Why only Catholics are fighting the HHS Mandate?

Catholic Bishops Begin National Campaign for Religious Liberty

by Dr. Susan Berry 

A mass at Baltimore’s Basilica of the Assumption on Thursday night was the setting for the start of what U.S. Catholic bishops are calling a “Fortnight for Freedom,” a campaign “of teaching and witness for religious liberty.” 

The initiative is in response primarily to the HHS mandate, part of ObamaCare, which forces Catholic and other religious institutions such as schools, hospitals, and charities, to provide free contraception, abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization procedures for its employees in their health insurance plans. The mandate is set to go into effect on August 1^st.
The celebrant of the mass, Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori, head of the “Fortnight for Freedom” initiative, was greeted by a standing ovation and applause as he entered the standing-room-only basilica.
During his homily, Archbishop Lori explained that the two-week campaign is in response to President Obama’s “morally objectionable” policies which amount to an attack on religious freedom. The Archbishop said:

Religious freedom includes the freedom of individuals to act in accord with their faith but also the freedom of church institutions to act in accordance with their teachings and to serve as a buffer between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual conscience.

Outside the basilica, approximately 40 members of Catholic groups protested the archbishop’s message, criticizing it as political activity and stating that it is inconsistent with the rights of women. James Salt, executive director of Catholics United, a group that says it is committed to “social justice” issues, said, "We think that the decision to have a 'Fortnight for Freedom' really is a political attack on President Obama, and it doesn't reflect the moral priorities of Catholics sitting in the pews, who are really more concerned about bread-and-butter issues."
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has dedicated fourteen days from June 21^st, the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, to July 4^th, Independence Day, as a “special period of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action” that will serve to “emphasize both our Christian and American heritage of liberty.” The bishops chose June 21^st as the starting date for the campaign because Saints John Fisher and Thomas More are both known as martyrs who were executed when they refused to deny their faith and beliefs in the face of persecution.
The “Fortnight for Freedom” will include daily reflections, available on the USCCB website, bulletin inserts, a texting campaign, and special events in dioceses and parishes throughout the country. The two-week period will end on July 4^th with a special mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, celebrated by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington D.C.



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Is Obama’s Latino Strategy Vulnerable?

by William Bigelow

Until recently, the general perception was that the Latino vote, which favored Barack Obama heavily in 2008 when he received 67% of that constituency, was assured of supporting him in the same manner in 2012.

But recent events have cast doubts on that assumption. Jorge Ramos, the premier journalist at Univision, the huge Spanish network, has been calling for answers in the Fast and Furious scandal, tweeting,” “It’s a very simple question. Who authorized Fast and Furious? We don’t have an answer yet.”
With Obama’s recent statements on immigration reform, including his decision not to deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, the expectation was that Obama had secured the Latino vote for good. Yet the Obama Administration has deported more undocumented immigrants. 1.2 million, than any other president, and that has not gone unnoticed by the Latino community, which smells election-year politicking behind Obama’s sudden amnesty for the undocumented immigrants.

Ramos, in particular, was offended earlier this year when he posed the question of Fast and Furious to Obama and was given the condescending response, “the United States is a big country.” In addition, Ramos was angry because the Obama campaign had used Ramos’ image in a campaign ad as well as the name of Univision without permission. He released a statement saying:

 “A few hours ago the Obama reelection campaign aired an ad using my image and that of Noticias Univisión. I want to make clear that I reject the use of my likeness and that of Noticias Univisión in any election campaign. We have let the Obama campaign and the White House know, and we want to leave a public notice of our disagreement. We have always defended our journalistic integrity and will always continue to do so.”

Ramos also interviewed David Axelrod, who said picking Marco Rubio as a running mate for Mitt Romney would be “an insult to Hispanics.”

There is no guarantee that the Latino vote is in Obama’s pocket. If Univision, which is a television giant, starts to melt away from Obama, his prospects in November start looking grimmer and grimmer.

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Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show

By Lewis Page •

Posted in Science

Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic have been compared with reality for the first time - and found to be wrong, so much so that it now appears that no ice is being lost at all.
"Previous ocean models ... have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place," says Tore Hattermann of the Norwegian Polar Institute, member of a team which has obtained two years' worth of direct measurements below the massive Fimbul Ice Shelf in eastern Antarctica - the first ever to be taken.

According to a statement from the American Geophysical Union, announcing the new research:

It turns out that past studies, which were based on computer models without any direct data for comparison or guidance, overestimate the water temperatures and extent of melting beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This has led to the misconception, Hattermann said, that the ice shelf is losing mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass, leading to an overall loss of mass.
The team’s results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted ...

Hatterman and his colleagues, using 12 tons of hot-water drilling equipment, bored three holes more than 200m deep through the Fimbul Shelf, which spans an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey. The location of each hole was cunningly chosen so that the various pathways by which water moves beneath the ice shelf could be observed, and instruments were lowered down.
The boffins also supplemented their data craftily by harvesting info from a biology project, the Marine Mammal Exploration of the Oceans Pole to Pole (MEOP) effort, which had seen sensor packages attached to elephant seals.
"Nobody was expecting that the MEOP seals from Bouvetoya would swim straight to the Antarctic and stay along the Fimbul Ice Shelf for the entire winter," Hattermann says. "But this behaviour certainly provided an impressive and unique data set."
Normally, getting sea temperature readings along the shelf in winter would be dangerous if not impossible due to shifting pack ice - but the seals were perfectly at home among the grinding floes.
Overall, according to the team, their field data shows "steady state mass balance" on the eastern Antarctic coasts - ie, that no ice is being lost from the massive shelves there. The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
This is good news indeed, as some had thought that huge amounts of ice were melting from the region, which might mean accelerated rates of sea level rise in future. ®

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