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   Small, independently owned stores offer customers a faith-filled atmosphere and quality service, not contraceptives

At a growing number of pharmacies nationwide, patrons bearing a prescription for contraceptives are being turned away by pharmacists who are taking a stand for their beliefs.

"There's a lot of Christians out there who like to practice their faith beyond their house or their church, and they would like to come to business where they don't have to leave their faith at the door," said Robert Laird, executive director of Divine Mercy Care, which owns the pro-life DMC Pharmacy in Chantilly, Va. "They want to be able to support a pharmacy that supports their beliefs."

DMC Pharmacy, which opened Oct. 20, is the latest pharmacy to adopt a wholly pro-life approach to its business. The desire for those in the pharmaceutical industry to reconcile their beliefs with their business practices is not new. In 1984, pharmacist Bogomir Kuhar founded Pharmacists for Life International, an organization that provides support and legal assistance to pharmacists who choose not to sell contraceptives.

Pharmacists for Life president Karen Brauer became a spokesperson for the group after being fired from her job for refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, citing their ability to act as an abortifacient. Brauer told Our Sunday Visitor that while there is "no way to know" just how many pro-life pharmacies exist in the United States at this time, there is a growing trend among pharmacists to stop selling contraceptives as more individuals become aware of their potential risks.

"People change over time in how much they understand about the pill, and a lot of pharmacists are along that path, too," she said. "A lot of them will dispense the regular birth control pills, but they will not dispense the 'morning-after' pill because it has too much of an abortive method, so they draw their line at that place. And I respect them -- they are pro-life, they are developing their understanding and probably sooner or later a whole lot of them are going to quit dispensing the pill, too."

The Pharmacists for Life website includes a listing of six pro-life pharmacies, but Brauer said she is aware of many more that exist around the country. She suggested that customers can find other pharmacies in their area that have a pro-life approach through an Internet search. In many cases, she explained, the pharmacies have been the subject of local news stories or have garnered attention from pro-choice groups such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL.

Although Pharmacists for Life is a Catholic organization, Brauer said that they have worked with pharmacists of other faiths who also have chosen not to sell contraceptives in their stores.

"They are not all 100 percent ideologically committed to the Catholic belief on contraception but if they are pro-life and they are acting on their conscience, we will assist them," she said.

Business decision

Mike Koelzer, owner of Kay Pharmacy in Grand Rapids, Mich., made the decision to stop selling contraceptives at his business in 2002. Koelzer, a third-generation pharmacist, told OSV that while it was difficult at first to convince his father to make such a change, he felt that it was more important to follow his conscience.

"I am really just following what the medical profession and the pharmacy business should be," Koelzer said. "We should be promoting life, and we should not be promoting drugs that can harm people, no matter how big those people are and no matter whether they are in the womb or not in the womb."

After discontinuing the sale of birth control products, Koelzer said that he sent out letters to the more than 230 regular customers who had prescriptions for contraceptives to apprise them of the change. As he expected, the move resulted in Kay Pharmacy losing a portion of its customer base.

"It did make a dent in our business," Koelzer said. "You are losing the person that uses the contraceptives, which was about 4 percent of our business, and you are typically losing their husbands and you are typically losing any children they might have, so now the whole family is gone just because you are not carrying one drug." But even though he did not originally intend to promote the pharmacy's new pro-life business model as a means of attracting new customers, Koelzer has found that the media attention he's received over the decision has done just that.

"We do have people saying they are coming from larger distances to buy from us," he said. "I don't know if it has quite evened out the loss, but we are certainly happy to have those customers, and I think more so we are happy to be able to give them an option to trade with someone who is not dispensing abortifacients."

Competitive edge

Laird said that the DMC Pharmacy, which is located in a busy metropolitan area filled with competing pharmacies, will rely on quality customer service and personalized care that large chains such as CVS and Walgreens cannot deliver. "It is how we treat people that is the secret," Laird said. "We should treat everybody coming into our practice, everyone coming into our store, our co-workers, our superiors or our subordinates as if they are Christ. We firmly believe that, and we put that into practice every day in what we do."

Those customers who do come in with a prescription for contraceptives will politely be referred to any of the area's other pharmacies, two of which are located in the same shopping plaza as DMC Pharmacy, Laird said. While such practices will result in losing some customers, he explained, the pharmacy is confident that its approach to doing business will attract many others. "It is about being good to people and treating them with respect and dignity. And I think if anybody does that, that will win people over and that will begin changing hearts."

Pharmacists encouraged to follow conscience

"In the moral domain, your federation is invited to address the issue of conscientious objection, which is a right your profession must recognize, permitting you not to collaborate either directly or indirectly by supplying products for the purpose of decisions that are clearly immoral such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia", Scott Alessi writes from New Jersey.

 

TOPEKA

 "Our legislative agenda this year focuses on ways to make our state government more accountable to its people," said AFP-Kansas state director Derrick Sontag. "We support real and meaningful reforms of how our state manages its finances, how we select our judges, and how we track taxpayer-funded lobbyists."

 Sontag said years of over spending at the state level have now come to a head, with a mounting budget deficit looming.  "The state of our budget cannot be blamed solely on the current economy," said Sontag. "It's quite simple: we have an over spending problem in our state government."

Sontag said that had our state budget grown at a more moderate rate, the state's financial situation would be vastly different today.

"Had the Legislature approved budgets with five percent growth since 2004, rather than eight or nine percent growth, the state would have more than $2 billion in the bank," he said.

AFP plans to help legislators fight the temptation to raise taxes in order to balance the budget, encouraging them to make responsible cuts and to implement budget reform.

"Our state is one of the few nationwide with no budget stabilization fund," Sontag said. "We must do what we can to build up reserves so our state can weather tough financial times without asking taxpayers to shoulder the burden." AFP's full legislative agenda is available at www.americansforprosperity.org/kansas.

 Blog Administrator

The California Supreme Court’s attempt to legitimize sodomy by redefining marriage in May of 2008 is another example of the ‘rule of rationalization’ rather than the rule of law.  The court’s edict seeks to affirm that rationality as defined by ‘science’ is the best means of governance.  The court is illegally and unconstitutionally barring the people from participation in their own democracy because of a presupposed compelling state interest.

There is NO inherent right to practice homosexuality in the constitution; the court has simply invented it by twisting the phrase ‘life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’  The real question ‘is.. the exercise of homosexuality truly ‘scientific’ while traditional marriage is outdated religion as  many homosexuals claim?’ In November of 2008 the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) released what it calls a "Groundbreaking Report on Health Disparities Based on Sexual Orientation". As the DPH press release describes:  

"The report revealed significant disparities among people who identified as homosexual or bisexual in the areas of access to care, self-reported health status, anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, smoking, binge drinking, illicit drug use, sexual assault victimization, intimate partner violence, disability, obesity, asthma and heart disease . . . Lesbians were 2.2 times more likely than heterosexual women to be obese." This is in addition to a shortened life span of only 41 years independent of the contraction of AIDS compared to everyone else’s 70+ years.  It is a pathological existence.

However, this is merely the state affirming what Jeffrey Satinover, M.D. has reported in his book, "Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth." Timothy J.  Daily of the Family Research Council has also noted similar findings.

So ‘science’ suggests that sodomy is a debilitating lifestyle that has been known throughout the millennia by all those with a modicum of intelligence, this court clearly an exception; homosexuality is a predatory lifestyle that victimizes society’s innocent and vulnerable. The supposed ‘scientific’ aspect of the lifestyle is pure delusion.

This California Supreme Court has stated under SCOTUS on their own website: "Th[e] power of "judicial review" has given the Court a crucial responsibility in assuring individual rights, as well as in maintaining a "living Constitution" whose broad provisions are continually applied to complicated new situations."

Disenfanchising 52% of the state's voter's in order to grant license to sexual predators is not protecting individual liberty in any realm of reality in which most Americans reside.  A ‘living’ state constitution is not grounds to viloate the US 19th Amendment by overturning the voted will of the people.

Article III of the US constitution says nothing about the courts’ empowerment to decide ‘social issues’ nor do the individual state’s ‘compelling interests’ grant such authority.  It is a ‘seized’ right and antithetical to the principles of representative government based on a constitution fully ratified by a 2/3 majority of all the states.

Article VI of the US Constitution states: "The Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.." It is therefore immaterial as to how this high court views the California Constitution and its supposed broad provisions permitting the redefinition of Marriage because such ideology conflicts with the federal constitution.

However, under the Supreme Court of California's interpretation, individual rights have become anything the court desires and this isn’t democracy; it’s tyranny!  Under a ‘living’ constitution, the people of California are irrelevant; it’s simply the will of a robed monarchy.

This court has little concern for rights when the pathological whims of a minority are allowed to set social policy.  This power belongs to the people alone under the US tenth Amendment.  The California Supreme Court’s actions are more consistent with those  engaged in a political payoff to the special interests that have secured their respective appointments to the bench. 

Attorney General Brown's actions in failing to defend the voted will of the people, by which he took an oath of office, is the ultimate act of betrayal.  And, his rewrite of the ballot language denying the proposition 8 petitioners their own words on the constitutional amendment is a shameless act of treachery. "In a new statement on the dispute over Proposition 8, through which voters in November approved limiting marriage to one man and one woman, [AG] Brown said the vote must be "invalidated." - World Net Daily  Mr. Brown needs to seek employment elsewhere.

Where is the rule of law?

Marriage is not to be defined by freaks and social misfits, nor by crusading social activist courts that now populate the land.  The crackpot ideology of the California Supreme Court threatens to overflow the land like a vile flood.  America will not be ruled by MAD science or activist courts.  

O’ Ye….O’ Ye… All rise. The court of jackals is now in session.

by Mass Resistance

The newspapers are full of news about the president-elect's new choice for US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, the superintendent of schools in Chicago and an old friend of Obama (they even played basketball together). Duncan is being cheered as a great education "reformer" by the media and just about everyone else.

Associated Press: Obama chooses Chicago schools chief

But there's a darker side.

Of course there are a few things that the Associated Press doesn't tell you. 

As Chicago schools chief, Duncan has worked closely with The Annenberg Challenge, the ultra-radical education group formerly run by Obama and Bill Ayers.

The Annenberg Challenge is is one of those Barak Obama escapades that the media doesn't want to talk about, though occasionally it gets leaked.

Wall Street Journal: Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools

And Arne Duncan seems to fit right in, having worked closely with that group while he's been the Chicago schools chief. As Chicago writer Emily Zanotti observed on her blog when hearing the news of Duncan's appointment by Obama:

This Arne Duncan guy that everyone is all excited is going to run the nation's public schools as Secretary of Education? He's not exactly a proponent of secular education in the city of Chicago, and by that I mean, he's very fond of inculcating Chicago students with more than just a top-notch education. . . .

My favorite subject in all of this Chicago mess is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which is the project on whose board Bill Ayers and Barack Obama served together. I love this project because right up the street from me, I have an Annenberg Challenge school, which I think is known in the community as the "Peace School," and is very interactive with residents of my little neighborhood. They hold peace studies rallies, drum circles, indoctrinate children in what appear to be Marxist values and hold the weekly farmers market (who said communism couldn't taste fresh?). They are a continual annoyance to me, particularly because, in the summer, my favorite Thai restaurant has a mini-cafe right across the street and I have to stare at their peace signs and "Vote" posters until I seethe, and it ruins my basil chicken. 

Arne Duncan is Best Buddies with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In fact, he worked with the Annenberg Challenge to program curriculum in Chicago Public Schools. From an official statement by the Annenberg Challenge:

The Challenge's work is still carried on today through to the bipartisan Chicago Public Education Fund, which coordinates closely Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan and Mayor Daley . . . 

This past October, Arne Duncan recommended that the Chicago Board of Education approve a special homosexual/ bisexual / transgender public high school.

But there was so much outrage that even the pro-homosexual Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, backed away from the idea.

Wall Street Journal: Duncan Caused Stir With Plan for High School for Gays

During Duncan's reign, the Chicago Public Schools began implementing a radical "comprehensive" sex-ed program, set up by an "adolescent health" organization that held their fundraiser at the Playboy headquarters in Chicago.

Playboy Fundraiser Unmasks 'Comprehensive' Sex Education in Chicago

This is the man who will be running the US Department of Education. And he'll have billions of dollars of your tax money, and enormous executive power, to work with. The DOE will be completely in line with the teachers unions and their radical agendas. But no one who voted for Obama should be surprised.

By the way, according to reports Duncan (like Obama) does not send his own kids to public schools. Can you blame him?

 Star-Kist Tuna's headquarters are in San Francisco, Pelosi's home district.  Star-Kist is owned by Del Monte Foods and is a major contributor to Pelosi.  Star-Kist is the major employer in American Samoa employing 75% of the Samoan work force.

Paul Pelosi, Nancy 's husband, owns $17 million dollars worth of Star-Kist stock.

In January, 2007 when the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $7.25, Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del Monte would not have to pay the higher wage.  This would make Del Monte products less expensive than their competition's.

Last week when the huge bailout bill was passed, Pelosi added an earmark to the final bill adding $33 million dollars for an 'economic development credit in American Samoa '.

Pelosi has called the Bush Administration "CORRUPT" 

How do you spell "HYPOCRISY" ? ?

by Kathleen Gilbert

WASILLA, Alaska, (LifeSiteNews.com) - A blaze swallowed Gov. Sarah Palin's evangelical Christian church on Dec. 12th and caused severe damage that fire officials say was likely the work of arsonists.

The damage to the 2 1/2-year-old Wasilla Bible Church building is estimated at $1 million.  Five women, and possibly a couple of children, were inside the church when the flames erupted, but escaped with no injuries.

Palin's spokesman, Bill McAllister, said that Palin stopped by the church the following day to apologize in case the fire was connected to the "undeserved negative attention" the church has received since her unsuccessful run for the vice presidency.  Palin was not present when the fire started, and did not attend Sunday services temporarily held at a local middle school, as she was on state business in Juneau.

Fire Chief James Steele told the Associated Press that the blaze is being investigated as a case of arson.  He said investigators had no leads to discern whether the arsonist had a political motivation.

"Whatever the motives of the arsonist, the governor has faith in the scriptural passage that what was intended for evil will in some way be used for good," McAllister said.

John Doak, associate pastor at Wasilla Bible Church, expressed the communion of faith that united churchgoers after the devastating blaze.  "The definition of the church is the body of Christ, made up of God's people," said Doak after the Sunday service at Wasilla Middle School, attended by about 1,200 people. "The church is still there. We are the church."

During Sarah Palin's VP run on the Republican presidential ticket with John McCain, her home church came under harsh scrutiny from media analysts who found fault with the church's teachings.  In particular, homosexualists were outraged when it was discovered that the church advertised a Focus on the Family conference inviting homosexuals to overcome their same-sex attraction.

The Bible Church also made headlines for having hosted Jews for Jesus leader David Brickner.  Political commentators warned Palin that the church's decision to host Brickner would alienate her from the Jewish community, as Brickner's organization has been criticized for “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”

Further reading and pics of the damaged church --> http://pharmphun.blogspot.com/2008/12/palins-church-burned-by-arsonist.html

by Anonymous

The sustainable energy age has begun. It was recently announced that a company in Florida called Green Flight International (GFI) has plans to construct a $100-million, algae biofuel plant aimed at making fuel for the aviation industry as well as for ground-based transportation.

GFI has also completed the world's first jet-aircraft flight powered by 100% biofuel. GFI president and CEO Douglas Rodante says that "algae-based biofuel would be able to replace petroleum without alterations to engines or infrastructure, and could be used for all sorts of transportation."

The potential of algae biofuel for both vehicles and air travel is so promising that it will play a large role in helping America finally become energy independent. Biofuel from algae completely eliminates the food vs. fuel concerns of other biofuels, and CO2 will be significantly reduced. Algae are the fastest growing plants in the world, and that fact translates into 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre! Soybean, corn, switchgrass and other biofuels cannot even compete.

Since the average diesel engine is 35% more efficient than a gasoline engine, maybe the Big Three auto manufacturers in the US crying for a bailout would be wise to create a nice selection of diesel-hybrids, because only diesel engines can run on biofuels.

In Europe, there already exists the "Volkswagen One-Litre," which is a "two-seater prototype that's been on the roads in Europe, does 237 mpg."It is estimated that by 2010, these cars will be running at 250 mpg. Look at the "VW Lupo" or "Audi A2,"

As an example of innovative green technology, there are several cool diesel motorcycles, such as: "The eCycle Hybrid Motorcycle is a...diesel-electric hybrid...accelerating from 0-60 mph in 6 sec and with fuel consumption at 160 mpg." Diesel motorcycles have been old news throughout Europe for years. 
The use of biofuels in diesel engines has been clearly known for 100 years:

"The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time." - Rudolph Diesel, 1912

by George F. Will

Reactionary liberalism, the ideology of many Democrats, holds that inconvenient rights, such as secret ballots in unionization elections, should be repealed; that existing failures, such as GM, should be preserved; and, with special perversity, that repealed mistakes, such as the "fairness doctrine," should be repeated.  That Orwellian name was designed to disguise the doctrine's use as the government's instrument for preventing fair competition in the broadcasting of political commentary.

Because liberals have been even less successful in competing with conservatives on talk radio than Detroit has been in competing with its rivals, liberals are seeking intellectual protectionism in the form of regulations that suppress ideological rivals.  If liberals advertise their illiberalism by reimposing the fairness doctrine, the Supreme Court might revisit its 1969 ruling that the fairness doctrine is constitutional.  The court probably would dismay reactionary liberals by reversing that decision on the ground that the world has changed vastly, pertinently and for the better.

Until the Reagan administration extinguished it, the doctrine required broadcasters to devote reasonable time to fairly presenting all sides of any controversial issue discussed on the air.  The government decided the meaning of the italicized words.

When government regulation of the content of broadcasts began in 1927, the supposed justification was the scarcity of radio spectrum.  In 1928 and 1929, when Republicans ran Washington, a New York station owned by the Socialist Party was warned to show "due regard" for others' opinions, and the government blocked the Chicago Federation of Labor's attempted purchase of a station because all stations should serve "the general public."  In 1939, when Democrats ran Washington, the government conditioned renewal of one station's license on that station's promise to desist from anti-FDR editorials.

In 1969, when the Supreme Court declared the fairness doctrine constitutional, it probably did not know the Kennedy administration's use of it, as one official described it: "Our massive strategy was to use the fairness doctrine to challenge and harass the right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue." Richard Nixon emulated this practice.  In 1973, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, a liberal, said the doctrine "has no place in our First Amendment regime" because it "enables administration after administration to toy with TV or radio."

The court's 1969 ruling relied heavily on the scarcity rationale.  But Brian Anderson and Adam Thierer, in their book "A Manifesto for Media Freedom," note that today there are about 14,000 radio stations, twice as many as in 1969; 18.9 million subscribers to satellite radio, up 17 percent in 12 months; and that 86 percent of households with either cable or satellite television receive an average of 102 of the 500 available channels. Because daily newspapers are much more scarce than are radio and television choices, should there be a fairness doctrine for the New York Times?

The 1969 court dismissed as "speculative" the possibility that the fairness doctrine would cause broadcasters to "eliminate coverage of controversial issues."  But the proper worry was that the doctrine would continue to stifle the flowering of controversy.  A court that considers the doctrine today will note that whereas in 1980 there were fewer than 100 talk radio programs, today there are more than 1,500 news or talk radio stations.  Further subverting the "scarcity" rationale for government supervision of broadcast content, some liberals now say: The problem is not maldistribution of opinion and information but too much of both. Until recently, liberals fretted that the media were homogenizing America into blandness.  Now they say speech management by government is needed because of a different scarcity -- the public's attention, which supposedly is overloaded by today's information cornucopia.

And these worrywarts say the proliferation of radio, cable, satellite broadcasting and Internet choices allows people to choose their own universe of commentary, which takes us far from the good old days when everyone had the communitarian delight of gathering around the cozy campfire of the NBC-ABC-CBS oligopoly.  Being a liberal is exhausting when you must simultaneously argue for illiberal policies on the basis of dangerous scarcity and menacing abundance.

If reactionary liberals, unsatisfied with dominating the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood, were competitive on talk radio, they would be uninterested in reviving the fairness doctrine.  Having so sullied liberalism's name that they have taken to calling themselves progressives, liberals are now ruining the reputation of reactionaries, which really is unfair.