Friday, January 10, 2014

The Political Madhouse: Obama and the Little Sisters

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has blocked the administration’s mandate that the Little Sisters of the Poor contract to provide contraception coverage to their employees.  That the case has gone this far illustrate the sickness of the left, the complacence of our popular media culture, and the weakness (partly self-inflicted) of President Obama’s political opponents.
That’s the message from First Things columnist Pete Spiliakos in the January 9 “On the Square” column.  Spiliakos identifies the administration’s control grab for what it is, and calls them on their adamance.  “In a sane world,” he writes,

“…the Obama administration would simply have given the sisters a thank you and left it at that.  When it became clear that the president’s health care law would force the sisters to violate their consciences as a condition of continuing to alleviate the suffering of the vulnerable, the Obama administration could have apologized for the confusion and then either issued a waiver or called on Congress to adjust the law.
But, since the sisters’ beliefs are an example of unauthorized diversity, the Obama administration did not grant them a waiver.  The Obama administration chose a “compromise” in which the sisters would still have to contract with a third-party to provide contraception coverage.
Spiliakos goes on to criticize both the Obama administration for their heavy-handed insistence on their left-wing political agenda, and the conservatives for their willingness to let social welfare policy be subjugated to economic policy.  He warns that the end result may be one we don’t want to think about:
Absent a visible and comprehensible set of alternative policies, President Obama’s chaotic, expensive, and coercive statism will ultimately triumph.
It’s a great article.  Read the rest here.

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