The Banter Long Read: Earlier this week, the White House signaled its support for a bill that would criminalize all abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy... To continue reading this article, please go here. You'll get unrestricted access to all our member's content, and your ...read more
Among the manyreactions to the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision, which granted women's bosses the power to deny them the access to contraception that the law says they're entitled to as part of their earned benefits, none were as clever or hilarious as that of Jasmine Shea. ...read more
Oh, Rush Limbaugh. In your feeble old age, you're making it way to easy for people like me. Today on the Rush Limbaugh Program, our favorite radio troll circled back to the Obamacare contraception issue, which, unless we're mistaken, was resolved by the Supreme Court last week. ...read more
151 years ago today, the Army of the Potomac under the command of Major General George Meade, narrowly thwarted total annihilation at the hands of Robert E. Lee and his First Corp commander, James Longstreet, in the hills outside a small Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg. If ...read more
If you jumped into your time-traveling DeLorean, set the flux-capacitor to 1993, and traveled back in time to ask former President Bill Clinton about the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which he signed that year, it's doubtful he'd agree that neither this ...read more
The Supreme Court decision in Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores continues to confound me. It's difficult to get beyond the basic dumbness of the conservative justices who utterly failed to recognize that the Affordable Care Act absolutely does not mandate that corporations buy ...read more
We turn now to the Pope-is-Catholic and Water-is-Wet file to learn that Karl Rove lied on Fox News Channel today (shocking, I know), repeating that the Affordable Care Act covers abortion-inducing morning after pills. It doesn't. Today on Fox News Channel: "It was not about ...read more
We've covered this several times already, but even otherwise smart liberals who support the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) continue to get this one wrong. The ACA (Obamacare) does not cover any contraception that prevents implantation of a fertilized egg ...read more
President Obama declined to answer questions about the Supreme Court's ruling on the Hobby Lobby case this morning, so Monday morning's White House daily briefing provided the first opportunity for the administration to react to a decision that places employers' religious ...read more
Bibles? Firearms? Blah people? Nope, nope and nope. Better. Speaking at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics, the former U.S. senator and presidential frontrunner Rick Santorum was asked about his views on Catholicism and contraceptives. Of course, Santorum is no ...read more
Yesterday, we learned that Hobby Lobby, which is challenging the federal government over Obamacare's mandatory contraception coverage, offers its employees a 401(k) retirement plan that happens to invest $73 million in pharmaceutical companies that develop and produce various ...read more
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the dual Obamacare contraceptive cases, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius yesterday, and the upshot is that prospects are looking rather grim for the government's case. As we've discussed ...read more
Virginia State Senator Steve Martin, an anti-choice Republican, received a pro-choice Valentine's Day card from an activist group and decided to rant about it on Facebook. Here's the choice paragraph in which he refers to expecting mothers as "hosts." "You can count on me to ...read more
It seems obvious, doesn't it? Contraception, and easy access to it, prevents unintended pregnancies and, therefore, abortions. So why is it that the anti-choice movement is also opposed to women having access to free contraception via the Obamacare health insurance plans -- I ...read more
I'm old enough to remember when tort reform was a thing. The issue was mostly driven by Republicans in the name of politicizing so-called "frivolous lawsuits." Certainly there's some merit in the idea of legislating against lawsuits by nimrods who bite into a hot apple pie and ...read more
The Supreme Court announced that it plans to hear arguments regarding the Affordable Care Act's mandate requiring all health insurance policies to cover contraception and reproductive services without co-pays. The mandate has been challenged by two business owners including the ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From AP: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday denied a request to block part of the federal health care law that requires employee health-care plans to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar emergency ...read more
Andrew Sullivan on the Catholic Church's ridiculous and morally bankrupt stance on contraception: I find the protectors of child rapists preaching to women about contraception to be a moral obscenity. When all the implicated bishops and the Pope resign, ther replacements ...read more
