WASHINGTON—Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney waffled Thursday on an issue that has become central for Republicans in recent weeks, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, known in the Senate as the Blunt-Rubio amendment. The act addresses President Obama’s contraceptive mandate, preserving employers’ conscience protections so they don’t have to pay for contraceptives or abortifacients.

In an interview with reporter Jim Heath of the Ohio News Network (ONN-TV), which aired Wednesday evening, Romney indicated he was against the Blunt-Rubio amendment.

“Blunt-Rubio is being debated, I believe later this week, that deals with banning, or allowing employers to ban providing female contraception,” Heath said to Romney. “Have you taken a position on that?”

“I’m not for the bill,” Romney replied. “But look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception between a man and a woman, between a husband and wife, I’m not going there.”

After clips of the interview began circulating, the Romney campaign quickly issued a statement saying the candidate did in fact support the Blunt-Rubio amendment.

“Regarding the Blunt bill, the way the question was asked was confusing,” stated spokeswoman Andrea Saul. “Gov. Romney supports the Blunt bill because he believes in a conscience exemption in healthcare for religious institutions and people of faith.” …

Romney later Wednesday evening did address the misstep in a radio interview. “I simply misunderstood what [Heath] was talking about,” he told the Howie Carr Show. “I thought it was some Ohio legislation that—where employers were prevented from providing contraceptives, and so I talked about contraceptives and so forth. So I really misunderstood the question.” Romney added that he supports the Blunt amendment. “I clearly want to have religious exemption from Obamacare.” … COMPLETE STORY >>

Read Emily Belz’s complete Web Extra report.

A Sunday morning bombing outside the headquarters of a leading Christian denomination in northern Nigeria exploded what has been a brief season of calm in the Plateau State capital, Jos.

The Nigerian-based terrorist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack Sunday, which killed four and severely injured at least 38. In a tactic now familiar to victims of Boko Haram, a suicide bomber loaded a vehicle with explosives, and then drove through the security gate of the Church of Christ in the Nations (COCIN) headquarters, which includes offices, a church, and classrooms. The bomber apparently planned to crash the gate and detonate his vehicle inside the sanctuary, where hundreds had gathered for worship. Instead, the car’s tire blew and the vehicle hit a motorcycle, detonating only yards away from the church building.

The dead include a woman crushed by the vehicle explosion, a woman who only a week ago relocated to Jos after being displaced by similar attacks on Christians in Yobe State farther north, and a an 18-month-old child.

“On exploding, the bomber himself was in pieces,” said Mark Lipdo of the Jos-based Stefanos Foundation, who pointed out that the fourth victim killed was a church member initially injured in the attack. Bystanders, seeing him beside the vehicle in the immediate aftermath, presumed that he was another Boko Haram assailant and killed him. … COMPLETE STORY >>

Read Mindy Belz’s complete Web Extra report.

Last week, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Lenoir City High School in Tennessee denied an atheist student permission to publish an editorial accusing school administrators and faculty of violating her rights as an atheist. Krystal Myers, editor of the school newspaper, wrote that the school allows prayer at football games “via the public address system,” which she claims makes it school-sponsored prayer. Among other things, she also took issue with prayer at graduation, a teacher wearing a T-shirt with a crucifix on it, and another teacher writing Bible verses on the board as part of “Quote of the Day.”

The U.S. Constitution protects expression of religion, speech, and the press, but these rights aren’t absolute. The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment to deny free speech protection to child pornography, incitement of violence, defamation, copyright infringement, and other forms of expression. The court also has ruled that a government high school can restrict speech in school-sponsored publications.

Notwithstanding Myers’s allegation that Lenoir City High School violated the Establishment Clause or the school’s right to restrict speech in a student newspaper, should the administrators have censored her article? Perhaps the better and less controversial option would have been to allow the editorial, along with a counterpoint editorial from a Christian student. For example, Myers wrote:

“Before I even begin, I just want to clear up some misconceptions about atheism. No, we do not worship the ‘devil.’ We do not believe in God, so we also do not believe in Satan. And we may be ‘godless,’ but that does not mean that we are without morals. I know I strive to be the best person I can be, even without religion. In fact, I have been a better person since I have rejected religion.”

A counterpoint response could have been along these lines:

“Ms. Myers might not believe the God of the Bible or Satan exists, but they certainly believe she exists. Satan is at enmity with God, and the Bible teaches that we belong either to God or to Satan. Our ‘morals’ and good deeds fall far short of God’s standards of perfection. No matter how much we strive to be the ‘best person’ we can be, we are sinners under God’s wrath and in need of a Savior. I’ll explain what that means.”

By publishing two opposing articles, Lenoir City High School could not be accused of favoring one system of belief over the other. Consequently, the administrators could have created a platform for debating the claims of the Christian faith and atheism and preparing young people to defend their beliefs. Instead, Myers will continue to think she’s part of a persecuted minority group.

Myers and her persecution complex remind me of myself in young adulthood, full of passion about my formerly liberal and misguided views. She’s experiencing the power of boldly expressing her opinions, and the attention surrounding the censorship controversy likely will fuel her fervor.

Do you think the school should have censored the editorial?

In mid-February ESPN execs fired Anthony Federico for using the words “Chink in the Armor” in his headline, because it violated the current politically correct culture. Apparently there is no such outrage over overtly encouraging dishonest destructive behavior.

On Monday’s edition of the Fox News commentary show The Five, Bob Beckel led a discussion of a proposed law in Richland, Calif., that would restrict smoking even in the front yard of one’s own home. Beckel and the other four commentators were rightfully unanimous in their outrage at the overreach of the authorities proposing this intrusion into personal liberty. But Beckel went a step further.

He voluntarily proposed a method for all “smokers” on “How to avoid the $250 fine for smoking in your hotel room.” Beckel explained with a smug smile this scheme: Check into your room, smoke as you wish, use the soap dish as an ashtray because hotels no longer provide ashtrays, leave a $20 tip for the maid, and upon checkout, proceed to the front desk, fill out a survey form critiquing your stay, and say that you are furious that they gave you a room in which the previous guest had smoked. “It works every time,” Beckel said with a proud smile. Everyone on the panel laughed and Beckel thought he was quite clever, gloating in a scam well executed and well taught. Lying was presented as a virtue.

In the discussion that followed, Beckel’s underlying deceit and lack of values was totally submerged as the focus was on “the unreasonable smoke police everywhere.” But what Beckel revealed about himself and about his liberal thinking in general was telling. He revealed that lying was an easy act for him. He even thought it virtuous, since he had decided the rule of no smoking in hotel rooms was unfair. He revealed that if a rule affected him personally and negatively, he saw nothing wrong with ignoring and flaunting it. He revealed that he had no problem causing damage to property as long as he was not held responsible. Finally, he encouraged every smoker watching the show to copy his behavior and try out the scam. His total lack of sensitivity to personal truth, virtue, good and evil was as appalling as it was effortless. It seemed an innate element of his character. The ease with which he explained and recommended this tactic was as natural and free flowing as a cat licking his paws to clean his head. So the next time you check into a hotel and the room reeks of smoke, you can thank Bob Beckel for the odor.

All that is bad enough, but the total lack of any negative reaction to Beckel’s instruction reveals much more about the panel, the audience, and the executives who tolerate and even reward this behavior. Lying is now accepted as OK, even creative. I am not a smoker, nor am I a non-smoking Nazi, but I do want to encourage truthfulness and properly righting wrongs. I do not want to see lying and destructive behavior encouraged and made to be virtuous. Smoking in a hotel room does degrade the value of the room. Try selling a hotel with all rooms smelling like smoke. It will sell for less if it sells at all.

I hope that every hotel manager in the country reads this and adjusts accordingly. I also hope other smokers who read this will be appalled at the thought of copying this scheme. I hope that others will become sensitive to the ease in which we are sometimes sucked into a smoothly presented lie and will consciously try to develop discernment for the truth. Bob Beckel, do not check into my hotel!

We all know that free trade forces our capitalists to outsource and exploit the poorest countries in the world. It leads to a “race to the bottom” in wages, work safety, and environmental standards. Of course, as John Stossel put it, “What we all know isn’t necessarily so.” Let’s leave the neo-Marxist rhetoric behind and look at the facts: Americans invest twice as much capital in Canada than in all of South America. Our foreign direct invest in a tiny rock called Hong Kong exceeds that in all of mainland China. We outsource three times as much capital to Australia than India. We invest in Luxemburg, one of the global leaders in labor and environmental standards, seven times more than in all of Africa with its huge “reserve army” of desperately poor workers and corrupt governments who couldn’t care less for the fate of the mountain gorilla or the black rhinoceros.

Yes, free trade and outsourcing provide financial capital that helps the growth of the Third World. More importantly, it assists in the dissemination of knowledge and skills, transfers cleaner technologies than the available domestic ones, and creates more job opportunities for the indigenous populations. It expands their middle class, increasing the demand for better environmental and working conditions. But guess what? The world’s largest recipient of foreign direct investment are not the countries where capitalists can pay low wages and dump their toxic waste into the rivers. It’s us, the United States of America.

In 2010 we attracted a total of $194 billion with 84 percent of it coming from eight of the wealthiest nations in the world: Canada, Great Britain, Japan, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The stock of foreign direct investment in America exceeds $2 trillion, opening hundreds of thousands of jobs (such as one out of every three jobs in our manufacturing sector) and generating a significant part of our wealth. Just as American businesses abroad pay wages that are significantly higher than the prevailing market rates in those countries, foreign companies based here typically pay higher salaries than our corporations—an average annual compensation of $68,000 per employee.

Are you mystified by the fact that most of the world’s foreign investment flows among the wealthiest nations? The answer is simple. Those who run their own business know that, while regulations and labor costs play an important role in their decisions to invest, making profits depends on a smoothly functioning legal system that protects private property rights, a well-educated and disciplined workforce, and good supporting infrastructure. Free trade encourages all of that.

Do you really care for the poor? I mean poor as in the starving orphans in the sub-Saharan region, not the overweight welfare recipients in Carbondale, Ill., who are having a hard time paying their cable and cell phone bills. If so, join the so-called “race to the bottom”—take your savings out of the bank and open up a sweatshop in Niger.

With Mitt Romney’s victories in the Arizona and Michigan Republican presidential primaries, the Santorum sweep, for now, has been replaced by the Romney double play.

Romney’s comfortable win in Arizona and his slim success in Michigan slowed down the momentum rival Rick Santorum showed earlier in February with his triumphs in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri. But winning by just a little more than three percentage points in Michigan, the state where he was born, after outspending Santorum more than 5-to-1 there, Romney still has work to do to silence the persistent “anybody but Romney” Republicans.

Still trying to win over the Tea Party and the social conservative crowds, Romney’s night Tuesday could have been better. But it also could have been worse: Just a week ago, Santorum led in Michigan polls. A Michigan loss for Romney would have unleashed a weeklong debate about his electability heading into Super Tuesday next week. Romney, in his victory speech Tuesday, acknowledged that a win is a win.

“The pundits and the pollsters—they were ready to count us out,” he said. “We didn’t win by a lot, but we won by enough, and that’s all that counts.”

Romney will have to continue to address skepticism among social conservatives about his past support for abortion. He will also have to keep explaining the Massachusetts healthcare law he supported as governor to Tea Partiers who remain angry over President Obama’s healthcare plan.

He will likely need some support from those two groups in future contests. But Romney’s Michigan win on Tuesday showed that his economic message still carried weight in that hard-hit state despite recent signs of slight job growth and an uptick in the stock market. … COMPLETE STORY >>

Read Edward Lee Pitts’ complete Web Extra report.

There is nothing like filing a car accident report to your insurance company over the phone to show you where you place on the truth-o-meter. The claim-filing exercise is a good one because of its condensed and intensive quality, simulating rigorous fight-or-flight experiments. Self-knowledge that the rest of the world takes a lifetime to grope toward, never arriving, you now apprehend in a 15-minute conversation with the adjuster.

“So, Mrs. Seu, tell us about the accident.”

What makes the general enterprise of telling the truth complicated is that there are, of course, righteous causes for maintaining a mind-mouth filter. “That’s an ugly dress you’re wearing” may be a truthful transcript of your momentary mental landscape, but neither Jesus nor the prophets condoned it; it doesn’t meet the demands of kindness, gentleness. …

Dicier is the species of conversation called legal or contractual. In this sphere, it would be considered foolish to act as one’s own adversary. A tacit posture is adopted, by all parties, in which the defendant steers from unnecessary self-incrimination. One does not notify the men in blue that yesterday one sailed through a red light.

But as nigh universal as it is, this culturally accepted law of social discourse—of highlighting the positives and not mentioning the negatives—comes with a personal cost that is not much reckoned with. That cost is freedom, not in some corny platitude way, but in the most practical way that makes the difference between peace and a case of nerves.

Mark Twain said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” This weight off the shoulders is only the beginning of what I am getting at. Sticking to one coherent story does have obvious advantages to a memory-challenged person such as myself. But there is more, much more.

I determined beforehand that I would tell the insurance representative and the hospital billing clerk, and whoever else needed to know, nothing but what actually happened last Sunday night when my daughter wrecked the car. And what I discovered as a result, during the phone interrogation, is that my commitment to truth had put my soul in a “zone” (I do not mean something psychological but something spiritual) that is very different from the old zone I have known.

In brief, what I discovered is that when one adopts the life-orientation of being ready to lie or shade or to be “selective” in the facts one tells, one renders oneself (unawares) incapable of finding truth, even for one’s personal appreciation. One has entered a region of darkness. One believes he is putting something over on someone else, and does not know that he is in fact also putting something over on himself. It’s like the old saying: “Said the fly to the flypaper, ‘I’ll getcha.’ Said the flypaper to the fly, ‘Gotcha!’”

God said “Let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no.” This refers to a way of life—and a way of being truly alive. It commends Truth as the operational goal, rather than self-protection. It looks to God for security, and not to one’s wits. And when we live in Truth, and by it, we walk in a constant stream of light. In that light there is creativity and freedom of exploration and a constant expansion. And nothing hiding in the shadows can jump out and harm us.

Welcome to WORLD’s online community.

This is our daily open thread, where you, the commenters, get to choose the topics of conversation and politely interact with one another.

Have a great Wednesday!

WASHINGTON (AP)—Mitt Romney coasted to victory in the Arizona primary Tuesday night and vied with rival Rick Santorum for supremacy in Michigan.

Two other candidates, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, made little effort in either state, pointing instead to next week’s 10-state collection of Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses.

Romney’s Arizona triumph came in a race that was scarcely contested, and he pocketed all of the 29 Republican National Convention delegates at stake.

Michigan was as different as could be—a hard-fought and expensive race in Romney’s home state that he could ill afford to lose and Santorum made every effort to win.

Returns from 13 percent of Michigan’s precincts showed Romney at 41 percent and Santorum at 38 percent. Paul was winning 11 percent of the vote to 7 percent for Gingrich.

UPDATE (10:19 p.m.)

WASHINGTON (AP)—Mitt Romney has narrowly won the Michigan Republican presidential primary. The former Massachusetts governor defeated Rick Santorum, who had waged a hard-fought battle for the state. Michigan is critical for Romney because it is the first of the nation’s industrial battleground states to vote in the GOP nominating race—and it is also his home state.

© 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Cathleen Falsani interviewed then-State Sen. Barack Obama on March 27, 2004, for “The God Factor,” a series in the Chicago Sun-Times that later became a book by that name. God’s Politics, the Jim Wallis/Sojourners blog, republished the interview last week with a note from Falsani:

“Because of the seemingly evergreen interest in President Obama’s faith and spiritual predilections, and because that 2004 interview remains the longest and most in-depth he’s granted publicly about his faith, I thought it might be helpful to share the transcript of our conversation. …”

Below are excerpts. Question: How would you describe Obama’s faith in 2004, based on what he said then? How often did he miss Jeremiah Wright’s preaching? Do you agree with his description of Jesus and his response about heaven?

Cathleeen Falsani: What do you believe?

Barack Obama: I am a Christian. So, I have a deep faith. So, I draw from the Christian faith. On the other hand, I was born in Hawaii where obviously there are a lot of Eastern influences. I lived in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, between the ages of six and 10. My father was from Kenya, and although he was probably most accurately labeled an agnostic, his father was Muslim. And I’d say, probably, intellectually I’ve drawn as much from Judaism as any other faith.

So, I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. … [O]ne of the churches that I became involved in was Trinity United Church of Christ. And the pastor there, Jeremiah Wright, became a good friend. So I joined that church and committed myself to Christ in that church.

Falsani: Do you still attend Trinity?

Obama: Yep. Every week. Eleven o’clock service.

Ever been there? Good service. …

Falsani: Who’s Jesus to you?

(He laughs nervously)

Obama: Right. Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.

And he’s also a wonderful teacher. I think it’s important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history. …

Falsani: Do you have people in your life that you look to for guidance?

Obama: Well, my pastor is certainly someone who I have an enormous amount of respect for. …
Falsani: Do you believe in heaven?

Obama: Do I believe in the harps and clouds and wings?

Falsani: A place spiritually you go to after you die?

Obama: What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded.