This article titled “Obama’s contraception rules under fire from Congress and religious groups” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington, for The Guardian on Thursday 9th February 2012 00.24 UTC

Barack Obama has come under a barrage of criticism from Congress and religious organisations over a new requirement that Catholic-run schools and hospitals provide free contraception to workers.

The issue has ballooned into a political confrontation that appears to mark out one of the battle lines for the presidential election campaign. The Republicans said the new regulation is further evidence that the president is “hostile to people of faith”. Democrats claimed that opposition to it is another front in the Republicans’ “war on women’s health”.

The newly announced regulation, which takes effect in 18 months, says that all health insurance plans provided by employers must offer birth control to women free of charge. It applies equally to Catholic-owned universities, medical establishments and charities.

As the Catholic church loudly denounced the rule, Republican opposition focused on whether a religious organisation opposed to contraception could be forced by the government to go against its principles.

Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential candidate who is a convert to Catholicism, called the regulation an “attack on the Catholic church”. Two of the other candidates, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, were also strongly critical.

John Boehner, the Republican and Catholic speaker of the House of Representatives, called the White House move a breach of constitutional protections against government interference with religion.

“In recent days, Americans of every faith and political persuasion have mobilised in objection to a rule put forth by the Obama administration that constitutes an unambiguous attack on religious freedom in our country,” he said. “This attack by the federal government on religious freedom in our country cannot stand, and will not stand.”

Republican leaders said they would push legislation to block the requirement.

The Catholic archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, said that the government’s attempts to force the new regulation on his church had prompted outrage from people of all faiths.

“The more people learn what is at stake here, the more people are speaking up. It’s not just a Catholic issue. It’s an issue that touches all faith based communities, all religions, all organisations that draw their inspiration from their faith. I think what’s happening across the country is that the more people learn about this mandate, the more they’re saying this is wrong,” he said.

Obama also came under criticism from some Democrats, including the former Virginia governor, Timothy Kaine, who is running for the Senate and is a close ally of the president. He said that it was a political misstep.

“The White House made a good decision in including a mandate for contraception coverage in the Affordable Care Act insurance policy, but I think they made a bad decision in not allowing a broad enough religious employer exemption,” he said. “I have definitely expressed my grave concerns to the White House about that.”

The White House signalled on Wednesday that it may be prepared to reach a compromise, but there were also signs that the administration is not unhappy to fight a political battle in an election year over a social issue likely to see many independent voters, particularly women, side with the president.

Some critics said that Obama may have misstepped in alienating large numbers of Catholic voters who, while many do not follow their church’s teachings on contraception, object to the government forcing it to go against its beliefs. They also said that it would have a negative impact on voters from other religions and again fire up Christian evangelicals who are ambivalent about the prospect of Romney as the Republican presidential candidate.

Peggy Noonan, a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, wrote in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week that Obama has committed an inept faux pas that showed how removed he is from the “essential realities of America”, and that it could cost him the presidential election.

But Obama also has an interest in keeping issues such as access to contraception on the political agenda, especially if he faces Romney as the Republican presidential candidate.

When Romney was governor of Massachusetts in 2005, a new state law required all hospitals, including Catholic-run ones, to provide morning after pills to rape victims, which the Catholic church regards as a form of abortion. Romney said he opposed the law but he was also quoted at the time as saying: “My personal view, in my heart of hearts, is that people who are subject to rape should have the option of having emergency contraception or emergency contraception information.”

The White House flagged up that the issue will be a political battleground when Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, said that it is “ironic that Mitt Romney is criticising the president” for a regulation that is similar to the one in Massachusetts.

“The former governor of Massachusetts is an odd messenger on this given that the services that would be provided to women under this rule are the same services that are provided in Massachusetts and were covered when he was governor,” he said.

The issue is also likely to play in to concerns about Republican attitudes toward women after the furore around the politically-driven attempt by the Susan G Komen for the Cure foundation to halt grants to Planned Parenthood because it provides abortions.

The controversy may not do the damage to Catholic support for Obama that the Republicans hope.

A poll released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that more than half of Catholic voters agree that employers should be required to provide their workers with healthcare insurance that covers contraception. However, only 45% supported the requirement for religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals to do so while 52% oppose it.

Carney hinted that the White House may give ground, but not much.

“We want to work with all these organisations to implement this policy in a way that is as sensitive to their concerns as possible,” he said. “But let’s be clear: We are committed, the president is committed, to ensuring that women have access to contraception without paying any extra costs, no matter where they work.”

One compromise under discussion is permitting church employers to effectively subcontract the part of health insurance covering contraception to an alternative insurer.

The administration has previously rejected another proposal that would broaden the definition of a religious employer beyond the churches themselves to include schools and hospitals.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

That headline alone has gotta be worth something! The Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson paid $2,500 at a charity auction for dinner with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dorn. He took Andrew Breitbart with him. A breathless Breitbart tells of the experience moments after leaving the dinner.

Our corrupt Attorney General, Eric Holder, was grilled by House Republicans yesterday over the DOJ’s “Fast and Furious” gun running scandal.

People who say the rich are not “paying their fair share” need only to look at Newt Gingrich’s tax records he released last night. Gingrich earned $3.4 million in 2010 (which is “rich” unless you live in NYC or LA) and paid $944,708 in taxes. So essentially he had to fork over a $1 million because he earned $3.5 million. That’s a lot of money. 31.7 percent of their gross adjusted income to be exact. The idea that higher income Americans should be forced to hand over even more of their earnings to the government is outrageous. It’s outright theft.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich paid nearly $1 million in federal income taxes in 2010 on more than $3.1 million in income, filings released Thursday showed amid renewed calls for rival Mitt Romney to release his tax records as well.

Gingrich’s tax returns — released minutes after the start of the latest Republican presidential debate — showed he and his wife paid $994,708, or about 31.7 percent, of their adjusted income in taxes. Personal financial disclosure forms filed last summer show Gingrich is worth more than $6.5 million.

As a side note, it’s pretty pathetic for Gingrich to keep attacking Mitt Romney for his wealth and business dealings at Bain Capital. One can argue about how many jobs Romney created, but it was a hell of a lot more than Newt Gingrich ever did as a lobbyist and author after leaving Congress. Republicans should leave the politics of envy and class warfare to the Democrats.

(H/T Fox News)

From Mediaite:

South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Dick Harpootlian objected earlier in the week on MSNBC to today’s Republican primary debate. Unlike the rest of America, he was not just objecting to the concept of having the watch the same candidates of the past year or so talk about the same things for another two hours– he considered it objectionable to have a debate on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and “ignore” the holiday. On tonight’s Bill O’Reilly, Harpootlian began to make the case, but was promptly silenced, jaw agape, as O’Reilly reminded him that the Democrats in his state did the exact same thing in 2008.

Frankly, it was a beautiful and well crafted take down on O’Reilly’s part. Dick came off looking like just that — a dick. He tried to make a racial issue out of the GOP hosting a debate on MLK Day and came out looking like a fool. It really is sad that liberals so desperately want to play the race card. They trivialize the issue of racism at every turn with their false allegations and cynical race baiting.

Now watch it all unfold…

Source: Rasmussen Reports
Scott Rasmussen discusses Mitt Romney and President Obama’s latest hypothetical Election 2012 matchup.

Fox News is reporting that Mitt Romney has been declared the winner of the Iowa caucuses. He won by 8 votes.

From USA Today Live Blog:

2:34 a.m. ET

Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn says Mitt Romney wins the Iowa caucuses by eight votes.

Right now as of 12:57am there is exactly 4 votes separating Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in the Iowa caucuses. Fox News just reported that moments ago. This is one of the closest contests in modern political history. The article linked reflects an 18 vote gap in the contest, but that has since narrowed to just 4 votes. They are essentially tied for first place.

Source: CBS
Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson announced he is going to retire next year.

From Big Government:

In a Christmas break message to his party, Communist Party USA vice chair Jarvis Tyner has confirmed the vital importance of the build up to the 2012 elections to “set the stage for a new progressive era and for a socialist transformation.”

Tyner draws clear right/left battle lines and the communist’s commitment to Party ‘friend’ President Barack Obama and to the Democratic Party cause…

The Christmas message is quite lengthy and lays out the Communist plan for helping their friend Barack Obama get re-elected. They plan to join with labor unions and other Progressive organizations to fight Republicans who “literally thrive on racism as a party.”

If the Republicans and Tea Party gang want people to stop accusing them of racism, there is a solution. They must end their long history of using racist scapegoating and pushing racist policies and practices. After the passage of the Civil rights and voting rights acts in the mid sixties the racist Southern white Democrats (called “Dixiecrats”) en mass joined the ranks of the Republican Party. They were warmly welcomed. Today without their racist Southern base of voters the Republicans could not win the presidency, or any national election. They literally thrive on racism as a party. And that is why there is a virulent racist component to almost every program they advance today.

It’s a well known fact that many in the Democrat party are in bed with Communists. This is not an issue that died with the Cold War. It’s still very much alive. Last year, Connecticut AFL-CIO leader John Olsen accepted an award from the Communist Party USA.

Do I think there is a Commie takeover on the horizon? No, I don’t. But it’s important to highlight these connections to show just how radical many on the far left actually are. The president’s own mother was a Communist. His entire adult life was spent advocating Marxist policies as a community organizer and agitator. The Democrat Party of today is not what it was during the Clinton years. The 1960′s radicals have had a second-coming of sorts and they are going to use every tactic both legal and illegal to get their man Obama another four years in office.