i said it on friday. i like the way the president handled this. he recognized he had gone too far in intruding on the place of the church in defending their own beliefs. and he fixed it and said the insurance companies will pay the cost for this birth control coverage. you agreed with me, i think, on that. i carefully read your article, and you didn t like the first way the initial take he took on this. no. and i think because inevitably, someone would have raised the question of religious liberty. this question of contraception is controversial. if you remember in the vatican council, the commission set up by pope john xxxiii approved the
including in the church. where others who basically said we have a religious liberty interest which we want to protect, and we also understand that the notion of providing contraception is part of a health plan. it s not alien. there are a lot of catholic institutions that provide it. i said it on friday. i like the way the president handled this. he recognized he had gone too far in intruding on the place of the church in defending their own beliefs. and he fixed it and said the insurance companies will pay the cost for this birth control coverage. you agreed with me, i think, on that. i carefully read your article, and you didn t like the first way the initial take he took on this. no. and i think because inevitably, someone would have raised the question of religious liberty. this question of contraception is controversial. if you remember in the vatican council, the commission set up
the commission set up by pope john the 23rd approved the pill only to be overruled. so the idea this is a crucial and critical doctrine was forced in the first place. but if you can avoid a fight with religious people, you should. and i think it s a complicated issue. i might add, also, in california and new york, this was already the rule. this was already the law. in 2000 the employment e equality opportunity commission ruled it had had to be mandated in every health care plan because otherwise it would violate sex discrimination laws. so i think a lot of this was gender by the bishops. they were the one that set a for obama. they are like wyomiiley coyote trying to blow up the road runner, only it blew up on them. let me go to e.j. on this. politically speaking, as well as being a catholic like i am, this whole issue. do you think the president
jobs. and it is now cheaper to buy a home than ever before. time to play reporter roulette on this thursday. dan lothian, let s begin with you there at the white house. dan, we listen to the president this morning answering many questions and not only did he take on republicans, he s taking on, again, millionaires. reporter: that s right. what we are talking about here is that surtax to pay for the president s jobs bill which senate democrats are pushing 5.6% on those making over a million dollars. we did not see or hear a full-throated endorsement of this from the president. in fact, though, what he said was that he was comfortable in that he thought that this approach from senate democrats was fine. the president supporting this as a means of paying for this jobs bill which, of course, that s been the big issue. how to pay for all of this. president obama, though will congress do something? if congress does something, then i can t run against a do-nothing congress.
from the public on the gulf of mexico oil spill. and the white house is saying what? well, it was a damning report, and the question today is when did the administration realize the magnitude of the disaster on their hands and whether they were candid with the american people about what was going on. reporter: a commission set up by the president, himself, to look at the administration s own response to the oil spill released a damning preliminary report. it stated that the white house vastly underestimated the tens of thousands of barrels of oil pouring into the gulf after the deepwater horizon disaster, and despite contrary information from scientists who used different measuring methods. the commission says that the white house stuck with the number of 5,000 barrels a day through may 27th, a month after the initial explosion, despite eestimates from outside experts and even, bp, itself, suggesting a much higher figure.