Weekly Pulse: The Religious Right vs. Birth Control

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Does health care reform’s promise of preventive care extend to free birth control? Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services have 18 months to decide whether to require insurers to provide oral contraceptives, IUDs, and other prescription birth control with no co-pay. With pro-choice Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at the helm, HHS is expected to say yes.

[Update: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that birth control will not be on the White House's preliminary list of free preventive services, to be issued today. However, as Miriam Perez of feministing explains, HHS will ultimately have the final word. Observers, including Dana Goldstein who covers reproductive rights for the Daily Beast, are optimistic that the pro-choice side will carry the day at HHS.]

Incremental tyranny has marched, step by step, up to our door. Are we going to accept authoritarian control over our lives, travel, currency and economy? Will we actually accept martial law in the streets or the internment of “domestic terrorists” and political dissidents?

Bunning’s hold-up has shut down FEMA’s flood insurance…and The Flood Factor could erase Republican assumptions they’ve a shoo-in Senate seat from North Dakota.

The end game has begun. The FDIC is insolvent. The banks can no longer be “rescued.” The final transfer of wealth is at hand. Legislation is being pushed through right now to activate 400,000 Federal Troops on the streets of America. What are you doing about it?

But don’t panic yet. Although the earthquake swarm continues, according to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, the volcano alert level remains normal. And a slew of larger earthquakes have occurred throughout the western U.S., Alaska, Puerto Rico and even Pennsylvania in the past week without incident, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.