NCSEN: Hagan OKs judge who wants to extend govt reach into church operations | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Brant Clifton uses, in part, the words of others to stay vigilant on ObamaCare in his "bare knuckles" Conservative online publication known as The Daily Haymaker.

    Elections have consequences. In 1980, we put out Jimmy Carter, elected Ronald Reagan, and got tax cuts and unprecedented economic growth. In 2008, North Carolina voted for Barack Obama and replaced Republican senator Elizabeth Dole with Democrat Kay Hagan. As a result, we got ObamaCare and unemployment  -  both of which are hitting North Carolina harder than just about every other state.

    Ol' Kay has been a good soldier for Barry Obama, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer. In fact, she's racked up a voting record to the left of Reid. She voted with Reid and the gang to drop the centuries-long filibuster rule  -  allowing Democrats to ram even the most objectionable, extreme Obama appointees through with a simple majority vote.

    This week, the Senate OKed the nomination of Cornellia Pickard to the DC Court of Appeals. This court hears arguments about the biggest policy fights in DC. With the approval of Pickard and one other judge this week, there is a 6-4 Democrat majority on the court. (Hagan voted YES on both. Burr voted No.)

    National Review offered us a hint of what we might come to expect from Judge Pickard:

    At about 1 a.m. last night, the Senate voted 51  -  44 to approve Cornelia Pillard to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The vote occurred in the middle of the night because the GOP, asserting its minority rights that the Democratic majority has significantly curtailed, is holding a "talkathon" to drag out the process of voting on the nominations before the Senate. [...]

    [...] Pillard is just the sort of person that does deserve a great deal of scrutiny from the Senate, and now just needs a party-line bare-majority vote, thanks to Majority Leader Harry Reid's unilateral change to the chamber's rules in November. Most Americans may not know just how far out of the mainstream her views are, but here's a simple piece of evidence: In 2011, she commented at a Georgetown University event on a case before the Supreme Court, Hosanna-Tabor vs. EEOC, in which a Lutheran church was defending churches' right to be exempt from normal employment-discrimination law. Pillard said the following, ""[The notion that] the Constitution requires deference to Church decisions about who qualifies as a minister . . . seems like a real stretch. . . . The Lutheran Church's position here is a substantial threat to the American rule of law  -  it would effectively empower any religion to create its own autonomous Vatican City-­style regime. . . . It is hard to see the Supreme Court deciding that that is what the First Amendment law requires."

    So  -  in this woman's view  -  if your church doesn't want to hire, let's say, an openly gay youth pastor, your congregation can get dragged in front of the EEOC and into court by the US DOJ. Welcome to Barry, Harry & Kay's America.