A Prophet is not without honor, save in his own house and country.

Paul VI was right.

James Taranto writes:

It may be true that fatherlessness begets fatherlessness, but widespread illegitimacy is a recent phenomenon whose ultimate causes demand inquiry. In his landmark 1965 report, "The Negro Family: A Case for National Action," Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed that "both white and Negro illegitimacy rates have been increasing, although from dramatically different bases. The white rate was 2 percent in 1940; it was 3.07 percent in 1963. In that period, the Negro rate went from 16.8 percent to 23.6 percent."

The 2011 figures (which exclude Hispanics) were 29.1% for whites and 72.3% for blacks--a more than eightfold increase for whites and more than threefold for blacks. A cycle of fatherlessness operating over two to three generations cannot be sufficient to explain such an enormous rise.

So what does? In our view, a dramatic change in incentives owing to two major social changes that were just getting under way when Moynihan wrote.

The first is the rise of female careerism--the expectation that most women will spend most of their adult lives (rather than just the period when they are single) in the workforce. Women have less incentive to wed, since marriage no longer means trading in a job for a provider husband. Female careerism got a big boost with the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace.

The second is the introduction of the pill, which the Food and Drug Administration approved for contraceptive use in 1960. It made nonmarital sex far more easily available, reducing the incentive for men to marry. As George Akerlof and Janet Yellen argued in a 1996 paper (yes, that Janet Yellen, and Akerlof is her husband), the pill very quickly broke down the old institution of the shotgun wedding. With reproduction under female control, it became a female responsibility. Men no longer felt obligated to marry women by whom they fathered children. The paradoxical-seeming result is that a technology to reduce "unwanted pregnancy" massively increased out-of-wedlock births.

Hmmm...once again science climbs the tallest mountain and finds...

...that the church was there ahead of it.

Little known and rarely utilized is the single method of birth control supported by the Catholic Church. Righteously termed "natural family planning," the method limits sexual intercourse to women's naturally infertile periods, such as certain portions of the menstrual cycle, menopause, or during pregnancy. Pope Paul VI's rationale for approving natural family planning versus other methods was that it "uses a faculty given by nature whereas contraception impedes nature." 

To me, that seems a dogmatic and unscientific argument. So I assumed that the method itself would be similarly lacking in evidence. But to my surprise, I was wrong.

As it's typically used, natural family planning is about as effective as the female condom -- between 75 and 80% successful at preventing pregnancy over the course of a year. But when perfectly used, it can be 95% effective or higher. A large study conducted in 2007 found that the "symptothermal" method of natural family planning, in which the female user tracks both her body temperature and cervical secretions to gauge her fertility, is 99.6% effective when properly adopted, roughly the same as a copper intrauterine device.

Natural family planning has drawbacks, of course. It does not prevent sexually transmitted diseases and it also restricts sexual activity to select times. These two factors likely contribute to the method's small following in the United States, where only one to three percent of women use it. 

But beyond its mere use as a tool to stymie "artificial" contraception in the First World, natural family planning has potential humanitarian applications in the Third World. In the 1990s, the World Health Organization worked with 869 women from a multitude of diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds and found that 93% of them could be trained to identify the symptoms distinguishing fertile and infertile periods of the menstrual cycle. In 1993, R.E.J. Ryder commented in the British Medical Journal, "It might be argued that natural family planning, being cheap, effective, without side effects, and potentially particularly effective and acceptable in areas of poverty, may be the family planning method of choice for the Third World."

The Catholic Church's official stance condemning contraception is, in my view, dubious and disempowering to women. But though dogmatic religious leaders may deny the overt benefits of contraception, an open mind cannot deny based on the available evidence that their lone alternative is indeed effective.//

Condoms, Human Flourishing and the Meaning of Life...

...or Houston, we have an existential problem:

Nor is it clear what this has to do with a government that occasionally lends a hand to deserving individuals in distress. For all those who need a condom to “keep them from falling,” as well as those whose “ability to succeed in modern America [is] imperiled” for want of a rubber, here’s my crude, heartless, I’ve-got-mine-Jack advice: pursue your dreams and buy one. We are not talking about paraplegic orphans. We are talking about Georgetown law students—the most privileged members of our society, who are training for their future calling (government, or hanging on to it) by haranguing us: you owe us.

I don’t suggest for a moment that Henry actually believes this claptrap. The point, which I think he underestimates, is that a country that doesn’t simply laugh the “free condoms” crowd out of town—without need of explanation—is in serious trouble. The very fact that clever pols can turn this no-brainer into a “wedge issue” makes you wonder about the reservoir of good sense out there.

Maybe conservatism has become disconnected from the thought that “the average person has a moral life that is worth leading and pursuing,” and maybe it neglects or slights the fact that government can at times foster that pursuit. But even if so, that ain’t the major problem. The contemporary transfer state is not about moral worth and aspirations. The administration’s “Julia” had no aspirations and no coherent plan of life, and the government in her story had no objective beyond assuring her that whichever way she might drift or be tossed, there’ll be a government program. To put the point in a sentence: while one can perhaps imagine a government that would help “average” people to realize their transcendent hopes and aspirations, our actual government is designed to wring any meaning out of life. The cheap, nasty free condom campaign encapsulates that agenda.

Henry Olsen is searching for a distinction between a hand up and a handout—between the uplifting and the tawdry, the compassionate and the grasping. But that’s hard to articulate even on paper, and harder still to observe in practice. And against it stands liberalism’s limitless, all-encompassing ethos: If I can’t have my condom, you might as well kill widows and orphans. If conservatism and the GOP often seem disconnected from “average persons” and their need, in distress, for government help, maybe that’s because they sense that before you can explain the needed distinctions, you have to explain that enough is enough and indeed, altogether too much. That strikes me as the right impulse. The hard question is whether even that much, or that little, can still be explained.//

What if, in the effort to make sure that Georgetown law students don't have to shell out a couple of bucks on a Friday night, the paraplegic orphans - who, lord knows, have less political pull than Georgetown law students - get lost in the taffy yank?

Ruh-Roh!  Environmentalists are now unhappy with Obama's Contraception Mandate.

Simcha Fisher points out that an organic food company is suing to block the contraception mandate because of the deleterious effect that contraception has on the environment:  Michael Potter, the owner of Eden Foods, has been catching flack for being a closet "right-winger."

He just doesn't want to pay for contraception, and doesn't understand why he (or anyone) should have to.   He says in a follow-up interview with Salon :

I don’t care if the federal government is telling me to buy my employees Jack Daniel’s or birth control. What gives them the right to tell me that I have to do that? That’s my issue, that’s what I object to, and that’s the beginning and end of the story ... I’m not trying to get birth control out of Rite Aid or Wal-Mart, but don’t tell me I gotta pay for it.

His official statement clarifies:

We believe in a woman's right to decide, and have access to, all aspects of their health care and reproductive management. This lawsuit does not block, or intend to block, anyone's access to health care or reproductive management. This lawsuit is about protecting religious freedom and stopping the government from forcing citizens to violate their conscience. We object to the HHS mandate and its government overreach.

And he points out, in the Salon interview:

I'm not in your bedroom.  Obama's in your bedroom.

Contraceptives and Substandard Catholic Healthcare.

Craig Bernthal has a nice round-up of videos on the Obama HHS mandate.

His post attracted this comment:

Joshua SteinJune 20, 2012 9:06 AM
The Father totally misses the point. Is the Catholic Church allowed to offer sub-standard care to those they ensure based on their moral position? Contraception is part of standard care, for a number of reasons.

First is that oral contraceptives are part of a standard regimen of treatment in women's health that includes treatment of polycystic ovaries, reducing risk of ovarian cancer, and the reduction of pain and discomfort during the menstrual cycle.

Second is that the position on "religious liberty" that the Father is taking is one often used to advance a failure to meet standard of care requirements by a number of religious organizations, including the Jehovah's Witnesses and various New Age groups who oppose vaccinations. It is important to acknowledge that as an entailment of the position.

What's my point? Well, as the bioethics guy I feel obligated to point out that he's strawmanning the issue. I was the beneficiary of a Catholic education and, as a young Jewish person, have deep misgivings about some of the things that the Church chooses to care about. But I really have no stomach for failing to recognize the issue.

If you believe that the Church is allowed to offer substandard care, then the argument needs to be a justification for that; the argument presented in the videos, while perhaps in part true, is a strawman so long as it neglects that acknowledgement.

My comment in reply:

Joshua,

Reading your comment, I note the following issues.

First, you assume that the Catholic position on contraception necessarily means "substandard" treatment. In fact, the tendency toward using contraception without giving due considerations to alternatives for conditions other than birth control may be substandard. While Catholicism for providing "substandard treatment,” people with a pro-contraception mentality tend to forget the injury done to women by contraceptives. Bio-ethicist Janet Smith points out:

"Now, let us review some of the bad health effects of contraception on women. One news report tells us:

'Johnson and Johnson spent at least $68.7 million to settle hundreds of lawsuits filed by women who suffer blood clots, heart attacks, or strokes after using the company’s Ortho-evra birth control patch, court records show. Johnson and Johnson, the world’s largest maker of health-care products, avoided trials through confidential settlements and hasn’t released the financial details to investors.31'

About thirty women using the patch died of heart attacks and strokes. They were young, many in their early twenties. These are not the usual causes of death for a woman in her twenties."

Second, Catholicism does not teach that contraceptives are “unclean” or “taboo” eo ipso. It teaches that contraception is a departure from natural law.

It tends to be modernists, who lack the intellect and patience for nuance, who create strawmen consisting of black and white, not the Catholic Church.

Third, consistent with the second point, consistent with if you look at basic church documents on contraception, you see that contraceptives are permitted for reasons other than contraception. Thus, Paul VI in Humanae Vitae wrote:

"Lawful Therapeutic Means

15. On the other hand, the Church does not consider at all illicit the use of those therapeutic means necessary to cure bodily diseases, even if a foreseeable impediment to procreation should result there from—provided such impediment is not directly intended for any motive whatsoever. (19)"

Fourth, your comparison of Catholicism’s position to the JW position on blood transfusion is accordingly a strawman or begs the question. Insofar as contraception is used to “treat” fertility, it is in no way comparable to using blood transfusions to treat a medical condition. Fertility is not a disease; it is not defective function of the human condition; it is in fact a sign of health. In contrast, blood transfusions are used to treat illness, trauma and disease.

Have you ever noticed how porn merchants and pick-up artists are the biggest supporters of "a woman's right to choose"?

I'm sure they are persuaded by the rock-solid intellectual arguments as opposed to their own self-interested desire to avoid responsibility for their sexual activities or something.

Hustler magazine publishes a demeaning photoshopped picture of libertarian/conservative pundit S.E. Cupp. Hustler explains its editorial position as follows:

S.E. Cupp is a lovely young lady who read too much Ayn Rand in high school and ended up joining the dark side. Cupp, an author and media commentator who often shows up on Fox News programs, is undeniably cute. But her hotness is diminished when she espouses dumb ideas like defunding Planned Parenthood. Perhaps the method pictured here is Ms. Cupp’s suggestion for avoiding an unwanted pregnancy.

Stay classy, Larry Flynt. Stay classy.

Of course, no one cares what Larry Flynt or Hustler does. They are both circling the bottom of the sleeziest toilet in the universe. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy for "Holding Paper" purposes to notice the how the Venn diagram of political ideology connects "misogynists" with "people who really, really believe in a woman's right to avoid carrying her pregnancy to term if she wants to be a slut."

Just saying.

When, not if, birth control fails.

Stacy Trasancos does a nice job of running the numbers - an 8% failure rate, for example - on contraception use to make the case that someone is making claims that would get a car manufacturer hit with punitive damages before you can say "unfair trade practice."

Guess who is losing his attempt to rouse up the masses in a "two minute hate" against Catholics?

Obama, that's who.

How do we know that?

Because on Friday as part of the traditional "Obama news dump," the administration announced a new defintion of "religious employer" that includes colleges and universities.

According to Jimmy Akin:

From the National Catholic *Reporter* (not Register):

Taking a conciliatory tone and asking for a wide range of public comment, the Obama administration announced this afternoon new accommodations on a controversial mandate requiring contraceptive coverage in health care plans.

Coming after a month of continued opposition from the U.S. bishops to the mandate, which was first revised in early February to exempt certain religious organizations, today’s announced changes from the Department of Health and Human Services make a number of concessions, including allowing religious organizations that self-insure to be made exempt.

Also raised is the possibility that the definition given for religious employers in the original mandate could be changed.

. . .

News of the changes also came as a separate ruling on student health insurance coverage was announced by the Department of Health and Human Services this afternoon. Under that ruling, health care plans for students would be treated like those of employees of colleges and universities—meaning the colleges will have to provide contraceptive services to students without co-pay.

Religiously affiliated colleges and universities, however, would be shielded from this ruling, according to a statement from the HHS.

“In the same way that religious colleges and universities will not have to pay, arrange or refer for contraceptive coverage for their employees, they will not have to do so for their students who will get such coverage directly and separately from their insurer,” the statement said.

In the 32-page proposal on the broader health care mandate published in the Federal Register today, the Health and Human Services Department says it is not yet making final rules on the contraceptive mandate, but is instead issuing questions and suggestions for a 90-day comment period to begin today.

Repeatedly, throughout the document, the federal departments involved in the ruling—which include Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury—ask for advice on how best to address several issues raised by the mandate.

The federal departments, the document says, “seek input on these options, particularly how to enable religious organizations to avoid such objectionable cooperation when it comes to the funding of contraceptive coverage, as well as new ideas to inform the next stage of the rulemaking process.”

Among the suggestions made in the document, known as a “proposed rulemaking,” is that self-insuring employers with a religious affiliation be given several options to ensure that they will not have to cover contraceptive services. Included in the possibilities is the use of a system of third-party administrators to administer the coverage.

While the original version of the mandate defined religious employers as those which primarily serve or hire those of their faith, the rulemaking acknowledges that federal law in other areas define religious employers more broadly.

A few thoughts:

1) Note that this was in a Friday news dump from the administration, to have minimal news impact.

2) The provisions, while welcome, do not go far enough. Nobody should be required to pay for abortion and contraceptive services against their will. Religious freedom matters for everybody, not just the minimum number that the Obama administration thinks it must grant religious freedom to.

3) This is a sign of weakness. The Obama administration has begun to realize how badly it has burned itself by its thuggish, totalitarian move to restrict freedom of religion to freedom of worship in this country.

4) This is not the time for the bishops or others to go soft. It’s time to press further and demand full respect for religious liberty. Caving at the first opportunity would be a grave mistake.

5) Ignore analysis about tone (e.g., taking a conciliatry tone, dialing back rhetoric, etc.). Tone is just the wrapping on the package. What’s inside the package is what counts.

Factor in the booing on St. Patrick's Day and you have to wonder what Obama's polling shows about the "blow-back."

The Real Contraception Wars, aka...

Can you say, "The Catholic church was right"?

Megan McArdle on the European Birth Dearth:

But that’s where the dearth of workers comes into play. Everyone agrees that rapid growth would be much nicer than higher taxes and slashed pension payments. The hitch is that over the past five years, growth in the Italian economy hasn’t averaged even 1 percent a year. Soaring growth will be tough to achieve, because more and more Italians are getting too old to work—and fewer and fewer Italians have been having the babies needed to replace them.

Italy’s fertility rate has actually been inching up from its 1995 low of 1.19 children for every woman, but it is still only about 1.4—well below the number needed to replenish its population (2.1). As a result, even with some immigration, Italy’s population growth has been very slow. It will soon stall, and eventually go into reverse. And then, one by one, the rest of Europe’s nations will follow. Not one country on the Continent has a fertility rate high enough to replace its current population. Heavy debt and a shrinking population are a very bad combination.

Since the invention of birth control and antibiotics, country after country has gone through a fairly standard shift. First, the mortality rate drops, especially among the young and the aging, and that quickly translates into a bigger workforce. Then, birthrates drop, as families realize that they no longer need to birth a basketball team to ensure that a couple members will survive to adulthood. A falling birthrate means that parents can invest more in each child; with fewer mouths to feed, more and better food can nourish each of them, and children can spend more years in school, causing worker productivity to rise from one generation to the next. As the burden of bearing and rearing children lightens, mothers can do more work outside the home, boosting both household resources and the national economy.

In 1984, when Ronald Reagan spoke of “morning in America,” he was at least demographically accurate. The youngest members of America’s vast Baby Boom were in college; the oldest were on the brink of their peak earning power. America was about to reap what the economists David Bloom and David Canning have dubbed the “demographic dividend” of rising labor supply and productivity. Bloom and Canning’s analysis of East Asia and Ireland attributes a substantial fraction of the recent economic booms in those places to this dividend.

And a "tale of two cities":

To see why, picture two neighboring towns, sharing all the same infrastructure and economic opportunities, with one key difference: their median age. In the first town, which I’ll call Morningburg, the average resident is 28. In the second, which I’ll call Twilight City, the average householder is 58.

Research indicates that even with all the same resources at their disposal, these two places look very different, and not just because one’s grocery store does a booming business in diapers while the other’s has a whole aisle devoted to Centrum Silver.

In Morningburg, young workers are rapid, plastic learners, eager to try out new ways of doing things. Since they’re still hoping to make a name for themselves and maybe get rich, they take a lot of risks. They push their managers to expand into new markets, propose iffy but innovative product lines, maybe start their own firm if the boss won’t let them advance fast enough. For the right opportunity, they’ll put in 18-hour days for a year or more.

In Twilight City, time horizons are shorter—people aren’t looking for projects that will make them rich or famous 20 years from now. They are interested in conserving what they have. That’s mostly rational, given Twilighters’ life stage; but studies show that older people worry more than younger ones about losses and are therefore especially averse to risk. Twilighters also tire more easily and need more time off for illness, so hours worked slowly decline each year. Wages stay steady, however; Twilighters, like most people, get very angry if you try to cut their salary.

That makes Twilighters expensive—so when they lose a job, finding another is tough. As a result, Twilighters tend to cling fiercely to their positions, and may block younger workers from getting a foothold in the labor market.

The difficulty of reemployment contributes to Twilight City’s surprisingly high, but somewhat deceptive, rate of entrepreneurship. Looking closely, we find that businesses there are disproportionately owned by semi-retirees who have hung out a consulting shingle, or become part-time caterers, or invested in a hobby business like an antique store. These businesses typically don’t have much growth potential, in part because cautious Twilighters won’t (or can’t) borrow money for expansion.

Morningburg is a boomtown, prone to periodic savage busts when the young strivers realize that those fur-bearing-trout farms they invested in aren’t going to make them rich. Twilight City is a less volatile place—but little change also means little growth.

In theory, smart policy could make Twilight City look a little more like Morningburg: public investment and forced savings could boost research and business development; employment laws could be reformed to make labor markets more flexible; heavy investments could be made in education to improve the productivity of Twilight City’s few young workers.

In practice, all of this is likely to be fiercely opposed by Twilight City’s citizens, who tend to vote against change, particularly if it threatens their pensions or health care. Many of the most vehement public demonstrations in Europe over the past two decades have followed attempts at pension reform.

Surprise! The advertising boycott against Rush Limbaugh...

...was really an "astroturfing" - fake grass roots - campaign by Media Mattes.

Joseph Goebbels couldn't have handled it any better.

Hey, who won the "the Great Contraception War of 2012?"

Answer: it wasn't Obama.

Left-leaning Mickey Kaus writes:

Caught cocooning in public: Here’s what the NYT‘s story on its latest poll told readers:

In recent weeks, there has been much debate over the government’s role in guaranteeing insurance coverage for contraception, including for those who work for religious organizations. The poll found that women were split as to whether health insurance plans should cover the costs of birth control and whether employers with religious objections should be able to opt out. [E.A.]

If the Times says women were “split,” you know that must mean they were actually narrowly against the NYT‘s preferred position. Sure enough, when asked, “Should health insurance plans for all employees have to cover the full cost of birth control for female employees or should employers be able to opt out for moral or religious reasons?” women favored opting out by a 46-44 margin. The margin increased to a decisive 53-38 for “religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university.”

That’s among women. Unbeknownst to those who read only the Times‘ main story, the poll asked the same question to men. They were not split. Men favored opting out by a 20 point margin (57 vs. 37), except when a “religiously affiliated employer” was involved, in which case the margin increased to 25 points. Combining men and women, a substantial majority (51-40) favors allowing an opt-out–increasing to 57-36 where religiously-affiliated institutions are involved.

These are not close results. It’s hard to read this poll and not conclude that, contrary to some accounts, Obama wasn’t such a genius to pick a fight over mandated contraception coverage–because he appears to be losing the public debate on the question. That’s a conclusion the Times story effectively hides from readers.

It’s also one possible explanation for Obama’s otherwise somewhat mystifying overall drop in approval during the period–March 7-11–when the poll was in the field. But not an approved explanation.

Gas prices are the official MSM explanation. Got it? Gas prices.

P.S.: I’ve noticed that even solid NYT reporters–in this case, Jim Rutenberg–have their bylines over wildly misleading copy when the subject is the NYT/CBS poll. My working theory is that these stories are the most heavily rewritten by the Times‘ fabled meddling mid-level liberal editors. Can’t trust the cocoon to anyone else.

Let's be honest - the Democrats selected contraception as a "wedge issue" that was designed to divide mainstream secular America from Catholics and other pro-institutional religious Americans. This strategy surfaced when George Stephanopolous ambushed Santorum with his non sequitur about "banning contraception."

At the time, everyone went, "Jeez, George, get back on your meds."

But over the next few weeks, the Obama administration rolled out its campaign to isolate Catholics from America, and the Catholic Church from Catholics, by focusing on the one issue that it thought could make Catholics look like snake-handlers.

It didn't dare mention on sterilization or abortion; instead it trotted out an unmarried, middle-aged, abortion-rights activits, law school co-ed with an over-developed sense of entitlement in order to make the "Daddy is so unfair because he won't pay for me to screw whoever and whenever I want to" argument.

And - surprise, surprise - the whole thing backfired because Americans have been raised on the idea that "mind your own business" means "mind your own business."

However, look how sleazy and evil the Obama plan was. It relied on taking a section of the American community and shining a light on it in order to play a game that is no different than "Jew-baiting" or any other kind of fascist strategy designed to get the majority united against a convenient scape-goat minority.

The Contraception War.

From Hot Air:

When you ask people, “Should religious employers be required to cover contraception?”, 61 percent will tell you yes. When you add the magic words “opt out,” you get the data set you see above. Makes me wonder how closely most voters are following the contraception debate in the first place. If slight tweaks in wording can turn the numbers upside down, the public’s probably not paying close attention, which may mean there’s fertile ground for Democratic “war on women” demagoguery. That moronic “permission slip” on Obama’s Tumblr account was no accident.

Oh, almost forgot: Another trillion-dollar deficit this year. Probably no poll damage to him from that, though. Yawn.

He who laughs last, laughs..

...etc.

Limbaugh rebuffs attempts by advertisers to get him back.

And for real OCD types...

...here is a Planned Parenthood site saying that birth control pills cost $15 to $50 per month.

I did the hard work - less than a minute - of researching the issue, which, apparently, highly paid professional journalists are unable to to perform for themselves.

$15 to $50 per month works out to $180 to $600 per year.

Since beggars can't be choosers, we'll go with the low end of $180 per year.

This is substantially - to put it mildly - below Fluke's testimony under oath that contraception costs $1,000 per year.

So, Fluke is not only a publicity slut, she's a perjurer.

The benefits of the Limbaugh-Fluke Kerfuffle...

First, it let's us play spot the idiot, which in this case happens to be the college administrator who criticizes a colleague for daring - daring! - to have an independent thought.

Second, it forces us to contemplate the ability of the left to dive into a wooden humorlessness when they need to (as in long unfunny anti-catholic screeds are to liberals "funny," but biting satire of an adult's overweening sense of entitlement are to liberals "not funny" because it used a "bad word.")

This is from Ann Althouse:

We are here to educate, to nurture, to inspire, not to engage in character assassination." Where's the character assassination? Landsburg disagreed with the policy Sandra Fluke promoted. In Congress. Professors have the obligation to "nurture" and "inspire" her from afar by refraining from taking on her ideas? Is that some special kid-gloves treatment for women? Ironically, that would be sexist. Should we be patting the female political activist on the head and murmuring good for you for speaking up? That is dismissive. It's better feminism to react to what a woman in politics says and to respond to her with full force the way you would to a man. And that's what Landsburg did:

[W]hile Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position — which is what’s at issue here — deserves none whatseover. It deserves only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered. To treat it with respect would be a travesty....

To his credit, Rush stepped in to provide the requisite mockery. To his far greater credit, he did so with a spot-on analogy: If I can reasonably be required to pay for someone else’s sex life (absent any argument about externalities or other market failures), then I can reasonably demand to share in the benefits. His dense and humorless critics notwithstanding, I am 99% sure that Rush doesn’t actually advocate mandatory on-line sex videos. What he advocates is logical consistency and an appreciation for ethical symmetry. So do I. Color me jealous for not having thought of this analogy myself.

Now, Landsburg's an economist. Note the references to externalities or other market failures. He goes on to say a little something about prostitution. He goes on find the the analogy to prostitution flawed. Fluke is, he says, more of an "extortionist" — an "extortionist with an overweening sense of entitlement." For some reason Seligman thought he needed to throw in his position on prostitution:

I totally disagree with Landsburg that there is nothing wrong with being paid for sex.

Here is the original Professor Steve Landsburg post.

Great Moments in American Business.

Investors flee Carbonite after Limbaugh announcement:

On Saturday, Carbonite CEO David Friend released a statement on his company’s website declaring that Carbonite had decided to “withdraw” advertising from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in the wake of his controversial remarks involving Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke because it will “ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse”:

Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.

However, it hasn’t done much to contribute to his company’s stock price. Since the market opened on Monday through its close today, Carbonite stock (NASDAQ:CARB) has plummeted nearly 12 percent, outpacing the drop of the NASDAQ index in that same time period by nine-and-a-half points. It was also one of the biggest decliners on the NASDAQ on Tuesday.

America, You Should be Ashamed.

The horror!

The horror!

Publicity Slut is also a Perjurer.

Someone finally ran the numbers on Sandra Fluke's totally BS claim that she was being bankrupted by having to pay for her own contraceptives:

The crucial lynchpin of the argument for attacking Georgetown’s Catholic religious beliefs is the hypothesis that birth control is too expensive for a student to afford without health insurance paying for it. YET, THAT IS A FLAT-OUT, TOTAL LIE.

Sandra Fluke committed perjury (lying under oath) by claiming that “AS YOU KNOW” birth control costs a student “OVER $3,000″ over the three years of law school.

Note: Some have tried to cover for Fluke by changing this to “UP TO.” No. She said “OVER $3,000.”

To expose this perjury, we need look no farther than Planned Parenthood’s own website.

Of course Sandra Fluke did not identify which type of birth control she had in mind. But it doesn’t matter:

COSTS: (1) Birth Control pills, every single day (with placebos often in the plan for 2 or 3 days): $15 per month, says Planned Parenthood. $540 over 3 years. (2) the PATCH: $15 per month says Planned Parenthood. $540 over 3 years. (3) IUD: Good for 12 years, $500 to $1000 up-front, says PP. (4) condoms: 40 cents each in economy packages.

Top name brand, Trojan, condoms cost $13.99 in a 36 count economy pack. That’s 40 cents a condom. So the only way that a Georgetown student could be spending $3,000 over three years is to have sex 7,500 times over three years. That’s 6.84 times a day, every single day, without any days off, for three years.

Could one spend MORE than $15 per month, which Planned Parenthood says is a likely price? Who cares? The discussion is about a student on a limited budget. So we are talking about how little she might spend, not how much she could go on the up side.

It is Sandra Fluke’s claim that a student *MUST* spend “OVER $3,000″ during 3 years. She is claiming that it is NECESSARY (unavoidable) for a woman at Georgetown Law School to spend “OVER $3,000″ a year for birth control.

So, sure — you could pay more than $15 per month. But we are talking about students who are short on money. So obviously we are talking about students paying the minimum, because they are on a limited budget. The argument is that these students cannot afford birth control, so we have to look at the minimum price, not the premium price you could pay if you don’t care about the cost.

But if Georgetown’s students — who are supposed to be studying some of the time — had sex 3 times a week, taking 2 weeks out being with their families for holidays and taking 2 weeks out for exam weeks, that would be 432 times over three years.

COST FOR CONDOMS: $172.80 plus tax over three years. (432 times 40 cents each.)

A Modest Proposal with respect to Helping Sandra Fluke Shoulder the Burden of Paying for her Sex Life.

From Roxeanne de Luca at Haemet:

You demand I buy your birth control, but you don’t even require your dates to buy you dinner before using it.

Discuss.


Why is it that only women, according to the Left’s orthodoxy, have to pay for contraception? Doesn’t it take two to tango? Aren’t we all empowered these days? Stacy McCain, in calling Sandra Fluke a liar, forgets to rip apart this part of her testimony:

“Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy,” Fluke testified regarding the Catholic university’s policy of not covering birth control. “Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school.”

On a side note, it was 40% of students who are a part of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, which is not exactly a representative sample. More importantly, why would anyone screw a guy who would let you shoulder a grand a year in birth control costs yourself?

I have been beating the “young women of the world, have you all lost your minds?” drum for quite some time here at Haemet. And I will continue to do so. According to Fluke and the other lefties, the plight of women is so dire that they are left pleading before Congress to pay for the condoms and Pills that their lame-ass sex partners won’t pay for. Could we humiliate young women any more?

What is so infuriating is it is not that complicated to avoid having to spend thousands of dollars of your own money on contraception while men float freely through their educations, spending all of their money on video games, plasma TVs, or Brooks Brothers suits. Two rules. Follow them. Love them. Embrace them. Here they are:

1. Don’t fuck cads who refuse to to toddle over to CVS and buy a box of Trojans before the evening’s Kama Sutra extravaganza.

2. If you feel the need to violate Rule 1, buy a vibrator or see a shrink.

Back in the Dark Ages, men used to buy women diamonds before getting them into bed. Now that you’ve done away with that requirement, how about at least asking men to buy your Ortho Tri Cyclen? If you’re an equal partner, negotiating a sexual encounter, why are you so unequal that you’re the ones crying to rich men in Congress for help, like Oliver Twist asking for another serving of food, while all the guys on Law Review are writing their Notes and applying to clerkships without a care in the world? And whose fault is that? Rick Santorum’s? Pope Benedict? or yours, for not having the basic self-respect to tell Mr. Law Review that he’s not getting any unless he understands that “equality” doesn’t mean that the woman buys the Pill and the condoms, too?

Publicity-skank Sandra Fluke invited us in to a discussion of her sex life by making her personal appeal to Congress that everyone - including her Catholic law school - be requierd to subsidize her sex life, so it seems that helpful suggestions like the above are properly in order.

Let's be honest about this...

...the liberals are pushing contraception as a stalking-horse for other medical costs, such as sterilization, abortion and gender-reassignment surgery.

The Other McCain points out that "publicity slut" Sandra Fluke has argued for mandatory insurance coverage for sex-change surgery.

Remember, as Byron York previously reported, Fluke was rejected as a last-minute substitute witness at a Feb. 16 committee hearing because staffers for Chairman Issa were unable to discover Fluke’s claim to expertise relevant to the subject of the hearing. This law school journal article is the sort of thing that might have been discovered about Fluke’s background, had the Democrats who put Fluke forward as a witness done so with the usual 72-hour advance notice. Here’s one brief quote from the article:

Transgender persons wishing to undergo the gender reassignment process frequently face heterosexist employer health insurance policies that label the surgery as cosmetic or medically unnecessary and therefore uncovered.

Now, imagine Fluke trying to defend this language about “heterosexist” policies in a public hearing, with Republican members of the committee questioning her about whether religious institutions (or private businesses, or taxpayers) should also be required to foot the bill for “gender reassignment.”
Congratulations, America: You’ve been scammed!