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White House Position
on Exemption from Contraception Coverage
“Not a Done Deal”?

…”  The Washington Post reports this morning that Democratic Senators, on a phone call yesterday with White House senior advisor David Plouffe, argued against adopting the Bishops’ position.  My source says it’s “not a done deal” yet, but expected action from the White House within a week. UPDATE: Another womens’ rights advocate tells me that she has “no reason to think” that the Obama administration feels it “owes” the Bishops for health care refo…

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Hillary Clinton Feeds the Trolls

…or celebrity status. The Orlando nightclub shooter reportedly checked his phone for news about the shooting during the actual event; the man who murdered hostages at the Hyper Cacher kosher grocery store in Paris last year filmed the attack on a GoPro camera (in that light, the company’s slogan, Be a HERO, seems chilling). It would be wrong to ignore these shooters—their acts have enormous consequences—but you feel complicit, somehow, when you pa…

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Obama’s Pastor “Dream Team”

…and tempers taking turns providing spiritual support, and mainly over the phone. Because Goodstein’s piece was essentially unsourced, some caution is in order as to even believing that Obama accepts rotating support and counsel from Jim Wallis, Joel Hunter, Otis Moss Jr., Kirbyjon Caldwell, and T.D. Jakes. This crew struck me as a little too Dream Teamy in respect to the political and cultural stances and demographic constituencies of the disting…

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Bishop Minerva Carcaño Has a Nearly Impossible Job

…f women’s leadership in mainline Christian denominations—and if our recent phone conversation is any indication, she has her work cut out for her. She must assume the bishop’s role of watcher or overseer; she must surpass her male colleagues in competence to show that a woman, in her case an Hispanic woman, can be a good bishop; and, she must find a way to live out her own unique commitments with integrity. As was said of the legendary Ginger Roge…

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“We Blew it” on Climate Change, But May Survive Anyway: An RD Discussion with the First Transhumanist Candidate

…so that we spend a huge amount more money on science and medicine for the American citizenry. What do you think of religious subsidies—the approximately $80 billion a year that the American government spends on religious institutions through reduced income, property, and investment taxes? We would remove every single one of those deductions. Of course, I say that knowing that that would be an impossibility. But that would be the goal, to remove t…

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How Do We Break the Cycle of Religious Violence in South Asia?

…indus. For an example of this, we can look at how one of the largest Hindu-American organizations, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), reacted to the violence in Bangladesh and Tripura. The VHPA is aligned closely with the political ideology of Hindu nationalism, and has a proven track record of collaborating with Hindu extremist ideologues such as Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati, who has publicly declared that “Islam should be eradicated fr…

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Finding the “Good Girl Role Model”

…r family, publishing their personal details online so that activists could phone and text-message “Agata” to dissuade her from her choice. They followed Agata to a second clinic when the family attempted the procedure there; charging in the media that the girl was being pressured into the abortion by Planned Parenthood and informing the police that Agata’s mother was “inciting her daughter to abortion,” leading to the illegal separation of the gir…

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Dear Lindsay Lohan, I’m Sorry

…f such a mean gesture. In fact I had a phone conversation with a prominent American imam last night—in Islam, we say subhanallah at such coincidences—and he mentioned in passing how offended many white American Muslims were by this very kind of gesture. On reflection, I can see why. I don’t find racial insensitivity humorous directed at me. The least I can do is not support it. And the least I can do is the least I can do. There are not many white…

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Reporting from Paris: A Prayer for Polluters

…e a caucus proposed a stop fracking resolution. We spent hours on national phone calls debating when fracking should be stopped. We finally proposed 2030 as the last fracking date. It was a compromise after many “brackets,” what COP21 calls the matters that are kept in that famous parking lot where we put the things we don’t know how to decide. The Synod amended our so-called radical proposal and unanimously passed 2017 as the final date. We were…

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