Tuesday's Thoughts

Politicizing the Girl Scouts.  I was scanning some news sites when I came across the article below.  The Girl Scouts are using the same tactics as are unions---money flows upwards to the central organization where it's used to push a political agenda.  In this case, one element of that liberal agenda is supporting abortion.

There are a number of youth organizations, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the 4-H and other similar groups whose primary task is supposed to be providing moral and philosophical principles for living.  Most of these encircle family, God and community.  Now, the morality that is being taught is that of the liberal political line...like supporting abortion and Planned Parenthood.

Say no to Girl Scout Cookies

Left-wing political agenda undermines girls, families

By Cathy Cleaver Ruse - The Washington Times

Monday, January 16, 2012

When our sweet little neighbor in her brown camp uniform came knocking on our door this year, we had to say no. I told her mother that I didn’t want to hurt Katie’s feelings, but I couldn’t support the Girl Scout cookie sale anymore because I’d learned too much about the organizers’ agenda, primarily their support for abortion and partnership with Planned Parenthood.

I worried that my “political” stand would cause uneasiness between us, but her response put me at ease: “Well,” she said, “they do use unpaid child labor to make their sales, and the troop only gets 10 percent of the revenues anyway.”

True. According to the Girl Scouts’ website, the lion’s share of the money goes not to the troop but to bureaucrats up the chain of command in multicounty councils. The national office gets a piece of the pie, too, in the form of royalties based on gross annual sales volume - about 200 million boxes per year.

It’s a sacrifice, because I love the cookies and the cuties who sell them, but enough is enough.

I remember the Girl Scouts being flaky way back in the early 1970s. When I was a Brownie, I was told to recite some chant and step over a mirror. If I had known the word, I would have called it “pagan.” Even an unchurched girl of 7 could smell a rat.

...

Several years ago. a quarter of the Girl Scout councils nationwide admitted to partnering with Planned Parenthood, the nation’s abortion giant. When questioned about the affiliation on NBC’s “Today Show,” Girl Scout CEO Kathy Cloninger had no compunction in confirming it.

...

Heard enough? There’s a lot more at 100questionsforthegirlscouts.org.

Earlier this month, a young Girl Scout employee, Renise Rodriguez, made the mistake of stopping by the office to do extra work on her own time in a T-shirt bearing the words: “Pray to End Abortion.” A supervisor ordered her to turn the shirt inside out or leave the office. She left, for good.

So should we all.

There is much more at the website, but frankly, I'm embarrassed to add them to my post.  Frankly, it's horrifying what the Girls Scouts are doing.  I'll no longer support them in any form.

***

Union thuggery. Public Service unions like the SEIU are back in the news again.  They are openly hiring thugs to invade offices and commit other "non-violent" acts.  I suppose those non-violent acts would be like those in St. Louis when the SIEU didn't like what they heard from a black Tea Partier who asked embarrassing questions to democrat Russ Carnahan's so-call Town Hall meeting.

The SEIU, gloating of their past successes are making such acts a matter of policy now.

Bored with union organizing, SEIU gears up for thuggery

By: Examiner Editorial | 01/16/12 8:05 PM

The SEIU is looking for someone
to lead non-violent protests. In other
words, someone who has no problems
invading buildings and getting arrested.

The SEIU is looking to hire someone to lead members in nonviolent civil disobedience. In other words, someone who has no problem invading buildings or getting arrested.

Something questionable is going on when a state chapter of the Service Employees International Union advertises on the SEIU national website a "Lead Internal Organizer/Home Care (LiA)" position paying up to $65,000 a year for somebody with the following qualifications:
• Train and lead members in non-violent civil disobedience, such as occupying state buildings and banks, and peaceful resistance.

• Plan and execute strategic direct action field plans including banner drops, bank takeovers, and capitol occupations with membership, other local unions, and coalition partners.

• Execute field plans for special campaigns including contract campaigns, ballot initiatives, COPE contributions, general membership growth and the broader campaign to fight for a fair economy.

(For those not familiar with SEIU nomenclature, "COPE" stands for Committee on Political Education, which the national union describes as the "300,000 SEIU members, staff and retirees who contribute an average of $7 a month." That at least explains the source of some $25.2 million of SEIU's beaucoup campaign money for Democrats.)

...

Since by SEIU's own words, it is assisting in takeovers of government buildings and violating private property and related activities that have no bearing on "traditional representational duties," we wonder if the next president and his appointed attorney general will ask if "SEIU" has anything to do with "RICO."

In other words, SEIU is hiring goons to go after whomever opposes the SEIU and their other public service union buds.

***

Conservative Victories. There were three conservative victories in the Courts this last week.  

1. In Texas, a federal appeals court upheld the state's sonogram law, which requires that women seeking abortions view a picture of their baby before having the procedure. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling, which had issued an injunction, preventing the law from taking effect. 
2. A Marion Superior Court judge in Indiana upheld that state's school voucher law. Judge Michael Keele rejected arguments from opponents that the nation's largest school voucher program is unconstitutional because parents might send their children to religious schools.
3. The Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. At issue was whether a church or religious organization could hire and fire ministers according to their theological beliefs and teachings.

There was little coverage of these and most of that coverage was about the unanimous SCOTUS decision supporting "Ministerial Exception." "Ministerial Exception" is that portion of the 1st Amendment that prevents the government from interfering in the internal operation and doctrine of a church.

Opinion recap: A solid “ministerial exception”

Analysis

Closing the courthouse door much of the way, but not completely, to workplace bias lawsuits by church employees who act as ministers to their denominations, the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously gave its blessing — for the first time — to a “ministerial exception” to federal, state, and local laws against virtually all forms of discrimination on the job.  The Court’s ruling, which only Justice Clarence Thomas said did not go far enough, did not order courts to throw out all such lawsuits as beyond their jurisdiction, but it left them with only a narrow inquiry before the likely order of dismissal would come down.  As soon as the denomination makes its point that it counts an employee as a “minister,” within its internal definition, that is probably the end of the case.  And the employee could be anyone from the congregational leader, on down to any worker considered to be advancing the religious mission.

The decision, with the main opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., was clearly one of the most important church-state rulings that the Court had issued since its 1990 ruling, in a case involving a Native American church ritual of smoking peyote.  In that case, the Court allowed the government to apply “neutral and general” laws to some religious practices, but the Chief Justice on Wednesday said that did not control the new ruling — in the case of Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (docket 10-553).

The Roberts opinion dismissed as an “extreme position” the plea of EEOC to limit any “ministerial exception” solely to workers who perform “exclusively religious functions.”  While the opinion said the Court was “reluctant to adopt a rigid formula for deciding when an employee qualifies as a minister,” the opinion went on to describe some key factors that courts are to take into account in judging whether a given denomination has proved its claim to the exception.

In this particular case, involving a parochial school teacher in Redford, Mich., who spent most of her work time on non-religious duties, the Court found these to be decisive factors: that she was formally commissioned or ordained as a “minister” in the Lutheran denomination’s internal practices, that she did perform “important religious functions” in addition to her teaching of lay subjects in the classroom, and that her non-religious duties, however extensive, did not make a difference.   The Chief Justice said the Court was unsure whether any church employee would ever do exclusively religious chores.

The central opinion was, briefly, that the government must have hands-off when it comes to internal church practices and doctrine.  This does NOT provide a blanket ban on suits involving church organizations.

While all nine members said they joined the Roberts opinion, Justice Thomas made it clear in a separate opinion that he did not fully embrace it.

The Roberts opinion said in a final footnote that is likely to take on added significance as time goes on, that the “ministerial exception” was not “a jurisdictional bar” to all such lawsuits claiming workplace bias.  Rather, the Chief Justice explained, it is “a defense on the merits.”  Thus, such lawsuits can be filed, and the worker who is suing will make a claim that he or she is the victim of discrimination, and then the denomination gets to answer that the case cannot go further because it considers the employee to be a “minister.”

All-in-all, it was a good week for conservatism.  Not all judicial decisions are liberal.