Mike Kelly is a Dolt (Religious Freedom Edition)

Okay, this is hard, Mike (R-Penn.), because most of your blather below is fact-free posturing.  But let’s look at your fabulous press release of yesterday.

Washington, D.C. –Representative Mike Kelly led a GOP Freshman Class press conference today marking day one of the controversial HHS mandate, which will require all non-exempt employers to provide health care coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs or else pay a steep tax.

Except that contraceptive drugs and devices are not abortion-inducing.  They are pregnancy-preventing, but that’s not the same thing.  Or do you think it is, Mike?

For the millions of Americans who oppose this unconstitutional policy, August 1, 2012, will be known as the day religious freedom died.

Of course.  Because just yesterday morning the storm-troopers kicked in the door to my house and took all my Bibles.

If, Mike, your definition of “religious freedom” is “freedom to do whatever the heck I want to do religiously,” then you didn’t have that freedom on July 31, either.  Any number of much-more-blatant restrictions on religious practice have been in place for years, if not centuries — from ceremonial drug use to polygamy. Not to mention zoning laws.

If your definition of “religious freedom” is not being compelled by law to provide money on things you don’t believe in religiously, then you’ve also been out of luck.  Quakers still pay taxes, even though a huge chunk of the federal budget goes to weapons of war. Heck, some of your tax money goes to fund programs that already provide contraceptive care to women; have you felt a chill of religious oppression on your back?

Those employers aren’t even having to contribute any money directly for this added coverage; it will be part of all health insurance plans. Further, since contraceptive coverage actually reduces health care spending, it shouldn’t even factor into the cost of employer contribution to insurance plans.

According to the Congressional Research Service, insurers and employers that do not comply with the HHS mandate could face a federal tax of $100 per day per employee, or a yearly tax of $36,500 per employee.  So if you’re a small business owner who believes that these drugs violate your religious beliefs, you will be forced to choose between following your conscience or paying a punishing tax. If you employ only 50 people, that could mean a payout to the government of up to $1,825,000 each year. For many who are already struggling to survive in this Obama Economy, that is simply no choice at all.

Why, Mike, would you say that the employer’s religious beliefs are more at stake here than the employee’s religious beliefs?  Are we talking employers that are providing the full cost of insurance coverage, or are the employees not also contributing?  If an employee feels that contraception is perfectly acceptable, religiously, why does the employer’s beliefs get to trump what health care coverage is made available?

Rep. Kelly issued the following statement:

So the top part of this statement wasn’t vetted by you, Mike, even though it’s on your web site?

“We need to stop worrying about political correctness and worry about correcting the politics of Washington …

Sorry, Mike — do you consider contraceptive coverage a matter of “political correctness”?  Why do you say that? Do you have any idea of what contraception actually means from a health care standpoint?

… before our constitutional rights continue to erode before our eyes. It’s time to turn the tide and turn back the unconstitutional HHS mandate, …

Its unconstitutionality has yet to be established.  And, of course, when it is, that will settle the matter one way or the other.

… which is an undeniable and unprecedented attack on Americans’ First Amendment rights.

I deny it.  I don’t feel my First Amendment rights are being violated, certainly not in an “unprecedented” fashion.  My tax dollars go to a variety of things I have a moral objection to already.

“Our freedoms and way of life have been under attack before, from both internal and external threats. If we fail to defend our constitutional rights, we risk losing the freedoms that so many brave men and women have given their lives to defend throughout the course of our nation’s history.

Because our soldiers died on Iwo Jima and Omaha Beach to make sure that we don’t provide contraceptive health care to women.

 “We will not turn a blind eye to the HHS mandate’s attack on our religious freedom and we will work to stop this unconstitutional mandate from taking away our God-given and constitutionally protected rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Psssst! Mike! I know you’re just a Congressional Freshman and all, but I think you need to read up on the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Of course, your press release didn’t include your zaniest assertion yesterday, which you raised from the House floor:

I know in your mind you can think of the times America was attacked. One is December 7 — that is Pearl Harbor Day. Another was September 11 — that was the day of the terrorist attack. I want you to remember August 1, 2012 — the attack on our religious freedom. That is a date that will live in infamy, along with those other dates.

Because the thousands of deaths in both of those acts of war and terrorism, and the armed conflicts that the triggered, are, of course, exactly the same as requiring business to cover contraception.

I’ll let some of your colleagues who actually were involved in both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 respond to that particular assertion (see the update at the end of that article).

Anyway, Mike, thanks for your devotion to religious freedom.  It’s an important topic, no question.