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" I am starting to get the impression that judges around the country are getting fed up with the overwhelming triviality with which our politics have come to deal with the very real problems that the country has. First, last week, in Missouri, a federal judge \u2014 appointed, you will note, by Poppy Bush \u2014 threw out the phony freedom-of-religion challenge to the Affordable Care Act, and gave everybody a lesson in basic don&amp;#039;t-bring-that-weakass-shit-in-here jurisprudence while doing so.... The burden of which plaintiffs complain is that funds, which plaintiffs will contribute to a group health plan, might, after a series of independent decisions by health care providers and patients covered by [an employer&amp;#039;s health] plan, subsidize someone else&amp;#039;s participation in an activity that is condemned by plaintiffs&amp;#039; religion.... [Federal religious freedom law] is a shield, not a sword. It protects individuals from substantial burdens on religious exercise that occur when the government coerces action one&amp;#039;s religion forbids, or forbids action one&amp;#039;s religion requires; it is not a means to force one&amp;#039;s religious practices upon others. [It] does not protect against the slight burden on religious exercise that arises when one&amp;#039;s money circuitously flows to support the conduct of other free-exercise-wielding individuals who hold religious beliefs that differ from one&amp;#039;s own.... In other words, Mr. Catholic Mining Company Owner, your Presbyterian janitor doesn&amp;#039;t have to live under rules for sexytime devised by Pope Paul VI and some other long-deceased celibates. Then, today, having had a decision kicked back down to him, Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson in Pennsylvania decided that the state&amp;#039;s new voter-suppression will not be in force during this November&amp;#039;s election. All over the country, it seems, judges at the lower level have decided not to buy the blatant nonsense that these laws are meant to do anything except keep from voting for those people who might inconvenience the Republican Party. Simpson is only the latest one. The Pennsylvania case is interesting because the state continued to push the pretense so hard that it actually had to prove that it was making the newly required photo ID&amp;#039;s easily available to every voter, which it could not do, because the law was designed to do exactly the opposite. Simpson sounds as though he just got fed up watching these contortions: His ruling came after listening to two days of testimony about the state&amp;#039;s eleventh-hour efforts to make it easier to get a valid photo ID. He also heard about long lines and ill-informed clerks at driver&amp;#039;s license centers and identification requirements that made it hard for some registered voters to get a state-issued photo ID. Again, all features, not bugs. I would like to believe that we have reached a critical mass on this issue \u2014 that Americans, no matter what their political affiliations, share a common belief that nobody should muck around with voting. I would like to believe that but, then again, John Fund still has a job. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a16073/pennsylvania-voter-id-law-postponed-13301674/?click=news>