Hyperbole Schmyperbole

and What On Earth Are You Talking About

    If you have not noticed and you live in DC or Maryland there is a massive PR effort afoot in tandem with the HHS so called religious liberty suits involving something called a freedom fortnight of prayer or something like that. It ends on July 4 (with fireworks thanks to the National fireworks folks who put on the best display imaginable everyone should see in DC once in their lifetime)-

Judges, I am told, love it when you 'litigate in the press.' (NOT)

Aside from the obvious difficulty in contorting additional insurance benefits into liberty issues- (aside from the fact that anytime anyone makes anyone buy anything it is an infringement of liberty of sorts-ask the guys at CATO who did the briefing)- there are hyperbolic statements that are troubling and don't serve the cause- because they just don't sound honest.

  For instance, in the Wuerl clip below he talks about how 'soup kitchens and pantries' will be threatened (wiped out? have to close??)  if insurance has to be provided that includes contraception, sterilization and the Plan B abortofascient. I have volunteered in one such place for a few years now and to my knowledge the only full time staff at all associated with it is a saintly Priest who presumably doesn't need any of those things-thus no additional cost burden there. Everyone else is a volunteer except one part time staffer who likely doesn't get any medical benefits-and if she did she wouldn't use things against church teaching. So how does this self-insured imposition add a penny to the cost burden? Over half the volunteers are past child bearing age, and all the other ones are following
the church teaching on chastity. So self-insurance means you pay nothing more. By distinction, if you had to buy an insurance policy that had elevated premiums that somehow were passed to the Archdiocese as opposed to the insured individual or beneficiary of a policy you would be
paying more for the eventuality of something that never got used. Self insurance is thus cheaper if no one uses it.

  So why would a 'soup kitchen or pantry' have to be shut down? We don't serve soup by the way, which Wuerl would know if he ever stepped foot into the program run right out of the basement of the Cathedral where he is supposed to sit (when not in Rome of course.)

    Did anybody take a poll before these suits were filed? How does it threaten chastity to have expanded insurance possibilities for things people don't use. People who have catastrophic coverage hope to never have to use it. Everyone who gets car insurance hopes to not have to get in an accident involving bodily injury. Do car accident rates go up because people have car insurance? It's nonsense.
Who gets in a car and says "I have insurance now- lets see if I can have a catastrophic spinal injury in a car accident!"
  Why are you wasting anybody's attention, time, money or patience on this?

Do you have medical  insurance for any priest that covers sorosis of the liver if they turn out to be an alcoholic?  Drunkenness is right up there with fornication on the bad acts list.  Clearly insurance covers things that might result from disapproved conduct. What about lung cancer if you had a secretly smoking priest? Do your policies cover lung cancer. Do you think any priest or any employee of the Archdiocese will start taking up smoking once they find out lung cancer is covered?

This is a huge Republican grandstanding assault against the Obama Cabinet because they can't stand him. They are furious the Republicans lost the White House and have been waiting for any colorable excuse to attack him. It's really a bit much, don't you think?