By Ken Shepherd | August 14, 2012 | 1:14 PM EDT

"Since when does serving up junk food give someone a license to preach?" carped Petula Dvorak as she opened her August 14 piece, "Now featuring filet o' fracas."* Gee, I dunno, Petula, maybe 1791, when the First Amendment -- you know, that pesky little document that guarantees freedom of speech and religion among other things -- was ratified.

"We've got the Papa John's pizza guys weighing in on the health-care debate, while the burger slingers out West at In-N-Out can't serve up a cheeseburger without a Bible verse," Dvorak carped. Later in her Metro section column, she essentially compared the pizza chain to drug-running terrorists.

By Jeffrey Meyer | August 10, 2012 | 3:36 PM EDT

Apparently CNN considers the stating of cold, hard economic realities to be risky partisanship now. Take the case of  Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter claiming that ObamaCare will increase costs for his company.  

Papa John's is not the first company to claim Obamacare will raise its costs, but it is the first to be viciously attacked by CNN. 

By Paul Wilson | August 10, 2012 | 1:51 PM EDT

The media doesn’t like food much these days. Papa John’s Pizza founder John Schnatter is the latest individual in the food industry to draw fire from the left; in his case the he made the mistake of discussing the economic effects of Obamacare on his company. Outlets from the Colbert Report to the Boston Globe savaged Schnatter for having the effrontery of publicly explaining basic economics. 

In a conference call with shareholders last week, Schnatter (who is a Romney supporter) said:: “Our best estimate is that Obamacare will cost 11 to 14 cents per pizza, or 15 to 20 cents an order from a corporate basis.” He also assured listeners that,  “If Obamacare is in fact not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto consumers in order to protect our shareholders best interests.”