Constitutional Catholics
by digby
Here’s a nice Lawrence O’Donnell segment on the constitutional implications of the the “conscience” exemption concept, featuring David Boies:
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Here’s a piece by Linda Greenhouse discussing the constitutional issues as well. Her last sentence spells out the absurdity of this argument:
The question would be whether a church that has failed to persuade its own flock of the rightness of its position could persuade at least five justices.
Sadly, I’m afraid that such an obvious flaw in the logic will not have any sway on this court.
Meanwhile, the great GOP Hispanic hope takes on the issue:
Legislation introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to reverse the Obama administration’s birth control rule would effectively permit any employer to deny contraception coverage in their employee health plans, critics note.
The Rubio bill, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, comes in response to a Catholic firestorm that the administration’s exemption on its birth control rule does not include religious hospitals and universities along with churches. But this bill appears to go far beyond that, permitting any employer to claim the religious exemption without a criteria.
Gosh, I wonder if they’re going to find a “compromise” between this and the President’s order? Like, perhaps, just letting the Catholic institutions opt out? You know, what the Catholic Bishops have been insisting on from the beginning?
Update: Another tick-tock from inside the administration thatchallenges the fatuous notion that the administration was playing 11 dimensional chess with this decision:
The Vice President and others argued that this wouldn’t be seen as an issue of contraception – it would be seen as an issue of religious liberty. They questioned the polling of the rule advocates, arguing that it didn’t explain the issue in full, it ignored the question of what religious groups should have to pay for. And they argued that women voters for whom this was an important issue weren’t likely to vote for Mitt Romney, who has drawn a strong anti-abortion line as a presidential candidate, saying he would end federal funding to Planned Parenthood and supporting a “personhood” amendment that defines life as beginning at the moment of fertilization.
Political hands disagreed with that interpretation. Cultural issues will play a bigger issue in the 2012 election than they did during the economic crisis of 2008, they said. Some of the suburban women up for grabs in this election, ones who are starting to feel more confident about the economy, can be firmly won over if they learned about this rule – if they also were told that President Obama supported an exemption for houses of worship while Romney opposes not only abortion but federal funding for contraception.
If anyone doubted that opposition to this inside the administration was about dealing away women’s rights to appeal to conservatives, that should clear it up.
(And Leon Panetta, who is featured heavily in this story, should probably concentrate on which citizens they’re going to target for assassination next and leave the morality of birth control pills to others. He has his hands full.)
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