Page 4A Tuesday, January 31, 2012
OPINION
Obama botches
health rule on
contraception
WASHINGTON — One of
Barack Obama’s great attractions as
a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers.
That is why it is so remarkable that
he utterly botched the admittedly
difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under
the new health care
law.
His administration
mishandled this decision not once but
twice. In the process,
Obama threw his
progressive Catholic
allies under the bus
and strengthened the hand of those
inside the church who had originally
sought to derail the health care law.
This might not be so surprising if
Obama had presented himself as a
conventional secular liberal. But he
has always held himself to a more
inclusive standard.
His deservedly celebrated 2006
speech on religion and American
public life was a deeply sophisticated and carefully balanced effort
to defend the rights of both believers and nonbelievers in a pluralistic
republic.
Obama was also willing to annoy
some in his liberal base during the
battle for the health care bill by
making sure that Catholic institutions do not have to perform or pay
for abortions. Rather than praising
him for this, the bishops and the
Catholic right invented the idea that
the health law covers abortion.
It doesn’t, as Sister Carol Keehan,
president of the Catholic Health
Association, insisted at the time. For
this brave act, she took much grief
from the bishops. That’s why it was
unconscionable for Obama to leave
her hanging out to dry in the latest
controversy.
At issue are regulations promulgated Jan. 20 by the Department of
Health and Human Services that
required contraceptive services to
be covered by the insurance policies
that will be supported under the
Affordable Care Act.
In its interim rules in August,
HHS excluded from this requirement only those “religious employers’’ who primarily serve and
employ members of their own faith
traditions. This exempted churches
from the rule, but not Catholic universities or social-service agencies
and hospitals that help tens of thousands of non-Catholics.
As a general matter, it made perfect sense to cover contraception.
Many see doing so as protecting
women’s rights, and expanded contraception coverage will likely
reduce the number of abortions.
While the Catholic Church formally
opposes contraception, this teaching
is widely ignored by the faithful.
One does not see many Catholic
families of six or 10 or 12 that were
quite common in the 1950s. Contraception might have something to do
with this.
Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the
church would be more open on the
contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who
believes that religious pluralism
imposes certain obligations on government, I think the church’s leaders
had a right to ask for broader relief
from a contraception mandate that
would require it to act against its
own teachings. The administration
should have done more to balance
the competing liberty interests here.
And it was offered a compromise
idea to do just that by Melissa Rogers, the former chair of Obama’s
Advisory Council on Faith-Based
and Neighborhood Partnerships.
(Rogers and I have worked together
on religion and public life issues
over the years, though I played no
role in formulating her proposal.) In
The Washington Post’s On Faith
forum in October, she pointed to a
Hawaii law under which “religious
employers that decline to cover contraceptives must provide written
notification to enrollees disclosing
that fact and describing alternate
ways for enrollees to access coverage for contraceptive services.’’ The
Hawaii law effectively required
insurers to allow uncovered individuals to secure this coverage on their
own at modest cost.
Unfortunately, the administration
decided it lacked authority to implement a Hawaii-style solution. The
Obama team should not have given
up so easily, especially after it
floated a version of this compromise
with some Catholic service providers who thought it workable. Obama
would do well to revisit his decision
on the Hawaii compromise.
 Washington Post Writers Group
The Pueblo Chieftain
The Pueblo Chieftain
FRANK S. HOAG, General Manager,
Publisher, President—1904-1963
FRANK S. HOAG, JR., Chairman,
Publisher, President—1931-1989
ROBERT H. RAWLINGS,
Publisher and Editor
EDITORIALS
T
Matter of valor
HE STAGE is firmly set for a constitutional review of the Stolen Valor Act
by the U.S. Supreme Court. Last week
the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver
upheld the constitutionality of the law, a ruling counter to the one previously issued by the
California-based 9th Circuit.
The law is the brainchild of former Puebloans Doug and Pam Sterner. It was passed by
Congress to give federal authorities the ability
to arrest and prosecute those who falsely
claim to be recipients of the Medal of Honor
and other high military awards.
In the Denver court, lawyers for Rick
Strandlof argued that the act is unconstitutional because Congress did not show it had a
compelling reason to restrict that kind of
speech, even if it is false.
The act was sponsored in Congress by
then-Rep. John Salazar of Colorado’s 3rd District. In passing the act, Congress actually did
present compelling reasoning when it found
that:
“1. Fraudulent claims surrounding the
receipt of the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross, the Air
Force Cross, the Purple Heart, and other decorations and medals awarded by the president
or the armed forces of the United States damage the reputation and meaning of such deco-
O
rations and medals.
“2. Federal law enforcement officers have
limited ability to prosecute fraudulent claims
of receipt of military decorations and medals.
“3. Legislative action is necessary to permit
law enforcement officers to protect the reputation and meaning of military decorations and
medals.”
If anything is allowed when it comes to free
speech, then everything is allowed. Yet the
courts have ruled it’s not an exercise in protected free speech to yell “FIRE!” in a crowded
theater. There are limits.
In their 10th Circuit majority opinion,
Judges Timothy M. Tymkovich and Bobby R.
Baldock noted, “As the Supreme Court has
observed time and again, false statements of
fact do not enjoy constitutional protection,
except to the extent necessary to protect more
valuable speech. Under this principle, the Stolen Valor Act does not impinge on or chill protected speech, and therefore does not offend
the First Amendment.”
We take seriously the First Amendment
right of free speech. We also take seriously
demeaning our nation’s recognition of those
whose military service protects that right.
It’s that recognition which Congress
declared it was holding in high esteem when it
passed the Stolen Valor Act. We hope the justices of the nation’s highest court will see that
the law is not inimical to the Constitution.
Top citizen
UR HAT’S off to Adolph “Rudy” Padula, who was named 2011 Citizen of the
Year last week by the Greater Pueblo
Chamber of Commerce.
Dr. Padula, a retired Pueblo dentist in practice for 42 years, is a co-founder of the Center
for American Values, which is housed in the
Waterfront Building he bought and refitted on
the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk of Pueblo.
That center brings in groups from around the
nation to learn about and discuss the values
that make America great.
Dr. Padula comes from the strong roots of
this nation. His steelworker father and mother
operated a farm on the St. Charles Mesa to
raise money to put him and his sister through
college. After his graduation from dental
school, he decided to return to his hometown
and start his practice. He called Pueblo “the
only place I ever wanted to live.”
Actor Gary Sinise has had a strong attraction to the Center for American Values, and
plans to return in mid-May for the unveiling of
a Riverwalk sculpture featuring steel from the
World Trade Center.
Rudy Padula is fully deserving to be named
Citizen of the Year. He’s emblematic of the
kind of people who make the United States
exceptional among the world’s nations.
WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING
St. Cloud (Minn.) Times on
U.S. obesity rate:
America’s battle with its
bulge received potentially
good news recently when a
couple of studies showed the
nation’s obesity rate may be
leveling off after about 30
years of big gains.
The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention said
its latest National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey
showed that in 2009-10 the
number of obese adults was
basically the same as in 2005-
MALLARD FILMORE
06 — about 78 million people.
For kids ages birth to 19, the
numbers of overweight and
obese children also held
steady. About 17 percent are
obese and one of every three
is overweight or obese.
It may not seem like much,
but those statistics mark the
first time since the early 1980s
that the number of overweight or obese Americans —
kids and adults — has not
increased ...
The same day those num-
bers came out the Sartell-St.
Stephen school district
became the first Minnesota
school district and second in
the United States to use
NuVal ratings for food served
in its cafeteria and vending
machines. (If you aren’t familiar with NuVal, it’s a national
company that ‘‘scores’’ foods,
making it easier for consumers to determine the nutritional value of foods and
especially different brands of
the same food.) . . .
By BRUCE TINSLEY
■ Pueblo, Colorado
Obama would
have us march
to his cadence
WASHINGTON — War, said
James Madison, is “the true nurse of
executive aggrandizement.’’ Hence
Barack Obama’s State of the Union
hymn: Onward civilian soldiers,
marching as to war.
Obama, an unfettered executive
wielding a swollen state, began and
ended his address by celebrating the
armed forces. They
are not “consumed
with personal ambition,’’ they “work
together’’ and “focus
on the mission at
hand’’ and do not
“obsess over their
differences.’’ Americans should emulate
troops “marching into battle’’ who
“rise or fall as one unit.’’
Well. The armed services’ ethos,
although noble, is not a template for
civilian society, unless the aspiration
is to extinguish politics. People
marching in serried ranks, fused into
a solid mass by the heat of martial
ardor, proceeding in lockstep, shoulder to shoulder, obedient to orders
from a commanding officer — this is
a recurring dream of progressives
eager to dispense with tiresome persuasion and untidy dissension in a
free, tumultuous society.
Progressive presidents use martial language as a way of encouraging Americans to confuse civilian
politics with military exertions,
thereby circumventing an impediment to progressive aspirations —
the Constitution, and the patience it
demands. As a young professor,
Woodrow Wilson had lamented that
America’s political parties “are like
armies without officers.’’ The most
theoretically inclined of progressive
politicians, Wilson was the first
president to criticize America’s
founding. This he did thoroughly,
rejecting the Madisonian system of
checks and balances — the separation of powers, a crucial component
of limited government — because it
makes a government that can not be
wielded efficiently by a strong executive.
Franklin Roosevelt agreed. He
complained about “the three-horse
team of the American system’’: “If
one horse lies down in the traces or
plunges off in another direction, the
field will not be plowed.’’ And progressive plowing takes precedence
over constitutional equipoise among
the three branches of government.
Hence FDR’s attempt to break the
Supreme Court to his will by enlarging it.
In his first inaugural address, FDR
demanded “broad executive power
to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would
be given to me if we were in fact
invaded by a foreign foe.’’ He said
Americans must “move as a trained
and loyal army’’ with “a unity of duty
hitherto evoked only in time of
armed strife.’’ In such a time, dissent
is disloyalty.
Yearnings for a command society
were common and respectable then.
Commonweal, a magazine for liberal
Catholics, said Roosevelt should
have “the powers of a virtual dictatorship to reorganize the government.’’ Walter Lippmann, then
America’s pre-eminent columnist,
said, “A mild species of dictatorship
will help us over the roughest spots
in the road ahead.’’
Obama, aspiring to command
civilian life, has said that in reforming health care, he would have preferred an “elegant, academically
approved’’ plan without “legislative
fingerprints on it’’ but “unfortunately’’ he had to conduct “negotiations
with a lot of different people.’’ His
campaign mantra “We can’t wait!’’
expresses progressivism’s impatience with our constitutional system of concurrent majorities. To
enact and execute federal laws under
Madison’s institutional architecture
requires three, and sometimes more,
such majorities. There must be
majorities in the House and Senate,
each body having distinctive constituencies and electoral rhythms. The
law must be affirmed by the president, who has a distinctive electoral
base and election schedule. Supermajorities in both houses of Congress are required to override presidential vetoes. And a Supreme Court
majority is required to sustain laws
against constitutional challenges.
“We can’t wait!’’ exclaims Obama,
who makes recess appointments
when the Senate is not in recess,
multiplies “czars’’ to further nullify
the Senate’s constitutional prerogative to advise and consent, and creates agencies untethered from legislative accountability.
Like other progressive presidents
fond of military metaphors, he
rejects the patience of politics
required by the Constitution he has
sworn to uphold.
 Washington Post Writers Group