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

A Money-Laundering Scheme
“Man Charged With Stealing Thousands in Detergent”–headline, WCCO-TV/AM website (Minneapolis), Feb. 13

Bottom Stories of the Day

  • “Obama to Unveil Budget With Higher Taxes, More Deficits”–headline, Washington Times, Feb. 11
  • “Jacob Lew Defends Obama’s Spending Plan”–headline, Washington Post, Feb. 13

Birth Control Yes, Government Control No
New York Times editorials are often worth reading–stop laughing, we’re serious!–because they provide a window into the mindset of the liberal left, the ideological tendency that dominates many major cultural institutions and, for at least the next 11 months, the executive branch of the federal government.

Times editorialists write for people who think alike and seek reinforcement of their prejudices. Unconstrained by any need for compromise or political sensitivity, they provide an honest distillation of left-liberalism, something you can’t always get from politicians who need to appeal broadly enough to win electoral majorities or even from the leaders of other institutions that serve a more diverse audience or clientele. What you learn from reading Times editorialists is that the fundamental attitude of left-liberalism today is one of contemptuous ignorance.

Thus after President Obama made a symbolic concession to religious liberty last week, the Times once again employed scare quotes to sneer at the entire idea. This time it was in the very first phrase of its Saturday editorial:

In response to a phony crisis over “religious liberty” engendered by the right, President Obama seems to have stood his ground on an essential principle–free access to birth control for any woman. . . .

Nonetheless, it was dismaying to see the president lend any credence to the misbegotten notion that providing access to contraceptives violated the freedom of any religious institution. Churches are given complete freedom by the Constitution to preach that birth control is immoral, but they have not been given the right to laws that would deprive their followers or employees of the right to disagree with that teaching.

In truth, no one denies that individuals have “the right to disagree with that teaching,” and the religious institutions that object to the mandate do not claim the authority to police their employees’ private lives or opinions. Rather, they oppose the government’s attempt to coerce them into facilitating the practices they preach against.

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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.”