Religious Liberty Archives - Page 13 of 17

Category Archives: Religious Liberty

That Sam Brownback Sure Can Draw a Crowd!

September 6, 2007 Stephen Littau Church and State, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Election '08, General, Humor, Individual Rights, Politics, Privacy, Religious Liberty, Reproductive Rights, The Nanny State

This photo just warms my heart. Here we have the Christian Right’s dream candidate Sam Brownback drawing…let’s just say a less than impressive crowd in New Hampshire. Could it be that his vision of government imposed family values isn’t resonating even within the G.O.P.? Could this be a sign that maybe, just maybe the Christian Right is losing some if its control over the party? That would probably be too optimistic of an assessment but hope springs eternal.

Stephen Littau

http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Does von Eschenbasch deserve a pension or probation?

August 15, 2007 tarran Healthcare, Religious Liberty, The Nanny State, The War on Drugs

In 2001, two parents were convicted of manslaughter in Colorado for allowing their daughter to die from untreated diabetes-related infection. Had she been taken to a doctor, she would likely have lived. Several of her surviving siblings were also found to be sick with strep throat, with which they had apparently been infected for months.

The parents were punished with probation in lieu of confinement and are marked with the stigma of being felons.

This is most unjust, since regulators working for the FDA are committing the same crime and are being praised and rewarded, even though they are harming not a handful of defenseless children, but millions of their countrymen as the CATO institute points out:

Over the past five years, the Alliance has pushed for access to 12 exceptionally promising investigational cancer drugs which have subsequently been approved by the FDA and now represent standard care. At the time we began our advocacy, each of the drugs had cleared at least preliminary Phase 1 testing, and in some cases more-advanced Phase 2 or Phase 3 trials. In other words, they obviously worked for some patients. …

In sum, these 12 drugs — had they been available to people denied entry to clinical trials — might have helped more than one million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters live longer, better lives. We have actually underestimated the number of “life-years” lost at more than 520,000, because we have not included other safe and effective uses of these drugs that the FDA has yet to approve. …

The American Cancer Society reports that some 550,000 cancer patients die annually, making the number of cancer deaths from 1997 to 2005 about 4.8 million. Over that same period, the FDA reports granting individual access to an investigational drug to not more than 650 people per year for all diseases and drugs — a pathetic, even cruel, pittance. A few thousand more patients managed to gain access by enrolling in relatively small clinical trials or exceedingly rare expanded access programs. The other 4.7 plus million cancer patients, not to mention millions more with other diseases, were abandoned to die, denied access to progress by their own FDA when they needed it most.

The FDA, and its supporters put a different spin on the matter:

Public policy should discourage access to investigational drugs outside of clinical trials. Investigational treatments made available outside of clinical trials have the potential to undermine the clinical trials system. There is little incentive for a patient to participate in a clinical trial if she can obtain the investigational drug outside of the trial. This makes trial accrual difficult, and may significantly undermine the ability of the investigators to determine the efficacy and safety of the intervention. That was certainly the case with bone marrow transplant for breast cancer – because it was so widely available outside of clinical trials it was extremely difficult to accrue patients to trials, and it took many years longer than it should have to learn that the high-risk and expensive procedure provides no benefit to women with breast cancer.

Investigational treatments are by definition unproven; even the most promising data in earlier stages of trials often do not hold up. Further, there may be significant safety issues that do not emerge until well into a phase III trial. For example, the cardiotoxicity of Herceptin was not apparent in the phase II data, but emerged in the much larger phase III trial. …

It is compelling to argue that there is little harm in making an investigational therapy available to a seriously ill individual for whom there is no effective therapy, if someone is willing to pay for it. This argument does not hold upon scrutiny. To follow this to its logical conclusion completely undermines research and the concept of evidence based care. Where would the line be drawn? It would mean that any individual should have access to any drug, as long as she is willing to pay for it Emphasis added – tarran.

Single patient INDs or INDs with small numbers of patients under Tier 1 approval raise serious issues of fairness. Granting access to investigational drugs with Tier 1 approval to patients who can pay for them at a price higher than cost makes this proposed system highly inequitable. Patients with access to them would likely be very knowledgeable, well-connected, and financially privileged. They would have access to physicians who have the ability to develop a protocol for them, and are willing and able to implement it. This is not the case for most cancer patients. Resources devoted to fighting cancer should be based on the best evidence available. The off-trial process involves a great deal of time and expense for clinicians, regulators and investigators, with very little likelihood of benefit to the patient, or to accumulation of knowledge about the intervention in question, that would benefit all.

The FDA justifies its democidal campaign by claiming that while the testing delays kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people, the testing delays prevent millions more from being killed or injured by unsafe, or ineffective treatments. This is horseshit.

Dr Mary Ruwart, a former drug researcher, estimates that tens of millions of people who have died since 1962 have had their lives shortened by the FDA preventing new treatments from being sold, or having their benefits advertised. She calculates that these regulations have prevented at most 7,000 deaths from drug toxicity. Folks, these numbers are on a par with the number of people slaughtered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Furthermore, even if the FDA and its boosters were correct, that FDA roadblocks on treatments save more lives than they take, the FDA’s actions would be unjustified. Their actions would be unjustified for the simple reason that when an FDA official orders a pill-maker not to distribute a drug, it is an identical form of assault to the one I would be guilty of if I were to show up at the CEO’s office with a gun making a similar demand.

There is no doubt in my mind that many people who work in the FDA sincerely believe that they are, in the aggregate, helping people. I’m certain that Randy and Colleen Bates felt that they were helping their dying daughter too as they anointed her fevered forehead with oil and prayed over her as she gasped her last breaths. In the end, good intentions are no excuse for slaughter on an industrial scale. We cannot subject Randy and Coleen to the sanction of law while lauding government officials who do the same thing.

tarran

I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.

https://thelibertypapers.org/author/tarran/

One Man’s Freedom of Expression is Another Man’s Hate Crime

August 1, 2007 Stephen Littau Church and State, Constitution, Crime and Punishment, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Founding Fathers, Free Speech, Freedom of the press, General, Government Regulation, History, Individual Rights, Legal, Media, Political Correctness, Politics, Property Rights, Religious Liberty, The Bill Of Rights, Theory and Ideas

We seem to have strayed a long way from our valuing of free speech, perhaps best stated by Voltaire “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” In this age of political correctness, both the Right and the Left has bastardized the idea of free speech to a more politically correct attitude: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend your right to say it until someone else is offended.”

As I was driving in to work, I caught a couple of segments of The Mike Gallagher Show (a show I do not normally listen to). Gallagher brought up a case which happened at Pace University where a 23 year-old man by the name of Stanislav Shmulevich allegedly threw a Quran in a toilet on two separate occasions. The university originally reported the crime as an act of vandalism but later decided to report the act to the NYPD as a hate crime instead. I assumed that Gallagher would go on to criticize this as political correctness run amok but to my astonishment, he said that treating this act as a “hate crime” was completely appropriate. Gallagher went even further to say that certain acts such as desecrating a “holy book” (regardless of the faith), the American flag, or burning crosses should all be exempt from First Amendment protection. In his view, there are just some things which should be held sacred; those who commit “crimes” against what he or others consider “sacred” should be punished criminally.

Gallagher’s arguments got even weaker from there. Several callers challenged him on this notion and Gallagher would ask questions like (paraphrasing) “Should we consider it free speech when someone paints swastikas on a Jewish person’s home?” and “What about burning a cross in the lawn of an African American, is that free speech?” Perhaps his most absurd example was whether or not a person dressed in Nazi uniform goose stepping in a Jewish neighborhood should be protected by the First Amendment.

All of these questions can be easily answered if only we go back to the basic idea that each individual has the natural rights of life, liberty, and property (“your freedom ends where my nose begins”); nowhere in our Constitution is there a right to not be offended. Painting swastikas on a Jewish person’s home or burning a cross in an African American’s yard are both violations of these individuals’ right to property, and therefore, the perpetrator should be prosecuted on those grounds.

So, what about the racist bastard goose stepping in a Jewish neighborhood? Assuming the idiot does so on public property, s/he is protected by the First Amendment. Being an anti-Semitic moron, while infuriating to most sensible people, is not a crime nor should it be.

One could argue that these above acts would be acts of intimidation and could warrant criminal prosecution (certainly in the first two examples would be prosecutable without “hate crimes” laws, the last example would still be a bit of a stretch) but I fail to see how desecrating a book which some people deem as “holy” even rises to this standard. There’s no question that desecrating a holy book is offensive to a great majority of people, but a crime? Thomas Jefferson found fault with much of the Bible and therefore proceeded to physically cut and paste the portions of the Bible that he found to be authentic to create his own interpretation of the Bible and discarded the rest. References to the virgin birth, the resurrection, angels, and other miracles were all omitted from the Jefferson Bible. Clearly, if someone like Gallagher knew of someone doing something like this today, he would regard this person as a hate criminal.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to protect speech that can be and often is offensive to the sensibilities of a person, a group, or even a majority. Popular speech does not need to be protected nearly as much. I might not like it if someone chooses to burn an American flag, desecrate a copy of Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness, or wishes to write terrible things about me on a post I have written but unless such an individual does these things without threatening my life, liberty, or property, I have to put up with these things. It’s the price I pay for living in a free society and a price I am quite willing to pay.

Cross posted here at Fearless Philosophy for Free Minds

Stephen Littau

http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

America: More Likely To Elect A Gay, Muslim, Former Drug User Than An Athiest

July 22, 2007 Doug Mataconis Politics, Religious Liberty

That is the somewhat interesting result of a recent New York Times poll:

THE probing about his Mormon beliefs has by now become familiar to the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But when Mary Van Steenis, a teacher at a local Christian school, took the microphone at a recent â€œAsk Mitt Anythingâ€ forum in Pella, Iowa, to ask her question, it still felt as if some sort of unspoken boundary of social etiquette had been breached.

Mrs. Van Steenis wanted Mr. Romney to say where the Book of Mormon would figure in his decision making as president.

â€œWhere would the Bible be?â€ she asked. â€œWould it be above the Book of the Mormon, or would it be beneath it?â€

Although the Constitution bars any religious test for office, if polls are to be believed, Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, faces a serious obstacle to winning the presidency because of his faith. Surveys show a substantial percentage of Americans would be less likely to vote for a Mormon, or for that matter a Muslim or an atheist. But how rigid is that sentiment?

Just take a look at the numbers and it seems pretty rigid.

This is why candidates appearing at churches and Presidents invoking God are part of the public religion of the United States. The voters expect it, heck in some parts of the country I’d go so far as to say they demand it. This is hardly surprising, since the United States has always been a far more openly religious country than most of the West.

And repression has often been part of the package.

The Puritans, for example, didn’t come to the New World for religious freedom so much as they came so that they’d be able to impose their own brand of religious tyranny free from interference by the Church of England. And it happened in other colonies as well, with the exception of Quaker dominated Pennsylvania. That’s why we have a First Amendment and that’s why the Constitution specifically provides that there is no religious test for holding office.

But Constitutional amendments can only go so far. Toleration for other’s beliefs is not something that can be imposed, it must be learned. And it would seem we still have a long way to go.

H/T: Althouse

Doug Mataconis

http://www.belowthebeltway.com

Faith Based Charity Not Open To The Faithless

June 25, 2007 Doug Mataconis Church and State, Constitution, Religious Liberty

The Supreme Court ruled today that atheists don’t have standing to challenge their exclusion from President Bush’s faith-based initiatives programs:

The Supreme Court today handed President Bush’s faith-based initiatives program a victory, ruling that federal taxpayers cannot challenge the constitutionality of the White House’s efforts to help religious groups obtain government funding for their social programs.

In a 5-4 decision, the court blocked a lawsuit by a Wisconsin-based group of atheists and agnostics against officials of the Bush administration, including the head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

The court ruled that the suit, by the Freedom from Religion Foundation and three of its taxpaying members, could not go forward because ordinary taxpayers do not have standing to challenge the expenditures at issue. The ruling reversed a 2-1 decision in favor of the foundation by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in January 2006.

Liberal groups blasted the court’s decision in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation as a setback for the First Amendment and a paean to the religious right, while religious conservatives hailed it as a major triumph for the faith-based initiative.

The foundation had complained that parts of the faith-based initiatives program favored religious groups over secular ones, violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution’s First Amendment, which says in part that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

In its suit, filed in 2004, the foundation claimed that the faith-based initiatives office, formed by Bush in January 2001 through an executive order, unfairly used taxpayer money to provide an edge to religious groups seeking federal funding, and effectively endorsed “religious belief over non-belief.”

Under current Establishment Clause precedents, it would seem fairly clear that an expenditure program that explicitly favored religious groups over non-religious groups would be unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court didn’t even reach that issue, they agreed with the Bush Administration’s argument that individual taxpayers do not have standing to challenge an expenditure of money, even if it is unconstitutional:

In an opinion joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that “the payment of taxes is generally not enough to establish standing to challenge an action taken by the federal government.”

Given the size of the federal budget, “it is a complete fiction to argue that an unconstitutional federal expenditure causes an individual federal taxpayer any measurable economic harm,” Alito said. “And if every federal taxpayer could sue to challenge any government expenditure, the federal courts would cease to function as courts of law and would be cast in the role of general complaint bureaus.”

He noted that “Congress did not specifically authorize the use of federal funds to pay for the conferences or speeches that the plaintiffs challenged.” Rather, those activities were funded from “general Executive Branch appropriations,” he wrote.

Not only does that seem to contradict a 1968 Supreme Court decision which the Court did not overturn today, it raises the question of who, if anyone has the right to challenge an unconstitutional expenditure in Court if it isn’t a taxpayer.

Justice Souter puts it best:

In a dissenting opinion, Justice David H. Souter wrote that today’s ruling “closes the door on these taxpayers because the Executive Branch, and not the Legislative Branch, caused their injury.” He added, “I see no basis for this distinction in either logic or precedent. . . .”

In this case, “there is no dispute that taxpayer money in identifiable amounts is funding conferences, and these are alleged to have the purpose of promoting religion,” Souter wrote. “When executive agencies spend identifiable sums of tax money for religious purposes, no less than when Congress authorizes the same thing, taxpayers suffer injury.”

And so does the Constitution.