His statement follows:

“We have tried negotiation with the Administration and legislation with the Congress — and we’ll keep at it — but there’s still no fix. Time is running out, and our valuable ministries and fundamental rights hang in the balance, so we have to resort to the courts now. Though the Conference is not a party to the lawsuits, we applaud this courageous action by so many individual dioceses, charities, hospitals and schools across the nation, in coordination with the law firm of Jones Day. It is also a compelling display of the unity of the Church in defense of religious liberty. It’s also a great show of the diversity of the Church’s ministries that serve the common good and that are jeopardized by the mandate — ministries to the poor, the sick, and the uneducated, to people of any faith or no faith at all.”

Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, also applauded the additional 12 lawsuits filed around the country in protest of the Health and Human Services mandate forcing employers to provide coverage for activities they find objectionable.

The lawsuits represent 43 plaintiffs, including the Archdioceses of New York, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, the Michigan Catholic Conference, and several dioceses.

“These new actions mean there are now 23 lawsuits filed against this assault on religious freedom,” said Father Pavone, whose organization was the fourth to file suit against the mandate. “Since Priests for Life launched its lawsuit in February, we have urged other organizations and dioceses to do the same. When there are multiple federal lawsuits on the same issue in different parts of the country, this can create the potential kind of conflict that the Supreme Court may be more likely to resolve.”

Besides suing Kathleen Sebelius and the HHS, Father Pavone and Priests for Life are helping organize rallies nationwide to stand up for religious freedom on Friday, June 8. The Priests for Life team is organizing the rally in New York City.

“The fact that the New York Archdiocese is now part of the legal assault on this mandate will, I am sure, create renewed interest and participation in our June 8 rally. We invite all to take part.”

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, chaired by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL),  released new information that confirms the White House secret pact.

In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama repeatedly made promises to usher in an era of transparency, “put an end to the game playing,” and broadcast health care negotiations on C-SPAN. However, in 2009, a series of conflicting media accounts documented efforts by the authors of the health care law to make an agreement or series of agreements with health care industry stakeholders to squelch opposition and generate support for the legislation. These meetings and negotiations with various outside interest groups were never made public, and many members of Congress – from both parties – were not a part of those negotiations. Since those reports lacked consistency and concrete details, the committee launched an investigation on February 18, 2011, to determine whether “deals” were made, who made them, and what specifically was negotiated.

Today, a staff memo distributed to Republican members of the committee provided further information regarding the development of the “deal,” and the parties involved in negotiating specific policy outcomes to secure support for the legislation. Based on email exchanges and other primary source material, it appears the deal was reached not solely between PhRMA and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, but that top personnel in the White House were involved in negotiating and approving this deal. The committee’s investigation determined that the White House, specifically Office of Health Reform Director Nancy Ann DeParle, Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, actively engaged in these negotiations while the role of Congress was limited. Their involvement in these previously undisclosed negotiations is particularly noteworthy since it contradicts the president’s promises of transparency.

While news reports speculated on the details of the “deal,” the White House has been vague and contradictory about the specifics beyond the $80 billion threshold. In the coming weeks, the committee will show what the White House agreed to do as part of its deal with the pharmaceutical industry, and how the full details of this agreement were kept from both the public and the House of Representatives.

And as the memo highlights, the important question to be answered is what the White House got in return. Was it just Obamacare? Could this be the basis for another lawsuit? Does anyone have the guts to bring impeachment over destroying our healthcare with secret back room deals?

By Martin Gould at Newsmax.com

EXCERPTS:

“The bishops are seeing – rightly – a pattern of emerging of hostility towards the Catholic faith for upholding protection of the life of the unborn and because of its position on contraception,” said Hudson.

And Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League pointed out to Newsmax that the protests will come around the time the Supreme Court issues its judgment on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Unless the justices throw the act out completely, the protests could not be timed better, he said.

Donohue said the mandate to make insurance companies cover not only contraceptives but abortion-inducing drugs is the key, he said. “It was done on purpose as a wedge to open the door. If we don’t fight it the next step is to force Catholic hospitals to provide abortion facilities,” he said.

“The idea that I as a Catholic should have to pay for some woman’s abortion makes me want to reach for the vomit bag.”

FULL ARTICLE

From IBD Editorials

EXCERPTS:

When Vladimir I. Lenin sought to remake Russian society into a “proletariats’ paradise,” he targeted three sectors for control: health care, banking and education. Sound familiar?

Of these three, however, Lenin viewed socialized medicine as the “keystone” to building his socialist utopia.

As a result, “there still exists a great shortage of physicians and hospitals,” ….

Rationing became necessary. Elderly patients were often turned away from care. Death panels appointed by the health commissar decided their fate.

… Obama vowed to demolish “structural inequalities” in America and rebuild the economy on three new “pillars” — socialized medicine, banking and higher education.

A key part of his massive new health bureaucracy is a Soviet-style panel that has received little press attention — the Independent Payment Advisory Board. [The infamous death panel]

Russians suffered through 70 years of Lenincare. By the end of the century, the USSR was infamous for having one of the worst health-care systems in the world.

FULL ARTICLE

by Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D.

President Barack Obama is a “bully” for trying to shove his healthcare reform law down Americans’ throats and for trying to intimidate the Supreme Court into upholding the law, says staunch conservative Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. Obama, with his inexperience, wants to “force people to buy things they don’t want” through Obamacare, DeMint said at a town hall meeting in Rock Hill, S.C., the Rock Hill Herald reports.

Fair criticism? Absolutely.

It’s not just that Obama is a bully, however. It’s that Big Government and socialist policies are, by their very nature, bullying policies. They require compulsion. They are mandates, not protections. This is something advocates of liberal Obamaism and ObamaCare willfully refuse to understand. Participating in the requirements of ObamaCare is not an option, any more than participating in the programs of Medicare and Social Security are not, and never will be, an option.

Government social “welfare” programs require force, plain and simple. They have been sold, for decades now, as reasonable policies befitting a free people. “Retirement guarantees for the elderly. Health care for the elderly.” Who could argue with that? The problem is, they’re forced. And if they’re so universally beneficial, why do they have to be forced in the first place?

People don’t have to be forced to buy gasoline. People don’t have to be forced to purchase computers, iPhones, iPads or high-definition television sets. Not everybody buys these things, but most people voluntarily choose to do so, because they bring a lot of value and benefit. People will work and find money in their budgets to pay for these things. Shouldn’t they be willing to work and pay money for their medical care and insurance? Imagine even a Republican politician making this point. He’d be political toast, forever. Yet it’s still the truth, and people know it.

Liberals don’t have the confidence to let their ideas compete in the marketplace of ideas. They hate the marketplace because it implies profit, competition and business (even though the most prominent liberals are millionaires and billionaires—go figure!). But what liberals hate most of all, it seems, is the idea of anything (outside of sex and abortion) being remotely voluntary. Freedom of choice, in economic contexts, makes them crazy. That’s why you can’t have a rational discussion with most liberals, even if in other contexts they’re perfectly sane, stable and reasonable.

The problem with the liberal mentality is that it’s based on neurotic and irrational fear. I’m not saying that people like Obama and Nancy Pelosi are fearful. They don’t seem afraid of anything, because they’re confident that their use of force will always get them what they want. But these liberal politicians play upon the fear of people. “I might not have my health care. I must have someone guarantee it for me.” It’s true that health care is important. But so is a roof over your head. So is food. So is fuel for your automobile, and your heat. Nobody guarantees these things for you, free of charge. They’re mostly left to the workings of a free market, driven both by profit for producers and the ingenuity and hard work of private businesses.

Why not the same for health care?

No answer is ever given. And if we can’t count on the free market to deliver these things, then why don’t we have the equivalent of Medicare and ObamaCare for everything else, including groceries? And don’t reply, “We already have food stamps.” ObamaCare is not the equivalent of a food stamps program. ObamaCare is a literal takeover of everything related to medicine. It makes it functionally impossible for a free market to function, either in health insurance or health care. It passive-aggressively and cynically makes it so impossible that within a certain period of time, everyone or almost everyone will be on the equivalent of Medicaid for health care. It all but requires doctors to work under Medicare and Medicaid rules, in deference to the government and not necessarily to the patient.

Fear of a free market is what got us ObamaCare. But what about the reasonable fears the new regime of socialized medicine is going to create? Waiting lists, waiting lines, fights in Congress over the proper age to let people die, by government directive. It’s all coming. It has to, because that’s what socialism brings. Like any control freak, liberalism takes care of you, but at the price of your freedom. Americans will apparently have to learn this the hard way.

The president and his administration “believe Americans are stupid,” Senator DeMint said.

I don’t disagree, but I’d put it a different way. The president and his administration are counting on Americans to either be indifferent, or afraid. Those who are afraid actively support ObamaCare. Those who are indifferent, in the sense of thinking, “Oh, they’ll just have to figure it out in Washington, it’s over my head,” are in effect supporting it. Together, these two groups make up a majority. This is why America is in such trouble. It’s the majority of the American people themselves who created the problem … and who ARE the problem. Only the majority of Americans can fix this problem, by fixing their thinking and correcting their errors and evasions.

GOP Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina says: “What is amazing is what a bully President Obama has suddenly become.”

Suddenly? I don’t think so. He’s been like this his whole time in office. But bullying, as I said, is the nature of liberalism and socialism. Liberals are nothing more than fear-driven, bullying control freaks. They want to impose their will on everyone and everything. They talk a good game about “tolerance” and “diversity,” but the context in which they’re willing to honor these ideas is minimal and marginal. When it comes to the basics of the economy and human civilization in a mostly free country as generations of Americans have known it, they want, as Obama puts it, “transformation.” This means government control, not only of health care, but of everything they can get their hands on.

Dr. Hurd has a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Psychology, Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, CA, November 1991. Degree awarded With Distinction. Master’s of Social Work (M.S.W.), Clinical, The University of Maryland at Baltimore, May 1988. Bachelor’s of Arts (B.A.), Psychology, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, May 1985. Distinguished Psychology Student Award, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude. Dr. Hurd blogs at DrHurd.com