The Illinois Supreme Court awarded parental custody to a woman who recently was released from prison after murdering her two-year-old son. Sheryl Hardy forced her son to eat his own excrement and smoked a cigarette while her husband repeatedly submerged the toddler in a toilet. The boy died the following day from the abuse.

After serving less than a third of a thirty-year prison sentence, Hardy remarried and gave birth to another child three years ago. Despite murdering her last child, the court awarded her custody of her new son.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court forced gay "marriage" upon the citizens of the Bay State. The California Supreme Court decreed that Catholic Charities must provide birth-control coverage for employees. Now, the Illinois Supreme Court orders a child under the care of a convicted child-murderer.

Like the angel Clarence taking George Bailey through Pottersville, such arrogant court decisions give us an idea of what the U.S. Supreme Court might have looked like had John Kerry received 80,000 more votes in Ohio last Tuesday.

That is a sad story.

I am going to do the almost unthinkable here, though, and defend the Cali decision forcing Catholic Charities (this is a proper name not a general category) to provide birth control to its employees.

First of all, Catholic Charities is notorious for being anything but Catholic despite its name, its relationship to the Church, let alone orthodoxy, is rather marginal. Second, it couldn't prove that it was actually a religious, and thus protected, charity. Significantly, when they were directly questioned by the court about whether they were affiliated with the Catholic Church, their lawyer admitted quite frankly that they consider themselves completely seperate and unbeholden to or directed by the local bishops or the Church in general.

Finally, they willingly get themselves in trouble by relying very heavily on public funds instead of private charitable contributions, etc. This is the problem with Bush's "compassionate conservatism" and faith-based funding as well. Once the state gets into the churches the churches lose their autonomy and begin to be controlled and manipulated by the state. CC got itself into this boat and now they are reaping the unsavory results. If they did not want to be forced to fund contraception all they have ever had to do is reject state monies. If they did that, in fact, then they would possibly actually become a "Catholic" charity again.

Brian: I don't think CC's either receiving state monies or not being beholden/under the authority of the bishops can justify Cali's decision. CC clearly handled it badly, and should have played hardball by shutting down and moving to another state after the decision (this would have taken away one of the largest charities from California). Too bad they didn't. Bottom line, the law is unjust, not merely to groups that are officially associatied with the Church, but with any group owned by a Catholic.

I agree that taking state money is a mixed blessing for religious charities, and that it risks their autonomy, but there is no question that the state of California has an arrogantly unjust law in this case.

Impeach!

Brad is right the answer is definitely impeachment.

I think I agree with you Short but I suppose I didn't actually deal with the justice of the law itself that was at issue. I still see this court ruling as actually consistent with the Cali law rather than as a case of judicial liberal fiat in the sense we normally mean it.

Maybe I should say that the CA SC should of decided that the law was itself unjust and so refused to rule in favor of it.