Note to Pence: The economy trumps all

When Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson wisely refused to sign the state's new "religious freedom" law and returned it to the legislature for repairs, you had to wonder why Mike Pence, Indiana's rattled governor,   didn't do   it sooner before some business and sports world giants  broke down his door as he sputtered for  conflicting answers.

In Hutchinson's case, it was Wal-Mart, the state's biggest employer, along with Little
Rock's Regional  Chamber of Commerce, and Convention and Visitors Bureau that jerked the deal from his desk after he first said he would sign it.

In both states, as well as others that might be trolling, the issue was the same:

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

What Pence painfully learned  in the age of hyper-communications is that he could be instantly rocketed   from his safe chair back home in Indiana to a broken national figure  who admitted that he had fumbled his interview by ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

He was completely unprepared - a governor, for Heaven's sake! -  for his political calamity. Now, despite his own protest that he meant no harm to LGBT's, he was betrayed by his 2000 congressional campaign website, by these damning words:

"Congress should oppose any effort to recognize homosexual's [sic] as a 'discrete and insular minority' entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and minorities.'"

Some things never change.

Monroe Beachy: Amish insist on going it alone

AS HOT WIRES LIKE "Religious liberty" and "conscience" flare between religious conservatives and President Obama, there is a another religious issue being played out in the Amish village of Sugarcreek south of Akron. It swirls around the arrest and indictment of one of Sugarcreek's leading Amish citizens, Monroe L. Beachy, a man in his 70s, who has been accused of running a Ponzi scheme that has stripped its investors' savings of $16 million. The victims included charities, congregations and some of his own relatives.

In a lengthy story in Sunday's New York Times, the case details the clash between prosecutors who are sworn to uphold the law, and the Plain Community of Amish who insist their members' faith is being trampled by the insensitive state. They argue that they can privately handle the case in their own way without secular society butting in. It is a classic tale of church and state, which has so dominated the GOP narrative these days.

At stake, the Amish witnesses maintained in bankruptcy court, was nothing less than religious liberty, no matter whether Beachy was guilty or innocent.The Times noted that "many of Mr. Beachy's investors have said in court that it is more important to forgive him than to recover their money." Creditors said the court's way of dealing with the alleged scheme's "downfall could not be squared with their faith or with his."

They further asserted that by leaving the Plain Community to its own protective framework of religious imperatives in the Beachy case, they would achieve "worthy goals that would be less expensive and be based on Christian principles of love and care for the needy and the poor". It also would sustain "religious forgiveness and repair the tarnished testimony and integrity of the Plain Community."

They failed to discourage the prosecution. The Beachy trial is scheduled for later this month.

Meantime, how coincidental this is in matters of faith! I'm sure you can see a certain connection with the argument by the Catholic church and other religious conservatives that faith and conscience trump all else in the lively debate over contraception and other forms of birth control (slide rules excluded, for whatever convenient reason of conscience!).

It will be interesting to see whether Rick Santorum, who is recklessly opting for sainthood if not the presidency in his travels around Ohio for the Republican primary, will take a moment to stop by Sugarcreek to describe his version of America's dictatorship.

Unfortunately, it may take a while for the Alka-Seltzer to settle his nausea over President Kennedy's speech on church and state more than a half-century ago. In mauling JFK's words to serve his own out-of-control jeremiads, it can easily be documented that not even sainthood awaits him. He is, and probably will continue to be, America's most passionate liar.