Monthly Archives: March 2012

Melissa Schechinger doesn't consider herself a political activist. But just before noon Friday, the mother of three from West Peoria found herself in Downtown Peoria, as part of a national Rally for Religious Freedom.

"I want to make sure we can practice our religion and not be infringed upon," Schechinger said as she stood aside a stroller that carried her 10-month-old daughter Mariah. "We're really at a crossroads right now with religious freedom."

The Schechingers joined about 250 others gathered at Main Street and Jefferson Avenue, in front of the Peoria County Courthouse.

As they stood near a statue of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, speakers criticized a contraception-coverage mandate endorsed by the current Oval Office occupant, Barack Obama.

The mandate issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would require the health plans of many religious institutions and employers to include free contraceptives, sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs.

Employers with religious objections to contraception will not be required to cover birth control for employees. But employees will be able to obtain contraceptives directly from their insurers at no additional cost.

"I'll go to jail before I pay for abortion," said one rally participant, Don Castelli of rural Edwards.

Defiance also was evident in the public remarks of Bishop Daniel Jenky, the leader of the Catholic Diocese of Peoria.

"No government can tell us what our ministry is and what our ministry is not," Jenky told the crowd. "We will not cooperate."

Catholics have been perhaps the most vocal foes of the HHS mandate. But Jenky said 52 Eastern Orthodox Church bishops also have expressed opposition.

Continue reading here:
Religious freedom at 'crossroads'

Enlarge Alex Brandon/AP

Protesters rally for religious freedom in front of Philadelphia's Independence Hall on Friday. Rallies took place nationwide to protest the mandate that some religious organizations cover the cost of contraception.

Protesters rally for religious freedom in front of Philadelphia's Independence Hall on Friday. Rallies took place nationwide to protest the mandate that some religious organizations cover the cost of contraception.

Across the country, thousands of people skipped lunch Friday to protest what they see as a threat to religious liberties in the United States.

The protesters' specific complaint was the birth control mandate in the new health care law, but the discontent runs far deeper.

It didn't take much for the Rev. Pat Mahoney, an evangelical minister, to warm up the crowd in Washington. He gazed out at hundreds of people who filled the plaza in front of Kathleen Sebelius' office at the Department of Health and Human Services.

"Come on," Mahoney urged the crowd. "We want Secretary Sebelius to hear you!"

Beyond Birth Control

Earlier this year, Sebelius announced that the nation's new health care law would require some religious organizations, like Catholic hospitals and universities, to provide birth control coverage to employees.

Many conservative Catholics and evangelicals not to mention the Catholic bishops were furious at the announcement. That anger sparked the nationwide rallies, dubbed "Stand Up For Religious Freedom."

The rest is here:
Thousands Rally For Religious Freedom Nationwide

The United States Capitol, much like this citys other architectural glory, the National Cathedral, is as much a work in progress as a finished product. Completed nearly a century and a half ago, it has been repaired and improved almost nonstop. The famous statue of Freedom, the magnificent dome upon which it stands, the stunning paintings and frescoes by Constantino Brumidi, the hidden systems by which the vast building is heated and cooled all these and countless other features have been worked on and, wherever possible, modernized, a process that seeks to maintain the Capitols 19th-century grandeur while making it a hospitable environment in which to conduct the nations business when, that is, Congress is in the mood.

Still, the construction of the Capitol as the world has known it since Freedom was put in place in the late autumn of 1863 is a story unto itself the story of the buildings expansion in the 1850s and 60s from the comparatively small early 19th-century original and Guy Gugliotta tells it superbly in Freedoms Cap. He takes his title from the original design submitted in 1856 by Thomas Crawford, an American sculptor based in Rome, in which the elegantly draped figure of a woman wore a liberty cap, the symbol from classical antiquity of a manumitted slave. This was disagreeable to the secretary of war, Jefferson Davis, who had taken a powerful interest in the Capitols improvement but did not want anything associated with anti-slavery sentiments to be memorialized in the building. As Gugliotta explains, eventually the liberty cap was replaced by the somewhat bizarre crest of feathers and a birds head with which it has been adorned to this day, but he chooses, properly, to see the Capitol itself as the cap, worn by a nation whose people are now far more free than they were when the statue was installed.

(Hill & Wang) - Freedom's Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War by Guy Gugliotta

Gugliotta is a freelance writer who has worked for a number of newspapers in various capacities including The Washington Post, though his path and mine never crossed. With this book, he joins that estimable group of non-professional historians who have revived the practice of narrative history, one cherished by serious readers but too often scorned these days in academic history departments. From time to time he strains to maintain narrative pace with unnecessary foreshadowing As time passed, Walter would have even more reason to worry about Meigs, Many things would happen to make Meigs repudiate those words but this may not annoy most readers as much as it does me. On balance, Gugliotta writes lucidly and engagingly, he brings to life a huge cast of characters, he captures the physical setting of Washington in the mid-19th century and the mood of a city where every transaction seemed to be poisoned by the issue of slavery, and he has done a stupendous amount of research.

What Gugliotta calls the seed of the Capitols expansion was planted in 1850 by Davis, then the junior senator from Mississippi, in communication with a Washington architect named Robert Mills. Davis wanted a set of drawings and estimates for an enlargement of the U.S. Capitol by adding new wings to either end of the existing building. Nothing as ambitious as that happens quickly in Washington, but the letter was the beginning:

View post:
“Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War” by Guy Gugliotta

MADRID Freedom of information in Spain came one step nearer Friday after the recently-elected government agreed to introduce a bill in response to widespread disgust over corruption and mismanagement by elected officials of both main political parties.

The country's Cabinet agreed to put forward legislation that will allow Spaniards to find out more about how their money is spent by government. Spain, which is struggling to get its public finances under control, is one of Europe's few countries without wide-ranging freedom of information legislation.

"It is a law whose main goal is improve the credibility of and trust in our institutions, especially government ones," Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said.

The legislation will take months to come into effect, after an unprecedented 15-day period in which the general public can make suggestions on what should be accessible to them and how the law should work. After that, the bill has to be go through normal Parliamentary procedures.

Though the salaries of the prime minister and government ministers are already public information, as are the national budget and much other money-related data, not all of it is easy to access.

But under the new bill, information on subjects including senior public servants' salaries and detailed data on government contracts and subsidies will be published online. Spaniards will also be able to file requests for other kinds of information providing it does not breach national security or personal privacy.

The goal of the new law is to make public officials at all levels much more accountable for how they spend taxpayer money. People will be able to get information just by the click of a mouse.

"It is a law that tries to give rigor to compliance with budget and financial obligations that were unknown until now, but will serve to restore credibility to all levels of government," Saenz de Santa Maria said.

News of the Cabinet's support for a package that should make for more open government comes as the country struggles to avoid the same fate as other indebted European countries. The newly-elected conservative government is trying to convince investors that it has a strategy to deal with its debts so it won't follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal in needing a bailout.

Concerns have swelled recently after figures showed the country's borrowing last year was way more than expected, due in large part to overspending by regional governments but also because the economy is shrinking and laying siege to tax revenues.

Read this article:
Spain edges closer toward freedom of information law