I had never heard of the Al Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner before the flak that arose over President Obama being invited this year.

According to Wiki the event is “is an annual white tie charity fundraiser for [local] Catholic charities, held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on the third Thursday of October… in honor of former NY Governor Al Smith, the first Catholic presidential candidate. The first dinner was in 1945, the year after Al Smith’s death.”

Last night’s event raised $5 million.

Wiki goes on to explain the Al Smith Dinner’s foray into presidential abortion politics:

… [T]here’s a grand canyon of difference between Obama, who’s very pro-choice, and, for example, the Republican ticket this year, which would give 14th Amendment rights, whatever that means, life, liberty, and property rights, to a fetus that had just been – or rather, an egg that had just been fertilized, right after sex, if […]

The Obama campaign launched a television ad over the weekend attacking Mitt Romney for attacking Planned Parenthood.

Airing in seven battleground states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina, and Virginia), the ad manages in 30 seconds to hit Romney on several liberal reproductive talking points.

The well-crafted piece starts with a pitchwoman assailing Romney for opposing contraceptives. One must read over what she is saying (see above right) to know the complaint is actually about Romney’s opposition to the Obamacare contraception mandate.

I saw the above Planned Parenthood tweet a couple days and first thought, You have got to be kidding, and then thought, Of course this is how they’ll spin this. The Obama administration provoked a huge nationwide controversy in January by ordering religious groups to cover contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization in their insurance plans, and […]

When even infamously liberal Catholic and Obama worshipper Chris “Thrill Up My Leg” Matthews has problems with the Obama administration’s mandate forcing religious institutions to cover contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization in their insurance policies, you know it’s in trouble. “It gets to that interesting point to me, which is frightening, when the state tells the […]

Chris Matthews: Let me tell you what he said. He’s said “My religion should dominate, should trump issues of the Constitution.”… He was saying, “Bill O’Reilly, you and I are of the same religion, therefore we should deny a woman’s constitutional right to buy birth control or a male to buy birth control.” Isn’t that […]

UDPATE, 10:38a: Ed Morrissey at