Helgeson's Hikes

Sunday, July 5, 2015

How SCOTUS Just Killed The Estate Tax

Has SCOTUS Created a Way to Get Around the Estate Tax?

Sometimes, at a most solemn moment, a most irreverent thought shoots through the mind. When I heard that the US Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, my thought was "I wonder what the estate tax lawyers will make of it?"

How about advising a terminally ill widowed grandma to marry her much-beloved granddaughter at the deathbed? Won't the estate pass to the surviving spouse intact? I'm not a lawyer, but I think it will -- without IRS getting the bite out of it as would happen now.

And it would be very hard to have a sound legal argument against such marriage. Isn't it born out of love? Absolutely. But doesn't it go against the prohibition of marriage with a blood relative? But this prohibition is rooted merely in the very same authority that also prohibits the same-sex union, and hence could survive juducial review if litigation results.

The law of unintended consequences may work to surprising effect. The very people who are today repelled by the court's decision may come to embrace it as a tool of keeping their wealth in the family; the government that is now elated with the court's decision, may yet come to rue it when US Treasury's estate tax revenue dwindles.

It's a brave new world out there. One wonders how the lawyers will navigate and harness it.

Truth Overruled

Nothing in the Constitution requires the redefinition of marriage, and the Court imposed its judgment about a policy matter that should be decided by the American people and their elected representatives. The Court got marriage and the Constitution wrong today just like they got abortion and the Constitution wrong 42 years ago with Roe v. Wade. Five unelected judges do not have the power to change the truth about marriage or the truth about the Constitution.

Redefining marriage to make it a genderless institution fundamentally changes marriage: It makes the relationship more about the desires of adults than about the needs—or rights—of children. It teaches the lie that mothers and fathers are interchangeable.

Because the Court has inappropriately redefined marriage everywhere, there is urgent need for policy to ensure that the government never penalizes anyone for standing up for marriage. As discussed in my new book, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, we must work to protect the freedom of speech, association, and religion of those who continue to abide by the truth of marriage as union of man and woman.

At the federal level, the First Amendment Defense Act is a good place to start. It says that the federal government cannot discriminate against people and institutions that speak and act according to their belief that marriage is a union of one man and one woman. States need similar policies.

Recognizing the truth about marriage is good public policy. Today’s decision is a significant set-back to achieving that goal. We must work to reverse it and recommit ourselves to building a strong marriage culture because so much of our future depends upon it.

Ryan T. Anderson is William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and author of the forthcoming book Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom.

21 Truly Eye-Catching Bar Signs

My favorite is the Irish Soup of the Day sign . . .

21 Truly Eye-Catching Bar Signs

http://www.trendzified.net/funny-bar-signs/

This will make Liberal Heads Explode!

An Unintended Side-effect of the SCOTUS Ruling on Same-Sex Marriage

by Allen West on June 27, 2015

Yep, since now the SCOTUS has determined it can bequeath a right to marriage across all 50 states, there is an interesting point to be made.

As reported by BearingArms.com, “If you’re following any of the various media outlets this morning, you’re probably aware that the U.S. Supreme Court has just extended gay marriage to all 50 states. The Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex couples have a right to marry nationwide, in a historic decision that invalidates gay marriage bans in more than a dozen states. Gay and lesbian couples already can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The court’s ruling on Friday means the remaining 14 states, in the South and Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans on same-sex marriage. The outcome is the culmination of two decades of Supreme Court litigation over marriage, and gay rights generally.”

Now here is the kicker, as the writer articulately brings to light: “By using the Constitution in such a manner, the Court argues that the Due Process Clause extends “certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy” accepted in a majority of states across the state lines of a handful of states that still banned the practice. The vast majority of states are “shall issue” on the matter of issuing concealed carry permits, and enjoy reciprocity with a large number of other states. My North Carolina concealed carry permit, for example, was recognized yesterday as being valid in 36 states, which just so happened to be the number of states in which gay marriage was legal yesterday. But 14 states did not recognize my concealed carry permit yesterday. Today they must.

Using the same “due process clause” argument as the Supreme Court just applied to gay marriage, my concealed carry permit must now be recognized as valid in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.“

Yes folks, there is a standing right called the Second Amendment, which grants the right to keep and bear arms, and that specifically granted right shall not be infringed. So, the SCOTUS does not need to have a court case and prolonged legal, judicial activism — that right exists.

So, since I have moved from Florida to Texas, my concealed weapons permit is not only transferrable here, but all across the country, in all fifty states — or fifty-seven if you are President Obama.

Yeehaw!

Thanks to the LGBT community for making it very clear, my constitutionally declared right MUST be recognized in every state. Not only is it my right to keep and bear my arms (weapons) but that personal choice is central to my individual dignity and autonomy — the protection of the unalienable rights granted to me by the Creator, the first of which is life.

Hot doggone, I just cannot wait to hear the liberal progressive socialist anti-gun argument against this premise — which is now established!

http://allenbwest.com/2015/06/yeehaw-this-side-effect-of-the-gay-marriage-ruling-will-make-liberals-explode/

The Benedict Option

Orthodox Christians Must Now Learn To Live as Exiles in Our Own Country

By Rod Dreher @ The American Conservative

One can certainly understand the joy that LGBT Americans and their supporters feel today. But orthodox Christians must understand that things are going to get much more difficult for us. We are going to have to learn how to live as exiles in our own country. We are going to have to learn how to live with at least a mild form of persecution. And we are going to have to change the way we practice our faith and teach it to our children, to build resilient communities.

It is time for what I call the Benedict Option. In his 1982 book After Virtue, the eminent philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre likened the current age to the fall of ancient Rome. He pointed to Benedict of Nursia, a pious young Christian who left the chaos of Rome to go to the woods to pray, as an example for us. We who want to live by the traditional virtues, MacIntyre said, have to pioneer new ways of doing so in community. We await, he said “a new — and doubtless very different — St. Benedict.”

Throughout the early Middle Ages, Benedict’s communities formed monasteries, and kept the light of faith burning through the surrounding cultural darkness. Eventually, the Benedictine monks helped refound civilization.

I believe that orthodox Christians today are called to be those new and very different St. Benedicts. How do we take the Benedict Option, and build resilient communities within our condition of internal exile, and under increasingly hostile conditions? I don’t know. But we had better figure this out together, and soon, while there is time.

Last fall, I spoke with the prior of the Benedictine monastery in Nursia, and told him about the Benedict Option. So many Christians, he told me, have no clue how far things have decayed in our aggressively secularizing world. The future for Christians will be within the Benedict Option, the monk said, or it won’t be at all.

Obergefell is a sign of the times, for those with eyes to see. This isn’t the view of wild-eyed prophets wearing animal skins and shouting in the desert. It is the view of four Supreme Court justices, in effect declaring from the bench the decline and fall of the traditional American social, political, and legal order.

We live in interesting times.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/american-exiles/

Jubilee Medal of St. Benedict

“Be gone Satan! Suggest not to me thy vain things.”

“The drink you offer is evil; drink that poison yourself.”

Saturday, July 4, 2015

Anti-Fascist & Lay Dominican

We need more young people to be lay Dominicans who fight against Obama’s Fascism . . .

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

Posted on July 4, 2015 by Fr. Gabriel Gillen, OP in General

Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati

Lay Dominican

Pier Giorgio Frassati was born on April 6, 1901 in Turin, Italy to a family of political and social means. He attended the university of Turin as an engineering student. Giorgio was a popular student, a known social activist, and a servant to the poor and oppressed in fascist Italy. He joined the Dominican Order as a layman on May 28, 1922. He was known for his commitment to prayer and study, his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, and a tender love of the Blessed Mother. He died on July 4, 1925 of polio and was beatified May 20, 1990. He was given the title “Man of the Beatitudes” by Pope John Paul II at his beatification.

On his popular web series, “Word on Fire,” Fr. Robert Barron shares his thoughts on this modern saint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ceOn2UZl3wQ

Pier Giorgio Frassati

Why did this 24 year-old die on July 4, 1925?

Who was Pier Giorgio Frassati?

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati – patron of Catholic youth groups - is a saint for the modern world, and especially for the young people of our time. Born in 1901 in Turin, Italy, his time on earth was short-only 24 years-but he filled it passionately with holy living. Pier Giorgio was a model of virtue, a “man of the beatitudes,” as Pope John Paul II called him at the saint’s beatification ceremony in Rome on May 20, 1990. He was described by friends as “an explosion of joy.” As Pier Giorgio’s sister, Luciana, says of her brother in her biography of him, “He represented the finest in Christian youth: pure, happy, enthusiastic about everything that is good and beautiful.”

To our modern world which is often burdened by cynicism and angst, Pier Giorgio’s life offers a brilliant contrast, a life rich in meaning, purpose, and peace derived from faith in God. From the earliest age, and despite two unreligious parents who misunderstood and disapproved of his piety and intense interest in Catholicism, Pier Giorgio placed Christ first in all that he did. These parental misunderstandings, which were very painful to him, persisted until the day of his sudden death of polio. However, he bore this treatment patiently, silently, and with great love.

Pier Giorgio prayed daily, offering, among other prayers, a daily rosary on his knees by his bedside. Often his agnostic father would find him asleep in this position. “He gave his whole self, both in prayer and in action, in service to Christ,” Luciana Frassati writes. After Pier Giorgio began to attend Jesuit school as a boy, he received a rare permission in those days to take communion daily. “Sometimes he passed whole nights in Eucharistic adoration.” For Pier Giorgio, Christ was the answer. Therefore, all of his action was oriented toward Christ and began first in contemplation of Him. With this interest in the balance of contemplation and action, it is no wonder why Pier Giorgio was drawn in 1922 at the age of 21 to the Fraternities of St. Dominic. In becoming a tertiary, Pier Giorgio chose the name “Girolamo” (Jerome) after his personal hero, Girolamo Savonarola, the fiery Dominican preacher and reformer during the Renaissance in Florence. Pier Giorgio once wrote to a friend, “I am a fervent admirer of this friar (Savonarola), who died as a saint at the stake.”

Pier Giorgio was handsome, vibrant, and natural. These attractive characteristics drew people to him. He had many good friends and he shared his faith with them with ease and openness. He engaged himself in many different apostolates. Pier Giorgio also loved sports. He was an avid outdoorsman and loved hiking, riding horses, skiing, and mountain climbing. He was never one to pass on playing a practical joke, either. He relished laughter and good humor.

As Luciana points out, “Catholic social teaching could never remain simply a theory with [Pier Giorgio].” He set his faith concretely into action through spirited political activism during the Fascist period in World War I Italy. He lived his faith, too, through discipline with his school work, which was a tremendous cross for him as he was a poor student. Most notably, however, Pier Giorgio (like the Dominican St. Martin de Porres) lived his faith through his constant, humble, mostly hidden service to the poorest of Turin. Although Pier Giorgio grew up in a privileged environment, he never lorded over anyone the wealth and prestige of his family. Instead, he lived simply and gave away food, money, or anything that anyone asked of him. It is suspected that he contracted from the very people to whom he was ministering in the slums the polio that would kill him.

Even as Pier Giorgio lay dying, his final week of rapid physical deterioration was an exercise in heroic virtue. His attention was turned outward toward the needs of others and he never drew attention to his anguish, especially since his own grandmother was dying at the same time he was. Pier Giorgio’s heart was surrendered completely to God’s will for him. His last concern was for the poor. On the eve of his death, with a paralyzed hand, he scribbled a message to a friend, reminding the friend not to forget the injections for Converso, a poor man Pier Giorgio had been assisting.

When news of Pier Giorgio’s death on July 4, 1925 reached the neighborhood and city, the Frassati parents, who had no idea about the generous self-donation of their young son, were astonished by the sight of thousands of people crowded outside their mansion on the day of their son’s funeral Mass and burial. The poor, the lonely, and those who had been touched by Pier Giorgio’s love and faithful example had come to pay homage to this luminous model of Christian living.

Pier Giorgio’s mortal remains were found incorrupt in 1981 and were transferred from the family tomb in the cemetery of Pollone to the Cathedral of Turin near the Shroud of Turin.

http://ucatholic.com/saints/blessed-pier-giorgio-frassati/