According to Patrick J. Reilly, in Are Catholic Colleges Catholic Enough? – WSJ.com, the case hinges

on the Supreme Court’s ruling in NLRB v. The Catholic Bishop of Chicago, et al. (1979), which found that the NLRB had violated the First Amendment’s free exercise clause by requiring Catholic schools to comply with federal labor laws, thereby possibly interfering with religious decision-making. But that ruling didn’t stop the NLRB from claiming authority over most Catholic colleges and universities by arguing that Catholic Bishop protects only “church-controlled” institutions that are “substantially religious,” a phrase taken from Chief Justice Warren Burger’s majority opinion in the case. Many of the nation’s 224 Catholic colleges and universities are legally independent of the Catholic bishops or the religious orders that founded them.

So the NLRB has put itself in the position of judging schools’ religious character, and it has concluded over the years that many Catholic institutions are inconsistent in their application of Catholic principles to teaching, course requirements, campus life and faculty hiring. It’s a serious overreach by the government, though many Catholics would agree that colleges and universities often demonstrate inconsistent religious observation.

The erosion of religious identity in Catholic higher education over the past 50 years has been marked by theological dissent, hostility toward the bishops, and increasingly liberal campus-life arrangements such as co-ed dorms and lax visitation rules. These issues fueled the 2009 confrontation at Notre Dame, for example, when pro-life Catholics objected to the school honoring President Barack Obama.

The temptation to please the world is always there in Christian higher education.   Many initiatives undertaken by ostensibly Christian universities seem to be very similar to those that get excited attention at secular schools, but there are things that Christian higher ed talks about less and less (abortion-on-demand, for example) while it holds countless workshops on hot topics like human sex trafficking (as if there was something controversial about it, as if there was someone, somewhere, who thought it was a good thing).

Catholic educators are now awaiting the result of Manhattan College’s appeal to the NLRB regulators in Washington. Their appeal relies heavily on an argument put forward in 1986 by future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Writing for half the members of an evenly divided D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Breyer argued that the NLRB had contravened the Catholic Bishop ruling by establishing a “substantial religious character” test to determine whether a college meets sectarian standards.

The D.C. Circuit has formally embraced Justice Breyer’s reasoning twice over the past decade, instructing the NLRB to stop interfering with any college or university that “holds itself out to students, faculty and community as providing a religious educational environment.” In ruling against St. Xavier University and Manhattan College, NLRB regional staff seem to have ignored that instruction.

Protestant and evangelical Christian colleges and universities, take note: the candidate of hope and change you helped elect, possibly as part of your diversity initiatives, has his sights set on making you follow the same federal employment rules as any other school.  You may be forced to hire people who do not “model the Christian life” for students…  unless, of course, your notion of the Christian life has recently undergone radical revision.

A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the interpretation of the 14th Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its text intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive for illegal immigration.

To end the practice of “birthright citizenship,” all that is required is to correct the misinterpretation of that amendment’s first sentence: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” From these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants.

……………………….

Congress has heard testimony estimating that more than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to mothers who are here illegally. Graglia seems to establish that there is no constitutional impediment to Congress ending the granting of birthright citizenship to those whose presence here is “not only without the government’s consent but in violation of its law.”

George Will’s piece, linked above, gives a nice history of the 14th Amendment, and explains clearly why it should not be interpreted to mean that all babies of illegal aliens are automatically US citizens.  But somehow, I don’t think Congress is likely to act on this anytime soon, since the Democrats want to turn as many illegals as possible into voters… for them.  That’s why they are loathe to enforce our borders, they are for same day registration/voting and “motor voter” laws, and are only too happy to accept the support of illegal alien activist organizations.

I’m sure the Democrats mourn the passing of ACORN, which was famous for finding ways for illegals to vote, not to mention evade taxes and other laws.

So we won’t see a Congressional reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment anytime soon.  But read all of Will’s piece.  It’s essential information for the next time someone tries to convince you that it makes any kind of sense Constitutionally for anchor babies to be automatic US citizens.

America’s enemies are no more entitled to counsel in pursuing legal claims than, say, a pro-life group that chooses to file a lawsuit. If I went out of my way to contribute my services for free to a pro-life group, do you suppose the New York Times would have the slightest hesitation about drawing the inference that I was sympathetic to the pro-life cause? Of course not. The Gray Lady wouldn’t pretend that I was just, in the Gillers lexicon, promoting “the administration of justice.” After all, no one would have forced me to take that case. There are countless causes that a lawyer willing to donate his services can find. When you’re a volunteer, you’re doing what you want to do, not what you have to do.

As the law is currently understood, it is legal for a lawyer to volunteer his services to America’s enemies. It is absurd, however, to suggest that we have to applaud that decision. And it is equally ludicrous to suggest that we are forbidden from drawing the obvious conclusion that a lawyer who makes such a decision is predisposed to condemn the United States and to sympathize with America’s enemies on some level.

Here’s the landscape: The Obama Justice Department is staffed with many lawyers who volunteered their services to America’s enemies. Since those lawyers have been running the department, there has been a detectable shift in favor of due-process rights for terrorists, a bias in favor of civilian trials in which terrorists are vested with all the rights of American citizens, a bias against military tribunals, the extension of Miranda protections to enemy combatants, a concerted effort to publish previously classified information detailing interrogation methods and depicting the alleged abuse of detainees, efforts to subject lawyers who authorized aggressive counterterrorism policies to professional sanction, the reopening of investigations against CIA interrogators even though those cases were previously closed by apolitical law-enforcement professionals, and the continued accusation that officials responsible for designing and carrying out the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies committed war crimes.

You may think this is a coincidence. I don’t. And I’m not going to pretend it is because some lefty lawyer screams “McCarthyism.” This isn’t demagoguery. It is cause and effect. And if it is hurting President Obama politically, that is because he deserves to be hurt for indulging it.

And here stands our American President, atop what was once the beacon of liberty throughout the world, telling the people of Honduras that they have to suck it up and endure the man who wants to rule them forever, throwing away their own silly little constitution.
Because he just knows better than them? Because he’s a fan of the Leftist tyrants club? Because…?
Because he is wrong.

If Obama is willing to treat the Honduran constitution with such disrespect and to set himself and his own judgement above that of the duly elected officials and the Supreme Court of Honduras, who are, after all, following their own constitution and laws (with considerable restraint, I might add), what makes anyone think that he has any higher a view of the US Constitution?

To no one’s surprise, he doesn’t.

Obama is radically pro-abortion.  He is in favor of the killing of unborn infants with no restrictions, paid for with a government check.  He is also in favor of killing children born alive as a result of a botched abortion.  He is in favor of forcing doctors to perform abortions even if those doctors have a moral objection.

Does anyone remember Obama’s soft-spoken, relaxed and seemingly innocuous little comment to Joe the plumber?  “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody”.  We now see that what he meant was a wholesale destruction of capitalism and a premeditated effort to replace it with socialism.

Obama is robbing our future generations of any hope of prosperity by an orgy of federal spending unheard of in our country.

Obama is reaching into the board rooms of private companies and firing employees.  He has crossed a line between public and private sectors that is unprecedented.

Obama has just completed an international trip with the message of appeasement to our enemies.  When, in the course of human history, has appeasement ever worked?

Iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power.  Is there ANYONE who thinks this is a good thing?

The laundry list of Obama appointees who were revealed to have unpaid taxes is shameful.  Is there ANY private citizen who could get away with this wanton disregard for tax laws by simply saying “Oops, I’m sorry”?

The Republican Party is currently populated with political eunichs.  Where is the voice of opposition?

Obama wants to socialize medicine.  If this happens it will complete his coup d’état and America as we know it will be gone forever.

Many citizens of this great country are simply left speechless by this apparently unstoppable. radical, ultra-liberal assault on America.  So many of us feel a combination of powerlessness and outrage in the face of what is happening.  Many are asking, “What can I do to stop this madness?”  Not all of us have a public forum from which to vent our frustrations.  Not all of us are eloquent of speech or skilled in writing.  But we all have family and friends.  We all live lives that are made up of relationships.  This is where the battle must be fought – one friend, one family, one realtionship at a time.  Those of us who do believe America is essentially good – that it was founded and made great on a firm foundation of Judeo-Christian beliefs, that it is a place where people can be free, that perserverance and hard work will be rewarded and that anyone can acheive the American dream – must share our convictions and persuade our family and friends that it is an America worth fighting for.  For outrage is not enough, feeling helpless and powerless is no excuse, and inaction is not an option.

Yeah, I know it’s starting to sound like there should be a choir humming “My Country Tis Of Thee” in the background.  I don’t care. It is a battle worth fighting…but we had better start now.

H/T: Jonah Goldberg

Be it myth, legend, tale or fable we all know these four words and understand them to be a preamble to the telling of a make-believe story (though possibly based on fact).  Such stories serve many purposes, not the least of which is to teach an object lesson to the very young, a meaningful and memorable way to instruct children about great and noble virtues such as loyalty, honor, courage and truth.

Chicken Little is one such story. The diminuitive foul who determines Armageddon is at hand after being struck on the head by an acorn.  The story proceeds with Chicken Little determining the best course of action is to tell the king whereupon a journey commences and various encounters with other creatures ensue.  Depending on which version of the story is told, a final encounter with a deceitful fox who manipulates the circumstances brings about a close call or bad ending to the story.

I find several interesting parallels to current events.

• Though prompted by a real act (the falling acorn),  Chicken Little over-reacts and in doing so completely misreads the situation and arrives at the wrong conclusion.  No time is taken to assess what really happened, why it happened, and what possible responses should be considered.  Today we would call that a  “rush to judgment”.

• Chicken Little’s plan of action is to seek someone in governmental authority (tell the king) – as if any authority could be of help if the sky was indeed falling.

• Chicken Little whips everyone else into a frenzy of panic.  The other characters are gullible – willing to believe what they have been told by Chicken Little because they don’t know any better themselves.

• Foxy Loxy is an opportunist who sees the chance to exploit a problem for personal gain.  And it really doesn’t matter to the fox whether the problem is real or imagined.  What matters is that the fox uses the situation to get what he wants.

What worries me about our current “Chicken Little” moment is that this is not a fable, it is quite real.  The stakes are high.  The repercussions long-lasting and profound.

Admittedly the acorn in our story is no small seed pod from a tree.  It is not my intent to trivialize the financial market mess. But I do find it fascinating how our real-life characters are strikingly similar to the ones in the story. Instead of Chicken Little, Henny Penny, et al, we have an indeterminate but evidently ever-increasing portion of our citizenry who think government is the answer to every problem.  This, by the way, is what got us into the problem in the first place. And of course we have the federal government, an uneasy assimialtion of both Chicken Little and Foxy Loxy.  With the all too familiar battle cry of, “We’ve got to DO something,” the gain they apparently seek is even more government intrusion, control, regulation, and jurisdiction.  The seeming impossibility of a happy ending to this story is deeply alarming.

I can’t help but imagine a time and place in the not-too-distant future when another story will be told.  “Once upon a time….there was this great experiment in liberty and self-determination known as The United States of America.

Claremont Institute fellow Michael M. Uhlmann has a dismissive review of The Cult of the Presidency in the current issue of National Review: “It’s Not Just the Executive,” September 15, 2008. (Here it is if you get NR Digital, otherwise it’s available in the print edition). It seems to me that the review largely consists of inaccurate characterizations, unsupported assertions, and non sequiturs. But hey, I’m the author, and understandably biased, so check it out and judge for yourself.

Uhlmann writes that “The bulk of Healy’s book is devoted to various sins, offenses and negligences of the Bush administration.” That’s a bizarre statement, given that the book has nine chapters and an introduction, and only three of those chapters cover GWB’s tenure. In fact, the “bulk of the book” is devoted to demonstrating that, as I write in Chapter Two, “the problems of the modern presidency did not begin when George W. Bush emerged victorious from 2000’s seemingly interminable Battle of the Chads” and that–despite what some on the Left seem to believe–those problems will not vanish in January 2009 when he heads back to the ranch to cut brush.

Read it all.

I have never been an advocate of the popular notion that “everyone should vote.” Some people look at me as if I am somehow un-American when I say that I am not in favor of encouraging people to vote who would otherwise never darken the door of a polling place. I really don’t want someone on the streets of Hollywood, who just failed to identify the vice president of the United States on one of Jay Leno’s “Jay-Walking” segments, helping to select the person who will lead my government for the next four years.

Take the test here.

I have to report, sadly, that enormous numbers of high school graduates cannot pass this test (that is, get a score of 66.6%). More college graduates than I would wish are similarly unprepared. Yet this test is not hard, for anyone who has the vaguest notion of how our government functions, and the barest minimum of knowledge about current events. I know it is politically impossible that a test such as this will ever be adopted. But if you can’t pass it, you should be embarrassed to be voting. And in all honesty, I think the author of the test was too generous. In my opinion, if you can’t score about 24 out of 27, you should go out to lunch on election day (since you’re already there…), and then go home, and read a book or something.

If you don’t have this basic understanding and information, and lot more besides, you simply have no way of evaluating what the issues are about, who is lying to you, who is shading the truth, etc. You simply don’t have the conceptual tools to even read the newspaper.

Let me be really blunt. If you aren’t at least this well informed, and you still vote, you are a patsy. A sucker. A mark. You’re clueless. None of your political opinions are worth their weight in pond-scum. You should be wearing a sign that says “kick me” on your back, because that’s exactly what the people manipulating your vote are doing.

It isn’t enough for you to just “learn the test” now. That doesn’t instantly assure that you’re qualified to vote. (Talk about “teaching to the test”…) The point is that all of the opinions you now have were formed in a state of abysmal ignorance of basics, which means they have no chance of being well-considered, though some may be correct (the stopped clock principle…). So, if you want to be a competent voter, learn these basic facts. And then, read a little basic US and World History (NOT a Howard Zinn book). Then spend some time catching up on current events, and see what parallels you can find between them and the bit of history you’ve learned. Listen to some wise people discuss the issues, if possible with people with whom they disagree, so you can hear fair presentations of both sides. Don’t just read/listen to the main stream media, ABC, NBC, CBS, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc.

You should also read blogs. On the right, read Powerline, Hugh Hewitt, and maybe Instapundit at a minimum. On the left, read the Daily Kos and Huffington Post. In the talk radio world, center-right hosts Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager and Michael Medved are all known for having guests from the left on their shows, and treating them fairly, with extended discussions that will allow you to get a feel for the issues. On the left, sadly, there is no national talk radio show that routinely gives extended interviews to thinkers from the right. Well, truthfully, there is hardly a national talk radio show from the left that’s worth mentioning, but of course, the left owns the main stream media I just listed. Which is why you need to pay attention to both the old media and talk radio… between them, you get a fairly balanced dose of information and perspective.

Of all the networks, I trust Foxnews the most. What, your left-leaning friends say that Fox is too conservative and isn’t really fair and balanced? Hmm… haven’t we already established that you’re incompetent to judge when you’re being misled? If you get your info from all the sources above, no one is going to able to pull the wool over your eyes.

Then, maybe you can vote intelligently in the NEXT election cycle.

Do us all a favor. If this simple test is beyond you now, stick to watching Survivor reruns and MTV. Don’t vote this time around. Educate yourself, and maybe vote in the next election cycle.