"We couldn’t have picked a better witness"

Democrats on the committee tapped a low-level staffer to find a witness whose testimony and profile would juxtapose nicely with the tableau of white men Issa planned to call. The staffer found a video clip of Fluke speaking at the National Press Club on Feb. 9, when she was one of several Catholic students to defend the Obama Administration’s ruling. Fluke was eloquent, female and a student at a Jesuit institution to boot. “We couldn’t have picked a better witness,” says a Democratic committee staffer, who would not reveal the identify of the colleague who located Fluke…

Fluke says she understands that contraception is anathema to some religious beliefs. “There are, of course, some people who legitimately disagree about the actual contraception policy, and that legitimate policy disagreement is appropriate,” she says. But she also thinks there are other motivations at play, including ”misinformation about whether this is a taxpayer subsidy.” Says Fluke: “This has been completely distorted, I believe probably intentionally, by people who are hoping to confuse the debate. And it’s just entirely inaccurate.”