Two religious-affiliated colleges claimed a "major victory" Tuesday after a federal appeals court ordered the Obama administration to verify that it is revising the so-called contraception mandate in ObamaCare.

The decision out of the D.C. Court of Appeals effectively reinstated a challenge that had been dismissed by lower courts. Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey College were arguing against the federal health care overhaul rule that requires employers to provide access to contraceptive care.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has represented several plaintiffs challenging the rule, hailed the court decision.

"The D.C. Circuit has now made it clear that government promises and press conferences are not enough to protect religious freedom," Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund, said in a statement. "The court is not going to let the government slide by on non-binding promises to fix the problem down the road"...

Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a privately held retail chain with more than 500 arts and crafts stores in 41 states, filed a lawsuit today against the Obama administration over its HHS mandate.

The company says it would face $1.3 million in fines on a daily basis starting in January if it fails to comply with the mandate, which requires religious employers to pay for or refer women for abortion-cause drugs that violate their conscience or religious beliefs.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma and the business says it is opposing the Health and Human Services “preventive services” mandate, which it says forces the Christian-owned-and-operated business to provide, without co-pay, the “morning after pill” and “week after pill” in their health insurance plan, or face crippling fines up to 1.3 million dollars per day.

“By being required to make a choice between sacrificing our faith or paying millions of dollars in fines, we essentially mu

Democrats at the 2012 Democratic National Convention are set to approve a platform today that is unambiguously pro-abortion and opposes any effort whatsoever to stop any abortions. The platform also calls on forcing Americans to pay for abortions at taxpayer expense.

The platform Democrats will approve rejects efforts to stop forcing taxpayers to fund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business and supports the Obama HHS mandate that forces religious groups to pay for and refer women for abortion-causing drugs under Obamacare.

Democrats also support Roe v. Wade and its 40-year legacy of 55 million abortions, and President Obama’s decision to strike the Mexico City Policy, which President George W. Bush put in place to protect taxpayers from having to fund groups that promote or perform abortions overseas. Unlike the Republican platform, Democrats say nothing about China’s one-child policy that includes forced abortions...

Mitt Romney has launched his first attack on President Barack Obama’s pro-abortion record with a new advertisement that blasts the president for his pro-abortion HHS mandate that pro-life groups strongly oppose.

The Romney campaign released a new coordinated television advertisement wit the Republican National Committee. The campaign said “President Obama has declared war on religion by forcing religious institutions to go against their faith. Mitt Romney will stand up and protect religious freedom whenever it is threatened.”

The script for the ad follows:

VOICEOVER: “Who shares your values?” “President Obama used his healthcare plan to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith.”

VIDEO TEXT: “Obama Insurance Decision Declares War On Religion”...

President Obama has a very complicated argument to make as he works to sell his plan for higher taxes on top earners.

Calling for higher taxes on anyone in an election year during a fresh economic slowdown is tough. Obama and his campaign may be having some success in stoking resentment at the rich in general and Republican Mitt Romney specifically, but when Democrats talk about raising taxes, voters get anxious. It reinforces the most unpopular part of the blue team’s brand: tax-and-spend liberalism, a label that could prove toxic to Obama’s re-election hopes.

The president has tried to soften the blow in his current push for higher taxes by saying that he wants to give a $2,000 tax break to middle-class families next year.

But there is no tax cut. Rather, Obama is offering the one-year delay of a tax increase on middle-income households from current rates, some more than a decade old.

House lawmakers voted Wednesday to repeal the federal health care overhaul -- the latest in a long line of anti-"ObamaCare" votes, but the first since the Supreme Court upheld the law and defined one of its key provisions as a "tax."

The House has voted more than 30 times to scrap, defund or undercut the law since Obama signed it in March 2010. As with those bills, the repeal bill approved Wednesday on a 244-185 vote faces certain demise in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

But Republicans were looking to get lawmakers back on record on the law in the wake of the high court ruling last month. The ruling upheld most the law as constitutional, but in doing so determined that the controversial penalty on those who do not buy insurance technically qualifies as a "tax" and not a "penalty" as the administration had claimed. That definition fueled GOP criticism of the law, and put some Democrats in a politically tricky position...

Far from being discouraged by the Supreme Court decision upholding the federal health care overhaul, Republican governors are cranking up opposition to the law's implementation -- refusing to carry out two key provisions in the hope November's election will give the party enough votes to repeal it.

The list of GOP governors who have announced they will not move forward on the law has grown significantly since the high court ruling last Thursday.

At least 18 governors now say they are at least considering not expanding Medicaid -- effectively exploiting the one part of the ruling that came down in Republicans' favor. Previously, the law called on states to expand their Medicaid rolls and threatened to withhold money to those states that did not agree. The Supreme Court nixed that prescribed punishment, taking away the federal government's stick...

The Supreme Court may have ruled on Obamacare, but a pro-life law firm that is behind some of the many lawsuits that have been filed against the HHS mandate that requires religious groups to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs say those challenges continue.

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision essentially upholding the Obamacare law that pro-life groups regard as the biggest expansion of abortion and abortion funding since Roe v. Wade. The law also drew strong opposition from the pro-life community not only over abortion but because the legislation also promotes rationing of medical care that could lead to involuntarily denying lifesaving treatment.

Under the enacted law, federal tax-based subsidies will begin in 2014 to subsidize millions of private insurance plans that will cover abortion-on-demand, including some plans (“multi-state plans”) that will be administered by the federal government.

The Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling on Thursday cuts right to the very fabric of the relationship between a once-limited government and a once-free citizen, but the eternal struggle between liberty and tyranny endures. It is a beginning, not an end.

As enormously important as the high court’s Obamacare ruling is - and it’s huge - it’s not the final word. The legal and political dust has not yet settled, and it will take some time for the unpredictable ripples to form the powerful waves of history. Yet, history waits for no man, so we begin by asking: What now?

First, we mourn. We mourn that a nation built on the principle of limited government has grown the largest government in the history of humankind. We mourn that our Supreme Court rewrote Obamacare into Obamatax to allow for the individual mandate. We mourn that once again we read the lips of a president who promised he would not raise our taxes but did so anyway.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made the following statement Thursday following the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the constitutionality of the Obama administration's health care law.

"As you might imagine, I disagree with the Supreme Court's decision and I agree with the dissent. What the court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected president of the United States. And that is I will act to repeal ObamaCare.

Let's make clear that we understand what the court did and did not do. What the court did today was say that ObamaCare does not violate the Constitution. What they did not do was say that ObamaCare is good law or that it's good policy. ObamaCare was bad policy yesterday. It's bad policy today. ObamaCare was bad law yesterday. It's bad law today.

Let me tell you why I say that. ObamaCare raises taxes on the American people by approximately $500 billion.