Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has well and truly f***ed up: he wrote a letter to the Feds asking that employers not have to pay for birth control coverage if they have a religious objection to contraception. This “religious freedom” red herring is a load of hooey, as we have written before.

General DeWine has been a pretty fair AG thus far: he has done good work on prosecuting human trafficking, pill mills, sexual assault, fraud, and other important law enforcement tasks. But he is clearly out of his depth here.

The current “religious freedom” campaign is not about the freedom of we the people to worship (or not) as we see fit. Rather, it is about employers being able to:
Number A, weasel out of paying for employee health care by using specious religious claims, or
Letter 2, cram their own religion down the throats of their employees, or
Third option, both of the above.

General DeWine was a total right-wing tool in his previous government gigs, and we can see by this recent action that he has not changed one bit since. This is a clear example of why we have (and need to have) separation of Church and State; a concept so important to the Founders that it is set out near the beginning of the Constitution.

When greedy religious fanatics try to manipulate our system for their own benefit, we need to put a stop to it at the outset. It matters not if DeWine is a manipulator or being manipulated; what matters is that we take these attempts to insert religion into our government and squash them flat. And that soon.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky