Evolution Of The Republican Party Or Why Democrats Need To Tune In And Turn Out

What does it mean that your typical Republican does not believe in global warming or evolution, but does believe that Christianity should be established as this country's national religion? 

According to a recent Public Policy Polling national Republican poll:

• Only 25% of Republicans believe in global warming (another 10% are not sure) and 66% do not believe that global warming exists.
• A plurality of Republicans, 49%, do not believe in evolution (13% are unsure) and only 37% believe in the theory of evolution. 
• 57% of Republicans would support establishing Christianity as our "national religion" (with another 13% unsure), while only 30% oppose it.

(And, according to another recent poll, only 11% of Republicans believe that Obama loves America, a vast majority agreeing with Rudy Giuliani's ridiculous but insidious attack on the President.)

Are we doomed as a democracy, as a nation, when the majority of one of our two political parties has no faith in science or, apparently, in the Constitution (except for the Second Amendment); when that majority is not only more likely to believe in the Biblical prophesy of End Times than man-made climate change but wants to ensure that we all believe likewise?

With less than 60% of eligible voters turning out for the last presidential election, and barely a third voting in the last mid-term election, the key is making sure the rational half of the electorate tunes in and turns out.  

This is admittedly made more difficult in our post-Citizens United world where reasonable voices are drowned out by unlimited corporate spending.  It is also made more difficult because the mainstream media normalizes inane Republican positions on everything from national security and the environment to economics and civil rights by relentlessly seeking an illusory middle ground no matter how off the rails the right wing veers.  As the great Charles Pierce puts it, "the consistent inability to recognize the modern Republican party for the bag of nuts it has become is a true phenomenon in American journalism."

What is critical is for Democrats to rally around a cohesive and comprehensive message of economic inequality, wage stagnation and the decline of the middle class. 

A helpful template has just been provided by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Elijah Cummings, who announced in an USA Today op-ed the launching of a "Middle Class Prosperity Project," which will examine how the nation's economic system has been "rigged against the middle class over the past several decades" and promote "policies to ensure that the best days of America's middle class are still ahead."

Such an approach should not only energize Democratic voters but might even appeal to the narrow swath Republicans who are able to find a foothold in reality. 

Obama's Crusade, High Horses And American Exceptionalism

The reaction to President Obama's observation that we shouldn't condemn an entire religion, in this case Islam, because of the barbaric acts done in its name is another reminder of how difficult it is to have a serious conversation about issues that have the potential to undermine our unwavering belief in American exceptionalism.

Obama stated a fairly obvious truth:  "Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."

The overheated response from the right, from Christian groups, and even from some mainstream pundits for what Ta-Nehisi Coates described "as relatively mild, and correct, point" should not have come as a surprise.  We don't really like to think about those burning crosses do we?  We don't like to think about slavery or Jim Crow or the institutional racism that continues to have a profound impact on our society.

We don't like to think about the decimation of the native population that succumbed to our Manifest Destiny.  We don't like to think about the internment of Americans of Japanese heritage or the deployment of not one, but two atomic bombs.  We don't like to think about the many popularly-elected governments we have overthrown in the name of freedom.  We don't like to think about our use of torture (we don't even like to use the word, preferring 'enhanced interrogation').

There have been critical moments in our country's history where it was imperative to face up to some of our more malevolent deeds, confront hard truths, point out where we have strayed from what America is supposed to stand for and deal honestly with the fall out.  All too often, we have punted. 

When Richard Nixon resigned, his successor Gerald Ford declared that "our long national nightmare is over."  A month later, Ford pardoned Nixon, apparently deciding that the nightmare was not over.  Ford did not wish to "prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed" and exercised his power "to firmly shut and seal this book."  And so, for the sake of less fitful sleep, we were denied a true reckoning of the many abuses of power committed by the Nixon Administration, all but guaranteeing that future high government officials would feel similarly unconstrained.  (See, e.g., Iran Contra Affair)

Say what you will about the inefficacy of Jimmy Carter's presidency but he did try to get us to be a bit more reflective.  His derisively (and inaccurately) dubbed "Malaise Speech" in July 1979, describing a "crisis of confidence" in America's future, was supposed to be a wake up call for the nation to pull together to ease the energy crisis.  Carter acknowledged the loss of faith in government stemming from "the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.," "the agony of Vietnam," and the "shock of Watergate."  He conceded that "these wounds are still very deep" and "have never been healed." Carter's idea was to reinvigorate Americans through our joint efforts at energy conservation and innovation:  "the solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose." 

Americans soon opted instead for Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" and the promised end to our national nightmares.  Reagan disavowed Carter's pessimistic soul-searching for a rosy view of America as a "shining city on the hill."  The cure for Carter's "crisis of confidence" was  an invasion of the little island of Grenada to restore our military glory.  Reagan cloaked our unsavory policies in patriotic rhetoric.  The "contras" we armed and trained to overthrow the Nicaraguan government were "freedom fighters," "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers."  In Reagan's America there were no hungry children, ketchup was a vegetable and welfare queens drove Cadillacs. 

Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, gave the keynote address at the 1984 Republican National Convention, where she portrayed Democrats who criticized U.S. policy as disloyal, repeating the mantra, "they always blame America first." She closed by saying:  "The American people know that it's dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause . . . With the election of Ronald Reagan, the American people declared to the world that we have the necessary energy and to defend ourselves, and that we have as well a deep commitment to peace. And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House."

We did send Reagan back to the White House, and more than 30 years later, the same dynamic remains.  True patriots  are "proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves."  Then there is the pessimistic "Blame America First" crowd whose relentless questioning of the underpinnings of America's mythic greatness is a threat to that very greatness.

So when President Obama, referring to slavery, acknowledged that "the United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history" or suggested we may have "a moral responsibility to act" on arms control because only the U.S. had "used a nuclear weapon," he was hammered for apologizing for America.  When, after Trayvon Martin's murder, Obama explained that the "African American community is looking at this issue through  a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away," he was accused of fomenting racial divisions.  And, most recently at the National Prayer Breakfast, when he tried to provide some badly needed perspective on religious extremism, his remarks were characterized, for example, by former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore as "the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime" and by Catholic League President Bill Donohue as "insulting" and "pernicious."

The American psyche is not so fragile that it can't stand a bit of reflection and self-criticism.  We really aren't such a simpleminded people that we can't hold two conflicting concepts at the same time -- we can love our country and the many great things about it while recognizing its deep flaws.  It is therefore far past time to rid ourselves of Reagan's literal and figurative amnesia about America, to get off that high horse, and engage in meaningful conversations that raise troubling questions about our history and what it means for the future. 

Mitt Romney's Commencement Advice: WWCCD (What Would Charles Colson Do)?

Mitt Romney, in an attempt to assure the Religious Right of his social conservative bona fides, delivered the commencement address at Liberty University, the Evangelical Christian University founded by Jerry Falwell.

The reviews are in and it appears that he was a hit with the white Evangelicals he was trying to win over.  As the Christian Science Monitor reports, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, praised Romney's "well-delivered speech," which "accentuated the core values issues that are essential to a strong nation and of great importance to evangelicals . .  that America's financial greatness is directly tied to moral and cultural wholeness.”  And Richard Land, the Baptist pastor from Tennessee who heads The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, agreed, finding shared "values and a similar worldview" on marriage and abortion.

It was this common worldview which Romney stressed in trying to bridge the gap between his Mormon faith and that of these conservative Christians:  

People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology. Surely the answer is that we can meet in service, in shared moral convictions about our nation stemming from a common worldview. The best case for this is always the example of Christian men and women working and witnessing to carry God’s love into every life - people like the late Chuck Colson.

Yes of course, "always the example" of the late Charles Wendell Colson, former hatchet man for Richard Nixon, whose ruthlessness was captured by his oft-quoted remark that he would "walk over my own grandmother" if it would help Nixon get re-elected.  H.R. Haldeman wrote that Colson “encouraged the dark impulses in Nixon’s mind and acted on those impulses instead of ignoring them and letting them die.”  Among his many dastardly acts was compiling Nixon's infamous "enemies list," orchestrating the effort to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, and hiring E. Howard Hunt, who later led the Watergate break-in.

Hunter S. Thompson described Colson as "the guiding light behind Nixon's whole arsenal of illegal, immoral, unethical 'black advance' or 'dirty tricks' department."  (See Fear and Loathing at the Watergate, where HST writes about his "abortive plot" to "seize Colson out of his house and drag him down Pennsylvania Avenue tied behind a huge gold Oldsmobile Cutlass" and "cutting him loose in front of the White House Guard Gate," an idea hatched out of frustration that Colson -- at that time -- appeared to be "the only one of Nixon's first-rank henchmen who would probably not even be indicted."  But I digress.)

Turns out Colson was indicted on obstruction of justice charges for leaking information to the press about Ellsberg, for which he served seven months in federal prison.  By then he had become an Evangelical Christian, and while serving time founded a prison ministry.

He thus became, as Sarah Posner writes, "the original culture warrior," who "helped forge the Catholic-evangelical alliance against abortion."

He was nothing short of a battle commander in the cosmic culture wars, the manufactured showdown between the “Christian worldview” — the only “true” way to see things — and other “worldviews” he insisted were antithetical to it.

Put another way, as Ed Kilgore does, Colson

was for many years the chief advocate among conservative evangelicals of a “united front” with other conservative Christians (notably Catholic “traditionalists”) to pursue an aggressive cultural agenda wrapped in claims that those enemies of the “Christian worldview” were threatening religious liberty, which happens to have become the battle-cry of Christian Right opposition to Barack Obama. 

So what better role model could young conservative Christians have than Chuck Colson because, as Hunter at Daily Kos writes

when you think about how to be a good, upstanding Christian, you should be thinking about convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson, who did nasty things for partisan political gain, got caught, got sent to prison, and then discovered that mentioning Jesus was a fine way to make a generation of religious conservatives consider your own felon-for-your-party path through life as a decent career choice. Be like Chuck!

Grilled Cheese And The War On Religion

Passover is one of the major Jewish holidays, commemorating one of the essential stories of the Jewish people -- the Exodus, when the Israelites, led by Charlton Heston, escaped slavery in Egypt.  As the story goes, after the ten plagues were visited upon the Egyptians, the Pharoah agreed to free the Jews who then left quickly before the Pharoah could change his mind.  Apparently, all the Jews were in the process of baking bread when the decision to flee was made, and they had to leave before the bread dough could rise.  Thus, for the duration of the one-week Passover holiday, Jews cannot eat bread or bread products, but can only eat matzo, which is unleavened bread that tastes like water crackers.

Today is the last day of Passover 2012.  After six days without bread, bagels or scones, I may be overly sensitive, but am I the only one who is outraged that yesterday of all days was National Grilled Cheese Day?  I mean, the Jews escaping bondage did not have time to let their bread rise for a decent sandwich much less wait for the cheese to melt before making the long and treacherous journey across the Red Sea and through the desert.

Out of curiosity, I looked for what was going to undermine the next Jewish holiday, Shavuot, which is on May 27th:  End of the Word and Jesus Returns.  Figures. 

Why Republicans Need A War On Religion

By Tina Dupuy, cross-posted from her website

Republicans didn’t set out to have a war on women; they wanted a war on religion. Their intention was to march two Republican-created boogiemen into a battle that would make the War on Christmas cringe: ObamaCare and ObamaIsAMuslim. The Affordable Care Act stipulates birth control be included in insurance coverage instead of forcing women to pay out of pocket for such medications. This was the shot across the bow for the GOP to start their war. Republican sage, Congressman Darrell Issa, called a bunch of men of faith (yes, all men) to testify to Congress how the provision in the health care law regarding birth control would adversely affect them.

Then the right-wing echosphere spent the next week bouncing the sound bite: “This isn’t about contraception, this is about religious freedom.”

America’s right-wing: Afraid of Muslims, suspicious of Mormons, terrified of atheists and martyrs of religious freedom.

Republicans botched their war on religion with the word “slut.” Oh and by proposing laws against women getting equal pay, and a right to privacy or recourse if a doctor lies to them. The Chairman of the RNC, Reince Priebus, said the war on women is imaginary at the same moment Republican legislators around the country were introducing bills eroding women’s rights. So the war over what kind of war this was – religion or women – was lost by Republicans. Their best efforts to get a fruitful campaign about religious liberty backfired into a debate about gender equality.

To quote Rick Perry, “Oops.”

This party used to be better at getting traction with these wedge causes-they-call-wars. This has been their modus operandi to pummel artists, single mothers, monogamous gay couples, pot smokers, public employees and other subversives for decades: They create a fake crisis, say it will kill us all and then repeat it until our ears bleed.

How have they fumbled manufacturing a war on religion?! This is a John Carter level of a stink bomb: It’s totally formulaic – how can it fail?

The Difference Between Private And Public Morality

By Robert Reich, cross-posted from his website

DonkeyHotey

Republicans have morality upside down. Santorum, Gingrich, and even Romney are barnstorming across the land condemning gay marriage, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, and the wall separating church and state.

But America’s problem isn’t a breakdown in private morality. It’s a breakdown in public morality. What Americans do in their bedrooms is their own business. What corporate executives and Wall Street financiers do in boardrooms and executive suites affects all of us.

There is moral rot in America but it’s not found in the private behavior of ordinary people. It’s located in the public behavior of people who control our economy and are turning our democracy into a financial slush pump. It’s found in Wall Street fraud, exorbitant pay of top executives, financial conflicts of interest, insider trading, and the outright bribery of public officials through unlimited campaign “donations.”

Political scientist James Q. Wilson, who died last week, noted that a broken window left unattended signals that no one cares if windows are broken. It becomes an ongoing invitation to throw more stones at more windows, ultimately undermining moral standards of the entire community.

The windows Wall Street broke in the years leading up to the crash of 2008 remain broken. Despite financial fraud on a scale not seen in this country for more than eighty years, not a single executive of a major Wall Street bank has been charged with a crime.

Since 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed 25 cases against mortgage originators and securities firms. A few are still being litigated but most have been settled. They’ve generated almost $2 billion in penalties and other forms of monetary relief, according to the Commission. But almost none of this money has come out of the pockets of CEOs or other company officials; it has come out of the companies — or, more accurately, their shareholders. Federal prosecutors are now signaling they won’t even bring charges in the brazen case of MF Global, which lost billions of dollars that were supposed to be kept safe.

Nor have any of the lawyers, accountants, auditors, or top executives of credit-rating agencies who aided and abetted Wall Street financiers been charged with doing anything wrong.

And the new Dodd-Frank law that was supposed to prevent this from happening again is now so riddled with loopholes, courtesy of Wall Street lobbyists, that it’s almost a sham. The Street prevented the Glass-Steagall Act from being resurrected, and successfully fought against limits on the size of the largest banks.

Windows started breaking years ago. Enron’s court-appointed trustee reported that bankers from Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase didn’t merely look the other way; they dreamed up and sold Enron financial schemes specifically designed to allow Enron to commit fraud. Arthur Andersen, Enron’s auditor, was convicted of obstructing justice by shredding Enron documents, yet most of the Andersen partners who aided and abetted Enron were never punished.

Americans are entitled to their own religious views about gay marriage, contraception, out-of-wedlock births, abortion, and God. We can be truly free only if we’re confident we can go about our private lives without being monitored or intruded upon by government, and can practice whatever faith (or lack of faith) we wish regardless of the religious beliefs of others. A society where one set of religious views is imposed on a large number of citizens who disagree with them is not a democracy.

It’s a theocracy.

But abuses of public trust such as we’ve witnessed for years on the Street and in the executive suites of our largest corporations are not matters of private morality. They’re violations of public morality. They undermine the integrity of our economy and democracy. They’ve led millions of Americans to conclude the game is rigged.

Senate Kills Blunt Amendment, For Now

By Jodi Jacobson, cross-posted from RH Reality Check

courtesy of Daily Kos

By a narrow margin of 51 to 48, the Senate today voted to "table" the Blunt Amendment, effectively killing it.  For now.

The amendment, named for Missouri GOP Senator Roy Blunt and attached to a Senate transportation bill, arose out of the fight over the birth control mandate, but went even further. Blunt would have given employers sweeping authority to decide the kinds of basic health services to be covered by insurance plans, enabling any individual employer, religious entity, corporation, or health plan to refuse to cover any health care service to which they objected even on vague "moral" grounds, including, for example, screening for cervical and breast cancer, contraception, maternity care, HPV vaccines, testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, and prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS.

Three Democrats voted against tabling--or in other words for--the Blunt Amendment: Senators Bob Casey (PA), Ben Nelson (NE), and Joe Manchin (WV). Let's just say none of these men have a history of supporting women's basic health care or rights, and Casey and Nelson both have gone out of their way in the past to undermine women's access to care.  Nelson proved that this wasn't even just a craven election ploy, since he is in any case retiring from the Senate.
The only Republican who voted to table or kill the amendment was Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), who also just this week announced her retirement from the Senate, citing the high levels of partisanship and gridlock.

The Blunt Amendment was just the most recent salvo in a war over women's health and rights that, as detailed by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) in her remarks on the floor, has been waged since the January 2009 battle over the stimulus and in virtually every single budget, deficit reduction, transportation, and defense bill since then. But it came high on the heels of efforts by the fundamentalist religious right in the United States, led by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and groups like Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and others, to undermine women's access to primary reproductive health care under health reform.

After the vote, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi noted:

“It’s not ironic, but, rather, tragic, that on the day we kick off Women’s History Month, the Senate debates this devastating legislation to put at risk health care for millions of women, including the 20 million women already benefiting from preventive health services guaranteed under health reform.  But it’s just the latest ploy in the Republican agenda of disrespecting the health of American women."

“Women and families across America can breathe a sigh of relief that this radical amendment was blocked by Senate Democrats today, said Senator Patty Murray (D-WA).

“It was absolutely appalling that Republicans forced us to spend days and days dealing with contraception and women’s health, but I am hopeful that we can now get back to work on legislation to create jobs and invest in communities across America.
“It was shameful, but not surprising.  Republicans have clearly realized that if the conversation is about jobs and the economy, they lose. So they’ve made a concerted effort in this election year to attack women’s health care in an attempt to change the subject and rile up their extreme right-wing base. They seem to believe that their path to victory on Election Day runs straight through the women’s health clinic.

But, as Murray noted, “Republicans may have lost this battle, but there’s no indication that they are going to give up attacking women’s health as a political strategy.

Birth Control Bishops

Rather than spend energy fighting contraception legislation, the Catholic Bishops should clean up their own backyard.

By Rose Aguilar, cross-posted from Al Jazeera

Forget child abuse. The Catholic Bishops would rather spend their time, money, and resources on birth control and women's sex lives. The main debate over the past few weeks in the United States has been about birth control. And guess who's dominating it? The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the country's official organisation of the Catholic hierarchy.

The bishops are up in arms over the Obama administration's rule that would have required health insurance plans, including Catholic-affiliated hospitals and universities, to offer free contraception. Once the bishops took to the airwaves to criticise the decision, the administration modified its policy so that insurance companies, not Catholic hospitals or universities, pay for contraception. But that didn't appease the bishops - or Republican extremists.

On February 16, House Republicans thought it was necessary, with all the economic problems the US is facing, to hold a hearing on the contraception rule. The panel was comprised of five men - five religious men who without any kind of health background (watch this video, towards the end).

Before walking out of the hearing, Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York said: "What I want to know is: where are the women?"

The next day, MSNBC's Morning Joe asked that very question. Ironically enough, Morning Joe's discussion about the all-male hearing on birth control was comprised of men. You really can't make this up.

This issue isn't going away anytime soon. According to Reuters, the bishops' conference plans to "battle" the administration on the contraception issue by running TV and radio ads, and asking pastors of every evangelical denomination across the country to read their congregations a letter protesting the mandate as an assault on religious liberty.

You Really Want To Have A Culture War?

DonkeyHotey

What is going on with the Republican Party?  Sure, the House is filled with Tea Party extremists, the base has supported (and continues to support) some pretty wacky presidential hopefuls, and its leaders are far more concerned with toppling Obama than governing.  But they used to be more politically astute in their choice of wedge issues.  Now it seems they've completely lost their moorings with their aggressive and quite unpopular assault on contraceptive coverage.

As I wrote about earlier (see Occupy the Bedroom), Republicans are pushing for an amendment to the Affordable Care Act that would allow employers to deny coverage not just for contraception but for any treatment or any condition they claimed was contrary to their religious beliefs.

They are enthusiastically, if transparently, framing their attack on women's health, the right to privacy and health care reform as an issue of religious freedom.  Hence, the hearing today before a House Committee on the following question:  “Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?”   The hearing, consisting of a panel of eight men, is skewed so that only those who agree with the Republican position will be heard from. But are they really fooling anyone?

It is one thing for the far right to be agitating for this kind of culture war, but purportedly moderate Republicans are being drawn in too.  Maybe, there just aren't any more moderates in the Republican Party.

As this piece in the New York Times suggests, it is all about firing up the base, which has been somewhat lackluster in the wake of their uninspiring presidential candidates, and once again going after Obamacare:

Major evangelical groups that openly opposed Mr. Obama and his health care plan in the past see this as a new affront and a new opportunity for attack.
The National Association of Evangelicals, which represents thousands of churches in 40 denominations, “will be working vigorously” against the mandate, said Galen Carey, the association’s vice president for government relations — lending substance to the statement last week by Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and a Baptist minister, that “we are all Catholics now.”
Evangelical leaders say they would be outraged by the mandate in any case, but many also believe that it will bring them political gains. [Ralph] Reed, the conservative strategist, said that even if a majority of Americans expressed general support for requiring contraceptive coverage — and even if, as he believes, the economy remained the primary issue — getting conservative and religious voters more fired up could make a difference.

Democrats, as always, should follow Elizabeth Warren's lead and take on the Republicans.  She unapologetically attacked her Senate opponent, Scott Brown, for supporting the proposed amendment which she framed as "an extreme attack on every one of us”:

It opens the door to outright discrimination. It would let insurance companies and corporations cut off pregnant women, overweight guys, older Americans, or anyone — because some executive claims it’s part of his moral code. Maybe that wouldn’t happen, but I don’t want to take the chance.

Warren, quite correctly, argues that this issue must be viewed through the prism of economics:

This election is about whose side you stand on.  Here’s an example of giving power to insurance companies and corporations to undercut basic health care coverage. I’m going to fight for families to keep that coverage. The economics around health care are huge for families.

It has long been conventional wisdom that the culture wars help Republicans and drive a wedge between so-called Independents and Democratic "elites."  If the Democrats fight back, it won't work this time.

Occupy The Bedroom

Contraceptive use among women

99% of women who have been sexually active have used birth control.  And contrary to Rick Santorum and other clueless Republicans, birth control is not cheap.  But for them, denying women contraceptive coverage at religious-affiliated institutions is a perfectly acceptable cudgel with which to knock a few more dents into President Obama's health care reform law.  So, Republicans accuse Democrats of waging a war on religion and skewer Obama's "compromise" whereby religious institutions would not even have to provide contraceptive coverage to employees because insurers would do so directly -- a compromise that a majority of Catholic voters support and that major Catholic organizations favor.

But that's not all.  As Laura Clawson reports, "Republicans are now pushing for an amendment to the Affordable Care Act that would allow employers to deny coverage not just for contraception but for any treatment or any condition they claimed was contrary to their religious beliefs."

Got that?  Any employer would be able to deny any health care service on religious grounds. 

Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress explains:

Under the measure, an insurer or an employer would be able to claim a moral or religious objection to covering HIV/AIDS screenings, Type 2 Diabetes treatments, cancer tests or anything else they deem inappropriate or the result of an “unhealthy” or “immoral” lifestyle. Similarly, a health plan could refuse to cover mental health care on the grounds that the plan believes that psychiatric problems should be treated with prayer.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell claims this isn't about contraception but about freedom of religion:  "You can’t miss it — right there in the very first amendment to our Constitution,” McConnell said. “What the overall view on the issue of contraception is has nothing to do with an issue about religious freedom.”

Of course, this isn't about religious freedom either.  It is about gutting health care reform and scoring cheap political points.  Women's health be damned.

Death Penalty Proponents Wage War On Religion

When the fellas in the funny hats speak out, the GOP falls in line, and if the President and his Party disagree, ipso facto, they are waging a war on religion.  At least this is how it works when it suits the political purposes of Republican hypocrites.

The United States Conference of Bishops oppose Affordable Care Act regulations that require employers-- including religious-affiliated institutions -- to provide contraception coverage in insurance plans they make available to their employees.  House Speaker John Boehner called the Obama administration’s refusal to accede to the bishops' demands for an exemption “an unambiguous attack on religious freedom in our country.”

Mitt Romney, similarly, called the requirement an “attack on religious liberty.”  Rick Santorum warned that it will lead to decapitation: “What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do, and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.”

Interesting that Santorum would use a death penalty analogy given the bishops' unequivocal position on capital punishment.  Indeed, the United States Conference of Bishops have been calling for an end to the use of the death penalty for more than thirty-five years.

In 1974, "out of a commitment to the value and dignity of human life, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, by a substantial majority, voted to declare its opposition to capital punishment."

The USCCB issued its first Comprehensive Statement Calling For An End To The Death Penalty in 1980, contending that "the legitimate purposes of punishment do not justify the imposition of the death penalty," and that "serious considerations" should prompt "Christians and all Americans to support the abolition of capital punishment."

In 1999, their Administrative Board issued a statement that included the following:

We oppose capital punishment not just for what it does to those guilty of horrible crimes but for what it does to all of us as a society. Increasing reliance on the death penalty diminishes all of us and is a sign of growing disrespect for human life. We cannot overcome crime by simply executing criminals, nor can we restore the lives of the innocent by ending the lives of those convicted of their murders. The death penalty offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life.

 In 2005, the bishops reiterated that "ending the death penalty would be one important step away from a culture of death and toward building a culture of life.”

Over 1200 people have been put to death in the United States since 1977, when the Supreme Court validated the death penalty statutes of several states and executions resumed.

So, where's the outrage from Republicans?  Why are they not demanding an end to a practice that Catholic bishops vehemently oppose, one that requires taxpayer support, Catholic and otherwise.  California alone has spent $4 billion on a death penalty system despite the urging of the Archbishop of Los Angeles for the passage of laws that would "end the death penalty."

Judges, lawyers, jurors, court staff, law enforcement, and jail and prison personnel of all religions are required to participate in the death penalty process.  Thousands of "condemned" men and women, many of whom have found renewed faith, languish on death row, while others have been executed.

If that isn't a war on religion, I don't know what is.

The War On Contraception

Conservatives Claim "Religious Freedom" Means Freedom to Impose Religion on Workers

By Bill Scher, cross-posted from Campaign for America's Future

It was just one month ago when conservatives were complaining that ABC's George Stephanopoulos was displaying his "bias" while moderating a Republican presidential debate by being "obsessed" with contraception and asking Mitt Romney a "gotcha question" about whether the Constitution has a right to privacy that extends to obtaining contraception.

Last month, Romney handled the question by saying "Contraception—it's working just fine. Just leave it alone."

But now, after conservatives began obsessing over the Obama administration's decision requiring insurance companies to include contraception in the preventative services covered for free under the Affordable Care Act, Romney has become a little obsessed himself, falsely claiming, "President Obama orders religious organizations to violate their conscience."

The obsession has now reached the Speaker of the House, who declared today that if the President doesn't "reverse" this "attack on religious freedom," then "Congress must."

Like most obsessions, this one makes no sense.

How is a rule, based on the law that Congress passed, providing coverage for a service that literally more than 99% of women use, somehow a blunt attack on religion?

How is a rule that is already the law in 28 states—without much of a peep from conservatives including Mitt Romney who was governor of one of those states—suddenly wreaking secular fascism across the nation?

How is a rule that makes eight states expand the exemption for religious institutions, take away freedom from religious institutions?

Most importantly, how is a rule that explicitly exempts "religious employers" a violation of the separation of church and state?