Seize the Day

Well, sports fans, since I'm going to hike the Dolomites when I'm 100 years old (and you wouldn't just do that once, right?) I realized I've got another forty years ahead of me, so that's another whole adult lifetime, starting now.  So I've decided to re-set my age to thirty.  Which is a little awkward, since my daughter is thirty, but hey.

So I had to come up with a new career.  Obviously, it’s gotta be writing!  Well, and a little music.  You know my new mission statement, “Saving the world through words, music, and not looking before you leap.”

 I just finished my first novel, Baltimore Daze.  Cool beans.  But even cooler is that I'm making a foray into being a Radio Personality.  You may catch my new weekly commentary, Carp O'Diem, at the Portland Radio Project.   I even get groovy theme music!

Here's my first "Carp," which was originally aired on PRP on April 7, 2014.

 

Have you heard about the “Hobby Lobby” case now before the Supreme Court?  Here’s the question:  If an aspect of health care violates an employer’s religious beliefs, should they be able to deny those aspects of health care to their employees?  Even if those employees don’t share those beliefs.  

This could have an effect on a huge number of U.S. citizens.  And we could be talking about not just contraception.  Could employers opt out of funding vaccinations, blood transfusions, or mental health care?  Never mind that MSNBC reported Thursday that Hobby Lobby’s 401(k) plan is heavily invested in pharmaceutical companies that produce contraceptive drugs.  They could have divested those holdings instead of attempting to turn the First Amendment into Silly Putty, to justify yet another attack on the Affordable Health Care Act.

I used to teach the Constitution.  The point of religious freedom as protected by the First Amendment, as I understand it, was to keep a minority from imposing their religion upon others as a mandate.

Which is what this sounds like to me. The Supreme Court could decide to give private employers the right to impose their religious beliefs on their employees to the point of restricting their access to health care.