At the same time the IRS was ramping up its harassment of Tea Party groups in 2011, liberals were outraged and President Obama threatened to veto the debt ceiling legislation when Republicans tried to end public financing of Planned Parenthood’s abortion mills and incessant political advocacy. Even now, Planned Parenthood continues to receive public funding and also operates a 501(c)(4), presumably with private contributions, although accounting gimmicks make this separation highly dubious. Meanwhile, Tea Party groups whose stated mission is to educate citizens about the Bill of Rights and accept only private donations were held to a much higher level of scrutiny.

The contrast is spectacular and revealing: for modern liberalism, abortion is a public good but freedom of speech is not. Obama made this explicit when he told Planned Parenthood, “God bless you” and then went on to tell the graduates of Ohio State to reject the voices that warn that tyranny is just around the corner. If the revelations of the past few days have taught us anything, it is that the phrase “unaccountable bureaucrat” is not just a political cliché, and pace Obama’s assurances, there really is a petty tyrant that is always lurking around the corner of every page of ambiguous and ill-conceived legislation—and ObamaCare is by far the most heinous example.

President Obama claimed in a press conference yesterday that he had no knowledge of the IRS program, but this does not absolve him of responsibility. During his State of the Union address in 2010, President Obama made it clear that he was vehemently opposed to 501(c)(4) organizations engaging in political activity and urged Congress to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Perhaps, like the knights who killed Saint Thomas á Beckett after hearing Henry II wish for his death in a fit of rage, the IRS employees were just trying to please their boss.

“Paying the Tax,” by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, c.1620

This should give us pause when we consider the wide-ranging powers granted to the IRS under ObamaCare. Indeed, the landmark ruling of National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius only upheld ObamaCare by interpreting its most onerous provisions as an exercise of the taxing power. Liberal pundits echo Obama’s claim that we have nothing to fear, but they said the same thing about the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups. In this light, the words of the Declaration of Independence reverberate through the centuries as a warning that is just as relevant today, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.” The HHS contraceptive and abortifacient mandate is only a foretaste of what is to come.

In the age of Obama, we can no longer hope that the executive branch will exercise prudence and sound judgement in the enforcement of the law. Whenever the law allows for discretion, it also allows for abuse. As far as we know, this scandal is not the product of some Nixonian conspiracy, although the scope and longevity of the IRS program do not reflect well on Obama’s leadership if nobody ever thought to bring it to his attention. As the saying goes, “A fish rots from the head down.”

Most likely, these abuses are simply the result of an incompetent and ineffectual President who despises the citizens that elected him and takes no interest in the task of governing when it does not suit his latest initiative to remake American society. If we can take Obama at his word, the IRS employees were simply left to their own devices without proper oversight. It is only natural that they would follow the example of a President who never misses an opportunity to chastise his conservative opponents and to politicize every function of the government under his control. Sadly, in his peevish aloofness, Obama is the pettiest tyrant of them all.

—

Correction Note: the original version of this article referred to the debt ceiling debate as taking place in May 2012 when it was in fact the summer of 2011.

This is especially true of men entrusted with great power. In the case of President Obama and soon-to-be Pope Emeritus Benedict, the contrast of the two men’s fortunes is especially instructive. Whereas the latter is descending the proverbial staircase with grace and self-control, the former is desperately clambering up from the bottom in a futile struggle to the top. The two men could not be more different.

As the heir to the Chair of St. Peter, Pope Benedict XVI possessed not only tremendous temporal power but indeed the keys to heaven itself. In the frailty and weakness of his old age, he knew that he could not adequately shepherd the souls of billions toward the gates of the eternal kingdom and so he has relinquished everything to better serve his people and his God in meditation and prayer.

In so doing, he demonstrates the greatest power of all, which is the willingness to give it up.

Meanwhile, faced with tough decisions to reduce government spending due to cuts that were enacted by his own party in the Senate, Obama’s naked display of raw power is as embarrassing as it is ugly. An elder journalist has received threats from the White House staff and the Secretary of Defense is reducing our naval presence in the most troubled part of the world, for instance.

Both men entered into their respective offices with great hope and adulation, but there the similarities end. In Rome yesterday, tens of thousands crowded into St. Peter’s Square to wish Benedict a fond farewell and express their continued joy and hope for the future of the Church.

On the other hand, any illusion that Obama still believes his 2008 campaign mantra of “Hope and Change” surely has been dispelled by the events of the past week. Hope has hardly made a comeback in Washington since the election.

Double-helix staircase at Chateaux de Chambord, Loir-et-Cher, France which allows one to ascend without meeting someone coming down

King George III was reputed to have said of George Washington’s retirement as Commander-in-Chief, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.” The same could be said of Benedict today. Meanwhile, Obama’s abilities as a leader were never equal to his ambitions and his pique in response to his failures is like the madness of George III instead of the grace and humility of George Washington or the outgoing Supreme Pontiff. Whereas Pope Emeritus Benedict is laying his life at the foot of the cross in obedience to a higher power, President Obama’s second term is shaping up to be a reprise of the worst abuses of the Nixon administration.

Napoleon Bonaparte, who was well-acquainted with earthly power, is supposed to have said, “Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.” Obama seems to share in this mentality, for he is desperate to avoid the obscurity which seems inevitable as his influence wanes. However, Benedict knows better, for he remembers well the words spoken at his inauguration–and which will be spoken again at the inauguration of his successor, “sic transit gloria mundi.”

All power is for naught. In the final accounting, only grace and obedience to God will be of any value.

===

Joshua Bowman (@prolixpatriot) joined in full communion with the Catholic Church in 2010 after many years in the spiritual wilderness. He recently moved from his beloved native Virginia to Columbus, Ohio with his growing family and writes on religion, politics, history, and geographical curiosities in these pages and on his personal blog, The Prolix Patriot.

And we also wouldn’t have this…

The President of the United States recorded a message for NARAL Pro-Choice America, which celebrated the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade on Tuesday.

“To everyone at NARAL Pro-Choice America, thank you for your tireless advocacy,” Obama said. “I couldn’t be prouder of the work each of you is doing.”

By the way…

Why don’t Republican Presidents do this for pro-life groups? I remember my frustration that George W. Bush placed a phone call to the March for Life when we were all located about 200 feet from his house.

Really? Phoning it in?

I understand that Presidents don’t usually attend political rallies. But if Obama can record a video message, why can’t the next Republican President cut a video for the March for Life? C’mon folks, it’s the 21st Century.

Twenty young children, slain for no good reason. Adam Lanza just decided they were inconvenient to him. It was horribly wrong to do this. What Lanza did was wrong not because the parents of those children loved them and wanted them to remain alive. What Lanza did was wrong because each those children was an individual, unique, beautiful human person with his or her own soul and right to continue living.

It is a right that precedes all other rights, and no other rights are possible without it. It is a right that no one can take away, it can only be surrendered through one’s own actions. Adam Lanza ignored the unalienable right those children had to live and killed twenty of them.

Every single day in our country the body count of the Newtown massacre is met two-hundred times over in abortionists’ facilities. Two-hundred Newtowns, daily. The mind reels, the heart breaks.

In response to the Newtown massacre a hue and cry has arisen to restrict gun rights. The awful irony is that the Venn diagram of those who most ardently support such restrictions on guns and those who most ardently support a woman’s right to choose an abortion very likely have significant overlap.

Those same people would be hard-pressed to identify the moment at which the child in utero acquires the right to life, usually preferring to avoid the question entirely. They’d rather discuss the woman’s right to choose what to do with her body and ignore the hard reality that the presence of a new person in her womb changes the dynamic of the question utterly—of course it is her body, but it is also that child’s home.

President Obama and all who have been speaking after him on the topic of gun violence have repeated variations of, “If we can save even one child, it is worth it; we have a responsibility to act; we will be judged on how we move to protect the most vulnerable amongst us.”

Who can disagree with that? And yet, so many who call for measures that would save, at most, a few dozen children’s lives per year in this country defend a practice that directly takes 4,000 children’s lives per year.

Let’s move to value and protect them all.

Legend has it that when she was sent naked to the brothel, her hair miraculously grew long enough to cover her virginal body.

You see, living as a Christian was not allowed by Roman law. Rome at the time was in the throes of the Diocletian persecution. One could, of course, hold to Christian beliefs in one’s own head, but one’s public actions were subject to regulation by laws of the state, and the state outlawed Christianity.

The law also did not allow the execution of virgins so the prefect took the natural next step: he had Agnes dragged, naked, to a brothel to be ravaged against her will.

The legend has it that no man was able actually rape the young girl for whatever reason, miraculous or otherwise, and she was eventually dispatched by an executioner.

Agnes understood what marriage meant and refused to make a mockery of marriage.

Agnes understood the importance of her sexual purity and the dignity of the sexual act and would not make a mockery of her body or of the sexual act.

Agnes did not fear the power of the state, controlled at the time by men who would rather see her executed than allow her to live according to Christian principles. She allowed herself to be destroyed rather than submit to unjust and immoral laws.

Today during his inaugural address President Obama, already the most pro-abortion president we have ever know, already responsible for the greatest assault on religious freedom our country has seen in more the two centuries, well-nigh pledged action on same-sex “marriage”—a “right” he didn’t think was a right four years ago but now seems to hold to be as sacred as the ending of slavery.

Now, like gun control, what he may want to do and what he will actually be able to accomplish are very different things, given the makeup of Congress and laws presently on the books like the Defense of Marriage Act.

But he’ll try, through pressure and executive orders. It will start with nice-sounding calls for equality and respect and some focus group-tested phrase like “balanced approach” that sounds nice but really means, “do it my way or I’ll get testy.” He’ll give assurances that no one will be forced to violate their consciences, but we know he doesn’t give a fig about conscience protections if they think differently from his own.

There likely will not be much major action on the matter since marriage is generally regulated by the states, where executive orders don’t have much sway. That is until a same-sex couple demands that they be permitted to have their ceremony in name-your-significant-Catholic-church. St. Patrick’s in New York City? St. Louis? San Francisco? The Basilica in DC? At that point the argument would shift: if these public houses of worship accommodate anyone at all, like one-man-one-woman couples, they have to accommodate everyone. Then you get an equality argument akin to the segregation argument. They may be private entities, but they provide a service to the public, so discrimination is not allowed.

After all, as President Obama said today during his inaugural address, “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well.”

That is not just a policy position; that is a moral and theological position. At least, it is in Catholic parlance, and when Catholic parlance affects political activity Catholics must uphold the implications of Catholic teaching. For his part, when President Obama moves to act on his (new-found? Long-standing but previously masked?) belief that any and all “love” anyone commits to another, no matter how distorted or inchoate a sense of love it is, ought to be treated like every other version of love, he will be unable to broach any disagreement. A failure by anyone in society to respect anyone else’s professed love as the lovers demand to be respected must be treated as bigotry and therefore must be quashed in the name of our brave new inclusive, tolerant society.

This may be all well and good if we keep our “hateful” dissent on this new concept of “love” to ourselves, but if we have the temerity to write about it or, perish the thought, bar use of private facilities like churches or church halls over it, well, that opens us up to vitriolic comments and spurious charges of “hate speech,” and perhaps even legal action.

The Catholic Church is the chief obstacle standing between Obama and progressives like those who will blast me in the comments and their goal. They know that. We know that. It will undoubtedly be an eventful and contentious four more years.

But the witness of our saints like Agnes who stood and resisted the power of the state gives us hope. Perhaps not hope for a peaceful and simple political conclusion to the struggles ahead, but at least hope in remembering that God is sovereign, His will reigns supreme, this world with its pomp and puffed-up political power and prestige is fleeting.

I don’t expect the government under Barack Obama will actually move to shut down St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the next four years, but not for lack of desire. Chaining the door is not the only danger, however. Civil unrest, vandalism, egged on subtly by our Alinskyite, Community Organizer-in-Chief President, can make life very difficult.

“Agnes,” the lamb, and all who suffered persecution for their unwavering faith in He who is LORD, pray for us, that we may meet well those opposed to us, stand firm and with charity in our convictions, convert hearts to change minds, and bring about an ever greater measure justice in this world. Amen.

After reading excerpts from their letters and getting them to wave he said,

These are our kids.  This is what they’re thinking about.  And so what we should be thinking about is our responsibility to care for them, and shield them from harm, and give them the tools they need to grow up and do everything that they’re capable of doing — not just to pursue their own dreams, but to help build this country.  This is our first task as a society, keeping our children safe.  This is how we will be judged.  And their voices should compel us to change.

Now, coming from most people and in most settings I would accept these remarks as meaning nothing than the conventional collective responsibility for each others’ safety, “I am my brother’s keeper,” sentiment.

But this President isn’t most people and this press conference was not most settings. This President has followed a vision of government that puts governmental power first and the people second. He has demonstrated a propensity for power grabs that serve a narrow ideology and a cadre of wealthy, elitist supporters rather than advance the good for society. A gun grab is entirely within the vision that this President espouses, and his Alinsky training screams, “never let a crisis go to waste.” Newtown provides the unassailable crisis. Guns are the target. Of course, like his desire for single-payer health care, he won’t go for the whole enchilada at once: that will require a few more crises. But he’s got four more years. This is a great time to start the gun grab, hence today’s executive orders.

Because of that, I say to the President, no, those are not “our kids,” they are their parents’ kids. Their safety is not among my primary concerns, it is among their parents’ primary concerns. Giving those kids the tools they need is not my responsibility, it is their parents’ responsibility. Our first task as society is not “keeping our children safe,” it is protecting everyone’s ability to flourish according to their own effort and industry, it is helping parents accomplish their responsibilities vis-a-vis their children in the ways those parents decide they need help.

We are not a collective where kids, after birth (should they make it that far in Barack Obama’s Planned Parenthood-saturated America), become property of the state on loan, as it were, to the parents to raise so long as the state allows. Most of us recoil at the notion of becoming “Julia.” When kids go to school their primary teachers remain their parents, regardless of what the National Education Association and the Department of Education say. Throughout the day the persons chiefly responsible for the safety of the children remains their mother and father. Should the parents entrust this charge to another they have not thereby relinquished it.

That said, if parents in a local area wish their school to be protected by armed security they should be allowed to have it. If they wish to allow teachers and administrators to be armed, they should have it. If they wish their school to remain unprotected, surrounded by an imaginary “gun-free zone” bubble, that is their prerogative too.

And in the house, if the parents, the husband and father in particular, feel the need to possess firepower they deem necessary, within reason, for the protection of themselves and their children against all intruders civilian—or governmental—that right ought to continue to be protected.

In our Catholic tradition this falls in the vein of Just War Theory. Aggression, including lethal force, is justified in certain circumstances, among them is defense of another, especially those for whom you are responsible.

We believe that the family is the basic unit of society, and all components of society that are composed of families drawn together—a local community, a neighborhood, a town or city, a county, a state, and eventually a nation—are established because of, and must be in support of, the preservation and advancement of that foundational unit.

The government has responsibilities because families have rights to protect and responsibilities to carry out; among them the right to self-defense. Families banded together in a local area will entrust an overarching responsibility for policing to a governmental organization, but they do not thereby relinquish their right and primary responsibility to protect and defend themselves with all proportionate force. Within the family this responsibility of protection falls chiefly on the husband and father.

This woman has a better chance of surviving a home intrusion than a woman with nothing but a phone.

Governmental action should support, never neuter, a father’s ability to protect his family against those who will not obey silly gun control laws, and who intend also to violate laws against assault, burglary, rape, and perhaps even murder.

Reliance on the police is no answer. A criminal bent on mayhem busting through your window will not pause and wait for you to place a call to 9-1-1 and then wait for the police to arrive before he attacks. A five-minute response time may be four minutes and fifty-nine seconds too long to save your life or your virtue. On the other hand, merely flashing an AR-15 in the assailant’s sight and showing the least ability to use it will adjust his attitude real quickly, and in ways that even a handgun likely would not.

When a government seeks to reduce a husband and father’s ability to protect his family that government is not acting in support of the family, but rather at odds with it. When this happens the government becomes an enemy of the family rather than a friend.

That some people cannot fathom a reason someone else might want or feel that they need such a weapon does not overrule this. Laws ought not be based on “I don’t think you need those, and, frankly, they scare me.” but rather on sound reasoning.

The crazed actions of a few sick young men who did horrible things in a spectacular fashion do not overrule this. Reasonable measures to prevent such people from getting their hands on such weapons can and should be taken (more on that in another post, because I think some of the President’s policy proposals are actually quite sound). But measures are not “reasonable” that would remove these weapons from the hands of the overwhelming majority of persons who are only a danger to those who would do unjust harm.

¡Amigos para siempre! (Means you'll always be my friend.)

[Thanks to Don Shaolin in the comments for the assistance with my Spanish.]

——-

As predictable as Michelle Bachmann introducing a complete Obamacare repeal, über-liberal representative José Serrano of New York introduced a repeal of the 22nd Amendment, the one that instituted presidential term limits.

Now, to be sure, as SooperMexican notes, Serrano’s repeal has less chance of passing than Bachmann’s, which has none in the current Congress, because a constitutional amendment needs two-thirds of the House and the Senate plus ratification from three quarters of the states—thirty-eight of them. Bachmann’s measure, however, would merely need majorities in both houses plus the president’s signature or an override of his veto. Bachmann’s repeal could get a majority in the House before it dies in the Senate. Serrano’s repeal of the 22nd Amendment would be hard-pressed to get the necessary 67 senators, if it got there. It won’t: it’ll die in committee in the House, like it did in 2011.

So neither is mathematically possible at this point.

But one would be good for America. The other would allow Barack Obama to run for president again and again.

But if we’re looking for amendments relating to term limits, let’s limit terms for senators and representatives as well.

That adequately explains why I am entirely and completely unimpressed with the anger of the pastor at a parish who called me, irate that a group of volunteers I organized were putting pro-life leaflets on cars in his parish parking lot. He complained about how much difficulty it will cause him.

Difficulty? What difficulty? He didn’t know we were going to do it, so there is no possibility of legal difficulties.

The material was entirely consistent with the Church’s teaching on life and a Catholic’s obligations vis-a-vis voting and the “non-negotiables,” so it couldn’t possibly be controversial among his parishoners, could it?

One of the most powerful spots on the planet. Souls can be emboldened for the good or scandalized. Minds can be enlightened or confused. Hearts can be set afire or made lukewarm.

I mean, if his parishoners are well informed on the issues and well educated by their teachers in the faith concerning what is and what is not negotiable then the worst problem would be a few leaflets fluttering around in the breeze after parishoners left.

Perhaps a few parishoners who refused to accept the teaching of the Church might be upset, and perhaps a few might call him, thinking he had orchestrated the leafletting. In that case, it seems like a grand opportunity to collect a wayward sheep and coax him back to the fold, while assuring the parishoner that he, the pastor, had absolutely nothing to do with, nor knowledge of, the leaflets being distributed. So that’s not really a difficulty—it’s his job.

I’m flush out of what the difficulty might be. Whatever it is, I’ll wager that it pales in comparison to the difficulty a child in the womb feels during an abortion. Anyhow, I think you know where I’m going with this.

The Romney campaign was horrid at Hispanic/Latino outreach, which accounts for them not getting much of that vote. But not voting for one guy doesn’t mean one automatically votes for the other guy. If Catholics of any ethnicity cast a vote for a politician as antithetical to Catholic non-negotiables as Obama, that strongly suggests a failure on the part of those charged with forming the faithful on their faith and the duties the faith requires.

That sort of failure doesn’t happen just in the weeks and months leading up to the election, it goes back years.

All the faithful have a duty to educate themselves and one another on responsible citizenship, but if the shepherds do not lead the sheep scatter. There will, naturally, be some sheep who persist in their error and refuse to be led—we still have free will, pride, and concupiscence; and God ratifies our choices. But those ought to be the exception, not the majority. Sheep who ignore the shepherd and persistently leave the fold get eaten by wolves.

Christ said we are to be the salt of the earth, to season it, draw out its goodness. But if salt loses its flavor it is useless. It seasons nothing. It is worthy only to be cast out and trodden underfoot.

President Obama’s allies have rushed to claim a “mandate”, as have all previous presidential winners before him. If by “mandate”, they mean that officeholders in the Congress—also democratically elected in their own right—have some obligation to roll over for whatever the president desires, than I disagree.

We might recall the late Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill refused to grant any vague “mandate” privilege to Ronald Reagan after the latter was re-elected in 1984—an election Reagan won with 59 percent of the vote and carrying 49 states. Even less does current GOP speaker John Boehner owe a mandate to a president re-elected by only two percentage points in the popular vote.

But Boehner’s claims of a mandate of his own are equally silly, and as the debt skyrockets,  with China buying it up and gaining increasing leverage on the United States, both the Speaker and the President are going to have to come to some kind of deal and then sell their parties on it.

President Obama & Speaker Boehner have no choice but learn to work with each other--and they better do it fast.

The reality is that a $16 trillion debt doesn’t get solved without unpopular solutions, including solutions all of us aren’t going to like. Solving the debt is more important than the pet agendas a lot of us would like to see enacted—for me it’s the up-front costs of transitioning Social Security and Medicare to private accounts and vouchers. For others it might be a sweeping tax cut or an expansive new federal program. Those are the goodies, but the prerequisite to doing anything is a real plan to contain the national debt, as politically unromantic as that might be.

Neither side has been honest with the American public. Obama has pretended raising taxes a few percentage points on a few extremely rich people will enable him to cut the deficit  and still invest more in education and job training. Republicans, still living in the world Ronald Reagan inherited in 1981 can’t get beyond tax-cutting. Both agendas are going to have to be shelved.

A starting point for negotiation might be this—give Obama what we wants regarding the modest tax hike on the upper brackets. The rates going from 35 to 39 percent are not the difference between capitalism and socialism. But Boehner, and his strengthened Republican majority have a right to significant concessions of their own.

It’s long past time the left wing of the Democratic Party recognize that the wealthiest of the elderly don’t need to keep collecting Social Security, or get Medicare benefits. Republicans tried to broach this topic in the early 1980s and again in 1986, were demonized for it, lost big in congressional elections and learned their lesson—that the Democrats couldn’t be trusted to deal honestly with them on Social Security and Medicare

But these two programs are where the money is at. So perhaps Boehner should take Obama up on his offer—start the debt reduction by asking their wealthiest to pay a little more—but insist that the president himself get out front of taking the richest off Social Security, make it clear to the Left that the time has come for this change and stop the charade of one party playing ‘gotcha’ with the other.

Boehner wouldn’t be popular in his own party if he sold a modest tax hike on the upper brackets as part of a debt deal. Obama would lose the “cool kid” status he covets so much with his own base if he pushed for this type of Social Security reform. But in the loss of popularity and coolness, both could gain a new title—leader. It’s time for both men to start acting like one.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com

But after a few years of blogging, podcasting, and speaking at skeptics’ conferences, I began to get emails from strangers who detailed their sexual fantasies about me. I was occasionally grabbed and groped without consent at events. And then I made the grave mistake of responding to a fellow skeptic’s YouTube video in which he stated that male circumcision was just as harmful as female genital mutilation (FGM). I replied to say that while I personally am opposed to any non-medical genital mutilation, FGM is often much, much more damaging than male circumcision.

The response from male atheists was overwhelming. This is one example:

“honestly, and i mean HONESTLY.. you deserve to be raped and tortured and killed. swear id laugh if i could”

I started checking out the social media profiles of the people sending me these messages, and learned that they were often adults who were active in the skeptic and atheist communities. They were reading the same blogs as I was and attending the same events. These were “my people,” and they were the worst.

It gets worse from there, with a cameo by Richard Dawkins. It’s an unflattering cameo of Dawkins, but when someone is as uncareful and irresponsible a thinker as Dawkins it doesn’t really surprise.

So Emily’s article the other day, “Women, Know your limits,” named after the Harry Enfield sketch she embeds, showed up as a nice, well, not riposte, per se, because Emily and Ms. Watson are quite simpatico on the question of whether or not women are capable of rational thought, but it was a nice follow-up.

A great passage from Emily’s piece:

Try as I might to stop it, my mind continues to wander to a halcyon future when liberal politicians acknowledge that women own small businesses, have investments, and worry about pesky things like job creation, debt, and runaway entitlement spending.

In that future, they also recognize that women are rational creatures, with thoughts on war and peace, education and energy policy, trial lawyers and unions. In other words, they recognize that there’s a veritable laundry list of issues we consider more important than government-sponsored birth control.

Heck, since we’re dreaming, let’s just go for it and imagine a day where all politicians show some real concern for women’s health by pledging to put some of those government research dollars to work studying the many links between birth control and cancer.

Baseline minimum, I’m hoping for a future where presidents of the United States don’t think it’s anything other than nauseating to equate the act of voting with losing one’s virginity…where fathers of two young girls don’t have campaign ads mocking abstinence…and where those entrusted with safeguarding the Constitution realize that women might—just might—be more worried about the government violating the First Amendment and depriving Christians of their right to live their beliefs than they are about seeing Big Bird lose his government paycheck.

Emily’s closer, and Ms. Watson could have gone this route also, is that the people they are writing about have a view not unlike that expressed in this Harry Enfield sketch: