Then please tell me: how does this decision not apply to any other "sincerely held religious belief of a closely held corporation"? The SCOTUS might say that the decision is only supposed to apply to these particular scenarios, but I can't see how you can distinguish one sincerely held religious belief from another. Unless, of course, you let the government get into the business of deciding which religious beliefs trump which.

Then again, this is already happening, thanks to some enlightened congress critters wanting to legislate Baptist beliefs into government law.

The problem is that the only difference between your libertarian and your anarchist is that the anarchist goes to the logical end of "all government intervention is bad", and the libertarian just happens to support exactly the intervention that you like.

In other words, it's just another form of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

The Hobby Lobby owners are not forced to pay for other people's contraception out of their own pocket. However, they decided to form a corporation to take advantage of a lot of tax and liability incentives. Apparently, the SCOTUS decided that incorporating is all upside and zero downside.

Can I form a corporation, and, because I sincerely believe that paying taxes is immoral (I'll even provide some documentation that I sincerely believe that), not pay taxes on any money I take in through the corporation?

Yeah, didn't think so. Don't hide your religious bigotry behind a legal construct.

I think you're probably right in a lot of cases, but what I think this proposal is getting at is that right now we have a single contraceptive implant on the market that needs to be swapped out every 3 years. And, swapping it out means numbing up the area (which smarts), making a 1 cm incision with an 11 blade and fishing around with mosquito clamps to get the Nexplanon out which is often encapsulated with connective tissue and it doesn't want to come out, then injecting another one in. What if it could be turned on and off according to whether the woman wanted to have kids or was abstinent for awhile, so then we can avoid excess poking and prodding and hormones? If we could make that secure, would it be worth it? The cost of the Nexplanon in the US isn't much related to its materials (perhaps $5) as to the research costs and insurance and pharmaceutical company marble toilets with gold handles ($700). Couldn't an electronic Nexplanon with extended duration reasonably be cost effective if we can avoid the excess minor surgery, physician visits, and unintended babies?

Strictly speaking, in the US, we're not paying people to have kids but paying for people who have already had kids to have baby food and clothing and medical care. Even in places where people don't get government support for their kids, they still have plenty of kids - as I think you may be alluding to in your second paragraph but I confess confusion about how reactionary undereducated dicks are particular to Pakastani folks and not, say, Kentuckians.

Government-supported access to contraception is likely highly cost effective - it makes not just intuitive sense, but studies seem to bear this out. Without all the bother of just letting teen moms and their homeless kids, you know, die in the streets and spread measles all around.

The key word is right there: Presumably. Are they? As far as I can tell, most CEOs can be replaced by chipmunks for at least 6 months at a time, and absolutely nothing happens. What's more, I can think of quite a few high-profile cases where a chipmunk would have produced better results (hello, Carly). The only thing I know for sure is that the bigger the pyramid atop which the CEO sits, or the bigger the flow of money that runs across his (or, in much fewer cases, her) desk, the bigger the pay check. I see little correlation with actual productivity.

Since you're so wonderfully loading the question, I'm going to rephrase it a little bit. Does a civil engineer deserve less money than a marketing director whose sole job is to pump out pretty graphics to tell others what to buy and his bosses what that money went to? Because civil engineers, especially those starting out, make diddly squat.

You haven't met many CEOs, have you? Those that are CEOs or owners of small companies are indeed extremely busy. They also make shit money. Those that make the obscene salaries on the other hand have enough time for mistresses, hobbies and extra-curricular activities - far more so than any working drone underneath them.

False dichotomy. Your tinfoil hat is on too tight.

Most likely, they actually believe their drivel. The stupidity that is rampant even at well-run corporations would indicate that something far more susceptible to politics, theater and attracting the least qualified would result in positions like this. The TSA is utterly useless and needs to be abolished. Too bad that's only going to happen the day that we wholesale dissolve Congress, remove the POTUS, scrap all existing rules, and start from scratch.

You kinda got it right. Corporate social networks are there to promote the distribution of information. But for God's sake, do NOT call them "Facebook for the Enterprise", "Enterprise Social Network", or anything like it. Do not mention enterprise, do not mention facebook, twitter, instagram, or any other idiotic time killer. Call it what you want - "Acme's place for Engineers to comment on feature update requests from PMs", "Worldwide Information Sharing Platform", just don't use the Facebook analogy.

Second, employees are asking for tools to better share information. Sharing your latest beer run or cake social pictures is not information. Sales people want to know if someone knows someone at corp A, where they just got a meeting for. Support people want to know if anyone has seen weird behavior x that isn't documented anywhere, and hasn't been tagged in a case yet. Others want to know if there are some good presentations on a topic so that they don't have to create them by hand, or just want to get in touch with someone in a particular position but who they have never met. An enterprise social network helps that.

Here's the third issue, and this is where most corporate social networks fall down. It has to be used by the execs, and the execs have to show to everyone how to use it right. If they start posting pictures of their latest executive retreat where everyone has a Margarita in hand, or they start to talk about what movie they saw over the weekend, shit will irretrievably go in the shitter. Lack of adoption of a corporate social network is always and every time the fault of the corporate leaders. Whether the execs, or just the people everyone wants to listen to.

What's the problem with knowing that someone got charged for assault in a case that is very understandable?

The right to be forgotten is a terrible solution to the problem of people not being able to judge others properly.

No, not personal data. PRIVATE data. Plus, Google is handling other companies' data that has been put by them onto the public internet. Why the fuck is Google responsible for what is in it? Are you going to blame trash collectors for what people throw out on the highway?

You don't understand statistics very well, do you? Or how actuarial tables work.

After checking all the comments, I didn't see anyone pointing out what seemed very obvious to me when I read the summary: all the countries, USA, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, are offshoots of the old British empire, and all speak English only (well, Canada does have some francophones). It's like a club of like-minded countries, with the same base culture and language.

There's an interesting article on the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06... which contends that moral judgements depend on what language we're speaking. Within this 5-country native English language club, the emotional strength of their own shared language totally overrides any moral qualms they might have for spying on those foreigners speaking strange languages in primitive countries.

When men don't get into 2 as many accidents as women. Sorry, but a corporate accountant has analyzed your criteria, and found that your penis is correlated with a higher rate of accidents. Enjoy your rate.

Your mistake is to assume that we can survive without an ecosystem replete with a shit-load of species whose impact on us is largely unknown. We're about to find out if we can survive with a drastically changed one.

Yep, I'm aware of union shops and right to work states. Just wanted to be sure what you were talking about, because your initial description told a much, much wilder story.