In wake of Rick Santorum’s surprise trio of wins on Tuesday, Mitt Romney is dialing back expectations for the upcoming primaries in Michigan and Arizona.

“I’d like to win Arizona and Michigan because there are a lot of delegates at stake in both states,” Romney said in an interview set to air tonight on Fox Business Network. “And I’ll be campaigning hard to win in those states. I can’t make a prediction as to what will happen. Last time I won, but I won by 2 points. So it was pretty close. I’m not expecting a landslide. I can’t tell you 100 percent that I’ll win. I’m planning on it. I’m going to work hard for it.”

He said it was “unlikely” that no candidate would gain a majority of delegates before the convention.

“I hope I win all the remaining contests,” Romney remarked. “But remember last time around, John McCain, lost 19 states on his way to getting the nomination. You don’t win them all.”

“I expect,” he added, “that I’ll lose a number of states before we actually get to a point where I get the 1,150 delegates that I need.”

Romney would actually only need 1,144 delegates to clinch the nomination. 

Peter has beaten me to the punch. What I personally find most offensive about the HHS mandate is the shock with which it has been met. Why? This is who Barack Obama is. There is no reason to be surprised by this. He is not being pulled to extremes by his base — he is the one doing the pulling.

Obama’s abortion extremism is such that, as a state legislator, he opposed protection for — I’ll use his words here — “that fetus, or child — however way you want to say describe it” when, contrary to the wishes of the women involved and their abortionists, there was “movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out limp and dead.” Babies were inconveniently being born alive, self-styled health-care providers carted them off to utility rooms where they would be left to die. That is infanticide, plain and simple. In Illinois, people tried to stop this barbarism by supporting “born alive” legislation. Barack Obama fought them all the way.

That is not a secret. The Obamedia, of course, refused to cover it while they were running down Sarah Palin’s third-grade report card. The clueless John McCain failed to bring any attention to it. But it was far from unknown. I wrote about it in August 2008, and I was far from alone — at least among conservatives. My column was called, “Why Obama Really Voted For Infanticide — More important to protect abortion doctors than “that fetus, or child — however way you want to describe it”:

There wasn’t any question about what was happening. The abortions were going wrong. The babies weren’t cooperating. They wouldn’t die as planned. Or, as Illinois state senator Barack Obama so touchingly put it, there was “movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out limp and dead.”

No, Senator. They wouldn’t go along with the program. They wouldn’t just come out limp and dead.

They were coming out alive. Born alive. Babies. Vulnerable human beings Obama, in his detached pomposity, might otherwise include among “the least of my brothers.” But of course, an abortion extremist can’t very well be invoking Saint Matthew, can he? So, for Obama, the shunning of these least of our brothers and sisters — millions of them — is somehow not among America’s greatest moral failings.

No. In Obama’s hardball, hard-Left world, these least become “that fetus, or child — however you want to describe it.”

Most of us, of course, opt for “child,” particularly when the “it” is born and living and breathing and in need of our help. Particularly when the “it” is clinging not to guns or religion but to life.

But not Barack Obama. As an Illinois state senator, he voted to permit infanticide. And now, running for president, he banks on media adulation to insulate him from his past.

The record, however, doesn’t lie.

Infanticide is a bracing word. But in this context, it’s the only word that fits. Obama heard the testimony of a nurse, Jill Stanek. She recounted how she’d spent 45 minutes holding a living baby left to die.

The child had lacked the good grace to expire as planned in an induced-labor abortion — one in which an abortionist artificially induces labor with the expectation that the underdeveloped “fetus, or child — however you want to describe it” will not survive the delivery.

Stanek encountered another nurse carrying the child to a “soiled utility room” where it would be left to die. It wasn’t that unusual. The induced-labor method was used for late-term abortions. Many of the babies were strong enough to survive the delivery. At least for a time.

So something had to be done with them. They couldn’t be left out in the open, struggling in the presence of fellow human beings. After all, those fellow human beings — health-care providers— would then be forced to confront the inconvenient question of why they were standing idly by. That would hold a mirror up to the whole grisly business.

Better the utility room. Alone, out of sight and out of mind. Next case.

Stanek’s account enraged the public and shamed into silence most of the country’s staunchest pro-abortion activists. Most, not all. Not Barack Obama.

My friend Hadley Arkes ingeniously argued that legislatures, including Congress, should take up “Born Alive” legislation: laws making explicit what decency already made undeniable: that from the moment of birth — from the moment one is expelled or extracted alive from the birth canal — a human being is entitled to all the protections the law accords to living persons.

Such laws were enacted by overwhelming margins. In the United States Congress, even such pro-abortion activists as Sen. Barbara Boxer went along.

But not Barack Obama. In the Illinois senate, he opposed Born-Alive tooth and nail.

The shocking extremism of that position — giving infanticide the nod over compassion and life — is profoundly embarrassing to him now. So he has lied about what he did. He has offered various conflicting explanations . . .

There is more here, including the relevant portion of the legislative record, in which Obama makes his position, and his extremism, crystal clear.

Again, this is not new news. The transcript is from ten years ago. He has done nothing since but confirm — by his positions, speeches, associations, and presidential appointments — that he is still exactly the same guy. Obama’s horrifying stance in favor not only of abortion but of infanticide was known when 54 percent of Catholics and 53 percent of Protestants supported him for election in 2008, and when such leading Catholic institutions as Notre Dame and Georgetown welcomed him with open arms.

That is what we ought to find shocking. Obama, by contrast, should no longer shock anyone. Obama is simply doing what he came to do; what he said he was going to do when he promised to “fundamentally transform the United States”; and what anyone with a shred of common sense would have predicted he’d do upon scrutinizing his record.

Via Talking Points Memo, Senator John Kerry indicates some disagreement with the Obama administration’s ruling on contraception coverage. In a statement to the press, Kerry says:

I think the Administration is working towards a final rule that reflects a reasonable compromise. I think there’s a way to protect everybody’s interest here. I think you can implement it effectively in a way that protects women’s access, but at the same time protects people’s religious beliefs, and that should be everyone’s goal.

Roy Blunt just offered an amendment to the highway bill that would protect conscience rights. The language is that of a bill he introduced in August.

Harry Reid objected.

Mitch McConnell replied:

Our country is unique in the world because it was established on the basis of an idea: that we are all endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights — in other words, rights that are conferred not by a king or a president or a Congress, but by the Creator himself.

The state protects these rights, but it doesn’t grant them.

And what the state doesn’t grant, the state can’t take away.

McConnell went on:

That’s what this week’s debate on a particularly odious outcome from the President’s health care law has been about:

Our founders believed so strongly that the government should neither establish a religion, nor prevent its free exercise that they listed it as the very first item in the Bill of Rights.

And Republicans are trying today to reaffirm that basic right.

But Democrats won’t allow it.

They won’t allow those of us who were sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution to even offer an amendment that says we believe in our First Amendment right to religious freedom.

I never thought I’d see the day.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my life defending the First Amendment.

But I never thought I’d see the day when the elected representatives of the people of this country would be blocked by a majority party in Congress to even express their support for it.

Amendment blocked, Blunt urged a vote on his bill Monday. He called the HHS mandate “unbelievably offensive” and voiced outrage at the Army’s editing of a pastoral letter and silencing of chaplains you hear about first here.

Neither Blunt nor McConnell, by the way, are Catholic.

You might care to urge your senator to insist on a vote. 

Yesterday on the Bill Bennett show, I opined that the Obama administration will reverse itself on the HHS mandate regarding contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients. But after reading that just weeks ago the president personally promised Archbishop Dolan that the provision “would go away,” I’m slightly more skeptical.

During the course of his public life, President Obama has taken the hard-left position on matters falling under the phrase “reproductive rights.” Recall that as a state senator he fought against the Illinois state version of the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA). BAIPA requires that babies born alive after a botched abortion be given medical care and sustenance as any other infant born alive, rather than be left to die in a hospital utility closet.

Not one senator — neither Boxer, Clinton, nor Kennedy — voted against BAIPA at the federal level. Even NARAL did not oppose it.

Now, it’s not easy getting to the left of NARAL on “reproductive rights” issues. So it’s unlikely that reproductive-rights organizations have had to twist the president’s arm to prevent him from caving on the mandate. And it’s just as unlikely that issuance of the mandate was some staff or bureaucratic bungle. Not only is the mandate something President Obama strongly supports, it’s clear form the reported exchange with Archbishop Dolan that the president harbored no illusions about the church’s vigorous opposition to the provision. Perhaps President Obama didn’t anticipate the degree of blowback, but he knew there’d be blowback. Nonetheless, the administration implemented the mandate.

 If the mandate were promulgated in a second Obama term, the probability of rescission would be nil.

Over at the American Spectator, Aaron Goldstein responds to my Corner post yesterday, in which I noted that the BBC was unwilling to call Abu Quatada, “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe,” an “extremist.” Goldstein did a little digging and discovered that, despite the BBC’s protestations to the contrary, the corporation is not entirely averse to using the word on the grounds of being “non-judgmental”:

Well, how about being a Jew living in Israel? Consider some of the BBC’s recent headlines:

Israel bars 12 “extremist” settlers from West Bank

Israelis rally against ultra-Orthodox extremism

Shimon Peres urges Israelis to rally against extremism

So while the BBC declares it is beyond the pale to impart a value judgment where it concerns a Muslim jihadist, it expresses no such hesitation when it comes to Israeli Jews. This, my friends, is nothing more than anti-Semitism.

The Office of Management and Budget will put out next year’s budget on February 13. Under the law, the budget is supposed to be released on the first Monday in February and it’s not the first time the administration has released the budget late. I, for once, am not really looking forward to it. Based on the rhetoric at campaign stops and the president’s State of the Union speech, we already know what we can expect to see on Monday: more of the same policies that make the tax code so inefficient and unfair. For instance, we know we will get exemptions for some people and industries, and not others; and more taxes on some people and industries, and not others. And obviously, in spite of the rhetoric of fiscal responsibility, we can expect little in terms of real spending cuts.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the president wants more revenue:

About half the $1.5 trillion in revenue comes from ending Bush-era tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000 a year. Much of the rest comes from additional tax increases on families earning over $1 million a year, by taking away popular deductions and mandating a minimum 30% effective tax rate. Mr. Obama would end certain tax breaks for corporations, including breaks for oil and gas companies, as well as benefits for those who use corporate jets.

For those who think we need to raise more revenue to pay for our spending, this is not the way to go. First, leaving aside economic consequences or the question of how much revenue these proposals will really raise, they won’t come anywhere near raising the revenue we need to fix our deficits. Plus the president is planning to add some spending of his own: His renewed interest in industrial policy will likely cost a lot of money.

Also, sadly, many of his proposed savings won’t see the light of day. For instance, do we really believe that this Congress will pass “higher premiums and deductibles for many beneficiaries and lower payments to drug companies, hospitals and nursing homes”? I don’t. In the same way no one should count on the savings from the health-care law, which would require a 29 percent cut to doctors’ reimbursement fees for Medicare that lawmakers have postponed year after year since 1990, these savings are unlikely to materialize.

His refusal to tackle the real source of our fiscal problems going forward is problematic. He won’t touch Social Security — which, in the grand scheme of things, is the easiest of our big problems — but he also won’t make the structural changes to Medicare that are needed to control its cost. He won’t even suggest raising the eligibility age for the program.

Obviously, there are many things that are wrong and unfair in the tax code. For instance, there is no reason why I should get a tax deduction because I own a house or have kids as opposed to someone who makes as much money as I do but rents and doesn’t have children. We need fundamental tax reform. It’s an imperative. But not only is the president refusing to start the process, he is likely to make the situation worse. And of course, it’s unlikely that we will see the much-needed reform of the corporate income tax.

More important, this budget is likely to show that the president and, frankly, most of America, are not willing to face the cold hard reality that, if we don’t cut spending dramatically and address the root causes of our fiscal problems going forward (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), taxes will have to go up for everyone. We can’t continue spending forever and not pay for the spending.

Well, we may for a while as we get more and more into debt, but that won’t last forever. If spending doesn’t come down, taxes on the rich alone won’t postpone indefinitely the consequences of a mountain of debt and the interest payments that come with it.

“Government’s programs, once launched, never disappear,” said Ronald Reagan in his 1964 “Time for Choosing” speech. “Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” And a finer example of the immortal nature of taxes and other government initiatives than the telephone tax you will never find. It was passed in 1898 to fund the Spanish-American war and stayed on the books in different forms until 2006, despite that conflict having ended in the same year it started. Added to this in 1996 was the Universal Service Fund fee, which was introduced in the Telecommunications Act of that year. And I bet you don’t know what it pays for.

Among the typically vague justifications for the levying of the Universal Service Fund fee — the best of which is to “promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates” — is that it pays for a program called “Lifeline,” which is not remotely as urgent or necessary as its name suggests. Bottom line: You are paying for millions of other people’s phone service with every call you make.

There are currently 12.5 million wireless accounts registered under the scheme, which is administered by the FCC. Any American citizen who is on food stamps, Medicaid, or who earns up to 135 percent of the federal poverty line can apply. If an application is successful — and, given that the FCC actually advertises it by direct mail, who are we kidding here — the $1.6 billion program will pay for either a cell phone (up to the value of $30, of which there are many available) or a landline installation, and then pay your bill to the tune of $10 a month, which is roughly equivalent to about 250 minutes talk-time on an entry-level handset. To paraphrase Rick Santelli, Congratulations! You are now paying your neighbors’ phone bill.

The Lifeline program has become increasingly popular in the last few years, and spending on it has more than doubled, from $772 million in 2008 to $1.6 billion in 2011. It is now so popular, in fact, that many people have registered multiple times; an FCC audit conducted in 2011 showed that up to 269,000 wireless subscribers had free phones and cell service from at least two carriers. (And people who don’t qualify appear to like it, too.) These abuses have caught the attention of Democratic senator Claire McCaskill, who has called for an investigation.

The FCC will be hard-pressed to do much about the abuse, however, as until it was investigated, it had not considered it necessary to build a database to keep track of its handouts. It has now rectified this and claims to have saved $33 million since the audit. Greater efficiency is always laudable; but nobody seems to have stopped and asked a basic question: Why is the federal government running a semi-secret program to equip 12.5 million Americans with phones and pay $10 of their bills each month?

Also via ABCNews: 

“This was a bone-headed decision by HHS,” Sen. Ben Nelson said of the new Health and Human Services mandates, according to the Nebraska Radio Network.

Nelson agreed with state Attorney General Job Bruning’s decision to file a legal challenge to the mandate.

Florida’s Nelson has also raised concerns. “My position is that church-affiliated organizations should be exempt, not just churches,” Nelson told theTampa Bay Times Buzz Blog, adding that he has called the White House to express his concerns.

“It’s a matter of religious freedom,” Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin told ABC News.

Jake Tapper reports some Catholics in the Obama administration advised against the mandate, predicting it would backfire for the White House: 

“What are we doing here?” asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, stepping outside his wheelhouse to ask about a rising storm involving the Obama administration and the Catholic Church. “What’s the point?”

It was the Fall of 2011 and Panetta had read about a proposed Obama administration rule that would require employers – excluding houses of worship but including religious organizations such as charities, hospitals, and schools – to offer health insurance that fully covered contraception.

Panetta — a Catholic, former U.S. Representative, and White House chief of staff — didn’t quite understand why the Obama administration would be stepping into this conflict.

Panetta’s fears have to a degree been realized as White House officials now find themselves taking heat on a policy debate about conscience and religious liberty; the Obama administration is working to find a way to allow religious organizations to not pay for services they find morally objectionable, while also ensuring that, say, the women nurses and doctors who work at Catholic hospitals have full access to birth control. Some officials are discussing a way to introduce something like the law in Hawaii, where religious organizations don’t have to pay for employee insurance that covers contraception, but they do have to inform employees how they can get it on their own.

The debate within the White House on this issue was, sources say, heated, and President Obama was legitimately torn. Panetta wasn’t alone in his concerns. For months, Vice President Joe Biden and then-White House chief of staff Bill Daley argued internally against the rule, sources tell ABC News. Biden and Daley didn’t think the rule was right on either the policy or the politics, sources said. Joshua Dubois, head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, also expressed concern.

The policy was wrong, the two Catholic men, Biden and Daley, argued, saying that the Obama administration couldn’t force religious charities to pay for something they think is a sin. Sources say that Biden and Daley in these internal debates emphasized the political fallout more so than the policy issue. 

Lawyer Ed Mechmann writes:

We’re talking now with the Administration and their mandate that all employers, including Catholic institutions, will be forced to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception — free of charge.

Having inadvertently dragged the Church into electoral year politics, the Administration has now started talking about “compromise” to take some of the heat off.  To most normal people, the word “compromise” means that people sit down, talk to each other as equals, and try to work out something that will respect each other’s beliefs and values.  An online dictionary defines it as “a settlement of differences by mutual concessions”.

But the Administration seems to think that the word means “surrender your values, be quiet, and do what we tell you”.

There is much more detail here — it is worth reading and passing on. 

The Washington Free Beacon, that is, the new group with initials that must be an homage to NR’s founder. NR alum Andrew Stiles got the scoop that Obama bundler Ron Klein is a registered lobbyist — forcing the Obama campaign to distance itself from Klein and Klein to plead that his registration was a “clerical error.” Nice work for the Free Beacon’s first week.

Archbishop José H. Gomez:

The federal government’s new mandate — requiring Catholic charities, schools, universities and hospitals to supply employees with health insurance that covers birth control, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs — has become maybe the most controversial issue of our day.

I’ve been inspired by the unified reaction from our Catholic community. The bishops of almost every diocese in the country have spoken out. So have our largest Catholic institutions. Many individual Catholics — of every political opinion — have united in opposition.Other religious groups and many other Americans have also joined the protest — because this new mandate, of course, affects every employer in America.

As this debate continues, it is important to remember that the Catholic Church did not choose this conflict.The Church wants to be a partner with our neighbors and our government in building a more just and peaceful society — a society more worthy of the dignity of the human person who is the image of God. The Church’s mission in our society is to teach, heal and to care for others; to pray and to lead our neighbors to God.Our freedom to carry out our mission is totally threatened by this new mandate. But we are not just protecting our own parochial interests. As I have said, the issues at stake go far beyond the morality of contraception. This government mandate threatens the basic character of our society and puts every American’s freedom at risk.

The exile of Top Totty (beer) from a House of Commons bar (following a complaint from the Labour Party’s “equalities” spokeswoman) has been a big story in the UK in the last week, and it appears to have taken a happy turn:

Family-run Staffordshire brewer Slater’s revealed it has seen sales jump since one of its ales upset a MP Kate Green and attracted headlines around the world last week.  Slater’s sales director Fay Slater announced that the firm has been bombarded with phone calls and emails from landlords wanting to get their hands on barrels of Top Totty.

 The welcome boost for the popular ale comes after the four per cent beer was removed from sale at the Strangers’ Bar, in the Houses of Parliament, after shadow equalities minister Ms Green said the pump clip, which features a half-naked lady [bikini-clad, in fact], was offensive.

 Now Slater’s says it has sold around 50 more barrels than it shifts in an average week, with around half a dozen pubs saying they want to start selling the controversial ale too.

 “We have had emails coming in from up and down the country – London, Scotland, Lancashire – you name it, wanting our beer,” she said.

…A Stafford pub has put up a sign to let local drinkers know it is proud to sell beer that has upset a Government minister.  Jane Andrews, and Philip McIntosh who both run The Hop Pole pub in Sandon Road, say weekly sales have tripled in the last few days.

Mr McIntosh said: “The day I put the sign up we had between 20 and 25 people come in saying they just had to try some.”

National Review is accepting applications for its 2012 summer internship. The intern will work in our New York headquarters and receive a modest but adequate salary. Duties will include sundry editorial and administrative tasks, and there will be occasional opportunities to write. The ideal candidate will be a rising college senior with an excellent academic record, some experience in student or professional journalism, and a reflective commitment to conservative principles. If you wish to apply, please send a cover letter, your résumé, and no more than three clips to editorial.applications@nationalreview.com.

We have been told that an “independent” panel from the Institute of Medicine put together the recommendations upon which the current mandate we’ve been talking so much about here and elsewhere is based. But it’s worth noticing that the “reproductive rights” activists were well represented on that panel.

Human Life International further compiled:

Claire Brindis is a member of the Board of Directors of the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, as well as a member of NARAL’s Pro-Choice California “1969 Society,” which has been called by NARAL “a group of our most steadfast and generous donors.”

Angela Diaz is a former board member of “Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health,” anadvocacy group that “work[s] to improve access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion.” Until just a few weeks ago she served as the senior vice president of the International Women’s Health Coalition and was on the board of directors from 2007-2010. Her biography on the IWHC’s website (which was recently removed) stated that she “has a deep and long commitment to IWHC’s mission and to the organization.” The IWHC is a  pro-choice advocacy group that declares that “access to safe abortion is a human right” and that abortion and contraception are “universal and inalienable” rights.

Francisco Garcia has donated between $11,750 and $13,000 to candidates that support abortion since 2004. These pro-choice candidates include Raul Grijava and Barack Obama.

Kimberly Gregory, as indicated by public records, has donated $35,200 to the California Victory 2010 of the Democratic National Committee in support of Barbara Boxer.

Paula A. Johnson is the Chairwoman of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts and is affiliated with the pro-abortion National Organization of Women (NOW). This year she will be the winner of NARAL’s 2011 “Champion for Choice” award. Public records indicate that since 2003 she has given between $9,550 and $11,000 each to the political campaigns of Pro-Choice candidates including Martha Coakley, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. She also has made contributions to Emily’s List, an organization dedicated to “electing pro-choice Democratic women.”

Roberta Ness has donated at least $2,500 to pro-abortion candidate John Kerry and to the Democratic National Committee.

Magda G. Peck is associated with a host of organizations that advocate for abortion and free access to contraception, and was on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Nebraska and Council Bluffs and served as both vice chair and chair of the board.

E. Albert Reece donated $1000 in 2010 to the campaign of pro-abortion politician Barbara Mikulski, the sponsor of the amendment that paved the way for recommendation 5.5.

Linda Rosenstock, committee chairwoman, has since October 2004 donated over $40,000 to pro-choice political candidates including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, and the Democratic National Committee.

Alina Salganicoff is the Vice President and Director of Women’s Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a major proponent of abortion and contraception on demand. She donated $950 to the Barack Obama and Judy Feder campaigns in 2008.

Carol Weisman has made $4,500 in political donations to pro-abortion candidates including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry and Judy Feder since 2000.

As the Public Discourse website put it over the summer:

The vast majority of the committee members demonstrate a more than casual commitment to the goals of the abortion lobby. In fact, according to information available from the public record, these committee members have donated a total of $116,500 to pro-choice organizations and candidates. Public records show that not one of the fifteen committee members has financially supported a pro-life political candidate. This committee was purportedly assembled for the purpose of providing outside, objective, and expert advice to the HHS policymakers. Whatever one thinks of the relevant issues, one would be hard-pressed to argue that this IOM committee is politically nonpartisan.

Of course the political involvement of the members does not necessarily invalidate the findings of the IOM. Nor does support for a pro-choice candidate necessarily indicate an unalloyed loyalty to a cause. Yet the unbalanced makeup of the IOM’s supposedly objective committee—a makeup that does not reflect the distribution of either the lay population or of the medical community in America—should raise questions about the objectivity with which they undertook their mission.

The committee held three “open information-gathering sessions” to receive expert testimony regarding the preventive services that should be mandated and funded. However, nearly all of the invited speakers were known advocates of contraception and abortion on demand. Michael O’Dea notes:

At both meetings, the invited speakers represented organizations which advocate coverage of contraception, without cost sharing of expenses. Those organizations include the Guttmacher Institute, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, Planned Parenthood, The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Society for Family Planning.

That video Kathryn linked to, of last night’s event at the Catholic Information Center, is a “must see.” It was an excellent panel discussion on the HHS mandate and will be of interest to anyone—Catholic or otherwise—with a concern for religious liberty.

The point is worth reiterating: This is not just a “Catholic Issue.” You will find nary a sectarian argument in the entire 86-plus minute video. Anyone interested in a serious discussion of the issue by a panel with unequaled expertise in the matter will find this video well worth their while.

— Stephen P. White is a fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. and coordinator of the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society. 

Dan Abrams is on the case (via Instapundit).

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, head of the Archdiocese of New York, has now publicly criticized the Obama administration’s new HHS mandate. Specifically, he has stated that the President Obama betrayed a commitment made to him weeks ago in a personal meeting. CBS reports:

Dolan said he met with the president weeks ago in the Oval Office to talk about the law. Dolan said the president gave his promise the provision would go away, but it hasn’t. “It seems to be at odds with very sincere assurances that he gave me, that he wanted to continue to work with the church in these endeavors and views and projects he shared a passionate interest in, so I can’t figure it out,” Dolan said.

“When I left the Oval Office, where I was very grateful for his invitation to be there, I left with high hopes. That nothing his administration would do would impede the good work that he admitted and acknowledged in the church,” Dolan said. “And I’m afraid I don’t have those sentiments of hope now.”

This year marks the 25th anniversary of The Stanford Review, and this weekend, Review staffers and alumni are gathering in Palo Alto to celebrate the occasion. The Review has published every semester since 1987, making it the second-oldest continuously publishing conservative student newspaper in the country. During this time, the Review has provided a source of conservative commentary to the Stanford campus and has been a persistent thorn in the side of the university administration. In fact, in one of the Review’s finest moments, a Review staffer even defeated a university-imposed speech code in court. However, perhaps more importantly, the Review’s 25-year history provides good lessons about conservative student journalism and the rising fortunes for conservatives on many college campuses.

Too many conservative newspapers have sprung up on campuses during the last 30 years to keep track of. However, it seems that many of these efforts are relatively short lived. Why it is that papers like The Stanford Review and The Dartmouth Review have enjoyed continuity while most others have not? The simple reason is that both The Stanford Review and The Dartmouth Review succeeded in developing reliable networks of alumni donors early in their history. Of course, the fact that Review founder Peter Thiel went on to found PayPal has certainly helped the paper’s financial condition. However, the success of Thiel and other undergraduates at developing a solid fundraising base placed the Review on solid financial footing well before the dotcom boom of the late 1990s.

Indeed, when I get a chance to talk to students involved with conservative newspapers, I always encourage them to think about long-term fundraising. Most students who fundraise for conservative papers, understandably, spend most of their time thinking about how they can raise just enough money to publish another issue. However, the way to ensure the longevity of any conservative paper is to establish a solid base of alumni contributors. Recruiting good staffers every year can be a fickle process and a one bad editor-in-chief can easily undermine years of hard work. However, if a paper can effectively raise money, it is considerably easier attract the staff that will sustain the paper for an extended period of time.

The Review also teaches some good lessons about how Stanford has changed over the years. In the mid to late 1980s, Stanford was a much different place. The faculty senate vocally and shortsightedly raised a number of objections to placing the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on campus. Perhaps more notoriously, Jesse Jackson frequently visited the Stanford campus to rally opposition to Stanford’s Western-culture course requirements. In fact, one memorable day during the late 1980s, Jackson marched a team of undergraduates around campus chanting, “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Western Culture has got to go!”

Today the campus is much different. One gets the striking impression that many university administrators did not particularly like the fact that Stanford was one of key battlegrounds in the in the ongoing controversy over multiculturalism. As such, the campus today has a decidedly techie feel to it, with high numbers of undergraduates majoring in engineering, the hard sciences, and computer science. To a certain extent, this has probably reduced the amount of campus dialogue on political and cultural issues. 

On the other hand, it is probably safe to say that conservative undergraduates at Stanford probably face less in the way of shrill hostility than their peers at other schools. Furthermore, the administration has become smart enough to avoid attacking Review editors and writers directly. While some administrators have certainly tried to undermine and hinder the paper in more discrete ways, the Review’s ability to communicate with donors and alumni has caused many Stanford administrators to realize that direct hostility is not a winning strategy. This trend can be seen at other schools with established conservative newspapers as well.

Overall, it is hardly a secret that university campuses can be difficult places for conservative students. However, one encouraging trend is the emergence of durable campus institutions dedicated to either the promotion or the study of conservative ideas. Some of these institutions are faculty-driven, such as Robert George’s James Madison Program at Princeton. However, others are led by students such as The Stanford Review, The Dartmouth Review, and the various conservative parties in the Yale Political Union. Community is important to conservatives. And it is heartening to know conservative students can choose one of many top schools, confident that during their stay they will have the opportunity to be a part of a vibrant conservative community. Now that is something worth celebrating.

— Michael J. New is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J.  As a doctoral student in political science at Stanford, he served on The Stanford Review’s staff between 1997 and 2002.