Filed under 'In Case You Missed It.'

Appearing on Lawrence O'Donnell's show last night, the unflappable David Boies, of Bush v. Gore fame, calmly and damn near indifferently explained to his host that there is no -- repeat, no -- Constitutional, First Amendment issue at stake in the most recent Inquisition into 'Obamacare's' purported tyranny, this time over the Catholic Church's holy conscience.

(To digress, or perhaps I should say clarify: Yes, holy "conscience," as divinely revealed, for example, in the ecclesiastical expediencies of shuffling pedophiles or accommodating fascist regimes. Just so we all understand the terminology.)

What is at stake? Labor law; the same labor laws that the Church and every other U.S. employer is obligated to obey. The Catholic Church, as Boies explained dispassionately, could not evade out of some presumed religious conscience the minimum wage or workers' compensation or a 40-hour week or any other universally applied labor law of a reasonable standard. The Affordable Care Act's contraception provision, as a required condition of employer healthcare coverage, is no different. The Obama administration has already compromised, the ACA has already exempted the Church itself, just as a variety of preceding state laws have -- which have never, not once, been an "issue."

To put it idiomatically, this is a no-brainer. Which is also why, of course, culture-warring demagogues like Rick Santorum and suddenly Mitt Romney and virtually half the U.S. House will ride it to absolute exhaustion.

Still, that's what demagogues do. That's what they're expected to do. And who among us cares to fritter much time in blaming lizards for crawling or bats for flapping or black widow spiders for mariticide?

Should we not, however, expect something a bit more honorable from the Church? -- you know, the one worried about its integrity and conscience?