Tonight's guests are Dahlia Lithwick on The Daily Show and Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich on The Colbert Report.
Dahlia Lithwick is a writer and editor for Slate where she covers the courts and law.
After Hobby Lobby: The Supreme Court term wrapped up nice and neat last week. Unless you are a woman.
For the first time in my memory as a reporter, there was a men’s term and a women’s term at the U.S. Supreme Court. The men’s term ended last Monday, with a pair of split decisions in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn, and a lot of mumbling on both sides of the political spectrum about the fact that—as Supreme Court terms go—this was a fairly uncontroversial one, marked by high degrees of agreement and consensus-seeking by the justices, and minimalist, incremental changes where there might have been tectonic shifts.
Not so, for women, who—almost a week later—are still reeling over the implications of the Hobby Lobby decision for contraceptive care in America; still parsing the emergency injunction granted in the Wheaton College case only three days after the Hobby Lobby ruling came down; still mulling whether the Hobby Lobby decision may prove a boon for women in the long run; and generally trying to understand how a term that was characterized as minimalist and undramatic by many male commenters, even liberal male commenters, represented a tectonic shift not just for America’s women, but for the three women who actually sit up there and do their jobs at the high court.
I hope she discusses the Wheaton College case, that has not had the headlines Hobby Lobby has.
This new case involves Wheaton College, an evangelical Protestant liberal arts college in Illinois. A majority of the court granted Wheaton a temporary injunction allowing it to refuse to comply with the workaround, or “accommodation,” the court had just held up as the answer in Hobby Lobby. Under the ACA, churches have always been categorically exempt from the mandate. The law further allows religious nonprofits that don’t want to offer contraception to submit a short form, known as Form 700, which affirms their religious objection to providing contraception. Form 700 enables the company’s insurers or third-party administrators to cover the birth control instead of the employer.
Wheaton, however, along with many other religious not-for-profits, have long objected to this very workaround. They filed lawsuits claiming that the mere fact of signing a form noting their religious objection to contraception coverage triggered third parties to provide the contraception, which triggered women to have access to morning-after pills and IUDs, which in their view were akin to abortions, and thus violated their religious consciences.
And Thursday night a majority of the court agreed. The order is a preliminary injunction. The court will need to decide this and dozens of similar cases in the future. The justices caution that this in no way reflects their views of the future cases. But for our purposes, let it be known that the very workaround the court gave to religious objectors only four days earlier now likely violates their religious liberty as well.
Quick Change Justice: While you were sleeping, Hobby Lobby just got so much worse.
It is 2014 out there now, right, and not 1814?
Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich are the hosts of Radiolab.
Radiolab is a show about curiosity. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience.
The Meter: The Measure of a Man
In our “≤ kg” episode, we told a bit of its epic history. How it dates back to revolutionary-era France, where over 250,000 measures were in regular use. How the hungry and angry French peasants demanded a unified set of weights and measures. And how the revolutionary government wanted their system to be natural and timeless, and thus based it on the most fundamental physical object they could think of: the earth
As Alder explains, the duo set out in opposite directions from Paris - in tricked-out carriages, carrying the most advanced scientific equipment of their day - hoping to measure the fraction of the meridian between Dunkerque, France and Barcelona, Spain.
From their measurements, the French Academy of Sciences could extrapolate an exceedingly precise length: one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the north pole. They’d consecrate this distance as the meter.
For all the sophisticated surveying tactics and all the noble utopian idealism, the expedition - conducted in a time of revolution and war - turned out to be a bit of a farce. As the men climbed church steeples and peered through their instruments, angry mobs fingered them as spies. They were hauled before local officials, only to present papers signed by the now-deposed King. They were repeatedly detained. “At every turn,” Alder writes, “they encountered suspicion and obstruction.”
It is worth reading the entire story, I found it interesting. I can't say I have ever caught Radiolab, my radio is usually tuned to my local university's station so I can catch Democracy Now but this sounds like it might be worth listening to.
This Week's Guests
THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
Tu 7/15: TBA
We 7/16: Jerry Seinfeld
Th 7/17: Emma Stone
THE COLBERT REPORT, Comedy Central
Tu 7/15: Vint Cerf
We 7/16: TBA
Th 7/17: Steven Wise
A few pictures from the summer so far.