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Steven Waldman

Terry Mattingly makes the fascinating point that the U.S. Catholic Bishops seem to be non-players in the health care debate, if press coverage is any gauge. “Are the journalists ignoring the bishops or are the bishops (and their gatekeepers) ignoring the journalists? This is one of the biggest religion-news stories of the year, especially in…

“The new fault line is not between pro-life and pro-choice people. It’s within the pro-life community. The question now is: ‘are you pro-life and pro-contraception, therefore trying to reduce the need for abortions, or are you pro-life and against contraception and you hope that people’s lives improve just by hoping it, wishing it so.'” –Rep.…

During Republican administrations, the religious right flexed its muscle around issues like abortion and judicial appointments. As the religious left grew in importance during the election, it was unclear how they would attempt to exert their influence. It looks like the first big test is health care. They were non-existent players in 1993; this time,…

Walter Cronkite didn’t lend his name to many things. So it was notable when he became chairman of the Interfaith Alliance, a group in part created to combat the “religious right.” As the Alliance’s founder C. Welton Gaddy explained: “As a man of personal faith who loved his country and its Constitution, Walter Cronkite looked…

The “common ground” abortion legislation re-introduced today does seem to represent real political progress. I’m on jury duty today so I haven’t been able to do any extra reporting but looking over the summary of the legislation, known as “Ryan-DeLauro,” here’s what provisionally strikes me: For starters, last time Planned Parenthood would not sign on…

There was a major breakthrough today for efforts to achieve common ground on reducing the number of abortions. Rep. Tim Ryan, a pro-lifer, and Rosa DeLauro, pro-choice, reintroduced a revised version of their common ground legislation, drawing a wider range of support. I’ll comment on the politics and substance in a separate post. For now,…

I’ve written in the past of my frustration that health care advocates — both policymakers, religious lefties and spinmeisters — aren’t focusing sufficiently on the pre-existing condition problem as one of the central outrages of the modern health care system. A few reminders from readers: JB Chicago One of my closest friends has a pre-existing…

Religious leaders advocating for health care reform have tended to emphasize the plight of the uninsured, which surely is a great injustice. But to me, another facet is just as unjust — and politically more potent: that is, the tendency for insurance companies to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. The ranks of the…

There are some songs I secretly play when I’m alone that I know would mark me as a) unsophisticated b) sappy and c) old. But I love them nonetheless, perhaps because they entered my brain at an impressionable moment, perhaps because I have lousy taste but perhaps because the rest of the world hasn’t caught…

This photo has been running in newspapers and on websites throughout the country along with stories about legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite. The caption says it’s Cronkite and someone named Sandra Nemser broadcasting the CBS radio show Answer Please in 1958. The caption doesn’t say who Sandra Nemser is, but I know: that’s my mother. In…
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