LEO HOHMANN 

Christie O’Connor, co-owner of Memories Pizza, was forced to close her business following threats from same-sex marriage advocates.

The Christian, family owned pizzeria in Indiana forced to close after it received death threats from the “gay marriage” movement has raised more than $400,000 in just over 24 hours through an online GoFundMe account.

It took the account set up for business owners Kevin and Christie O’Connor of Memories Pizza only 20 hours to eclipse its goal of $200,000.

The O’Connors, who were asked by a reporter how they would respond to the state’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act, said: “We would serve gay individuals at the restaurant, but due to religious beliefs, would decline to cater a same-sex wedding.”

That was enough to bring an avalanche of pressure crashing down on the small-town pizzeria owners, including threats to harm or kill the family.

A female coach at Concord High School named Jess Dooley threatened in a tweet to burn the family’s house down, saying: “Who’s going to Walkerton, IN to burn down #memoriespizza w me?”

Fearing for their safety, the O’Connors shut their doors.

In an interview with the Blaze, Christie O’Connor said the family was considering leaving Walkerton, and possibly even the state of Indiana.

“I don’t know if we will reopen, or if we can,” she said. “We’re in hiding basically. Yep. Staying in the house.”

She said news reports about their comments were quickly distorted. Speaking up for her faith destroyed their family’s income in a matter of hours.

“I just got an apartment, and this was my income to keep that apartment going. I am suspended on another job that I have until this is cleared up,” Christie said, her voice hesitating. “So I have absolutely no income coming in, at all.”

Watch interview with Christie O’Connor below:

Christie O’Connor said she hasn’t talked to many of her customers yet, but the ones who have reached out to her have been “very supportive of us.”

A Facebook page reportedly home to thousands of other threats against the pizza shop and its owners was “unavailable” on Thursday. But a Yelp page formed to protest the owners was still operational.

One commenter wrote: “Well I just can’t go here or would ever because they engage in discriminatory practices based on I guess perception & ‘religious belief.’”

Blaze reporter Dana Loesch said she could hardly believe that in 2015 “we would be dealing with such persecution like this, just because someone said that they want to stand up for a tenent of their faith. It’s awful to see.”

That was why the Blaze set up the account at GoFundMe/memoriespizza.com, she said, apparently surprising Christie O’Connor with the news of financial support.

“We know how a lot of this backlash is, and we know how zealous some people are in terms of depriving someone of their livelihood or ruining their lives simply because they cannot tolerate their Christian faith, so we set up a GoFundMe account where people can go and they can make a donation, because nobody should have to suffer, or suffer alone, for their faith for standing up for Christian principles,” Loesch said. “We wanted to make you sure are aware of that as well, Crystal. God bless you for being fearless, and for standing up for your faith. And as Christ said, ‘If they persecute you, remember they came for me first,’ so you did nothing wrong here. You did nothing wrong.”

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• King of Shambhala

  Obama’s had two slap-downs already and is heading for the next one on April 17 in New Orleans’ 5th Circuit Appellate Court.

  But Judge Hanen will slap him with perjury before he gets even that far.

  Look at Spavovsky’s last two paragraphs below. He says

  “While the appellate court prepares to hear oral arguments on April 17, we may still hear more from Judge Hanen in Brownsville. He has not yet said whether he will be taking any further action against Justice Department lawyers who misled him during the pendency of the states’ request for an injunction.

  The lawyers had assured Hanen that the Department of Homeland Security was not yet implementing the president’s plan. In fact, DHS had issued more than 100,000 deferrals during that time.

  Last week, in a specially called hearing, Hanen gave the DOJ lawyers a thorough, very tough grilling over their misrepresentations. He asked them whether taxpayers would end up paying any sanctions he imposed on the lawyers and chided himself for having relied “like an idiot” on what DOJ told him. So there may be additional fireworks in the Brownsville courthouse yet.”

  Greg Abbott the Texas Governor, has encouraged Judge Hanen to slap Obama with sanctions and penalties for perjury for lying under oath in Hanen’s court.

  The Immigration Battle Heads to the Big Easy
  By Hans A. von Spakovsky

  Call it the Battle of New Orleans. On April 17, the litigation war over the president’s amnesty plan for 5 million illegal aliens will shift from Brownsville, Texas, to the Big Easy.

  In February, the administration suffered a major setback when U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen issued an injunction against the plan. Now the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear oral arguments over the Obama Justice Department’s request for a stay (pending appeal) of the injunction.

  The 26 states who brought the suit against the administration have already filed their first brief in the Fifth Circuit. It summarizes the case quite well:

  Defendants wish to implement a massive new program that dispenses with immigration law and grants work permits and lawful-presence status – which will confer Social Security cards and a bevy of other state and federal benefits – to 40% of the unauthorized aliens in the United States . . .

  Unilaterally issuing a plethora of benefits to millions of unauthorized aliens would mark one of the largest changes of immigration policy in this Nation’s history. Defendants now move to implement this benefits program immediately without meaningful judicial review – not even the resolution of this appeal. Such a drastic step would require an extraordinary showing of emergency and legal merit, and Defendants have failed to show anything close. In particular, they have identified no looming injury that could justify an ‘emergency’ stay. The preliminary injunction simply confines the Executive to what it previously admitted were the limits of its power, temporarily preventing the implementation of an unprecedented and practically irreversible benefits program in order to allow the Judicial Branch to review its validity.

  As the states point out, “Congress has not given the Executive carte blanche to grant lawful presence to unauthorized aliens.”

  The administration has tried to rely on “prosecutorial discretion” as its defense, but there was clearly no “discretion” involved in the mass approvals given to illegal aliens — the so-called “DREAMers” — under the 2012 DACA program. As the brief notes, the administration “mechanically approved applications that met DACA’s criteria; between 95%-99.5% of all applications were granted, and the Executive has not been able to identify a single application that was denied for a discretionary reason” (emphasis added).

  The brief also cites President Obama’s frank acknowledgement that he “just took an action to change the law.” This damaging admission directly refutes the Justice Department’s claim that the administration is simply acting within the discretion the executive is given under existing immigration law.

  The states contend that the president cannot even “come close” to meeting the legal standard of showing that maintaining the injunction will irreparably damage the government. The administration claims the president’s plan must be implemented now “to more efficiently ensure national security.” As the states point out, however, the government used that same argument during the Korean War to justify President Truman’s seizure of steel mills to forestall a strike. Yet in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), the national-security argument failed to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court. As the states note, that claim is “vastly less compelling now.”

  As former Nuremburg prosecutor and Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson said in Youngstown, the unlimited executive power that the framers of the Constitution were trying to avoid was “the prerogative exercised by George III, and the description of its evils in the Declaration of Independence.” That made Justice Jackson “doubt that they were creating their new Executive in his image.” President Obama at one point said, “I am not a king” when it came to immigration policy, yet that is the bottom line of the position Justice Department lawyers are taking in court: that the president has an unfettered ability to implement whatever immigration rules he sees fit.

  The states forcefully argue that a stay would prevent meaningful judicial review and irreparably injure them, since legalizing millions of aliens would be a virtually irreversible action once taken. And they once again turn the administration’s own words against it, citing the director of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service, Leon Rodriguez, a defendant in the case, who admitted that the program could not readily be undone and was designed to cement illegal aliens in place in American society.

  Finally, the states also dismiss the administration’s claim that the injunction should apply only to Texas or the states involved in the lawsuit, and not the rest of the country: “Patchwork relief is powerless to prevent the harms threatened by officials acting with nationwide jurisdiction.” In fact, the Justice Department’s argument is “nonsensical,” according to the states, since illegal aliens who are granted deferred action and work permits by the administration won’t be limited in where they can live and work — they will be able to move to any state and apply for work authorizations, licenses, and a myriad of government benefits. Immigration law requires a nationwide policy and, as the states put it, “an unlawful immigration directive requires a nationwide remedy.”

  While the appellate court prepares to hear oral arguments on April 17, we may still hear more from Judge Hanen in Brownsville. He has not yet said whether he will be taking any further action against Justice Department lawyers who misled him during the pendency of the states’ request for an injunction. The lawyers had assured Hanen that the Department of Homeland Security was not yet implementing the president’s plan. In fact, DHS had issued more than 100,000 deferrals during that time.

  Last week, in a specially called hearing, Hanen gave the DOJ lawyers a thorough, very tough grilling over their misrepresentations. He asked them whether taxpayers would end up paying any sanctions he imposed on the lawyers and chided himself for having relied “like an idiot” on what DOJ told him. So there may be additional fireworks in the Brownsville courthouse yet.

  – Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
  Originally appeared in the National Review Online

  http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2015/4/the-immigration-battle-heads-to-the-big-easy

  Apr 3, 2015, 7:55 am -2 Reply
  • Bill Lyle

    Pick a topic, Dopey….

    Apr 3, 2015, 7:20 pm 1 Reply