ReligionDispatches.org

Catholics for Choice, which supports the health care reform reconciliation bill, has harsh words for Democrats who were able to garner sufficient congressional votes only by restricting abortion access: Democrats have betrayed poor and disenfranchised women.

Jon O'Brien, the organization's president, told me this morning that "the Democratic Party has absolutely failed dismally to uphold its own party platform that claims they are the party of choice and the party on the side of women." Party leaders are too beholden to political strategists, says O'Brien, which he says "raises real questions about how people will perceive the party in the future from the perspective of standing up for womens’ rights in this country."

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” -- Charles Darwin from Descent of Man

This post has been updated.

This week the Catholic Hospital Association and the Leadership Council of Women Religious, an organization of presidents of communities of nuns, thumbed their noses at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops by refusing to buy the bishops' false claims that the Senate health care bill requires taxpayers to fund abortions. These organizations, in a remarkable move against the church hierarchy, said they were supporting the health care reform bill because it adquately prevented federal funding for abortion and served their social justice goals of providing needed health insurance to 30 million uninsured.

The myth of American success is one of the most enduring ideals of this nation. Wrapped in the language of liberty and freedom, this myth promulgates the belief that every person born in America is afforded a clean slate of equal opportunity. Though this myth has adjusted itself to each generation, two themes remain consistent: Neither family lineage nor class can control one’s destiny. And moral virtue and personal character determine one’s success in life. This is why the narratives of self-made men and women are a central part of American culture and religious life. (But so are Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny!)

Amidst all the recent headlines about scientists gone absolutely mad—murdering colleagues in cold blood in Alabama, planning terrorism at the particle accelerator in Switzerland, killing with anthrax in the U.S.—it’s nice to hear, for a change, about scientists merely perpetrating some good old, genuine, down-to-earth fraud.