WASHINGTON — Politicized culture wars are debilitating because they almost always require partisans to denigrate the moral legitimacy of their opponents, and sometimes to deny their very humanity. It’s often not enough to defeat a foe. Satisfaction only comes from an adversary’s humiliation. One other thing about culture wars: One side typically has absolutely no understanding of what...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The news that GOPers in Congress will soon move to try and make it so any employer (not just a religious organization) can deny women birth control coverage will likely not help how Republicans in Congress are faring. Just keep the newest push in mind when you read this poll: While positive ratings for Congress remain at an all-time low, more voters than ever see the Republican agenda in Congress as extreme....

Just declared: the Republican Party’s war against contraception.

A new poll finds that Catholic voters support President Barack Obama’s new — and controversial — contraceptive policy compromise: Catholic voters largely approve of President Obama’s new policy on contraception, according to a poll released Saturday by groups that support the policy. Supporters say the poll shows that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and congressional Republicans,...

Obama Does What? by Peter Funt We know President Obama did something Friday related to rules covering contraception and health insurance for employees of religious organizations. But how do you characterize his action in a short headline? What’s the appropriate verb to follow “Obama…”? Saturday’s front pages went in many, telling, directions. The Boston Globe and Seattle Times were...

BISHOP DOLAN IS GROUCHY In for a dime in for a dollar seems to be the modus operandi in the latest round of culture warfare and even when reasonable compromise is within reach it remains elusive. And so we have the sight of Catholic bishops locking horns with the Obama administration over its principled view that all women need affordable access to contraceptive services and products, including the morning-after...

A centerpiece of the Republican Party’s social agenda in the new millennium has been to deny women new rights and take away old rights, but it stands to reason that everyone of every political stripe would be opposed to neutering laws that seek to combat domestic violence and sexual assault. But Republicans are less reasonable with every passing election cycle, and so we had the specter this week of every...

Karen Handel, a senior vice president for public policy at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation and the woman widely viewed as having pressured Komen to sever financial ties with Planned Parenthood, has resigned. The only question is why it took so long. In a whiny, self-serving letter, the woman who engineered this public relations disaster says that she is declining the offer of a severance package...

Bill Day, Cagle Cartoons For a women’s magazine editor of half a century ago, the Planned Parenthood-Komen Foundation ugly furor recalls the time from introduction of the Pill when women, no matter what their circumstances, were without safe, reliable birth control and, before Roe v. Wade, had the choice of bearing unwanted children or being butchered by back-alley abortions. From the start, those new alternatives,...

By now most readers know my (changed) position on the Afghanistan War. I have expressed concern among other about rampant corruption and backstabbing at the highest levels in the Afghanistan government, incompetence of and disloyalty among its military and police and continuing human rights violations. I have mourned our casualties and fretted about our huge financial costs. But — perhaps insensitively...

Update, 5 February: I’ve looked at two years of IRS filings for United Way, two years for Red Cross and one year for Planned Parenthood: none mention severance on their filings. It seems hard to fathom, but in three years Susan G. Komen paid an estimated $1.9 million in severance. Former Komen CEO Hala Moddelmog, the woman who stepped down in November 2009 when Nancy Brinker resumed the reins, received...

Will Outrage Extend To $2M In Severance Payments? Twitter Mentions Of Komen, Per TopsyThe chart from Topsy Labs says it all: 306,000 mentions on Twitter in seven days. In seven days, the total number of tweets mentioning Komen increased by almost 50 percent. But this contextual stat is equally startling: over the same 7-day period, there were 507,000 Twitter mentions of the Super Bowl, America’s greatest...

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The reversal of field today by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation on its decision to terminate funding to Planned Parenthood clinics is doubly heartening. This is because a grave injustice has been corrected and it was corrected to a substantial degree by the pushback by many thousands of people who vented their displeasure with Komen on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, the first such instance in the U.S....

The Susan B. Komen for the Cure foundation has numerous corporate and other sponsors, but you have to question the wisdom of partnering with a handgun retailer. A blurb at Discount Gun Sales’ website: Discount Gun Sales is proud to team up with the Susan B. Koman Foundation to offer the Walther P-22 Hope Edition in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. A portion of each P-22 Hope...

We will find out in ensuing months the bones underneath this decision and what really happened; how reliable a non-profit can be to reverse itself twice in a few days. We’ll follow along for now, but it may have had something to do with Komen’s corporate sponsors. I’ve rec’d several emails yesterday and today asking that all write to Komen’s food and entertainment sponsors to protest...

Randall Enos, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

UPDATE: See posts atop the fold about Komen rescinding their decision to withdraw funding and future applications for funding from Planned Parenthood, dateline Feb 3, 2012) Duke, a progressive university with a strong med school may have ‘a problem, Houston.” They’ve invited Brinker along with four other notable people to do 2012 commencement. Problem may rise up with parts of vocal student...

NANCY BRINKER KOMEN The Susan Komen-Planned Parenthood debacle is a defining moment for women’s rights in America. As Taylor Marsh writes, it is an egregious example of liberals being asleep at the wheel, but it is much, much more: It is a watershed event in the politicization of women’s reproductive rights in an era in which the Republican Party is doubling down on denying women virtually all...

Updated 4 February, in the wee hours of the morning: An alert reader, who looked at Schedule J more thoroughly than I did, noticed that former Komen CEO Hala Moddelmog, the woman who stepped down in November 2009, received $279,734 the following fiscal year as part of her severance package. Others receiving severance: Annetta Hewko ($134,483), Kimberly Earle ($271,781) and Marianne Alciati ($208,231). Holy...

It’s been a rough few days for the three-year-old daughter of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who remains in a hospital with pneumonia. The longshot candidate described Bella Santorum’s improvement on Sunday as “a miraculous turnaround” and it may indeed be a God job. But the top flight medical care she is getting at a Washington, D.C. area hospital may have something...

After months of trying to ameliorate a disease ravaging the GOP, Jon Huntsman Jr. has moved into fighting cancers that afflict human beings rather than the body politic by taking over as chairman of a foundation that funds his family’s Institute, a research, education and treatment center with a full-time faculty and staff of 1300. In his political hiatus, Huntsman worked hard but failed to offer Republicans...

Maybe: Academy of Sciences published a study purporting to show how psilocybin, the active ingredient in what are known as “magic mushrooms” is helpful in the treatment of depression, PTSD and anxiety. Another study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, found similar results. Meantime, researchers around the world have been experimenting with Ecstasy, whose active ingredient, MDMA, has...