It seemed to take a long time to get public admission that the breast cancer awareness giant was even giving funds to the abortion giant. Once they did, they tried to focus on the good they intended it to do, and discounted the potential harm. Now, there’s no denial.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure has pulled its funding of Planned Parenthood. The story is spreading quickly.

Here’s what the Washington Post had to say.

The Associated Press reports that Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation’s leading breast-cancer charity, will cut off its funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates, where the foundation has traditionally paid for preventive screening services.

According to the AP, the move will mean “a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams.”Planned Parenthood confirms that Komen is the first, and only, organization to cut off funding… click here to read whole article and make comments

He won election with a slim majority of Catholic voters because enough progressives believed his policies aligned with social justice mandates of the Gospel. He just lost them with a mandate of his own.

The case his Department of Justice took before the Supreme Court was an audacious opening salvo. Now, his administration has launched an all-out assault on the church and believers and sympathizers.

Of the barrage of columns and articles and blog posts and commentaries on this, there are a few that stand out starkly for saying Obama’s Left Catholics. They deserve attention.

Ross Douthat in the New York Times:

When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good. Unlike most communal organizations, the government has coercive power — the power to regulate, to mandate and to tax. These advantages make… click here to read whole article and make comments

The Obama administration did what no one or nothing else has seemed able to do in recent history in one sweeping stroke…galvanize Catholics who were otherwise evenly divided for and against his policies.

This story is growing in both heat and light.

First, on January 19th, Pope Benedict warned the church in the US that ‘radical secularism’ was posing new threats to religious liberty in this country.

At the heart of every culture, whether perceived or not, is a consensus about the nature of reality and the moral good, and thus about the conditions for human flourishing. In America, that consensus, as enshrined in your nation’s founding documents, was grounded in a worldview shaped not only by faith but a commitment to certain ethical principles deriving from nature and nature’s God. Today that consensus has eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed… click here to read whole article and make comments

This was an extraordinary provocation.

On the day after Pope Benedict warned the church in America about unprecedented political and cultural threats to religious freedom, the Obama adminstration issued a mandate that will force religious institutions to comply with health care rules profoundly against their fundamental moral beliefs.

The ACLJ was already preparing briefs for the Supreme Court hearing on the Obama healthcare legislation, based on the individual mandate that required citizens to purchase something, by federal law, for the first time. Now, that mandate requires them to purchase something that violates their moral conscience.

Never before has an American president so openly and wantonly disregarded the religious civil liberties of so many.

Last Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would make final the rule mandating that insurance policies provide for contraceptive services, including sterilization, and drugs with an abortifacient mechanism of action.

It was a rare moment of honest admission.

Just a quick and simple throwaway line at the end of a discussion between Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and guests Larry Sabato and Gallup editor in chief Frank Newport about the Florida GOP primary on January 31st. A discussion about what happened in South Carolina and how fast the numbers changed in the week and few days and hours before the primary that no one could predict. After the Iowa primary in which no one foresaw Sen. Rick Santorum’s appeal and popularity.

In a tangle of confusing (or confused) punditry with commentators doing their best to call the GOP race as they see it, though they’re seeing it through the hopeful lenses of political ideology…

The show host asks for an informed assessment from experts on location in the next battleground state. And with time running out on the program, the Gallup organization’s spokesman says…

I remember writing in 2008 that the race was consistent only in its unpredicability. That’s the only resemblance this presidential race holds to the last.

There is no comfort in any political camp right now. They each feel equally emboldened and vulnerable. Just as they did in the Democratic primary in 2008.

That’s not bad for the political process after South Carolina, third race in.

Three states. Three winners. A divided delegate count. If there is one clarity in the unpredictable, captivating turns of the Republican presidential race, it is this: Anything can happen and Florida, which is next to vote, is wide open.

“Whether it’s a ball game or a political race, momentum counts. And Gingrich has it,” said state Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, who is not affiliated with a candidate.

Gingrich’s resurrection comes as the GOP field has narrowed, allowing him to tap into conservative… click here to read whole article and make comments

The news reports have been fast and…confusing. Or careful, as they ought to be. The internet world is far more difficult to police than the geographical one, tough as that one is.

So as CNN asks, what is this all about?

Megaupload, the file-sharing website shut down Thursday by the U.S. federal government, is a Web hosting tool that now finds itself accused of being an online haven for digital pirates.

Many people probably never have heard of the site. But to millions, the 6-year-old site, based in Hong Kong, was a fast, easy way to store massive files in a “locker” online and then share them with friends or colleagues.

At various points in its history, Megaupload has been among the most popular websites in the world.

And it once had the support of some celebrities. A (really bizarre) YouTube video shows Kanye West,… click here to read whole article and make comments

In the US, we’re consumed with presidential campaigns, debates and primary elections. However...

We’d better keep an eye on what’s happening abroad. Where to being on that….there’s so much.

Most urgently, look at what’s happening in Nigeria.

A militant Islamic group whose almost daily attacks have put Nigerians on edge left the country stunned Saturday after a well-coordinated strike with disturbing echoes of Al Qaeda’s brand of mayhem.

More than 150 people were killed in the Friday evening carnage in the northern city of Kano. The group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attacks, whose targets included the secret service headquarters, an immigration office and a passport office.

It was the group’s most deadly strike, far exceeding previous death tolls.

Boko Haram, which wants to impose sharia, or Islamic law, on Nigeria’s 160 million people, killed more than 500 people in almost daily attacks last… click here to read whole article and make comments

It started out to be about copyright infringement. But it ended quickly, when the old guard caved to the pervasive pressure from the new.

I was lamenting Wikipedia going dark, but was especially concerned about what the challenges in SOPA and PIPA might mean. Before I had the chance to really read the links to news stories I’d saved on them from the day before, it was all over.

When the powerful world of old media mobilized to win passage of an online antipiracy bill, it marshaled the reliable giants of K Street — the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Recording Industry Association of America and, of course, the motion picture lobby, with its new chairman, former Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and an insider’s insider.

Yet on Wednesday this formidable old guard was forced to make way for the new as Web powerhouses backed by… click here to read whole article and make comments

…be prepared to work harder for it. Some of the top search sites are going dark for the day.

Surely you know about this. If you don’t, chances are it won’t affect you much. But I do searches every day for research, so this will be an interesting exercise. We’ve heard of the ‘democracy of the Internet’, certainly of ‘Wikipedia.’ Here it is in action.

With a Web-wide protest on Wednesday that includes a 24-hour shutdown of the English-language Wikipedia, the legislative battle over two Internet piracy bills has reached an extraordinary moment — a political coming of age for a relatively young and disorganized industry that has largely steered clear of lobbying and other political games in Washington.

The bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate, are backed by major media companies and are mostly intended to curtail… click here to read whole article and make comments