No Right To Keep A Job You Don't Want To Perform

A federal appeals court ruled that pharmacists cannot refuse to dispense the Plan B "morning after pill" regardless of their religious beliefs:

Family-owned Ralph's Thriftway and two pharmacists employed elsewhere sued Washington state officials over the requirement. The plaintiffs asserted that their Christian beliefs prevented them from dispensing the pills, which can prevent implantation of a recently fertilized egg. They said that the new regulations would force them to choose between keeping their jobs and heeding their religious objections to a medication they regard as a form of abortion.

Ralph's owners, Stormans Inc., and pharmacists Rhonda Mesler and Margo Thelen sought protection under the 1st Amendment right to free exercise of religion and won a temporary injunction from the U.S. District Court in Seattle pending trial on the constitutionality of the regulations. That order prevented state officials from penalizing pharmacists who refused to dispense Plan B as long as they referred consumers to a nearby pharmacy where it was available.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction, saying the district court was wrong in issuing it based on an erroneous finding that the rules violated the free exercise of religion clause of the U.S. Constitution.

My freedom ends when I violate yours, essentially. If pharmacists don't want to distribute legal drugs to their patients, and cannot provide them with any recourse to obtain those drugs, they can find other work. I think the cost of denying legal medical treatment to women supersedes pharmacists' discomfort.

Two Bush 43-appointed conservatives and one Clinton appointee made this ruling, by the way.

Like A Lead Balloon

How'd y'all like that Mitt Romney speech.

I continue to be amazed by the stupidity of our media. Romney said for days that this wouldn't be a speech about Mormonism, that it would be about "faith in America," and would basically inform the evangelicals that he wouldn't take their Bibles away while still allowing them to expand their religious intolerance in the public square. And yet, after the speech, everyone is dumbfounded that he didn't mention Mormonism. Huh?

The speech had the phrase "freedom requires religion" in it. Yet people are still comparing it to JFK's "no religious test for public office/separation of church and state" bill. Yet the key question is this:

The question now is, has the media invested so much in insisting that this was indeed what the speech was going to be about that they won't be able to admit he ducked the issue entirely? Or is it just easier to say he did what he set out to do, because that story is already written?

And let's be clear that the result of the media spin may have a direct impact on who becomes the Republican nominee.

UPDATE: It looks like the media spin is favorable. They're predictably ignoring the most offensive parts:

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

In other words, there's a separation between church and state - but you'd better have a church, as long as I'm the state!

The Real Legacy of Bush-Cheney

We'll be marveling for 20 years about what a cruel, anti-citizen, pro-corporate Supreme Court we have.

EPA’s responsibility to protect endangered species weakened:

In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the federal government can avoid its responsibility to protect species under the Endangered Species Act by handing off authority to the states. The EPA routinely delegates administration of the Clean Water Act to states. The Court’s decision means the EPA does not have to ensure that states abide by the federal Endangered Species Act when they issue Clean Water Act permits. [National Association of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife and a companion case]

Ordinary taxpayers cannot challenge Faith-Based Initiative:

In a 5-4 decision, the Court “barred ordinary taxpayers from challenging a White House initiative helping religious charities get a share of federal money.” A taypayers’ group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation sued eight Bush administration officials, including the head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, objecting to “government conferences in which administration officials encourage religious charities to apply for federal grants.” [Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation]

Campaign finance restrictions weakened for corporate- and union-funded ads:

In a 5-4 decision, the Court loosened restrictions on corporate- and union-funded television ads that air close to elections, “weakening a key provision of a landmark campaign finance law.” The court “upheld an appeals court ruling that an anti-abortion group should have been allowed to air ads during the final two months before the 2004 elections.” [Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right-to-Life]

You'll notice that every one of them was a 5-4 decision. In an O'Connor court, the decisions may have been reversed.

This is why elections matter, particularly Presidential elections, but also for the Senators that vote to confirm Supreme Court Justices. Anthony Kennedy is seemingly growing more conservative as his influence on the Court grows, and we're going to see routine 5-4 decisions on the side of business and conservative causes, regardless of the facts of the case. John Roberts and Samuel Alito are reliable rubber stamps for the conservative agenda.

It's very depressing.

UPDATE: I missed that they voted against the Bong Hits for Jesus kid. So much for free speech in America. Again, it was a 5-4 decision. And all four of these opinions were written by Roberts and Alito.

Religion and Politics

While the mullahs of the Republican Party got together tonight to chat about forcing religion into the public square, in Turkey they are actually working hard to keep it out.

Turkish lawmakers on Wednesday set national elections for July 22, four months earlier than planned, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party submitted a package of bills that would bring it advantages in the coming political battle.

Elections had been scheduled for Nov. 4, but on Tuesday, Turkey’s highest court annulled Parliament’s vote for president, effectively blocking Mr. Erdogan’s candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a close ally with a background in Islamic politics. The ruling created a standoff between Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party and the secular establishment.

The secular establishment in Parliament blocked the Islamic candidate from taking the Presidency, with the tacit support of the military behind them. Now, the establishment probably just fears the more popular AKP Party, led by Ergodan, from getting power, and are using the religion card as a means to that end. This is a good take:

Turkey's 2002 election was a shocker, with AKP winning by far the largest share of the vote, and the results produced Turkey's first single party government since 1987 and the country's first two-party parliament in 48 years. It's vital to note, however, that AKP won not because of its religious conservatism but because the secular coalition was viewed as corrupt, out of touch, and stale. AKP and it's leader, current Prime Minister Erdogan, ran on a platform of reform, economic development, and technocracy. More importantly, AKP has mostly delivered on those promises.

This has occurred repeatedly, and yet people still don't understand it: in developing areas, especially the Middle East, the establishment secular rulers are thrown out for domestic reasons -- usually economic and developmental -- and replaced by reformers who happen to be religious conservatives. These groups often build grassroot support, provide services that the government neglects, and quietly but effectively grow their networks from the bottom up. Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Ahmadinejad in Iran. Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. AKP in Turkey. Further, many of those crappy secular governments are/were being propped up by the U.S., to the detriment of the nations' people. Turkey, which is, admittedly, uniquely founded upon the principles of secularism, is now struggling with just how religious politicians can be, and the results will be very interesting.

No, these aren't the brightest days for democracy in Turkey. But it's interesting that the separation of church and state, or mosque and state, can be used to appeal to the citizens of a predominantly Muslim nation. Religious freedom is typically strongest in those countries without a state religion and without a theocratic government; take for example the fact that Iraq has been added to a religious freedom watchlist because of the hardships that come with worship there. A country that values one religion over another will always suffer from this ignominy. A country that offers both freedom of religion and freedom from religion will eventually be more religious and more free. There are forces in this country trying to dismantle that wall between church and state, and in so doing they plant the seeds of their own destruction.