Lady Ga-Ga

Poor Kathryn Jean Lopez is so shocked by the news that she can't force everyone to obey Catholic doctrine that she is even less coherent than usual.

By HHS count, they received over 400,000 comments on this previously proposed rule, but were clearly not moved by the pleas. Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel at the Becket Fund calls it “more of the same.” If you provide insurance, you have to provide employees the means to an abortion end. It’s about facilitating the obtaining an abortion. The government says employers have to, period, he said on a call just now.

That's the first time I've ever see words flounce in indignation.

Of course it's not just about abortion, as K-Lo so very c a r e f u l l y spells out every time she mentions the HHS ruling, which she calls the "abortion/contraception/sterilization HHS mandate controversy." K-Lo is every bit as eager to outlaw birth control, in-vitro fertilization, tube-tying, and vasectomies. Every woman must be willing at all times to accept or be denied God's miraculous gift of life because every act of sexual intercourse is not just between a man and a woman.

K-Lo believes that each act is actually a Sacred Threesome, in a which a man and women and God all unite to bring new life into the world. While the man and women are making sacred marital love, God is also always present. After all, the Catholics say that each use of contraception interferes with God's plan for the couple and we must all obey the Catholics. (The Catholics told us so.) If he wants to inseminate the woman with a human soul, God needs to be free to do so whenever he wants or does not want, for infertility is God's will as well. Since God is present at every single copulation of every single man and woman at every single minute of every single day, of course birth control is against God's will.

(It's a good thing he's omniscient or all that porn might turn him into a sex maniac. The Catholics told us that too.)

But here we are. Employers with religious objections to abortion, contraception, sterilization have no religious-freedom claim in the eyes of the Obama administration, despite pleas, despite good-faith discussions, despite assurances by the administration.  

And, yes, the president and the vice president insisted this problem was all solved before their reelection. They lied. Because in this world of increased secularization and sexual revolutionary values, some churches’ teachings on human dignity have no place in the public square (the public square including evangelical schools, Catholic hospitals, religious soup kitchens). Or so the goverment mandates.

This is what happens when people never the leave the Catholic bubble: They begin to believe that their bubble encloses the entire world, instead of their own head. After that happens, reality is purely subjective. You just know that K-Lo talks to her crucifix every night and that Jesus talks back.

Breaking! Gravity Gone Wonky! Failures Rise Upwards!

We at The Hunting of the Snark are thrilled to announce that Mrs. Megan "Such is blogging" McArdle has once again clawed her way up another rung on the ladder to success. Bloomberg View is pleased to announce that McArdle has joined them as a blogger, the better to spread her wit and wisdom to its clientele.  FishbowlDC announced:

Washington, D.C.-based writer for Newsweek/Daily Beast and blogger Megan McArdle is joining the ranks of Bloomberg View, where she will be a columnist covering the economy, business, politics and national affairs.

“Megan is an extraordinary writer and thinker,” said David Shipley, Executive Editor of Bloomberg View in a morning statement. “Few people have done a better job chronicling the economic, corporate and technological disruptions of the last decade. She’s going to make a lot of readers — those who have followed her for years and those who will discover her at Bloomberg — smarter and happier. We’re thrilled that she’s joining the team.”

And who wouldn't be thrilled to hire McArdle? She chronicled the economic disruptions by alternately denying they existed, ignoring them when they occurred, and attempting to hide the consequences of the events. Her coverage of corporate America could not have been more attentive; every time they wanted anything from the public or government, McArdle leaped to defend and support them. And her knowledge of the technical disruptions of the last decade were epitomized by her posts regaling her readers with her camp-out on the streets to be the first in line to buy an expensive new phone.

Let's not forget her extraordinary thinking skills. Her analytical ability, her nuance while navigating tricky moral issues, and most of her keen grasp of logic and reason. These skills enabled her to decide to vote for Bush twice, botch the biggest economic disaster of our times, come out against gay marriage and abortion while claiming to be socially liberal, and never, ever fail to be wrong about practically everything.

Good luck, McArdle!

Evolution Of An Opinion

As many people have said, when people don't want to talk about the facts they talk about their feelings. They explain at great length how offended or hurt or puzzled they are when others are so unkind and uncivil as to refuse to agree with them. They also use emotion to manipulate debates; if they can discuss their feelings they don't have to discuss the inconvenient facts. The revelations following Edward Snowden's whistleblowing have forced authoritarians to come out of the closet and take a stand on the side of obedience to authority.

Naturally our Megan McArdle is out in front of the pack, which is only her due as a libertarian elite in a time of security abuses. Mrs. McArdle took the unwelcome intrusion and, as is her wont, did her darndnest to use the nation's troubles to advance the careers of herself and her friends.

In "Big Brother Is Watching Your Cell Phone," McArdle declares that government abuses are not the fault of the people who actually commit those abuses for their personal/political benefit. The abuses are not the work of a relatively small group of elite. No, it is our fault, we citizens of the US, because we have traded freedom for safety. Of course we do bear responsibility for our own decisions, including supporting those who are in power and practice abuses, but McArdle's history of supporting the elite over the individual make her meaning plain. The powerless are to blame for the abuses of the powerful.

However fear is even stronger than greed, and while she always eagerly inserts her tribe into the narrative, McArdle, her head a bran mash of popular fiction and schoolroom classics, has no desire to end up in an Orwellian nightmare.

Libertarians have been saying for years that the surveillance state has gotten out of hand, but on their own they are not enough of a political force to make any change. The liberal civil liberties movement lost a lot of its fire (and most of its political power) when a Democratic president was elected, and on the conservative side, there never was much political power to begin with. And so, just as libertarians predicted, the government has extended and consolidated its surveillance powers. Fifteen years ago, all of us would have laughed at the notion that the government would assert the right to know about every phone call made by ordinary American citizens suspected of no crime—that's something that East Germany would do, not the American government. How have we gotten so comfortable with the panopticon state in little more than a decade?  

y greatest fear is not that this surveillance will turn out to be more widespread. My greatest fear is that we will find out they are spying on us, and the American public will yawn. And in some secret room, bureaucrats and politicians will note that the American public does not care, and turn to discussing how much more spying they can get away with.

In "Internet Companies Deny They're Helping the NSA Collect User Data. Should We Believe Them?," McArdle quotes fellow libertarian Julian Sanchez, who thoughtfully informs us that sometimes people don't say what they mean. McArdle's own concern is that lying corporations might suffer a backlash from consumers. Or maybe not. However as time passes, so does McArdle's new fear, as she settles back into her more familiar concern, random death from one of those foreign people who hate us for our freedom.

In "We Shouldn't Treat Terrorism The Way We Treat Bathroom Falls," McArdle quotes libertarian Conor Friedersdorf's concern about security abuses but is swayed in the end by Jeffrey Goldberg's fear-mongering about al-Quaeda, a childishly easy task. She decides that the fight must go on to keep her America safe, libertarian concerns be damned!

McArdle's latest post explaining why we should submit to authority because whistleblowers are weird will be covered in a separate post.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Shorter Megan McArdle: We need to change our culture to pressure poor women to marry young, before they have illegitimate children. We also need to change our culture to pressure wealthier women to marry and reproduce when younger, so they will be able to reproduce as much as they want. I, however, married late and did not reproduce at all, which was the right choice for me.