At long last, here’s the line that everyone’s quoting:

Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women.

The line is from a Guttmacher Institute study that draws from the same data as the CDC survey we reviewed yesterday. Apparently women in the survey were asked about their faith, but the CDC didn’t report it. And while the Guttmacher study has drawn its own attention and criticism, we just can’t find the details in its report that support its assertion.

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While writing Monday’s Morning Blather, we considered including the statistic everyone’s been mentioning the past week: That 98 percent of American women used contraception. This, we discovered upon chasing down the source, is true.

Only it doesn’t exactly say what everyone says it says.

Andrew Sullivan, ruminating on the subject yesterday, expressed it this way:

The Bishops fail to see any difference. They want contraception, practised by 98 percent of Catholic women, and critical to preventing higher rates of abortion, kept out of any healthcare plan an employer decides.

The study we found — a 2010 CDC survey — doesn’t include the faith of respondents, but otherwise it’s in, um, broad agreement:

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We don’t know why, but we found ourself thinking about Terri Schiavo last night.

No, not Schiavo the person. Not even Schiavo the issue. More like Schiavo the moment.

The moment when the business of government came to a screeching halt so Republicans could grandstand over a dying woman in Florida. And, as it happens, the moment that Republican overreach was so spectacular, our jaw dropped.

A moment not unlike this:

Not satisfied with President Obama’s new religious accommodation, Republicans will move forward with legislation by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that permits any employer to deny birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday.

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David Frum, in the middle of a conservative blogfight that we won’t bother you with, drops this whopper:

As a matter of fact, if you announce that there can exist no possible information that might change your mind about abortion, the death penalty, marijuana, same-sex marriage, and the inheritance tax, then yes you are an unreasonable person — or anyway, an unreasoning one. I’ve changed my mind about same-sex marriage as experience has dispelled my fears of the harms from same-sex marriage.

Our Exceptional Nation was created at the height of the European Enlightenment, a moment when Reason was triumphant over Superstition. (Or at least pretended to be.) And yet Our Reasonable Forefathers chose to open our Founding Document with this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

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Out guest columnists are independent film producers who know that you can’t keep a good villain down.

Osombie is an independently-produced, feature-length zombie film, packed with violence, mayhem, guns, blood and discussions about Pokemon. Oh, and zombies. Lots of zombies. 

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So we’re chatting with the Male Parental Unit last night — well, listening, you know how that goes — and after the monologue drifts from the Ducks to Madonna to the Ducks, he mentions that he found a hundred-dollar savings bond in a drawer last year, and promptly cashed it.

Following which he received a Form 1099 for the taxes on it.

“Everybody pays taxes but the rich,” we tell him.

And he replies—

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Our guest columnist is His Excellency, the Most Reverend Timothy P. Broglio, J.C.D., Archbishop for the Military Services, who issued the following “pastoral letter” on January 26, to be read at military Sunday Masses. After the Army chief of chaplains refused to allow the letter to be read from the pulpit, the Archbishop complained to Army Secretary John McHugh, who consented to the letter but suggested that the “unjust law” line be removed.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

It is imperative that I call to your attention an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful. It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle.

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