Bookworm Room

Back at the end of the 16th century, Thomas Hobson ran a livery stable (which, in pre-auto times, was the equivalent of a car rental place).  Unlike other livery stables, he refused to allow his customers free pick of horses.  Instead, they were told that they could take the horse in the stall nearest the [...]

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Pathetic is a very strong derogatory word, but I think it’s apt when looking at Kathleen Sebelius’ defense for the Obama administration’s recent mandate that all employers must purchase insurance that provides their employees with birth control, sterilization and morning-after pills.  A fisking is in order (all hyperlinks in original omitted): One of the key [...]

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I hadn’t looked closely at what Sebelius said when promulgating the new ObamaCare rules that require religious organizations to fund birth control, sterilization, and morning-after pills.  Hugh Hewitt, however, did look — and caught something interesting: The press release that accompanied the new rule didn’t mention “Catholics” or “Catholic institutions,” but was as obviously aimed [...]

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Jonathan Last has as good a summation as any I’ve seen of the now open warfare between Barack Obama and his erstwhile ally, the fairly liberal American Catholic Church.  The article ends with an effort to understand why Obama would pick this battle, and why he would pick it now.  It’s certainly an interesting fight [...]

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In the past week, two decisions came out regarding the way in which private organizations spend their money.  The first decision was the Obama administration’s announcement that businesses in America must provide their employees with insurance that covers birth control, sterilization, and abortifacients.  The only exception was for businesses that had no employees other than [...]

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Barbara Boxer has taken to the pages of the Huffington Post to explain why the administration’s mandate that all insurers provide birth control, including drugs that induce abortion, advances rather than restricts, religious freedom.  If you like Orwell’s Newspeak, Boxer’s writing is a thing of beauty and will certainly be a joy forever as a [...]

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In the halcyon pre-Obama days, when Prop. 8 meant that gay marriage was a hot blogging issue, I argued that religion organizations, not the state, should be allowed to define what constitutes a “marriage,” with states confined to authorizing “civil unions.”  In that context, I commented upon the religious implications of the government mandating that [...]

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In no particular order: Listen to Richard Epstein and John Yoo explain why ObamaCare is a more heinous government policy than any ever before imposed on the American people.  Pay special attention to Richard Epstein’s point about the dangers lurking in rule by waiver, which is antithetical to rule by law.  (This is in the [...]

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People are rightly protesting on religious grounds the fact that Obama has mandated that health care plans must cover birth control and morning after pills: Most healthcare plans will be required to cover birth control without charging co-pays or deductibles starting Aug. 1, the Obama administration announced Friday. The final regulation retains the approach federal [...]

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For reasons unclear to me, myriad conservative sites are hosting an advertisement for Alan Grayson, a Progressive’s Progressive. You might remember Grayson from his last go-round in Congress.  This is not a guy who’s shy about sharing his convictions.  During the health care debate, he gave a quick and easy summary of the Republican position:  [...]

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Back in the 40s or 50s, Esquire Magazine, when it was still a magazine for gentleman, published some quite funny, if very risque cartoons.*  One of them showed a gorgeous, voluptuous, obviously purely decorative woman talking on the phone in her apartment.  Behind her is a kitchen piled to the ceiling with dirty dishes.  It [...]

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Oh dear, it appears the CBO has turned a tad pessimistic about its earlier prognostications on the economy, stimulus and ObamaCare, heralded as dogma and chiseled in stone tablets on the alters of the Left’s Temple of Orthodoxy.   Drinks all around for the Bookworm Room denizens that correctly anticipated the outcomes cited herein. It [...]

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In a market economy, the marketplace drives the availability of goods and services.  If there’s a big demand, the market will create a big supply; if the demand dries up, so does supply, as the market sends its resources elsewhere. Supply and demand, however, have no place in government controlled sectors of the economy.  Although [...]

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“Logic! Why don’t they teach logic at these schools?” — C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Neither Data nor Mr. Spock, two relentlessly logical creations, could ever be liberals or Democrats or Progressives, or whatever the Hell else they’re calling themselves nowadays.  (For convenience, I’ll just lump them all together under the [...]

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Readers of my blog know that one of my personal bête noires is liberal indoctrination in public schools.  I blog about it frequently.  My last outing on that subject was here, and I’ll get back to that in a little bit.  First, though, I’d like you to see how one public school teacher saw fit [...]

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Here’s what I see going on and, please, correct me if I’m wrong: Reconciliation is a red herring.  Right now, the House is being promised that, if it votes on the Senate bill, the Senate will fix differences between the two bills through reconciliation.  So everyone is focusing on whether the Senate will indeed have [...]

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You can’t summarize the whole fiasco better than Mark Steyn did: We were told we had to do it because of the however many millions of uninsured, yet this bill will leave some 25 million Americans uninsured. On the other hand, millions of young fit healthy Americans in their first jobs who currently take the [...]

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One of the things that ObamaCare proponents keep saying (and please add a whining note in your mind as you read the following) is that “the current system isn’t fair.”  It’s not right, they say, that, in a rich country, some people have premium health care, while others are forced to go to a free [...]

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I want to be a journalist.  I mean, heck, who would want a job where you don’t have to think and you don’t have to research — all you have to do is emote.  That’s what emotive New York Times “journalist” Nick Kristof did when he wrote a sob story about a young man with [...]

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Liberals are very gung-ho for a health care bill that will see the government take over 1/6 of the American economy, that will dramatically raise taxes, that will (if all goes according to plan) destroy private sector insurance, that will force Americans to “buy” insurance or pay a penalty, that will force all Americans to [...]

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A message from William Kristol, one that I’ve already put into effect as to my own Senators (much good it will do, of course, as they’re Feinstein and Boxer): I gather Rasmussen will report today that its latest survey shows support for the Congressional health reform legislation falling to a new low — 38 percent [...]

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It wasn’t a huge turn-out, but it was an imaginative, committed, informed turn-out — and that, in the long run, will matter a great deal.  Check out The City Square for photographs of yesterday’s “Sick-In” in San Francisco protesting PelosiCare.

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It’s Sunday and there’s nothing I can do to change yesterday’s vote at this moment.  I need to relax. Jennifer Rubin is also sanguine, bless her heart. UPDATE:  The Anchoress urges us to be not afraid, even in the shadow of the jackboot.

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I like how clearly Karl Rove sums up the economic pain the Democrats’ proposed health care plan will impose on the economy as a whole and on individual Americans: For starters, the bill is a lot more expensive than advertised. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) pegs its cost at $1.055 trillion over 10 years, not [...]

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I just love Jennifer Rubin in the morning.  Let me just cherry-pick some paragraphs from her morning writing. On Obama’s governing style: James Capretta notices two developments in the health-care debate. First, the president is telling us to shut up again. (”President Obama said today that the debate on health care has gone on long [...]

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