Shadow Dance

Chinese-style dancers at tonight's St. John's Church fellowship dinner, which had a Chinese New Year theme

Freedom To Believe Isn't Freedom To Act

Nicholas Kristof:

I wondered what other religiously affiliated organizations do in this situation. Christian Science traditionally opposed medical care. Does The Christian Science Monitor deny health insurance to employees?

“We offer a standard health insurance package,” John Yemma, the editor, told me.

That makes sense. After all, do we really want to make accommodations across the range of faith? What if organizations affiliated with Jehovah’s Witnesses insisted on health insurance that did not cover blood transfusions? What if ultraconservative Muslim or Jewish organizations objected to health care except at sex-segregated clinics?

The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can. But we ban polygamy, for example, even for the pious. Your freedom to believe does not always give you a freedom to act.

In this case, we should make a good-faith effort to avoid offending Catholic bishops who passionately oppose birth control. I’m glad that Obama sought a compromise. But let’s remember that there are also other interests at stake. If we have to choose between bishops’ sensibilities and women’s health, our national priority must be the female half of our population

The GOP's War On Reason

Steven Mazie argues that contraceptive services for employees of Roman Catholic universities, hospitals, and charities is 100% a public health and 0% a religious liberty issue:

It is time to put an end to the hyperbolic charges that Obama is waging a war on religion. John Boehner’s claim on the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday that the mandate represents “an unambiguous attack on religious freedom in our country” is unambiguously baseless. The Health and Human Services guidelines serve important public health goals and threaten no defensible concept of religious liberty.

Hat tip to Tom Tierney

Nixon's Secret Plan (aka Linebacker III)

In 1972 Richard Nixon tried to get the NFL to stop blacking out playoff games by promising to block all congressional attempts to end the league's unpopular regular-season blackouts. The AP reports that Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who worried about playoff games being played in half-empty stadiums, rebuffed the fan-in-chief in favor of a congressional plan he liked better.

Nixon told aides he had the interests of the people of the District of Columbia at heart, at least insofar as 1972's first-round Redskins-Packers game was concerned:

In [a] previously unreported taped White House conversation the week before the first 1972 playoff game, Nixon vented to [Attorney General Richard] Kleindienst and White House aide John D. Ehrlichman about the game not being televised locally.

“The folks should be able to see the goddam games on television,” he said. “Playoff games. Playoffs — all playoff games should be available.

“Now, you might say this. You might also point out, and say listen, just so you understand ... the president is not speaking for himself in this instance, because he’s going to be in Florida. And he’s going to be watching the game in Florida — it’s going to be carried there. But he’s speaking for all the people in Washington that didn’t vote for him,” Nixon said to laughter. The president had lost only the District of Columbia and Massachusetts in his landslide 1972 victory over Democrat George McGovern.

“Put it right that way.”

St. John's Sky

4:10 p.m.

Hamas Mess

Palestinian splinter group splinters over unity deal.

First Lord Of China

Later U.S. ambassador to China, Winston Lord served as an aide to NSC adviser Henry Kissinger in the Nixon White House. As the Shanghai Daily marks the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's 1972 visit, Lord trumpeted his own achievement during Kissinger's cloak-and-dagger advance trip the year before:

We were flying secretively from Pakistan to Beijing on a Pakistani plane, and as the plane got close to the Chinese...border, I was in the front of the plane, and Dr. Kissinger was in the back of the plane, so as we went into Chinese territory, I was the first. I always told everyone, and Kissinger agrees, that I was the first American official to visit China in 22 years.

Rumors Of War

Liz Sly surveys the discouraging news from the Middle East a year after the Arab spring:

“There are two different trajectories in the Middle East,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. While “North Africa is moving toward more democracy,” he said, the Levant region — including Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq — is “moving toward confrontation and sectarian conflict. It is a much darker, gloomier trajectory.”

Egretious

This egret probably reached our Yorba Linda neighborhood from the Santa Ana riverbed about a mile away, where you can see flocks of them coexisting with ospreys and seagulls. I ran into it during my morning walk and, like your average blogger, was whipsawed between appreciating its stunning gracefulness and snapping pictures with my phone. It was surprising how close it would let me get. As a matter of fact, I had the impression that this most regal of waterfowl found me to be a complete bore. When I got within ten paces or so, it slowly unfurled its wings, looped around me, and landed a half-block ahead, sticking its beak in the air and stepping daintily through the ivy. We did the dance three times. Then I left it alone.

Bigger Than Your Average Chipmunk

This young fan's voice probably hasn't changed, either.