Doug Kmiec's weak defense of Obama

In a commentary for the National Catholic Reporter, Doug Kmiec again proves something we've known for a while. He's a dupe. While he recognizes the Obama administration has erred with its HHS mandate, he doesn't think Obama's is to blame. In Kmiec's world, President Obama is just a poor schmuck whose underlings have run amok.

Unwittingly, perhaps, the president has allowed his appointees to drift into the secular lane and stay there.....

The noise of opposition could not be hidden from the president any longer, and the president reacted by shifting the obligation of the mandate away from employers to insurers......

Jenkins introduced the president at Notre Dame with a quotation from the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council and their pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes: "Respect and love ought to be extended also to those who think or act differently than we do in social, political and even religious matters. In fact, the more deeply we come to understand their ways of thinking through such courtesy and love, the more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue with them."

For now, I remain convinced Obama takes this seriously. Unfortunately, too many working for him do not.

Kmiec remains convinced based on what? Obama's empty promises? His appointment of the rabidly pro-abort Kathleen Sebelius to head the HHS? The administration's consultations with Planned Parenthood's president regarding the mandate? The fact that Cardinal Timothy Dolan told President Obama directly he was disappointed with the policy? The administration's embarrassing lack of thought, research or knowledge regarding the Constitutional principles in play?

Robert George takes apart another part of the commentary where Kmiec claims Obama isn't pro-abortion, he's just "pro-decision-making by pregnant women."

"Pro-decision-making by pregnant women." So this is how we, as defenders of the lives of children in the womb are to characterize the question of abortion? Someone like President Obama who would protect the lawfulness of deliberate feticide, enact policies to make it as widely available as possible, and support its funding with taxpayer money is not pro-abortion, he is merely "pro-decision-making by pregnant women"? Even when the decision (carefully left undescribed) is, in truth, a decision about whether to kill the child? It's this kind of abuse of language that people seem always to resort to when we want to obscure from view a deep injustice that is being done against our fellow human beings.