Hobby Lobby

Those Cuneiform Tablets Stolen From Iraq… Again…

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tabletsJoseph P Farrell – This is a story that, as one might imagine, I cannot help but speculate about. It was shared by Ms. M.W. The story itself contains a number of statements I find intriguing, if not downright provocative and suggestive:

Stolen Sumerian Tablets Come from the Lost City of Irisagrig

There’s so much potential for speculation here that I hardly know where to begin. Suppose we start here: the tablets, which were purchased by Hobby Lobby, and later discovered to have been stolen, are being returned to Iraq, and presumably, to the Baghdad Museum (we’ll get back to that interesting connection later). What’s intriguing here is the content of the tablets:

Hundreds of 4,000 year old tablets that were looted in Iraq and bought by the U.S. company Hobby Lobby seem to hail from a mysterious Sumerian city whose whereabouts are unknown, a U.S. law enforcement agency just announced. Continue reading →

Hobby Lobby Fined For Importing Stolen Artifacts

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tabletsJoseph P Farrell – This week has been such an unusually fruitful week for articles being shared that, today, Saturday, I am still combing through them to decide on what to schedule for blogs this coming week! So I want to thank everyone once again for sharing so many good finds, making the choice of what to blog about more difficult and, in a way, more fun. Some of these articles I have in fact archived for next week, as I may yet blog about them.

But this story had to be at the top of the list. Indeed, when I saw it, there was no doubt in my mind that it was at the top of the “final cuts” folder. So many people found various versions of it that I knew there was something in the aether and that this story would require some attention. So I present some of those various versions that people found for your consideration, before I get to my high octane speculation about the story, with a thank you to all of you who shared these articles and who are following the story:

Hobby Lobby to pay $3 million fine, forfeit smuggled ancient artifacts

Hobby Lobby will pay $3 million, forfeit ancient items smuggled from Iraq

Justice Department sues Hobby Lobby over thousands of looted Iraqi artifacts it bought

Let’s begin with the last of these articles, which indicates that Israel and the United Arab Emirates were involved in the deal. What is unclear, of course, is whether the individuals and organizations that functioned as components of the deal were simply located in these countries, or whether they were actually members of their governments. For reasons I’ll get to in the high octane speculation, I suspect the latter. Continue reading →

Jonathan Turley ~ Goodbye Hobby Lobby, Hello Halbig: Get Ready For An Even Greater Threat To Obamacare

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“Where Hobby Lobby exempts only closely held corporations from a portion of the ACA rules, Halbig could allow a mass exodus from the program. And like all insurance programs, it only works if large numbers are insured so that the risks are widely spread. Halbig could leave Obamacare on life support — and lead to another showdown in the Supreme Court.” J Turley

jonathanTurleyBelow is my column today in the Los Angeles Times on a little discussed case that presents a far greater threat to Obamacare than did Hobby Lobby. The Hobby Lobby case is a huge blow for the Administration in terms of one of the most prominent provisions of the Act and recognizing religious rights for corporations. However, it is more of a fender bender for the ACA. Halbig could be a train wreck of a case if it goes against the Administration. We are expecting a ruling any day and the panel is interesting: Judges Harry T. Edwards (a Carter appointee), Thomas B. Griffith (a George W. Bush appointee), and A. Raymond Randolph (a George H.W. Bush appointee). In oral argument, Edwards was reportedly highly supportive of the Administration’s argument while Randolph was very skeptical. That leaves Griffith. It could go 2-1 either way, though in my view the interpretive edge goes to the challengers for the reasons discussed below. This case however is largely a statutory interpretation case, though it has the same separation of powers allegations of executive overreach that we have seen in other recent cases.

Now that the Supreme Court has issued its ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, the legal fight over the Affordable Care Act will shift a few blocks away to another Washington courtroom, where a far more fundamental challenge to Obamacare is about to be decided by the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Indeed, if Hobby Lobby will create complications for Obamacare, Halbig vs. Burwell could trigger a full cardiac arrest.

The Halbig case challenges the massive federal subsidies in the form of tax credits made available to people with financial need who enroll in the program. In crafting the act, Congress created incentives for states to set up health insurance exchanges and disincentives for them to opt out. The law, for example, made the subsidies available only to those enrolled in insurance plans through exchanges “established by the state.” Continue reading →

Hobby Lobby And The Supreme Court

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BATR  December 2 2013

For a country founded upon the purpose of establishing religious freedom, the state worship establishment deems that their Supreme Court tribunal will announce its papal bull in the lawsuit, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

The SCOTUSblog explains the Issue: Whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000bb et seq., which provides that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless that burden is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest, allows a for-profit corporation to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by federal law, based on the religious objections of the corporation’s owners.

The first words in the Bill of Rights Amendment I, states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. Somehow, the barrister bar sees fit to ignore the highest law of the land, because robe magistrates deem that their rulings are a flowing and living privilege that easily conflicts with a dictionary reading of language.

Understanding the context of this case starts with an analysis by Lyle Denniston from the official SCOTUS blog.

“This time, the Court will be focusing only on whether the pregnancy-related care coverage can be enforced against profit-making companies – or their individual owners, when that is a very small group – when the coverage contradicts privately held religious beliefs.”

Jeremy Weber from Christianity Today reports that – Hobby Lobby explained in a statement that its Green family owners “have no moral objection to providing 16 of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives required under the HHS mandate and do so at no additional cost to employees under their self-insured health plan.”

Continue reading →