Nick Anderson for February 03, 2012

Youve got it backward. The Church wants the taxpayers money without following the rules. Sorrry Charlie- you can’t have it both ways.

And the church is exempt from this rule anyway. It’s only Catholic hospitals and universities — who also can’t fire people for their religion — who fall under the rules.

There’s something about that priest… Something I can’t quite put my finger on… Almost as if Anderson here made sure there was this exact something about the priest….

This is tawdry ! I came here to unsubscribe again. Why can I not get off this list?

Not everybody who works at a Catholic hospital or college is a Catholic – any any employee of such an institution who is not Catholic should be forced to adhere to Catholic dogma.

Don’t run a hospital if you don’t want to provide FULL healthcare services.

if you do not want to work for a religious org don’t

The “church” has made quite an effort to buy into control of hospitals around the country. Soo, is this “business” or “religion”? They take money from lots of sources, some traceable to federal payments. So, is this mixing church and state? You betcha’ it is! What the administration is saying is, if you take the money, you must provide the service. It is the church(es) that want to play it both ways.

Isn’t it even a little absurd that “PUBLIC broadcasting”, nationwide, receives less than one tenth the amount of TAXPAYER money that a single, PRIVATE, RELIGIOUS, “college” founded by Jerry Falwell receives??

Simply put, if churches run hospitals (or supermarkets) shouldn’t they pay full tax load on profits, and provide full services to taxpayers?

If the government would allow me to send my dollar for dollar tax money (instead of a slight tax break for charible giving) to the charities of my choice then the government would really see how the citizens felt! I don’t want the government to interpret what I think is right or wrong.

They would prefer to keep the money for a ventilator to keep you around 20 years beyond quality of life . Just ask Karen Ann and Terri.

If you have a living will,you can make an advanced directive to try to have your final word on intensive care and no-code choices. Unfortunately politicians,hospital staff, and family members, sometimes ignore advanced directives.

As I recall,the neoconservatives made a lot of noise about advanced directive discussion with your own physician,calling it death panels.

FactCheck.org dispensed with that GOPer fabrication, death panels, snort!

Typical Republican BS.The party that claims to want small government wants to tell you who you can marry, who you can sleep with, what you can drink, what you can smoke, what kind of birth control you can use, and who to vote for.Then if you point out churches are getting tax money, when they should be PAYING taxes, and they don’t want to follow rules associated with getting government money, they cry foul.

Um that depends on who has the gun,the pill,the pillow,the will, the oxygen,the courage,the scalpel,the power,or the luck,the karma,if I’m getting your drift?

The man who raised “Lamda” DID??

Scum

Catholicism has had it’s long, phallic nose in politics for centuries. This cartoon is ridiculously ignorant.

Fester,fester,fester.

do you get off on making inane comments? what a pitiful life you must lead.

It is fascinating to me to read the ill-informed non-factual or twisted fact comments from both sides of an issue on these editorial cartoons pages!!

I am not the Catholics biggest fan but if they own the hospital they have the right to do whatever they want (within the confines of the law) and so if they don’t support the killing of infants then they have a right to refuse to do so.

@bruce,a so called hospital that does not provide a neccessary and essential abortion, or council on birth control has no BUSINESS calling itself a hospital and should be shut down whether they take government money or not.

Bruce, the hospital where my dad died was taken over by the Catholic church, prices went up significantly.

As to “non-profits” and hypocrisy, when Elizabeth Dole took over at Red Cross, her salary soared, and she mandated we start charging folks to teach CPR and first aid. A lot of “non-profits” are kept so, by raising the salaries and “benefits” of the top echelon “employees”. It’s where “overhead” often proves FAR LESS for “government” agencies, than even non-profits, but especially compared to “for profit” outfits. Some of those “non-profits” in fact run as high as 73% or MORE for “overhead”. Some would just call it theft and leave well enough alone.

@oquaig, the catholic church most certainly does take public money, lots of it. george bush used it to buy votes. and obama hasn’t cut them off.

the founding fathers thought that mixing church and state was bad for both. it is. but so long as the catholic church takes public money, they should follow public rules. so long as they inject themselves into politics they should pay taxes.

they do neither.

over 2 billion dollars these schmucks take

For fiscal year 2005, more than $2.2 billion in competitive social service grants were awarded to faith-based organizations. Between fiscal years 2003 and 2005, the total dollar amount of all grants awarded to FBOs increased by 21 percent (GAO 2006:433). The majority of these grants were distributed through state agencies to local organizations in the form of formula grants (GAO 2006:173).

Yes, I’ve read that too fennec. Improved nutrition and exposure to plastics and food additives seem to have played a part in this change.

At the rate we’ve been ingesting, inhaling, and absorbing chemicals, we’ve continued to ignore what’s been going on with other critters at our peril. Like “genetic engineering”, playing with chemistry and ignoring biology is hazardous. From the way things have been going, infants may be popping out of the womb ready for pregnancy. Nutrition does affect a lot of things, but this early “maturity” seems more “chemically induced”.

@fennic,

early puberty is indicated to come from the use of bovine growth hormone in our cows. makes it into the milk. SURPRISE!

Now let’s see..the CAtholic Church has been going to Africa and telling Africans that condoms do NOT protect against AIDS because they are too porous; This is a total LIE. They also tell them that the West is racist and has put AIDS into the condoms specifically to kill blacks. And now they are complaining about UNFAIR PRACTICES? Will those hospitals be looking after the millions of Africans who get contaminated with AIDS because of the Catholic Church’s IMMORAL lying and interference? I doubt it. They will be going to hell before Obama does, that’s for sure!