The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

How Do You Poach a Rhino? First, Get a Really Big Pan . . .
“Rhino Dies in Anti-Poaching Demo by Conservationists”–headline, MSNBC.com, Feb. 9

It’s Always in the Last Place You Look
“Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay Finds a Home, Family in the Woods”–headline, Tampa Bay Times, Feb. 10

News of the Tautological
“Toxic Fish Can Sicken Seafood Eaters”–headline, Herald-Tribune (Sarasota, Fla.), Feb. 9

Abortifacient Shell Game
President Obama has partially climbed down from his decree that Catholic institutions must insure their employees for abortifacient drugs and sterilization proceedings in violation of religious law, ABC News reports:

“Religious organizations won’t have to pay for these services and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly,” the president announced from the White House briefing room. “Let me repeat: These employers will not have to pay for or provide contraceptive services, but women who work at these institutions will have access to free contraceptive services just like other women.”

How will that work? “If a woman works for an employer that objects to providing contraception because of its religious beliefs, the insurance company will step in and offer birth control free of charge,” ABC reports.

It’s not clear who will “step in” if the institution self-insures, and in any case this sounds like something of a swindle. Unless insurance companies have access to magical abortifacient trees, somebody has to pay for this stuff. One way or another the benefits will be priced into the cost of insurance, and even if insurers give Catholic institutions a discount and pass the cost on to everybody else, the former will still be purchasing a package of benefits that includes what they find abhorrent.

Will Catholics accept the arrangement? Those who are ideologically committed to ObamaCare, like Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, fell into line immediately. But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said only that it was “a first step in the right direction.”

Obama’s abortifacient shell game reminds us of other work-arounds from religious law, such as Shariah mortgages and the selling of chametz for Passover (see our 2009 discussion for details). But whereas those are accommodations by religious authorities for the convenience of the faithful, the ObamaCare mandate is an imposition by the state. There is no reason for Catholics to accept it unless, like Keehan and Dionne, they are ideologically committed to the vast expansion of state power that is ObamaCare.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”