The answer is simple: it does not put money in the pockets of executives at large corporations. The ONLY reason universal health insurance is getting any traction in this country is that huge companies like GM are starting to feel the burden on their own profit margin.

As for undue burdens on coworkers of working parents - there should be protections that keep other employees' absences from being their coworkers' problem. If our salary/hourly/overtime protections had not been corroded over the last ten years, this wouldn't be as much of a problem, would it? A built-in protection against being fired because you refused to do additional work without additional compensation wouldn't hurt, though.

From the station's website: "Duquesne University holds the broadcast license for WDUQ 90.5 FM's 25,000-watt broadcast signal. The station is a non-academic unit reporting to the Provost and Academic Vice President. Duquesne University provides DUQ with annual in-kind support (facilities and services) and 6% of cash funding."

In any case, we all know the radio station has a legal right to refuse whatever money it pleases. No one is saying it's illegal. But it makes them look silly to the general public.

Of course, they're not making this decision so they can look good for the general public. It's a decision based on principle (well, also because the church could lose some big donors and political friends otherwise...). My beef with it is the obsession of Catholics with reproductive rights. The vast majority of right-to-life folks voted for Bush for a second term, even though he is responsible for the slaughter so many innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you're really making decisions on principle, you should be opposing war and other injustices just as vehemently as you oppose birth control and abortion. And there are plenty of social justice Catholics out there, but that is only one wing of the Church. As a body, they are much more likely to take a vocal public stand on reproductive issues than on social justice. Are they going to start scrutinizing all their underwriters - or is this decision really just based on the fact that having announcements from Planned Parenthood makes them look bad?

The simple answer to your question is that conservative voters are regular people like everyone else. Conservative politicians, on the other hand, are extremist bullies. Basically, they are monomaniacal rich people who want to end all taxes for rich people. That is what they are in office to do. The right-to-life schtick and the racist schtick are ways to get funding and votes, respectively.

Sorry if I sound cynical. Sometimes the truth hurts.

Sorry, I did overgeneralize. I don't mean all conservative politicians - just the main ones currently in power. But even folks like Olympia Snow tow the party line. The Republican party works more that way than the Dem party does. (Not that I don't have criticisms of Dems as well.)

not tow. Sorry. Where's my coffee?

Really? I think the government should be guaranteeing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by protecting regular citizens from exploitation by the privileged oligarchy. I don't think the Constitution mentions fatherhood at all.

Well, I think you already said it. The free advertising is a bonus.

Running the numbers like that doesn't sound like something Jesus would do. I have always admired the purism of Catholicism, which I think is better represented by your own choice to vote for neither candidate. Comparing one candidate's shaky level of responsibility for millions of fetal deaths (most of which would happen even if abortion were illegal) to another candidate's obvious level of direct responsibility for tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths and then choosing the latter? Well, that's pretty tricky math, and it doesn't sound like Christianity to me, voting for a war hawk because he will nominate judges who might eventually overturn Roe v. Wade.

In any case, this was not originally a discussion about the votes of individuals, which happen for many reasons and are really none of my business. It's about the Church as a body taking a hard-line, public, loud, vocal stance against abortion, everywhere, all the time. And about war? Well, talking too much about that might get them in trouble with their political allies. I'm not talking about individual voters; I was Catholic once, and I know that lots of members do tons of work for families, their communities, and social justice. I'm talking about official political activities. You know, if the Church talked as loudly, publicly and vocally about grown-ups being killed as they do about fetuses being killed, I would still have a shred of respect for the it. As it is, I see that body as being disproportinately obsessed with sex and gender.

That may be so for people with freedom to have sex when they want and not when they don't, and for people with access to contraceptives. I think you've got the wrong ladies.

Did you look at the charts in that massive document? PAI tries to make a case for this being about abortion laws - and I'm not saying it's not - but if you look at the charts you can see that there is a huge correlation between maternal death and income. Big. Shocker.