What Was I Saying About Don't Place Your Bets on Brett?

Although this website is viewed by relatively few people, one of the reasons I continue to write commentaries on the farce of naturalism is to leave behind a permanent record of these analyses. So many Catholics get so agitated by the distractions offered by the false opposites of naturalism that they become “rooters,” if you will, for the supposed “good guys” against the “bad guys” without realizing, of course, that a belief that the pursuit of the common temporal good can be undertaken without regard for man’s eternal welfare always winds up badly for one’s country.

To wit, many Catholics breathed a collective sigh of relief after Brett Michael Kavanaugh was confirmed by a vote of 50-48 in the United States Senate on Saturday, October 6, 2018, the Feast of Saint Bruno. After all, there had been a gargantuan effort on the part of the partisans of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” to smear Judge Kavanaugh with baseless accusations while subjecting him to a demeaning line of questioning. Wasn’t there cause for celebration when the “bad guys” lost?

Not that anyone paid much attention, I did write the following five months ago in Don't Place Your Bets on Brett: 

My own first reaction upon reading the news of Brett Michael Kavanaugh’s nomination was, “Great. Trump has nominated a somewhat more "conservative" version Anthony McLeod Kennedy to replace Anthony McLeod Kennedy. Wonderful.” Obviously, this was sarcasm on the part of a displaced New Yorker. The point, however, is this: Brett Michael Kavanaugh has been part of the Washington, District of Columbia, establishment since his birth on February 12, 1965. 

All right. Sure, Brett Michael Kavanaugh was raised in Bethesda, Maryland, but that is part of the District of Columbia metropolitan area, which is why it is in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Kavanaugh has spent his entire life influenced by powerful establishment Republicans. One of the last things that the Supreme Court of the United States of America needs is another establishment Republican and another product of an Ivy League university, and the very last thing that the high court needs is yet another cut his political and legal eye-teeth in the administration of the statist “conservative” named George Walker Bush.

Those who believe that Brett Michael Kavanaugh would vote to overturn the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, may find themselves surprised to find a jurist in the mode of both Chief Justice John Glover Roberts, who was appointed by Dubya in 2005, and of the man he has been nominated to replace, Anthony McLeod Kennedy.

It was in his current capacity as a judge on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Kavanaugh wrote a dissenting opinion in the case of Priests for Life v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, May 15, 2015, that, while reaching the correct result, included the conviction that the government of the United States of America had a “compelling interest” in assuring that insurance companies provide coverage for contraceptives, which, of course, are evil of their very nature:

First, under Hobby Lobby, the regulations substantially burden the religious organizations’ exercise of religion because the regulations require the organizations to take an action contrary to their sincere religious beliefs (submitting the form) or else pay significant monetary penalties. Second, that said, Hobby Lobby strongly suggests that the Government has a compelling interest in facilitating access to contraception for the employees of these religious organizations.

Third, this case therefore comes down to the least restrictive means question. Under Hobby Lobby, Wheaton College, and Little Sisters of the Poor, requiring the religious organizations to submit this form is not the Government’s least restrictive means of furthering its interest in facilitating access to contraception for the organizations’ employees. Rather, the Government can achieve its interest even if it accepts the less restrictive notice that the Supreme Court has already relied on in the Wheaton College and Little Sisters of the Poor cases. Unlike the form required by current federal regulations, the Wheaton College/Little Sisters of the Poor notice does not require a religious organization to identify or notify its insurer, and thus lessens the religious organization’s complicity in what it considers to be wrongful. And even with just the Wheaton College/Little Sisters of the Poor notice, the Government can independently determine the identity of the organization’s insurer and thereby ensure that the same insurer continues to provide the same contraceptive coverage to the organization’s employees. Hence, the Wheaton College/Little Sisters of the Poor notice is a less restrictive way for the Government to achieve its compelling interest. (Priests for Life, Inc., v. United States Department of Health and Human Services.)

No government of any kind or at any level has any kind of “compelling interest” to assure that women have access to contraceptives. Once one concedes that there such a “compelling interest” exists, however, then one becomes trapped in a never-ending series of legal sophisms to “balance” “religious liberty” claims against the nonexistent “right” of women to frustrate the natural end for which God has given to rational beings the generative powers. Additionally, to call to mind the words of the late Father Paul Marx, O.S.B., the founder of Human Life International, most contraceptives abort, and most contraceptives abort most of the time.

The “conservative” creature of Washington, District of Columbia, Brett Michael Kavanaugh, thus used a tortured line of sophistic reasoning to reach a conclusion about a matter that is beyond the power of human beings to decide. However, he is far from alone in this as the associate justice who wrote the Court’s decision in the case of Hobby Lobby, Samuel Alito, used the exact same legal “reasoning” in the combined cases of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Connestoga Wood Specialities v Burwell, June 30, 2014. . . .

Similarly, it is my prediction that Brett Michael Kavanaugh, who will be confirmed as Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s successor by the United States Senate no matter the protestations and riots of the adherents, might use a similar line of sophistic reasoning with respect to Roe v. Wade by deferring to the “will of the people” as expressed in those states whose legislatures have enacted “trigger laws” to keep the killing of the innocent preborn in place even if Roe v. Wade itself is overturned. That is, Kavanaugh is capable of contending, I believe, that the matter of the inviolability of innocent human life belongs to the “people,” not to what Scalia had referred to three years ago as “an unelected committee of nine.”

Now, it is important to note as a matter of complete intellectual honesty that it is very clear that Brett Michael Kavanaugh believes that Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973, was decided wrongly. Indeed, he praised the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist who, as an associate justice, was only one of two Supreme Court justices to vote against the decision in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, in a speech he gave at the American Enterprise Institute on September 18, 2017:

Fourth, the Court’s power to recognize unenumerated rights. A few months after he joined the Court in 1972, Justice Rehnquist faced an oral argument about the constitutionality of a state law prohibiting abortion in the case of Roe vs. Wade. Rehnquist, along with Justice Byron White, ultimately dissented from the Court’s seven-two holding recognizing a constitutional right to abortion.

Rehnquist’s dissenting opinion did not suggest that the Constitution protected no rights other than those enumerated in the text of the Bill of Rights. But he stated that under the Court’s precedents, any such unenumerated right had to be rooted in the traditions in conscience of our people. Given the prevalence of abortion regulations both historically and at the time, Rehnquist said he could not reach such a conclusion about abortion. He explained that a law prohibiting an abortion, even where the mother’s life was in jeopardy, would violate the Constitution, but otherwise he stated the states had the power to legislate with regard to this matter. (Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh Speech at American Enterprise Institute, September 18, 2017.)

A law prohibiting the direct taking of innocent human life in his mother’s womb when it is alleged that the mother’s life is “endangered” would violate the Constitution?

Neither the late William Hubbs Rehnquist, a Lutheran who was buried in a Lutheran service held at Saint Matthew’s Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Washington, District of Columbia, on September 7, 2005, did not understand nor does his fervent admirer, Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh, accept the fact that it is the duty of the civil law to protect every innocent human life from all acts of direct, intentional killing regardless of the circumstances. Unconstitutional? Preposterous.

As I noted in Confirmations of a Different Sort, it is my belief that the apostle of precedent, John Glover Roberts, would vote to sustain the high court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, but it would not be surprising if he came to the opposite decision by making recourse to the “popular sovereignty” argument he advanced in Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, the Feast of Saints John and Paul. In other words, given the fact that the “conscience” of “the people” has changed, an Associate Justice Brett Michael Kavanaugh would rule that the “people” in the states have the “right” to decide matters pertaining to the inviolability of innocent human life over which they have no legitimate authority.

This having been noted, it must be remembered that Brett Michael Kavanaugh also used specious reasoning in the case of Garza v. Hargan, October 20, 2017, that involved an illegal immigrant who had sought to kill her preborn baby.

Kavanaugh, who issued a per curiam (for the court) order, ruled that an illegal immigrant of minor age had a “constitutional right” to kill her baby, stipulating only that it is not unreasonable for the petitioner in this case for the government to require said minor to find a sponsor or to return to her own country according to the controlling regulations of the United States Department of Health and Human Services:

The Government argues that, pursuant to standard HHS policy, a sponsor may be secured for a minor unlawful immigrant in HHS custody, including for a minor who is seeking an abortion.    The Government argues that this process by which a minor is released from HHS custody to a sponsor does not unduly burden the minor’s right under Supreme Court precedent to an abortion.    We agree, so long as the process of securing a sponsor to whom the minor is released occurs expeditiously. Cf. Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 899 (1992); Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 497 U.S. 502, 513 (1990).   

The District Court is directed to allow HHS until Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time for a sponsor to be secured for J.D. and for J.D. [Jane Doe] to be released to the sponsor.  If a sponsor is secured and J.D. is released from HHS custody to the sponsor, HHS agrees that J.D. then will be lawfully able, if she chooses, to obtain an abortion on her own pursuant to the relevant state law. If a sponsor is not secured and J.D. is not released to the sponsor by that time, the District Court may re-enter a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, or other appropriate order, and the Government or J.D. may, if they choose, immediately appeal.  We note that the Government has assumed, for purposes of this case, that J.D. Ban unlawful immigrant who apparently was detained shortly after unlawfully crossing the border into the United States possesses a constitutional right to obtain an abortion in the United States. (Order Issued by Judge Kavanaugh in Garza v. Hargan)

Although Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh has been lauded by neoconservatives for “faithfully applying the law,” laws and judicial decisions that are unjust are no laws at all. They must never be obeyed or “faithfully applied.”

It is especially wrong for a Catholic jurist to permit himself to live in a vacuum of “moral neutrality” whereby he can be said to wash his hands in a figurative sense of the shedding of innocent blood by taking shelter in his “obligations” to “follow the law.”

Defenders of Kavanaugh’s ruling contend that the newly nominated man to replace Anthony McLeod Kennedy on the Supreme Court of the United States of America was trying to apply existing Federal regulations to make it possible for Jane Doe to thoughtfully reconsider what he called a “momentous life decision” in his dissenting opinion after the full District of Columbia Circuit Court Appeals met on October 24, 2017, to overturn his initial ruling of October 20, 2017:

Today’s majority decision, by contrast, “substantially” adopts the panel dissent and is ultimately based on a constitutional principle as novel as it is wrong: a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. Government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand, thereby barring any Government efforts to expeditiously transfer the minors to their immigration sponsors before they make that momentous life decision. The majority’s decision represents a radical extension of the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence. It is in line with dissents over the years by Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun, not with the many majority opinions of the Supreme Court that have repeatedly upheld reasonable regulations that do not impose an undue burden on the abortion right recognized by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. . . .

But if transfer does not work, given existing Supreme Court precedent and the position the Government has so far advanced in this litigation, it could turn out that the Government will be required by existing Supreme Court precedent to allow the abortion, even though the minor at that point would still be residing in a U.S. Government detention facility.  If so, the Government would be in a similar position as it is in with adult women prisoners in federal prison and with adult women unlawful immigrants in U.S.  Government custody.  The U.S. Government allows women in those circumstances to obtain an abortion.  In any event, we can immediately consider any additional arguments from the Government if and when transfer to a sponsor is unsuccessful.  In sum, under the Government’s arguments in this case and the Supreme Court’s precedents, the unlawful immigrant minor is assumed to have a right under precedent to an abortion; the Government may seek to expeditiously transfer the minor to a sponsor  before  the  abortion  occurs;  and  if  no  sponsor  is expeditiously  located,  then  it  could  turn  out  that  the Government  will  be  required  by  existing  Supreme  Court precedent to allow the abortion, depending on what arguments the Government can make at that point.  These rules resulting from the panel order are consistent with and dictated by Supreme Court precedent. (Full United States Circuit Court of Appeals overturning of Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh's original order in the case of Garza v. Hargan.)

In other words, Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh wrote in his dissenting opinion in the case of Garza v. Hargan as decided en banc by the full United States Circuit of Appeals for the District of Columbia on October 24, 2017, that he accepts the “state of law” concerning the “right” of an illegal immigrant woman to kill her baby under the cover of the civil law, believing only that such a woman is not entitled to kill her baby immediately upon making her “momentous life decision” to do so.

This is pure poppycock and sophistry.

Catholics have a duty before God to be faithful to His truth in all circumstances, and to concede that a civil law sanctioning the killing of an innocent human being, whether immediately or after a period of time, is valid and applicable is morally repugnant. This is the sort of false, positivistic “reasoning” that seeks to limit the killing of innocent babies without challenging the basic false premise that babies can be killed under the cover of the civil law.

As the saying goes these days, I “doubled down” on this line of reasoning two months ago after Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the United States Senate:

The battle over the confirmation of Associate Justice Brett Michael Kavanaugh has been all about using the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, as a smokescreen to raise funds and to garner votes. Only one jurist, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, is clearly in favor of reversing these decisions, a reversal that is never going to happen. As noted in Confirmations of a Different Sort, it is my considered judgment that Chief Justice John Glover Roberts will never cast a vote to overturn those decisions as he does not want to be known as the chief justice who did away with “women’s rights.” Roe v. Wade is as here to say as ObamaDeathCare, which is here to stay because John Glover Roberts did not want to undo the singular legislative achievement of the first black president, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro.

The telltale sign that Justice Brett Michael Kavanaugh is not any kind of threat to the established of chemical and surgical baby-killing in the United States of America is the fact that the pro-abortion, pro-sodomite Catholic named Susan Collins, the senior senator from the State of Maine, would never have supported Brett Michael Kavanaugh if he was such a threat. Indeed, Senator Collins’s speech on the floor of the United States Senate on Friday, October 5, 2018, the Feast of Saint Placidus and Companions, demonstrated that the analysis of Justice Kavanaugh’s legal opinions that was offered in Don't Place Your Bets on Brett was quite correct. Anthony McLeod Kennedy has been replaced by a slightly more “conservative” version of Anthony McLeod Kennedy.

Here are a few passages from Senator Collins’s floor address of three days ago:

Others I met with have expressed concerns that Justice Kennedy’s retirement threatens the right of same sex couples to marry. Yet, Judge Kavanaugh described the Obergefell decision, which legalized same gender marriages, as an important landmark precedent. He also cited Justice Kennedy’s recent Masterpiece Cakeshop opinion for the Court’s majority stating that: “The days of treating gay and lesbian Americans or gay and lesbian couples as second-class citizens who are inferior in dignity and worth are over in the Supreme Court.”  

Others have suggested that the judge holds extreme views on birth control. In one case, Judge Kavanaugh incurred the disfavor of both sides of the political spectrum for seeking to ensure the availability of contraceptive services for women while minimizing the involvement of employers with religious objections. Although his critics frequently overlook this point, Judge Kavanaugh’s dissent rejected arguments that the government did not have a compelling interest in facilitating access to contraception. In fact, he wrote that the Supreme Court precedent “strongly suggested” that there was a “compelling interest” in facilitating access to birth control. (Susan Collins' Speech Supporting the Confirmation of Brett Michael Kavanaugh to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Unied States of America.)

Interjection Number One:

This is entirely correct and is very similar to what I wrote three months ago in Don’t Place Your Bets on Brett:

No government of any kind or at any level has any kind of “compelling interest” to assure that women have access to contraceptives. Once one concedes that there such a “compelling interest” exists, however, then one becomes trapped in a never-ending series of legal sophisms to “balance” “religious liberty” claims against the nonexistent “right” of women to frustrate the natural end for which God has given to rational beings the generative powers. Additionally, to call to mind the words of the late Father Paul Marx, O.S.B., the founder of Human Life International, most contraceptives abort, and most contraceptives abort most of the time.

The “conservative” creature of Washington, District of Columbia, Brett Michael Kavanaugh, thus used a tortured line of sophistic reasoning to reach a conclusion about a matter that is beyond the power of human beings to decide.

All right, let us return to Susan Collins’s defense of Brett Michael Kavanaugh’s respect for precedent: 

There has also been considerable focus on the future of abortion rights based on the concern that Judge Kavanaugh would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade. Protecting this right is important to me. 

To my knowledge, Judge Kavanaugh is the first Supreme Court nominee to express the view that precedent is not merely a practice and tradition, but rooted in Article III of our Constitution itself. He believes that precedent “is not just a judicial policy … it is constitutionally dictated to pay attention and pay heed to rules of precedent.” In other words, precedent isn’t a goal or an aspiration; it is a constitutional tenet that has to be followed except in the most extraordinary circumstances. 

The judge further explained that precedent provides stability, predictability, reliance, and fairness. There are, of course, rare and extraordinary times where the Supreme Court would rightly overturn a precedent. The most famous example was when the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education overruled Plessy v. Ferguson, correcting a “grievously wrong” decision--to use the judge’s term--allowing racial inequality. But, someone who believes that the importance of precedent has been rooted in the Constitution would follow long-established precedent except in those rare circumstances where a decision is “grievously wrong” or “deeply inconsistent with the law.” Those are Judge Kavanaugh’s phrases. (Susan Collins' Speech Supporting the Confirmation of Brett Michael Kavanaugh to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Unied States of America.)

Interjection Number Two:

The decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton established a “precedent” that is at variance with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law and is thus worthy of nothing but contempt. No piece of legislation or judicial decision that sanctions the surgical slaughter of innocent preborn children has any binding effect on anyone.

Also, as one trained in constutional and administrative law, I should note that Susan Collins is wrong in her belief that the decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, May 17, 1954, was an explicit overturning of the wrongly-decided case of Plessy v. Ferguson, May 18, 1896, as the unanimous decision of the Court in Brown “rejected” the “psychological knowledge”  at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson. The injustice of segregation of the races under cover of the civil law did not end with the Brown case as it applied only to public schools, not to transportation, hotels and restaurants:

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (Text of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, May 17, 1954)

One can argue with the preponderance of sociological and psychological arguments in the Brown decision as what would become typical of the Supreme Court of the United States of America under the stewardship of the thirty-third degree Freemason, Earl Warren. However, it is an oversimplification to say that Brown v. Board of Education overturned the unjust “separate but equal” standard established in Plessy v. Ferguson as that decision, though it had a broader impact, to be sure, applied to public schooling alone. (States’ righters, please spare me your notes. No human legislature has any authority to use race as a means of unjust discriminatory treatment than it does to endorse any kind of baby-killing, whether chemical or surgical, or to declare that people of the same gender may get “married” with the blessing of the civil law.)

Sure, this a minor point to some. Nevertheless, exactitude is important. The word “overturned” was not used in the text of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Collins's use of the word "overturn" is true only in a colloquial sense and not in a legal sense as the decision in the Brown case had the effect of aiding a process to end segregation in all facilities. However, the ruling itself did not do so.

All right, back to Susan Collins’s explication of why she did not consider Brett Michael Kavanaugh a threat to Roe v. Wade: 

As Judge Kavanaugh asserted to me, a long-established precedent is not something to be trimmed, narrowed, discarded, or overlooked. Its roots in the Constitution give the concept of stare decisis greater weight such that precedent can’t be trimmed or narrowed simply because a judge might want to on a whim. In short, his views on honoring precedent would preclude attempts to do by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly. 

Noting that Roe v. Wade was decided 45 years ago, and reaffirmed 19 years later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, I asked Judge Kavanaugh whether the passage of time is relevant to following precedent. He said decisions become part of our legal framework with the passage of time and that honoring precedent is essential to maintaining public confidence. 

Our discussion then turned to the right of privacy, on which the Supreme Court relied in Griswold v. Connecticut, a case that struck down a law banning the use and sale of contraceptives. Griswold established the legal foundation that led to Roe eight years later. In describing Griswold as “settled law,” Judge Kavanaugh observed that it was the correct application of two famous cases from the 1920s, Meyer and Pierce, that are not seriously challenged by anyone today. Finally, in his testimony, he noted repeatedly that Roe had been upheld by Planned Parenthood v. Casey, describing it as “precedent on precedent.” When I asked him would it be sufficient to overturn a long-established precedent if five current justices believed it was wrongly decided, he emphatically said “no.” (Susan Collins' Speech Supporting the Confirmation of Brett Michael Kavanaugh to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Unied States of America.)

Interjection Number Three:

Griswold v. Connecticut, June 7, 1965, invented a judicial “right to privacy” out of whole cloth by claiming that the Bill of Rights contained “penumbras” or emendations that are hidden within in its text, sort of like the “find the squirrel” page of Highlights Magazine for Children. The invention, excuse me, the “discovery” of the theretofore unheard of “penumbras” that guaranteed a marital “right” to contraception was also similar to Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s “discovery” of an Heglian process by which the dogmatic statements of the past can become “obsolete in the particulars they contain” over the course of time. Thus, you see, it should not be encouraging to any Catholic that Brett Michael Kavanaugh accepts the finding in Griswold v. Connecticut as a precedent without question as it was the “discovery” of a “right to privacy” that led to the jurisprudential foundation, such as it was, in Roe v. Wade.

No one has a "right" to frustrate the natural end of human conjugal relations, and human institution has any authority from God to declare that such a "right" exists. As has been demonstrated numerous times on this site, including in Planned Barrenhood: Evil From Its Very Inceptions, contraception is at the root of the destablization of the family and thus the rise and institutionalization of welfare state. Contraception is a denial of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage and leads of its nature to the spread of carnal pleasure as the sole aim of human existence and thus the acceptance of every kind of degrading practice and perversion that have been championed as "human rights." 

A "right to privacy"?

Says who?

Not the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity.

We return now to the Susan Collins speech: 

Opponents frequently cite then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to nominate only judges who would overturn Roe. The Republican platform for all presidential campaigns has included this pledge since at least 1980. During this time, Republican presidents have appointed Justices O’Connor, Souter, and Kennedy to the Supreme Court. These are the very three justices—Republican president appointed justices—who authored the Casey decision, which reaffirmed Roe. Furthermore, pro-choice groups vigorously opposed each of these justices’ nominations. Incredibly, they even circulated buttons with the slogan “Stop Souter Or Women Will Die!” Just two years later, Justice Souter coauthored the Casey opinion, reaffirming a woman’s right to choose. Suffice it to say, prominent advocacy organizations have been wrong. (Susan Collins' Speech Supporting the Confirmation of Brett Michael Kavanaugh to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Unied States of America.)

Senator Susan Collins, who is a little more than a year my junior in age, made a point about the Supreme Court nominees of Republican presidents that I have made repeatedly dating back to he time that President Ronald Wilson Reagan nominated the pro-abortion Sandra Day O’Connor to replace Associate Justice Potter Stewart on the Supreme Court of the United States of America on July 7, 1981, something that won me few friends among “conservatives” at the time. The appendix below will remind readers that the pro-abortion positions of Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony McLeod Kennedy and David Souter were well known at the time of their nominations

Senator Collins believes that baby-killing is a “right.” 

She is wrong.

Nonetheless, though, Susan Collins made valid points, albeit for the wrong reasons, to demonstrate that Justice Brett Michael Kavanaugh is not a threat to Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade or Obergefell v. Hodges. She is not wrong about her conclusions. Indeed, she is quite correct. The mania about overturning or retaining Roe v. Wade is simply a sideshow.

Contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose mortal bodies are destined for the corruption of the grave do not “decide” anything about the binding precepts of the Divine Law and the Natural Law. There are no “decisions” to be made about contraception, surgical abortion and special “rights” for sodomites, only God’s Commandments to be obeyed.

The whole specter of overturning Roe v. Wade has been a political gambit used by Republicans and Democrats for over forty-five years. What little progress has been made in curbing the surgical execution of the innocent preborn has occurred at the state level, but most of what has been done there has come with the usual “hard cases exceptions,” which is how the whole business of “expanding” access to surgical baby-killing began in the early-1960s.

Why is this relevant now?

Well, as I believed would be the case and wrote well before and then immediately after Brett Michael Kavanaugh’s confirmation to succeed the pro-abortion, pro-perversity Associate Justice Anthony MacLeod Kennedy, the newly-minted Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh is taking the lead of Opus Dei’s own John Glover Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United State of America, by showing himself to be a “moderate” when it comes to any case involving Planned Barrenhood, which goes by the official name of Planned Parenthood.

What do I mean?

Well, it is was only yesterday, Monday, December 10, 2018, within the Octave of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Commemoration of Pope Saint Melchiades, that Kavanaugh and Roberts voted with Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to permit individual Medicaid recipients to sue state governments whose legislatures had sought to defund Planned Parenthood because of its illegal sale of the bodily organs of babies butchered in America’s abortuaries.

This is significant as Planned Parenthood’s legal strategy is to bleed state governments to death with expenses incurred to defend themselves against lawsuits brought, at least ostensibly, by individual Medicaid recipients, thereby forcing those governments to fund its bloody business despite those governments’ efforts to use their full discretionary powers to block such funding. Planned Parenthood, which has great experience in bloodletting, is trying to slice and dice any state government whose duly elected officials dare to question its hegemony over “family planning” and its full access to taxpayer dollars

The following new story provides the details:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear two cases arising from efforts by states to bar Planned Parenthood clinics from the Medicaid program, drawing a rebuke from the court’s three most conservative justices and opening a window onto the court’s internal dynamics.

It takes four votes to add a case to the court’s docket, but the cases attracted only three — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch. Neither of the court’s other conservatives — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh — proved willing to supply a fourth vote.

That split on the right side of the court is evidence that Chief Justice Roberts is trying to keep the court out of major controversies and that Justice Kavanaugh, who joined the court in October after a fierce confirmation battle, is, for now at least, following his lead.

In his dissent, Justice Thomas questioned his colleagues’ motives. They had voted to duck the cases, he wrote, for a bad reason.

“What explains the court’s refusal to do its job here?” Justice Thomas wrote. “I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood.’”

But, he said, the cases are not about abortion rights, but only about whether individuals may sue to challenge decisions by states to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood clinics.

Resolving the question presented here would not even affect Planned Parenthood’s ability to challenge the states’ decisions; it concerns only the rights of individual Medicaid patients to bring their own suits,” Justice Thomas wrote.

That issue warranted the court’s attention, Justice Thomas wrote.

“This question is important and recurring,” he wrote. “Around 70 million Americans are on Medicaid, and the question presented directly affects their rights. If the majority of the courts of appeals are correct, then Medicaid patients could sue when, for example, a state removes their doctor as a Medicaid provider or inadequately reimburses their provider.”

Though the general legal question of who may challenge funding decisions has no particular political implications, recent cases have involved efforts by state officials opposed to abortion to cut off payments to Planned Parenthood clinics.

In letting stand two decisions allowing patients to challenge state funding determinations, the Supreme Court effectively sided with Planned Parenthood.

In the cases the justices turned away on Monday, from Kansas and Louisiana, appeals courts acknowledged that states have broad power to decide which health care providers may supply services for the program. But that power has limits, the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, ruled in the case from Kansas, Andersen v. Planned Parenthood of Kansas, No. 17-1340.

“States may not terminate providers from their Medicaid program for any reason they see fit, especially when that reason is unrelated to the provider’s competence and the quality of the health care it provides,” Judge Gregory A. Phillips wrote for a divided three-judge panel.

Five of the six appeals courts that have considered the issue sided with the clinics. The exception is the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, which last year allowed Arkansas to withdraw Medicaid financing for Planned Parenthood. Disagreement among federal appeals courts often prompts Supreme Court review.

Lawyers for Kansas had urged the justices to resolve the dispute.

“More than 70 million people — one out of every five Americans — are enrolled in Medicaid,” they told the Supreme Court. “The 10th Circuit’s decision permits any one of them to challenge a termination decision of an individual provider in federal court.”

Planned Parenthood’s local affiliates responded that Congress had meant to allow suits from patients in addition to federal supervision. The groups added that there was no reason to fear a flood of litigation.

“It would be wrong to assume that Medicaid recipients — some of the poorest members of our society — are enthusiastic about the prospect of bringing lawsuits against states,” their brief said. “They would much prefer that states just follow the rules and allow them to obtain health care from qualified and willing providers.”

The Supreme Court also declined to hear a companion case from Louisiana, Gee v. Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast, No. 17-1492. (Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Case Involving States' Challenge to Planned Parenthood Funding Suits.)

The decision of the Court’s six-member majority to refuse to grant certiorari to the cases brought by the States of Kansas and Louisiana is hardly a procedural matter as John Glover Roberts once again led the way for the Supreme Court of the United States of America to shirk its constitutional duty to defend the rule of law without regard to political pressures. Roberts did this with ObamaDeathCare twice, once in 2012 and then again in 2015, and he has done it again now. The man is a total creature of the political establishment, and the fact that Brett Michael Kavanaugh has joined him shows that he, Kavanaugh, is indeed paying his own political debt to United States Senator Susan Collins, the pro-abortion and pro-perversity senior senator from the State of Maine, for making possible his confirmation. As a former professor and later colleague of mine from Saint John’s University was wont to say, “Ungood.” (Yes, there is no such word, which is why the professor used it. He may be using it yet at age seventy-seven.)

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas’s biting dissent speaks to the completely political nature of the Court majority’s refusal to take the cases brought before it yesterday. Although the full text is appended below, here is a relevant excerpt:

So what explains the Court’s refusal to do its job here? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named “Planned Parenthood.” That makes the Court’s decision particularly troubling, as the question presented has nothing to do with abortion. It is true that these particular cases arose after several States alleged that Planned Parenthood affiliates had, among other things, engaged in “the illegal sale of fetal organs” and “fraudulent billing practices,” and thus removed Planned Parenthood as a state Medicaid provider. Andersen, 882 F. 3d, at 1239, n. 2 (Bacharach, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). But these cases are not about abortion rights. They are about private rights of action under the Medicaid Act. Resolving the question presented here would not even affect Planned Parenthood’s ability to challenge the States’ decisions; it concerns only the rights of individual Medicaid patients to bring their own suits.

Some tenuous connection to a politically fraught issue does not justify abdicating our judicial duty. If anything, neutrally applying the law is all the more important when political issues are in the background. The Framers gave us lifetime tenure to promote “that independent spirit in the judges which must be essential to the faithful performance” of the courts’ role as “bulwarks of a limited Constitution,” unaffected by fleeting “mischiefs.” The Federalist No. 78, pp. 469–470 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton). We are not “to consult popularity,” but instead to rely on “nothing . . . but the Constitution and the laws.” Id., at 471.

We are responsible for the confusion among the lower courts, and it is our job to fix it. I respectfully dissent from the Court’s decision to deny certiorari. (Supreme Court Orders, December 10, 2018)

Remember, five of the seven justices who voted to permit baby-killing up to and including the day of birth in the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, were appointed by Presidents Dwight David Eisenhower (Associate Justices William Brennan and Potter Stewart) and Richard Milhous Nixon (Chief Justice Warren Burger and Associate Justices Harry Blackmun and Lewis Powell) and that each of the five member majority in the case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. William Casey, June 29, 1992, had been appointed by Republican presidents (John Paul Stevens, an appointee of President Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr./Leslie Lynch King, Jr. and Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony MacLeod Kennedy, appointees of President Ronald Wilson Reagan, and David Souter, an appointee of President George Herbert Walker Bush). This is yet again another cautionary tale for those who believe that Republican presidents will always give the country nominees who serve to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States of America to defend principles of true justice without bending to the political winds. 

Sure, Clarence Thomas, an appointee of President George Herbert Walker Bush, and Samuel Alito, who was appointed by President George Walker Bush, and Neil Gorsuch, who was appointed by President Donald John Trump, were appointe by Republican presidents. What good in the natural order of things is it, however, to have supposedly "conservative" presidents who boast about not having the same sort of litmus test about baby-killing that Democrat presidents must pledge to use in order to secure their political party's presidential nomination? Once again, good readers, this should demonstrate that Democrats are more committed to the promotion, protection and institutionalization of evil than Republicans are in seeking to eradicate evil by using the limited tools that a secular, religiously indifferentist, Protestant and Judeo-Masonic land of pluralism affords them. Democrats are consistent in the promotion of evil. Their false opposites, the Republicans, are inconsistent in almost every way imaginable. 

Well, as has been pointed out so endlessly on this site, this state of things is the logical result of what must happen to men and their nations in the absence of their due subordination to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law in all that pertains to the good of souls. Nope, I will never cease reminding you, good readers, that there can never be any true administration of justice nor any true pursuit of the common temporal good as long as men are indifferent—if not hostile to—the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by His Catholic Church, she who has the duty to discharge her Indirect Powers of teaching and exhorting before interposing herself with civil leaders to prevent the enactment of laws injurious to the rights of God and the good of souls.

Do not permit yourself to be agitated in the midst of the circumstances in which we live. These are the circumstances that God has appointed from all eternity for us—yes, one of us—to live. We must rely, therefore, on the graces that His Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, won for us during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, to continue to offer up our prayers and sacrifices, especially during this season of Advent, as we pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary with the confidence that, despite our own sins and unworthiness, we may be able to plant a few seeds for the glorious day when all men and all nations will exclaim:

Viva Cristo Rey!

Viva La Virgen de Guadaulpe!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Andrew the Apostle, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Pope Saint Damasus, pray for us.

Appendix

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas’s Dissent in the case of Gee v. Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast

JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE ALITO and JUSTICE GORSUCH join, dissenting from the denial of certiorari.

One of this Court’s primary functions is to resolve “important matter[s]” on which the courts of appeals are “in conflict.” Sup. Ct. Rule 10(a); e.g., Thompson v. Keohane, 516 U. S. 99, 106 (1995). This case and Andersen v. Planned Parenthood of Kan. and Mid-Missouri, No. 17–1340, present a conflict on a federal question with significant implications: whether Medicaid recipients have a private right of action to challenge a State’s determination of “qualified” Medicaid providers under 42 U. S. C. §1396a(a)(23) and Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983.

Five Circuits have held that Medicaid recipients have such a right, and one Circuit has held that they do not.* The last three Circuits to consider the question have themselves been divided.

This question is important and recurring. Around 70 million Americans are on Medicaid, and the question presented directly affects their rights. If the majority of the courts of appeals are correct, then Medicaid patients could sue when, for example, a State removes their doctor as a Medicaid provider or inadequately reimburses their provider. E.g., Bader v. Wernert, 178 F. Supp. 3d 703 (ND Ind. 2016); Women’s Hospital Foundation v. Townsend, 2008 WL 2743284 (MD La., July 10, 2008). Because of this Court’s inaction, patients in different States—even patients with the same providers—have different rights to challenge their State’s provider decisions.

The question presented also affects the rights of the States, many of which are amici requesting our guidance. Under the current majority rule, a State faces the threat of a federal lawsuit—and its attendant costs and fees— whenever it changes providers of medical products or services for its Medicaid recipients. E.g., Harris v. Olszewski, 442 F. 3d 456 (CA6 2006). Not only are the lawsuits themselves a financial burden on the States, but the looming potential for complex litigation inevitably will dissuade state officials from making decisions that they believe to be in the public interest. State officials are not even safe doing nothing, as the cause of action recognized by the majority rule may enable Medicaid recipients to challenge the failure to list particular providers, not just the removal of former providers. E.g., Kapable Kids Learning Center, Inc. v. Arkansas Dept. of Human Servs., 420 F. Supp. 2d 956 (ED Ark. 2005); Martin v. Taft, 222 F. Supp. 2d 940 (SD Ohio 2002). Moreover, allowing patients to bring these claims directly in federal court reduces the ability of States to manage Medicaid, as the suits give Medicaid providers “an end run around the administrative exhaustion requirements in [the] state’s statutory scheme.” 876 F. 3d 699, 702 (CA5 2017) (Elrod, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc).

Finally, the disagreement over §1396a(a)(23) implicates fundamental questions about the appropriate framework for determining when a cause of action is available under §1983—an important legal issue independently worthy of this Court’s attention. The division in the lower courts stems, at least in part, from this Court’s own lack of clarity on the issue. As one court observed, the disagreement “can be explained in part by an evolution in the law,” Does v. Gillespie, 867 F. 3d 1034, 1043 (CA8 2017)—a tactful way of saying that this Court made a mess of the issue. We have acknowledged as much, explaining that language in our early opinions could be “read to suggest that something less than an unambiguously conferred right” can give rise to a cause of action under §1983, and that “[t]his confusion has led some courts” astray. Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, 536 U. S. 273, 282–283 (2002). We have “[f]uel[ed] this uncertainty” by equivocating on whether the standards for implying private rights of action have any “bearing on the standards for discerning whether a statute creates rights enforceable by §1983.” Id., at 283. Courts are not even able to identify which of our decisions are “binding”; in Planned Parenthood of Kan. v. Andersen, 882 F. 3d 1205 (CA10 2018), the Court of Appeals applied a decision that this Court recently said had been “‘plainly repudiate[d].’” Id., at 1229, and n. 16 (quoting Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc., 575 U. S. ___, ___, n. (2015) (slip op., at 9, n.), in turn citing Wilder v. Virginia Hospital Assn., 496 U. S. 498 (1990)). One can hardly blame the Tenth Circuit for misunderstanding. We created this confusion. We should clear it up.

So what explains the Court’s refusal to do its job here? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named “Planned Parenthood.” That makes the Court’s decision particularly troubling, as the question presented has nothing to do with abortion. It is true that these particular cases arose after several States alleged that Planned Parenthood affiliates had, among other things, engaged in “the illegal sale of fetal organs” and “fraudulent billing practices,” and thus removed Planned Parenthood as a state Medicaid provider. Andersen, 882 F. 3d, at 1239, n. 2 (Bacharach, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). But these cases are not about abortion rights. They are about private rights of action under the Medicaid Act. Resolving the question presented here would not even affect Planned Parenthood’s ability to challenge the States’ decisions; it concerns only the rights of individual Medicaid patients to bring their own suits.

Some tenuous connection to a politically fraught issue does not justify abdicating our judicial duty. If anything, neutrally applying the law is all the more important when political issues are in the background. The Framers gave us lifetime tenure to promote “that independent spirit in the judges which must be essential to the faithful performance” of the courts’ role as “bulwarks of a limited Constitution,” unaffected by fleeting “mischiefs.” The Federalist No. 78, pp. 469–470 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton). We are not “to consult popularity,” but instead to rely on “nothing . . . but the Constitution and the laws.” Id., at 471.

We are responsible for the confusion among the lower courts, and it is our job to fix it. I respectfully dissent from the Court’s decision to deny certiorari. (https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/121018zor_f2ah.pdf.)