In a model of Orwellian doublespeak, the New York Times published an editorial yesterday defending the ridiculous decision by U.S. District Judge Carol E. Jackson to dismiss the lawsuit filed earlier this year by Frank O’Brien and his O’Brien Industrial Holdings LLC. O’Brien had challenged the requirement that businesses offer employees contraception coverage through health care insurance, claiming it unconstitutionally violated his religious beliefs and the Catholic philosophy he applied in running his business.

Not so, say the NYT editors, who nod in approval at Judge Jackson assertion that the mandate does not rise to the level of a “substantial” burden because the “imposition on religion is trivial and remote.” What the NYT fails to mention is Jackson’s reasoning:
Read more on The New York Times Doesn’t Understand Freedom of Religion…

In addition to internal logical inconsistencies which raise serious concerns of long term economic sustainability regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), recently analyzed by John MacDhubhain, Robert Pear reports in the New York Times over the weekend how confusion over certain ambiguities in the law (ironically over the meaning of the word “affordable”) would end up hurting some of the people it is precisely designed to help: working class families.

Read more on Another Reason We Can’t Afford the Affordable Care Act…

On The American Spectator, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg observes that, “as evidence for the European social model’s severe dysfunctionality continues to mount before our eyes, the American left is acutely aware how much it discredits its decades-old effort to take America down the same economic path.” Against this evidence, some liberals are pinning the blame on passing fiscal and currency imbalances. No, Gregg says, there’s “something even more fundamental” behind the meltdown of the post-war West European social model. (Thanks to RealClearWorld for linking).

Read more on Samuel Gregg: The American Left’s European Nightmare…

Writing on National Review Online’s Corner blog, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg looks ahead to the Census Bureau’s release on Monday of poverty numbers based on a new measurement and analysis of those new numbers in a recent New York Times article:

Read more on Samuel Gregg on the New Poverty Numbers…

I have said it many times in the past, but now I have confirmation: According to the editors of the New York Times, the Pope is not permitted to make moral judgments because only the Editorial Board of the New York Times (all genuflect here) is permitted to pontificate:

Read more on The Paper Pope…