's and horomonal injections....

The issue with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is that religious freedom never needed restoration in the USA. The (2) unduly burdens laws written without any assignment to religion. Will the USA legislature ever be able to write laws without FIRST addressing religious freedom. It is ridiculous. The separation of Church and State will disappear forever if the Congress has to place a religious test to legislation.

The really interesting concept to this very questionably necessary restoration act is where does "Though shalt not kill," fit into the liberal gun laws?

(Pub. L. 103–141, § 2, Nov. 16, 1993107 Stat. 1488.)

(a)Findings
The Congress finds that—
(1) 
the framers of the Constitution, recognizing free exercise of religion as an unalienable right, secured its protection in the First Amendment to the Constitution;
(2) 
laws “neutral” toward religion may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise;
(3) 
governments should not substantially burden religious exercise without compelling justification;
(4) 
in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990) the Supreme Court virtually eliminated the requirement that the government justify burdens on religious exercise imposed by laws neutral toward religion; and
(5) 
the compelling interest test as set forth in prior Federal court rulings is a workable test for striking sensible balances between religious liberty and competing prior governmental interests.
(b)Purposes 
The purposes of this chapter are—
(1)
to restore the compelling interest test as set forth in Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963) and Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972) and to guarantee its application in all cases where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened; and
(2)
to provide a claim or defense to persons whose religious exercise is substantially burdened by government.
The Federalist Society is a danger to our democracy and their Evangelical need to control their religious freedom within every other American is an assault of conscience when realizing how other religions are taking a back seat to this disastrous movement within the seats of power in the USA.