Jon Stewart was cookin’ last night.

And then it got better — the embed code isn’t working, but here’s the link.

Sorry I’ve been scarce. This upper respiratory infection has just wiped me out.

Anyway — I have been following the contraception flap and am persuaded President Obama played the bishops, and the Republicans, like a fiddle (see Blue Girl for commentary). The best article I’ve read on this is by Helene Cooper and Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times. According to Cooper and Goodstein, the President didn’t give a hoo-haw about appeasing the Catholic bishops. However, he was getting some flak from people like Sister Carol Keehan, head of an influential Catholic hospital group, and Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a nuns’ social activist group. Now the sisters are happy and Planned Parenthood is happy, so it’s all good.

Even better, the bishops are still pissed. They and some GOP politicians are holding out for allowing employers to pick and choose what health care coverage their employees may have. So if the employer is a Christian Scientist, does nothing get covered?

Poll after poll says the public is in favor of the HHS policy. This includes a majority of Catholics. Yet cluelessness abounds. Possibly the oddest commentary is from rightie blogger Tom Maguire, who titles his post “The Contraception Controversy Would Have Been Avoided If Obama Were President.” The implication, of course, is that the President is not in charge, but based on my reading of Cooper and Goodstein, the President has been driving this issue exactly where he wants it to go.

And see the comment by Extraneus —

It’s amazing that they’re [the Obama Administration] willing to go to the mat for … birth control? Seriously?

We should already have a candidate who’s up ten points on this douchebag.

This brought to mind a post by John Cole from a few days ago:

Others here have talked about the issue in more detail, but I really just can’t believe that in the year 2012, with everything that is going on, Republicans want to pick a losing fight over condoms and the pill. I thought they were stupid, but I didn’t think they were that stupid. It’s like they’ve given up on taking us back to 1950 and have just decided to pretend it is 1950 all over again.

Or, to paraphrase — It’s amazing that they’re willing to go to the mat to stop … birth control? Seriously?

See, unlike fantasy issues like the President’s birth certificate and imaginary death panels, birth control actually makes a difference in the lives of real people. Yes, many people fork out the money themselves. But since we’re talking mostly about women’s health care, when contraception is not covered by insurance it amounts to a womb tax.

Cluelessness abounds. The congenitally clueless Ruth Marcus writes at WaPo,

The biggest puzzle is how the administration landed itself in this fix. There was going to be no satisfying the Catholic bishops. From the church’s point of view, no exemption could be broad enough. In a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops argued that contraception “is not properly seen as basic health care” and that the mandate “should be rescinded in its entirety.”

But the public was not in an uproar about the mandate itself. The administration’s self-inflicted wound involved its refusal to write a large enough exemption.

Marcus, you dimwit — the public was not in an uproar at all. The public overwhelmingly is opposed to allowing Catholic hospitals an exemption from birth control coverage.

And, of course, we’ve got some “Obama caved” snorting coming from the Left (see especially comments). I think this was a fight the President needed to have, however, and I think on the whole he has come out of this in better shape than he went in.

Those of you who enjoyed David Frum’s takedown of Charles “The Bell Curve” Murray will want to read Frum’s new piece, “What the Founders Would Tell Charles Murray.”

Unrelated, but this is so cute:

Last night Rachel Maddow argued that banning contraception is a losing issue, even in Mississippi.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rachel makes some of the same points about the HHS rules on contraception as part of employee benefit packages as Sarah Posner —

Obama’s greatest sin, in this view: violating the religious beliefs of the Catholic hierarchy. Not the beliefs or practices of lay Catholics, or the Catholic and non-Catholic employees of Catholic institutions.

The fact is, the enormous majority of Catholic women have used birth control. Apparently a whopping majority of American Catholic lay women quietly have decided the bishops ain’t gonna go through labor and raise the baby, so they don’t get to make the rules.

However, Joan Walsh writes,

I knew the president’s decision would be controversial, but I underestimated the firestorm he would face. Since 98 percent of Catholics practice forms of contraception forbidden by the church at some point in their lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control, I assumed many of them would speak out in favor of the new regulations. How could they expect the president to follow church teachings if they did not?

I was wrong. Too many Catholics are insisting that while they may personally disagree with the church on contraception, they defend the bishops’ opposition to the HHS moves as a matter of “religious liberty.” Others are silent. But silence lets the most right-wing forces of reaction prevail. It’s time for the 98 percent to speak up.

What cognitive dissonance hath wrought. But I suspect the silent ones will pay no more attention to the bishops in the voting booth than they do in the bedroom.

Further, I question whether standing up to the bishops would hurt Obama among non-Catholic religious voters who might otherwise vote for him. I suspect most Protestants and Jews respect the Catholic bishops about as much as they respect telemarketers.

So why does anyone care what the bishops think? Republicans are trying to make an issue out of the bishops, but Republicans seem to have entered a suicide pact on a lot of issues lately.

There’s a lot of talk abut whether President Obama will walk back the HHS decision for political reasons. I personally think he would lose more support than he would gain by doing so. The people screaming about it aren’t likely to vote for him anyway, and I think everybody else would be disappointed if he backed down. As the recent Komen for the Fail debacle showed us, a whole lot of people out there are getting fed up with letting a small bunch of screaming jack-booted whackjobs dictate public policy that impacts everyone.

See also:

Obama Weighed Religious Politics Before Contraceptive Decision

Public Health Includes Women

Many Catholic Universities, Hospitals Already Cover Contraception In Their Health Insurance Plans

Catholics, the Contraception Mandate, and Public Opinion

I have a nasty cold and don’t feel up to writing much. So I’m just going to link to something I’d like to write about.

Public Religion Research Institute Survey | Majority of Catholics Think Employers Should Be Required to Provide Health Care Plans that Cover Birth Control at No Cost

That’s a majority of Catholics, note. However, certain Republican politicians think they can score points with voters by painting the Catholic bishops as victims of religious oppression by the Muslim usurper Obama Administration. We’ll see.