It’s Spring Break — though up ’til today, it’s been spent at home, alternating between work and family, while my husband, with my youngest watching, if not participating, building a long-promised treehouse. But today we finally made it to the Field Museum to see the travelling exhibit The Greeks: Agamemnon to Alexander the Great. Hooray for us! So, first of all, if you’re in the Chicago area, you should see this exhibit, which runs through April 10th. It’s one of... Read more
Putting my actuary hat on this morning. First, to put the Little Sisters case into a health insurance context: One thing that people are saying about the situation is this: “the Sisters keep calling it their healthcare plan, but it’s not – it’s the employees’ plan.” So it’s important to understand that the Sisters do not simply purchase health insurance that they “give” to their employees. The Sisters offer what’s called a self-insured plan. This means that, although it... Read more
First of all, apologies for jumping in without context, but here are four thoughts for your Wednesday morning. For more detail, and links to the briefs and other resources, see the National Review. 1. It’s about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, not the First Amendment. This law was passed in 1993 after a series of court cases which had ruled that the First Amendment did not protect religious observance/practice in the case of government actions which were neutral, in principle,... Read more
While I wait for a report to process. . . It seems to me that it’d be worthwhile for me to write up something more comprehensive on the contraceptive mandate, the Little Sisters’ objection, and how health insurance, in general, fits into this. But right now I have to work, y’know. So here are two quick links from 2014, when this first became an issue, on the rationale behind the mandate: “The “War on Women” has gotten out of hand”... Read more
Look, I’ll be honest with you: when I first read about the bombings in Brussels (link to CNN for convenience), my immediate reaction was not concern for the victims, but, instead, concern for our own vacation this summer. We’ve got it all planned out now, you see. Are the places we’re visiting likely terrorist targets? London, the Netherlands (a spot halfway between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, by the coast), the Moselle Valley, Augsburg, and Munich. They’re all safe, right? At least 26 dead, and... Read more
On Friday, the New York Times published a commentary piece by Constance Veit of the Little Sisters of the Poor, “Obamacare’s Birth-Control ‘Exemption’ Still Tramples on Rights,” in which she outlines her orders objections to the administration’s implementation of the contraception mandate. She writes, the government has candidly told the Supreme Court that we “don’t get an exemption” at all. Rather, what Health and Human Services is calling an “opt-out” is really an “opt-in” — a permission slip where we... Read more
and Brady Center donor. The gun itself? Well, my husband did his 18 months’ service in the German military back when it was compulsory, in the Cold War days, and learned the basics of firearms there, even though he was happy to secure himself a desk job as soon after basic training as possible. (And military service was a different experience for him than the typical American soldier — it was a 9 – 5 sort of experience, with weekends... Read more
Diapers are in the news lately, due to a new White House initiative in which a Silicon Valley e-commerce startup, Jet, will be working with diaper manufacturer First Quality, to lower the price of diapers for the low-income families who struggle to afford them. By modifying diaper packaging and streamlining shipping processes along the lines of on-demand models like Amazon Prime, the project will allow nonprofits to quickly buy diapers in bulk online for distribution to families who need the... Read more
The Second Amendment is, apparently, up for grabs again. Or, at any rate, in 2007, after the D.C. circuit court had struck down the tight D.C. gun restrictions, Supreme Court justice nominee Merrick Garland voted for rehearing the decision; he was not with the majority, and the decision was upheld both there, and at the Supreme Court, becoming the Heller decision holding that the Second Amendment does indeed provide for an individual right to bear arms. The folks at the... Read more
Ann Althouse this morning links to her son’s blog, Jaltcoh, which links to an article in Talking Points Memo, “Kasich: I May Go To Convention ‘With More Delegates Than Anybody Else’” which says, “We’ll have one more to go this fall when we beat Hillary Clinton here because I’m in the best position to beat her and we’re going to get a lot of momentum. We have a lot of people now joining us who they were on the sidelines.... Read more
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