The Heartland Institute Obama Chooses Partisan Politics Over Conscience, Pragmatism President Barack Obama's decision to force religious organizations to violate their faith in order to continue serving their employees, students, and fellow citizens marks a break with the nation's founding principles of religious freedom and an unwise elevation of politics over pragmatism. Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic who favors unlimited access to abortion, announced recently the Obama administration will allow no exemptions for faith-based organizations from a mandate that all institutions must pay for all FDA-approved forms of contraception in their health insurance plans. This means hospitals, universities, charities, nonprofits, and every religious institution short of a church itself will have to fund abortifacients, sterilization, and contraceptives. The Stonegate Institute Who Are America's Reliable Allies? In a quickly changing world, it is important to ask which countries the United States can always count on in times of crisis. Recent events have shortened that list considerably. India has long claimed to be a reliable ally, but it is now undercutting American efforts to impose meaningful sanctions against Iran. Its help cannot any longer be counted on in the struggle against the greatest danger faced by the United States -- an Iran with nuclear weapons. Japan, another ally, is dilly dallying on sanctions as well. Brazil used to be a reliable partner, until it began to fall under the sway of Venezuela's Chavez, who is closely allied with Iran and other American enemies. The "new" Russia and China demonstrated their lack of reliability when they vetoed American efforts in the Security Council to help resolve the Syrian crisis. The Cato Institute How the Bishops Undermined Individual Responsibility There are times when a single issue captures the troubles of an age. Now in its fourth week, the Obamacare contraceptive battle is bringing to the fore not only the conflict between government-run health care and religious liberty but, far more sweepingly, between our ever more socialized world and basic notions of liberty and responsibility. The firestorm the White House created when it announced last month that it would allow only a narrow religious exception to its rule requiring employers to provide women with free contraception and abortion medication was hardly extinguished by Friday's "fig leaf" compromise.