Monthly Archives: February 2009
White House grabs 2010 census power
FROM WND
GOP warns Democrats attempting unconstitutional vote manipulation
By Drew Zahn
In a move with major political implications for voting, districting and representation in future elections, the Obama administration has demanded oversight of the 2010 U.S. census.
The move has Republicans crying foul, alleging that transferring the power of census-taking from the Commerce Department, which normally oversees the U.S. Census Bureau, to the White House is an attempt to manipulate redistricting of congressional seats.
“This action appears to be motivated by politics, rather than the interests of our country,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement. “The United States Census should remain independent of politics; it should not be directed by political operatives working out of the White House.”
The Washington Post’s Mary Ann Akers reports a senior Republican aide telling her that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has no business overseeing the headcount that will shape the future of U.S. elections.
“With all of its political implications,” the aide reportedly said, “hijacking the census from the Commerce Department and letting it be run out of Rahm’s office is like putting PETA in charge of issuing hunting permits.”
Congressional Quarterly reports that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the top Republican on the House Government Reform Committee, said the proposed move may even be in violation of federal law.
“Any attempt by the Obama administration to circumvent the census process for their political benefit will be met with fierce opposition,” said Issa. “This ill-conceived proposal undermines a constitutionally obligated process that speaks to the very heart of our democracy.”
Bruce Chapman, director of the U.S. Census Bureau under President Reagan, explains the Republican objection and why the census is so important in his Discovery blog:
“Everyone knows that it is possible to organize a decennial census in a way that benefits one party or another politically,” Chapman writes. “One way to effectuate this otherwise unpalatable departure from the Census Bureau’s 200-year history of non-partisanship is to put the Bureau administratively under direction of the politicos in the White House. In reality, that would be a sure invitation to cook the books on the highly consequential count of Americans.”
Chapman also claims, “The only reason the White House would want to be involved is in figuring out how to add more voting power to certain states and groups within states.”
The decennial census, taken every 10 years, generates maps and numbers then used to draw congressional districts. Ideally the census director conducts the count in a non-partisan manner under the authority granted by U.S. code to the secretary of Commerce.
Congressional Quarterly, however, announced earlier this week that a senior White House official reported the director of the Census Bureau will now report directly to the White House and not the secretary of Commerce.
CQ later updated its report, stating that the White House “took a small step back from what the senior official told CQ” by announcing that the director of the Census Bureau would “work with the high-level officials rather than report directly to them.”
 Secretary of Commerce nominee, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. |
Several news outlets speculated that the White House power play was prompted by objections from minority group leaders over Obama’s nomination of Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., to be secretary of Commerce, the office responsible for the census. Many of the groups are concerned about how particularly Hispanics will be counted in the next census, since the numbers affect both redistricting and federal funding based on demographic changes over the past decade.
Several minority leaders have expressed dismay over Obama’s nomination of a Republican with a questionable track record on the census.
Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said in a statement, “Sen. Gregg’s record of previously voting to abolish the Commerce Department and his attempts to block President Bill Clinton’s efforts to secure adequate funding for the 2000 census raise troubling concerns.”
A National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials spokesman told Politico, “Secretary of Commerce-designate Judd Gregg’s record raises serious questions about his willingness to ensure that the 2010 census produces the most accurate possible count of the nation’s population.”
An editorial in the Hispanic newspaper La Opinion went further, emphasizing a fear that Gregg may not place a high enough priority on getting an accurate count.
“We cannot afford this risk,” the paper opined.
At a White House briefing, however, spokesman Robert Gibbs denied that the change was linked to worries over Gregg’s nomination.
MSNBC reports a White House spokesman further arguing that Obama’s action actually has historical precedent.
“From the first days of the transition the census has been a priority for the president, and a process he wanted to reevaluate,” the spokesman reportedly said. “There is historic precedent for the director of the census, who works for the Commerce Secretary and the president, to work closely with White House senior management – given the number of decisions that will have to be put before the president. We plan to return to that model in this administration.”
Former Census Bureau Chief Chapman, however, disagrees.
“Simply put, there is no excuse for this idea,” Chapman writes. “It is not true that the Census Bureau has ever been under the direct management of the White House, and for good reason. Even if angels were in charge of the executive mansion, if the nation’s premier statistical agency were placed under White House direction, the danger to public trust would be enormous. The Decennial count is one of the few federal functions specifically described in the Constitution itself and must be operated above suspicion of politics.”
Chapman added, “Power flows from an accurate census count. Everyone involved for years has seen the count therefore as a sacred trust. It must not be polluted with even a semblance of presidential meddling.”
School interrogates, rejects parents’ religion
FROM WND
Subjects mom, dad to ‘sincerity test’ after filing vaccination exemption
By Drew Zahn
 Rita Palma and her children |
A mother and father in New York were subjected by their school district’s attorney to a faith “sincerity test,” which ultimately ruled their beliefs were too questionable to qualify for a religious exemption to mandatory student immunization.
Ron and Rita Palma filed the exemption with their son’s school district in 2006 after coming to the conclusion the year before that the required vaccinations violated their conscience and sense of God’s leading for their family.
Rather than accept the standard exemption form, however, the Bayport-Blue Point Union Free School District demanded the couple meet with school attorney David Cohen. The Palmas have twice been compelled to sit down with Cohen to be interrogated about their faith and their convictions about vaccines.
“If you believe God is on your side,” Cohen asked in the most recent of the two interviews, conducted last fall, “does that mean he’s not on the side of someone who believes in immunization?”
“Do you have conversations with God? Has God told you not to immunize?” the attorney asked. “Explain it to me.”
Cohen described to the Palmas’ attorney that the purpose of the interview was two-fold: to determine whether the Palmas’ beliefs are actually religious, as opposed to philosophical or political; and to determine whether the beliefs are “sincerely and genuinely held.”
Rita Palma told WND that being compelled to defend her faith before an attorney and answer questions about her family’s lifestyle, diet, medicinal choices and personal convictions was “unbelievably invasive.”
“It’s almost beyond words what we were put through,” Palma said. “It’s such an abusive power, it’s so arrogant that ‘outrageous’ doesn’t even label it correctly. It’s something you can’t even imagine that somebody would take it upon themselves to do – to judge the sincerity of your belief.
“Particularly in a school district,” Palma said, “taking it upon themselves to judge your relationship with God? Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
Not only were the Palmas grilled, however, their attempts to file religious exemptions were also ultimately denied.
Following both interviews, the first in 2006 and the last in 2008, the school district deemed the Palmas’ beliefs were not sincerely held.
“This determination,” wrote the school in 2006, “was made based upon your meeting with the school attorney and information which we received, which significantly calls into question your stated beliefs.”
Rita Palma explained to WND that her choice not to immunize her children was a decision of conscience and of following God’s leading. In the interview with the lawyer, Palma further explained that she sees a distinction between medicine as a healing for sickness and vaccines, which she described as injecting a sickness as step toward heath. The latter, she insisted, violates her understanding of trust in God and his design for the body.
The school district’s denial, however, cited a medical test Palma gave her son as evidence that her beliefs are too inconsistent to be sincerely and genuinely held.
The district’s second denial, in 2008, further criticized the Palmas, a self-described Catholic family, for misquoting the Bible and claimed that if their objection was truly a matter of religious conviction, they could have sought something other than public school for their son.
The Palmas appealed the original denial to the state’s commissioner of public education, only to be denied again.
Now, with the help of New York State Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, the Palmas are working to prevent other parents from enduring the same interrogation or contra-conscience mandatory immunization of their children.
Gottfried, chair of the state Assembly’s health committee, has sponsored New York bill A00883, which amends state law to ban “sincerity tests” and states, “The current common practice of government agencies scrutinizing and judging a parent’s religious beliefs is inappropriate in a democracy that values the First Amendment.
“There could be concern that some parents might falsely claim a religious exemption,” the bill continues. “But it is greatly outweighed by the burden that the intrusive, prolonged inquiry imposes on bona fide objectors forced to defend their religious beliefs.”
WND contacted the offices of attorney David Cohen for response or comment but received no reply.
Fed borrowing could reach $4 trillion
FROM WND
Welfare spending, unemployment balloon deficit
By Jerome R. Corsi
 U.S. Treasury |
NEW YORK – The federal government will have to issue record levels of debt in the next two years – up to $2.5 trillion in 2009 and as much as $4 trillion in 2010.
The record federal debt financing is required to fund the social welfare programs called for in the Obama administration’s nearly $1 trillion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan and to overcome a likely shortfall due to falling tax revenues, according to BustedBudget.com, a website dedicated to “tracking the government’s shameful overspending one painful day at a time.”
BustedBudget.com noted that factors leading to the increased federal government borrowing needs include the cost of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, amounting to approximately $700 billion, plus the nearly $1 trillion in deficit-spending that will be required to fund the proposed stimulus package.
Another contributing factor forcing the Treasury to plan for an unprecedented amount of federal borrowing this year is the unanticipated unemployment resulting from the economic downturn, with the resulting drop in employment tax revenues to the U.S. Treasury.
A total of 3.6 million jobs have been lost since the recession officially started in December 2007, according to U.S. Labor Department reports cited in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
The Wall Street Journal also reported the U.S. unemployment rate for January is expected to grow to 7.5 percent, the highest since 1993, as 525,000 jobs were lost last month, up from the 524,000 shed in December.
The possibility that the U.S. Treasury will be forced to raise as much as $4 trillion in debt in 2010 just to finance the federal budget deficit raises the question of how long the Obama administration can continue to increase social welfare spending unless millions of new jobs are created as a result.
Given the Labor Department’s estimates, the Obama administration will have to create over 3 million new jobs, just to replace the job losses that have occurred since December 2007.
According to the minutes of the U.S. Treasury’s Borrowing Advisory Committee, or TBAC, a key advisory committee to the Treasury Department, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets Karthik Ramanathan said estimates for Treasury borrowing needs range between $1.5 trillion and $2.5 trillion in the current fiscal year.
The TBAC warned that federal borrowing in fiscal year 2010 could reach levels as high $4 trillion. The U.S. government defines fiscal year 2009 as Oct. 1, 2008 through Sept. 30, 2009.
Whatever the deficit is this year, the Obama administration will be forced to have the U.S. Treasury sell Treasury bills and notes in that amount.
The Treasury debt will be sold largely to foreigners, predominately in China and Japan, the two biggest foreign buyers of U.S. Treasury debt.
New ‘Fairness Doctrine’ threatens Christian radio
FROM WND
Would Gospel need to be ‘balanced’ with Islamic, atheist programming?
 |
| Frank Wright |
WASHINGTON – As the National Religious Broadcasters convened today in Nashville, an ominous shroud cast by political chatter about the reimposition of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” in the nation’s capital hung over the gathering.
NRB President Frank Wright said he sees the move as a credible threat under a Democrat-dominated Congress and with President Obama in the White House.
“And we have a personal concern,” Wright told Broadcasting & Cable. “The only radio station that ever lost its license under the fairness doctrine regime was a Christian radio station in Red Lion, Pa. We are only responding now to the statements the Democrats themselves are making.”
Representing 1,400 organizations, including large ministries and TV and radio stations, NRB said it is “girding itself for a major battle over broadcasting freedoms,” and was prepared to go to court, lobby Congress, or take its message to the public.
“We have talked before about many of these issues, but now, with the shift in the political landscape, I think these same things have a much higher probability of being enacted or at least having legislation and hearings and debates, and on the regulation side at the FCC,” said Wright.
He said the new political climate doesn’t just threaten broadcasters, but even churches that have no broadcast outlet.
“The fairness doctrine has a tremendous potential for constraining free speech, but hate crimes (legislation) has the potential of criminalizing it,” he said. “In the short run, the fairness doctrine has the immediate threat of being applied to Christian broadcasters and to the church in a very deleterious way. Hate crimes legislation, if that is enacted, will evolve over time and bleed over into speech and have a negative effect, but not right away. The fairness doctrine will have a negative impact the day it is implemented.”
He said he expects religious broadcasters, largely Christian, to be particularly hard hit because of the doctrine’s requirement for so-called “balance.” If an opposing view must be found for every matter of controversy, Christian broadcasters could find themselves in the unenviable and untenable position of seeking out other religious viewpoints – Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist – to counter what ministers of the Gospel say on the air.
“I have had a number of conversations with NRB members who operated under the old ‘Fairness Doctrine’ regime,” he said. “What happens is there is a chilling of free speech because the license-holder tends to take off the air the programmer whose content is deemed to be controversial.”
This weekend’s meeting will offer up ideas about fighting back the prospects of government-controlled speech on the airwaves.
“I don’t want to tip our hands on strategy except to say that if the approach taken by the administration is an FCC approach, we believe we can bring enough pressure to bear on the commission at the point of enactment to bring enough heat to get them to see the light, so to speak,” he said. “I don’t think we can stop it in the House or Senate.”
Just last week another Democratic U.S. senator went on record as supporting the reinstatement of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” adding, “I feel like that’s gonna happen.”
 |
| Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. |
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., told radio host and WND columnist Bill Press \ when asked about whether it was time to bring back the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”: “I think it’s absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it’s called the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else – I absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves. I mean, our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency. You know, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And, I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.”
Stabenow’s husband, Tom Athans, was executive vice president of the left-leaning talk radio network Air America. He left the network in 2006, when it filed for bankruptcy, and co-founded the TalkUSA Radio Network.
Asked by Press if she could be counted on to push for hearings in the Senate this year “to bring these (radio station) owners in and hold them accountable,” Stabenow replied: “I have already had some discussions with colleagues and, you know, I feel like that’s gonna happen. Yep.”
Meanwhile, as WND has previously reported, other Democratic legislators have tried to claim talk about a reintroduction of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” is merely conspiracy-mongering by right-wing talk radio and its partisan cheerleaders.
But other Democrats in the Senate and House – and even a few Republicans – have made no secret of their support for such legislation.
“For many, many years, we operated under a Fairness Doctrine in this country,” Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., told Albuquerque radio station KKOB last year. “I think the country was well-served. I think the public discussion was at a higher level and more intelligent in those days than it has become since.”
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told WYNC’s Bryan Lehrer Show in 2007, “I think the Fairness Doctrine ought to be there and I also think equal time doctrine ought to come back.”
In June of last year, John Gizzi reported in Human Events a conversation with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in which he asked her if she personally supported revival of the “Fairness Doctrine.”
“Yes,” Pelosi answered.
And as recently as December, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. – who serves on the Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee – told the Palo Alto Daily Post she still believes in the “Fairness Doctrine” and will work on bringing it back.
“It should and will affect everyone,” Eshoo pledged.
Meanwhile, President Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told Broadcasting & Cable during the presidential election campaign, “Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters. He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible.”
But the debate heated up again recently when Obama singled out Rush Limbaugh, the king of talk radio, for criticism: “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.”
As WND reported, the Democratic National Congressional Committee also launched a petition to reprimand Limbaugh directly for his criticism of Obama.
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Bush appointee whose term runs through June, however, warned that Democrats may be adopting a stealthier approach to shutting down conservatives on talk radio.
In a speech to the Media Institute in Washington, Multichannel News reports, McDowell suggested there are efforts to implement the controversial policy without using the red-flagged “Fairness Doctrine” label.
“That’s just Marketing 101,” McDowell explained. “If your brand is controversial, make it a new brand.”
Instead, McDowell alleged, Democrats will try to disguise their efforts in the name of localism, diversity or network neutrality.
McDowell further suggested that the FCC may already be gearing up to enforce the “Fairness Doctrine” through community advisory boards that help determine local programming. While radio stations use the boards on a voluntary basis now, McDowell warned if the advisory panels become mandatory, “Would not such a policy be akin to a re-imposition of the Doctrine, albeit under a different name and sales pitch?”
And while Republicans’ prediction of “Fairness Doctrine” legislation remains unfulfilled and highly speculative, a WND investigation has revealed that McDowell and Walden aren’t just fear-mongering, as some have suggested. A think tank headed by John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama’s transition team, mapped out a strategy in 2007 for clamping down on talk radio using language that has since been parroted by both the Obama campaign and the new administration’s White House website.
In June of 2007, Podesta’s Center for American Progress released a report titled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio,” detailing the conservative viewpoint’s dominance on the airwaves and proposing steps for leveling the playing field.
“Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system,” the report reads, “particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management.”
The report then demonstrates how radio stations owned locally, or operated by female and minority owners, are statistically more likely to carry liberal political talk shows.
Therefore, the report concludes, the answer to getting equal time for “progressives” lies in mandating “localism” and “diversity” without ever needing to mention the “Fairness Doctrine.”
To accomplish the strategy, the report recommends legislating local and national caps on ownership of commercial radio stations and demanding radio stations regularly prove to the FCC that they are “operating on behalf of the public interest” to maintain their broadcasting license.
And if stations are unwilling to abide by the FCC’s new regulatory standards, the report recommends, they should pay spectrum-use fees directly to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting “with clear mandates to support local news and public affairs programming and to cover controversial and political issues in a fair and balanced manner.”
In this way, the report concludes, between $100 million and $250 million could be raised for public radio, which will be compelled to broadcast via the old standards established by the “Fairness Doctrine.”
Since the report’s release in 2007, the Obama camp has twice gone on record advocating positions identical to Podesta’s think tank.
Last summer, in denying the presidential candidate’s support of the “Fairness Doctrine,” Obama’s press secretary said, “Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets.”
Further, the White House website lists on its technology agenda page that the president plans to “encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum.”
The president’s position and proposals match the language of his transition co-chair’s think tank report almost word-for-word.
Communist: Obama working to nationalize U.S. economy
FROM WND
Claims ‘people advocate president’ pushing through radical agenda
By Aaron Klein
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
 Communist Party USA leader Sam Webb |
President Obama is “considering” a radical agenda to nationalize the U.S. financial system, the Federal Reserve Bank, and private industries such as energy and other sectors whose future is “problematic” in private hands, claims the leader of the Communist Party USA.
In a major speech focused on Obama titled “Off and running: Opportunity of a lifetime,” CPUSA leader Sam Webb also alleges Obama’s administration is considering turning education, childcare, and health care into “no profit zones;” rerouting investment capital from military infrastructure to “green economy” projects and public infrastructure; and waging a “full scale” assault on global warming.
“We now have not simply a friend, but a people’s advocate in the White House,” declared Webb at a recent speech in Ohio for People’s Weekly World Communist newspaper.
“An era of progressive change is within reach, no longer an idle dream. Just look at the new lay of the land: a friend of labor and its allies sits in the White House,” Webb proclaimed.
He stated Obama and the “broad coalition that supports him will almost inevitably have to consider – and they already are – the following measures:
- Public ownership of the financial system and the elimination of the shadow banking system and exotic derivatives.
- Public control of the Federal Reserve Bank.
- Counter-crisis spending of a bigger size and scope to invigorate and sustain a full recovery and meet human needs – something that the New Deal never accomplished.
- Strengthening of union rights in order to rebalance the power between labor and capital in the economic and political arenas.
- Trade agreements that have at their core the protection and advancement of international working class interests.
- Equality in conditions of life for racially minorities and women.
- Democratic public takeover of the energy complex as well as a readiness to consider the takeover of other basic industries whose future is problematic in private hands.
- Turning education, child care, and health care into “no profit” zones.
- Rerouting investment capital from unproductive investment (military, finance and so forth) to productive investment in a green economy and public infrastructure.
- Changing direction of our nation’s foreign policy toward cooperation, disarmament, and diplomacy. We can’t have threats, guns and military occupations on the one hand and butter, democracy, goodwill, and peace on the other.
- Full scale assault on global warming.
- Serious and sustained commitment to assisting the developing countries that are locked in poverty and misery.”
Webb lauded Obama’s $800-plus billion so-called stimulus package as “a good bill that will ease the pain of this crisis, create jobs, and begin to reflate the economy.”
He explained labor unions, which he said were instrumental in Obama’s election, must work to keep the White House in check by “exercis[ing] an enormous influence on the political process. Never before has a coalition with such breadth walked on the political stage of our country,” he said.
Indeed, in an article just after last November’s election titled, “Special Interest or Class Consciousness? How Labor Put Obama in the White House,” Political Affairs reported on polling data released that revealed the extent of union support for Obama.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, sponsored a poll showing union members supported Obama by a 68-30 margin and strongly influenced their family members.
According to the survey, Obama won among white men who are union members by 18 points. Union gun-owners backed Obama by 12 points, while union veterans voted for Obama by a 25-point margin. In the general population, Obama lost these groups by significant margins.
Bill forces shots on all children
Feb 19
Posted by Chris Thomas
FROM WND
Homeschoolers fight state legislation that criminalizes parents who object
By Ron Strom
West Virginia homeschooling families and others were scheduled to stage two rallies today to protest a proposed bill that would require every child in the state to have a record of compulsory immunizations.
The legislation, Senate Bill 439, stipulates “any parent or guardian who refuses to permit his or her child to be immunized” would face a criminal charge.
The rallies, sponsored by West Virginians for Vaccination Exemption, were scheduled to take place at the state Capitol in Charleston and outside the Marion County Courthouse in Fairmont.
“If passed, this bill will turn all West Virginian parents who choose not to vaccinate for religious reasons into criminals or force them to move to another state,” Helen Tucker, co-founder of WVVE and state chair of the Libertarian Party of West Virginia, said in a statement.
Unlike 48 other states, West Virginia currently does not have a provision for a religious or philosophical exemption. However, families can assert they have sufficient medical reason for not immunizing a child, which works, in effect, like an exemption. The new bill would do away with that right.
The legislation, which is sponsored by Sen. Joseph M. Minard and Sen. Roman Prezioso, both Democrats, also adds hepatitis B and chickenpox vaccines to the list of mandatory shots. WVVE says the chickenpox vaccine is manufactured with human cell cultures obtained from abortions and is objectionable to many parents for religious reasons.
Reads the bill, in part: “The state has a compelling interest in protecting the health of all citizens of this state, especially our children. With vaccines widely available to reduce or prevent the incidence of disease, the state bureau for public health has determined that the point of school entry is the best time to confirm each child’s record of compulsory immunization from the diseases enumerated in subsection (c) of this section.”
The bill establishes a fine of between $100 and $500 for any parent who refuses to show the state a valid immunization record for his or her child.
WVVE is demanding the bill be amended to:
The Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, is also involved in the protest of the bill.
Commented Euteneuer in a statement: “Along with Mississippi, West Virginia is the only state to forbid religious vaccine exemptions. This bill goes even further by prohibiting physicians from granting medical exemptions according to what they believe is best for each patient. Senate Bill 439 would also make West Virginia the only state to force homeschoolers to be immunized.
“It is deplorable that the West Virginia department of health is attempting to mandate these vaccines without an exemption,” said the minister. “State officials have a moral and legal responsibility to uphold parents’ constitutional right to make an informed decision about the medical care their children receive. They’re taking the fruit of the poison tree and making us eat it.”
The Homeschool Legal Defense Association, or HSLDA, opposes the legislation.
Scott Woodruff, an attorney with the organization, explained the bill leaves families with religious or philosophical objections to vaccinations no recourse.
If the bill passes, Woodruff told WND, “There would be no way a family with religious exemptions could defend itself. They would have no way of winning an argument in front of a judge.”
Continued Woodruff, “We are going to communicate to our members that this bill strips parents of important rights.” He says HSLDA will e-mail its members in West Virginia informing them of the proposal.
“This bill would take away a very important right to direct the health care of children,” Woodruff said. “Fundamentally, it’s the parents who should direct the health care of their own children, not the government.”
Woodruff mentioned data from the Centers for Disease Control indicate an exemption from vaccines does not cause a higher occurrence of diseases.
“In areas of preventing disease, we have to give parents wide discretion,” he said.
A second reading of the bill in the state Senate is scheduled for tomorrow. A final vote could occur as early as Thursday.
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