LifeSiteNews.com

by Ben Johnson

WEST POINT, NY – A study published by West Point's anti-terrorism center claims the “pro-life paradigm” is a motivating factor in domestic terrorism.

Dr. Arie Perliger, director of terrorism studies at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), makes the allegation in his report, “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.” The document – which references abortion 76 times in 146 pages – was issued in November but only reported last month.

In an analysis of “far-right terrorism,” Perliger likens the pro-life movement to the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads, and Christian Identity (a racist Christian heresy).

“The Christian fundamentalist violent far right emerged from two ideological platforms,” he wrote. “The more influential and popular one is that of the Christian Identity school of thought” – a tiny sect that teaches that Jesus Christ came to save only white people and that Jews are the literal biological children of Satan.

“The second is the anti-abortion/pro-life paradigm,” Perliger wrote.

Perliger writes that the “ideological principles of pro-life violence” include the beliefs that “the abortion industry” engages in “the systematic killing of innocent and pure human beings”; that “since every human being is created in the image of God, it is by definition a sin to end their lives”; and that “any violent acts to end their lives [of 'fetuses'] are immoral and should be prevented.”

Perliger also raps liberty-minded small government activists, whom he calls “anti-federalists.” According to the report, such purported would-be terrorists believe the government has “a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights,” and they “support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self-government.”

According to Perliger, small government advocates' views are not merely violent but “designed to exclude minorities and foreigners.” 

The section on the pro-life movement links Dr. C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer's statement that Roe v. Wade “symbolize[d] the triumph of evil over good” to a 1979 attack on an abortion facility and likens it to “the ideological rhetoric of the Identity movement.”

Perliger accuses pro-lifers of “using chemical and biological weapons” by “contaminating the medical equipment of abortion clinics with chemical materials.”

Perliger's competence in U.S. domestic terrorism is not readily apparent. The Israeli received his Bachelor, Master, and Ph.D. in political science at the University of Haifa, writing extensively on Middle Eastern terrorism.

The meandering report appears to come to conflicting conclusions. At once he claims pro-life terrorists “have been extremely productive during the last two decades, amassing 227 attacks.” Yet he adds pro-life “violence” is in “clear decline” and represents “a less salient threat.”

While he acknowledges more than 15 times as many “violent attacks” (3,354) were carried out by “unaffiliated” assailants and that such assaults have a higher rate of “lethality,” he maintains that organized attacks represent a greater danger.

The report's conclusions and funding have sparked outrage. Conservatives, including one West Point graduate who wrote to the Superintendant in protest against the report, have rejected the latest report as another government-financed smear job.

“Like so many in the Obama administration, Perliger does not want to engage in any dialogue on the issues, but just discredit an entire political movement by ad hominem charged words,” said Herb Titus, the former dean of the Regent University School of Law. “Perliger is not a serious scholar but a propagandist for the existing regime.”

John Fund writes that the newest “report manages to lump together every known liberal stereotype about conservatives between its covers.”

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Reuters

Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - A divided federal appeals court has temporarily barred the U.S. government from requiring an Illinois company to obtain insurance coverage for contraceptives, as mandated under the 2010 healthcare overhaul, after the owners objected on religious grounds.

More than 40 lawsuits are challenging a requirement in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that requires most for-profit companies to offer workers insurance coverage for contraceptive drugs and devices and other birth control methods.

Friday's 2-1 order by a panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in favor of Cyril and Jane Korte was the second by a federal appeals court to temporarily halt enforcement against people who said it violated their faith, said Edward White, a lawyer for the Roman Catholic couple.

The 7th Circuit suggested that the couple's legal challenge might eventually prevail.

Its order came two days after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor declined to block the provision's enforcement against companies controlled by the family of Oklahoma City billionaire David Green.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which had defended the contraceptives provision, did not immediately respond on Saturday to a request for comment.

The Kortes, who own the construction firm Korte & Luitjohan Contractors, had sought to drop a health insurance plan for 20 non-unionized workers that included coverage for contraception, and substitute a different plan consistent with their faith.

Read this story at reuters.com ...

Breitbart, roundup of other sources

Ken Klukowski

“We must obey God rather than men!”—Acts 5:29

Now that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has denied Hobby Lobby’s application for an emergency injunction protecting them from Obamacare’s HHS Mandate on abortion and birth control, Hobby Lobby has decided to defy the federal government to remain true to their religious beliefs, at enormous risk and financial cost.

Hobby Lobby is wholly owned and controlled by the Green family, who are evangelical Christians. The Greens are committed to running their business in accordance with their Christian faith, believing that God wants them to conduct their professional business in accordance with the family’s understanding of the Bible. Hobby Lobby’s mission statement includes, “Honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company … consistent with Biblical principles.”

The HHS Mandate goes into effect for Hobby Lobby on Jan. 1, 2013. The Greens correctly understand that some of the drugs the HHS Mandate requires them to cover at no cost in their healthcare plans cause abortions.

Today Hobby Lobby announced that they will not comply with this mandate to become complicit in abortion, which the Greens believe ends an innocent human life. Given Hobby Lobby’s size (it has 572 stores employing more than 13,000 people), by violating the HHS Mandate, it will be subject to over $1.3 million in fines per day. That means over $40 million in fines in January alone. If their case takes another ten months to get before the Supreme Court—which would be the earliest it could get there under the normal order of business—the company would incur almost a half-billion dollars in fines. And then of course the Supreme Court would have to write an opinion in what would likely be a split decision with dissenters, which could easily take four or six months and include hundreds of millions of dollars in additional penalties.

This is civil disobedience, consistent with America’s highest traditions when moral issues are at stake. The Greens are a law-abiding family. They have no desire to defy their own government. But as the Founders launched the American Revolution because they believed the British government was violating their rights, the Greens believe that President Barack Obama and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are commanding the Greens to sin against God, and that no government has the lawful authority to do so.

The Christian tradition of defying government commands to do something wrong goes back to the very birth of Christianity. When the apostles were ordered not to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with anyone, the Book of Acts records: “Peter and the other apostles replied: ‘We must obey God rather than men! The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.’”

Eleven of the twelve apostles—including Peter—would lose their lives for the sake of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ; only the apostle John died of old age. They were determined to obey God’s will at all costs.

This issue of civil disobedience is never to be undertaken lightly. The Bible teaches Christians to submit to all legitimate governmental authority (e.g., Romans 13:1), and so a person can only disobey the government when there is no other way to obey God.

But here in America, the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land, and in its First Amendment it protects against a government establishment of an official religion and separately protects the free exercise of religion. On top of that, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) to specifically add an additional layer of protection against government actions that violate a person’s religious beliefs.

The HHS Mandate is a gross violation of the religious beliefs of the Green family. The issue before the courts here is whether the Greens religious-liberty rights include running their secular, for-profit business consistent with their religious beliefs. In other words, is religious liberty just what you do in church on a Sunday morning, or does it include what you do during the week at your job?

The Greens are now putting their fortunes on the line to do what they believe is right. The courts should side with them, affirming a broad scope of religious liberty under the Constitution and RFRA. And the Supreme Court should resolve this matter with dispatch in their favor.

Millions of Christians across the country feel exactly the same way as the Greens. The Obama administration has issued a statist command that is a declaration of war on people of faith who object to abortion, and civil disobedience could break out all over the country unless the courts set this matter right—and quickly.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON –  An attorney for Hobby Lobby Stores said Thursday that the arts and crafts chain plans to defy a federal mandate requiring it to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill, despite risking potential fines of up to $1.3 million per day.

Hobby Lobby and religious book-seller Mardel Inc., which are owned by the same conservative Christian family, are suing to block part of the federal health care law that requires employee health-care plans to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar emergency contraception pills.

The companies claim the mandate violates the religious beliefs of their owners. They say the morning-after pill is tantamount to abortion because it can prevent a fertilized egg from becoming implanted in a woman's womb.

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[Editor's note: There is no such thing as a "fertilized egg." Once an egg is fertilized it is no longer an egg. It is a human being. It is a nascent human person who is being blocked from implantation, and therefore sustenance, by these drugs. It's the moral equivalent of starving your three year-old, or your grandmother, to death.]