Timeline- Republicans Trash Economy, Lie U.S. Into War, Pretend Recession Is Obama's Fault, Pretend They Don't Know Todd Akins, Hope Voters Are Idiots With Poor Memories

Timeline- Republicans Trash Economy, Lie U.S. Into War, Pretend Recession Is Obama's Fault, Pretend They Don't Know Todd Akins, Hope Voters Are Idiots With Poor Memories

If there was one thing Republicans sought to make clear at the start of their national convention in Tampa on Monday, it was that the party would not allow Missouri Rep. Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comments to lead them into a dialogue on women’s health issues, but rather would remain focused on the "issues that matter," namely the economy.

In the prior week, national attention had focused on how Akin’s controversial statement -- that women who suffer "legitimate rape" have a way of shutting down their bodies to prevent pregnancy -- might impact both presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Republican congressional candidates with women voters. Scrutiny of the Republican Party’s handling of women's issues further intensified when draft platform language, released in the wake of the Akin furor, included support for a constitutional ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest.

Nonetheless, Republicans were noticeably unwilling to discuss Akin, their abortion platform or any kind of polling gender gap, despite being prodded on the subject throughout the first day’s events in Tampa.

"I know that the DCCC likes to talk about a lot of things other than Obama's economy, but this is what we're voting on ... We’re voting on Obama’s economy," said Guy Harrison, executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a briefing with reporters. Harrison was reacting to a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee effort, launched Monday morning, to tie Republican members of Congress to the "extreme agenda" they share with Akin.

"Anything else they're talking about, any other issues, they're just wasting their time and space," he continued, adding later that most Republicans had called on Akin to step down, even though the congressman himself "made a different choice."

"If [Democrats] want to talk about that for the next two months, feel free," Harrison said. "We'll be talking about the economy."

A total of four questions on how the party planned to grapple with women's or social issues were virtually dismissed.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) offered a similar deflection toward the economy when asked about the aftermath of Akin’s remarks at a lunch hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

"This is another distraction," Boehner said. "The American people aren't asking questions about Akin. They're asking the question, 'Where are the jobs?'"

If national polling among women voters is anything to go by, however, the issue is hardly a distraction. According to a survey conducted just last month, President Barack Obama's support among single women nationally is nearly double that of Romney's, a gap that could be exacerbated if Akin continues to stand his ground in the Missouri Senate race and Republicans keep trying to portray abortion as a non-issue.

Romney's own discomfort with the whole matter was made apparent the previous Thursday, when a reporter for Denver's CBS affiliate KCNC said she was instructed not to ask him any questions about abortion or Akin as a condition for a one-on-one interview. Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who once co-sponsored anti-abortion legislation with Akin in Congress, has spent the week sitting through interviews heavy on women, abortion and his definition of rape, as opposed to his budget plan, Medicare and how a Romney-Ryan ticket planned to create jobs.

Forget that Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney see women and their rights much like Iran's fundamentalist mullahs. Fir get that the last time Republicans were in charge of the economy they drove it off the cliff. Yep let's just talk about Obama and all the jobs bills conservatives blocked.


Conservative VP Candidate Paul Ryan claims rape is a "method of conception" Media pretends he never said it.

Pennsylvania GOP Senate Candidate Tom Smith: Getting Pregnant From Rape Is ‘Similar’ To Having A Baby Out Of Wedlock

The Depravity of Rep. Todd Akin(R-MO) Is Shared By Paul Ryan (R-WI) And Other Conservatives

The Depravity of Rep. Todd Akin(R-MO) Is Shared By Paul Ryan (R-WI) And Other Conservatives

Republicans have been getting in trouble for asserting this since at least 1988 -- but anti-abortion politicians keep hauling out this old idea for a reason.

Here we go again. Trotting out the contemporary equivalent of the early American belief that only witches float, Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, told a local Missouri station in an interview that "legitimate rape" does not lead to pregnancy.

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare," Akin said in an interview with KTVI-TV that caused a furor online Sunday afternoon after being posted on TPM. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
....The thing is, his comments were hardly some kind never-before-heard gaffe. Arguments like his have cropped up again and again on the right over the past quarter century and the idea that trauma is a form of birth control continues to be promulgated by anti-abortion forces that seek to outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. The push for a no-exceptions anti-abortion policy has for decades gone hand in hand with efforts to downplay the frequency with which rape- or incest-related pregnancies occur, and even to deny that they happen, at all. In other words, it's not just Akin singing this tune.

Take Christian Life Resources, an educational site, for example. It reprints an 1999 article on the topic that seeks to make the same distinction between categories of rape as did Akin, and for the same reason. Wrote John C. Willke -- a physician who in the 1980s and early 1990s was president of the National Right to Life Committee -- in the piece, originally published in Life Issues Connector:

    When pro-lifers speak of rape pregnancies, we should commonly use the phrase "forcible rape" or "assault rape," for that specifies what we're talking about. Rape can also be statutory. Depending upon your state law, statutory rape can be consensual, but we're not addressing that here .... Assault rape pregnancies are extremely rare.

    .... What is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that's physical trauma. Every woman is aware that stress and emotional factors can alter her menstrual cycle. To get and stay pregnant a woman's body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that is easily influenced by emotions. There's no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy. So what further percentage reduction in pregnancy will this cause? No one knows, but this factor certainly cuts this last figure by at least 50 percent and probably more.

An edited version of Willke's article appears on the website of Physicians for Life group under the headline, "Assault Rape Pregnancies Are Rare." The most medically ignorant paragraphs have been excised from this version of the story, though the headline has been strengthened to make the point plain.

The canard had been floating around the right long before Willke wrote his piece. In 1995, 71-year-old North Carolina state Rep. Henry Aldridge gained national notoriety after telling the N.C. House Appropriations Committee, "The facts show that people who are raped -- who are truly raped -- the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant. Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever."

The Romney-Ryan campaign has issued a statement saying they do not agree with  Akin. The problem for Ryan is that he and Adkin have a documented history of thinking alike.

Ryan and Akin ... were co-sponsors of H.R. 3, the 2011 bill that would have limited the federal abortion coverage exemption only to victims of "forcible rape" and women whose physical health was in danger from her pregnancy, closing a supposed loophole in health-of-the-mother exemptions conservatives have been crowing about for years.

After massive vocal protest from women’s rights advocates, the sponsors dropped the "forcible rape" language from the bill, giving up their quest to redefine rape in the federal code with little explanation.

This is not about another conservative gaffe, another "rare' extremist" in the Republican ranks, this is the kind of evil deeply imbedded in the conservative movement.

Per the graphic at top, "We Haven't Run The Numbers:" A Startling Ryan Admission That's Getting Little Attention

New Romney Welfare Ad Cites Newspaper That Says Its Welfare Reform Claims Have ‘Been Debunked’

Undeterred by his own support for the welfare reform waivers he is now criticizing, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has released another ad slamming the Obama administration’s decision to give states greater latitude in how they administer the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

The ad cites a Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial to make the case that Obama’s welfare reform waivers are “nuts,” because, “If you want to get more people to work, you don’t loosen the requirement — you tighten them.” The newspaper’s editorial board did, indeed, pen that sentence in an August 15 editorial that defended the Romney campaign’s earlier ads and agreed with him that the work requirement had indeed been “gutted.” Now, though, the Times-Dispatch is admitting that its own claims — which are central to the Romney ad — have been “debunked“:

    The 30-second ad doubles down on the Romney campaign’s claim that Obama ended welfare’s work requirement “gutting welfare reform,” a charge that has been debunked by multiple independent fact-checkers.

Had they done their own reporting instead of relying on the Romney campaign’s advertisements, the Times-Dispatch’s editors wouldn’t have had to wait for three independent fact-checkers to realize that GOP claims that welfare reform had been “gutted” were a blatant lie. The directive outlining the waivers makes it clear that work requirements will remain in place, though states will have more leeway in determining how to get welfare recipients out of the program and into jobs.

The decision to issue waivers was made at the request of multiple Republican governors — Romney himself supported even farther-reaching waivers in 2005 — and is meant to address the program’s struggles. While the Romney ad cites a 1998 Washington Post piece calling TANF an “unprecedented success,” that too has been debunked: the 1996 welfare reform law has failed to help America’s neediest families, and the reduction in the number of people receiving welfare has come largely from kicking people off the rolls, not by getting them jobs.

Amazing that Romney is running the sleaziest most dishonest political campaign of the last 100 years and the media has not noticed or does not care.

Why Conservative Republicans Are Criminalizing Pregnant Women

Why Conservative Republicans Are Criminalizing Pregnant Women

Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.



Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.



"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaignNational Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."



Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in a prison cell in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On 23 December she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.



Shuai was rushed to hospital and survived, but she was 33 weeks pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.



In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state's "chemical endangerment" law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes.



Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way. During her pregnancy her fetus was diagnosed with possible Down's syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination, which Kimbrough declined as she is not in favour of abortion.



The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth.



Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with "chemical endangerment" of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.



"That shocked me, it really did," Kimbrough said. "I had lost a child, that was enough."



She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which if she loses will see her begin a 10-year sentence behind bars. "I'm just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids," she said. "They say I'm a criminal, how do I answer that? I'm a good mother."



Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalization of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs' case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi's highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.



"If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is," Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.



McDuff told the Guardian that he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. "I hope it's not a trend that's going to catch on. To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme."



He pointed out that anti-abortion groups were trying to amend the Mississippi constitution by setting up a state referendum, or ballot initiative, that would widen the definition of a person under the state's bill of rights to include a fetus from the day of conception.



Some 70 organisations across America have come together to file testimonies, known as amicus briefs, in support of Gibbs that protest against her treatment on several levels. One says that to treat "as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering".



Another, from a group of psychologists, laments the misunderstanding of addiction that lies behind the indictment. Gibbs did not take cocaine because she had a "depraved heart" or to "harm the fetus but to satisfy an acute psychological and physical need for that particular substance", says the brief.



Perhaps the most persuasive argument put forward in the amicus briefs is that if such prosecutions were designed to protect the unborn child, then they would be utterly counter-productive: "Prosecuting women and girls for continuing [a pregnancy] to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties. The state could not have intended this result when it adopted the homicide statute."



Paltrow sees what is happening to Gibbs as a small taste of what would be unleashed were the constitutional right to an abortion ever overturned. "In Mississippi the use of the murder statute is creating a whole new legal standard that makes women accountable for the outcome of their pregnancies and threatens them with life imprisonment for murder."


From protection to punishment

At least 38 of the 50 states across America have introduced fetal homicide laws that were intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn children from violent attacks by third parties – usually abusive male partners – but are increasingly being turned by renegade prosecutors against the women themselves.



South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy.

Ironically and predictability - yesterday,being the 4th of July I spent some time reading some conservative Republicans yammer on about freedom. Conservatives, much like communists and fascists are repeating a tiresome reenactment of fanatical political philosophy. Their restrictions on individual freedom, their draconian authoritarianism against anyone who breaks their loony ideas about "values" is to be imprisoned or at the very least kept from fully participating in society. Another example. Conservative Republicans could not get their legislation passed so they're shoving their agenda down everyone's throat by making their legislation a "rule", In Letter, Texas Department of Health Accused by Ten Democratic Legislators of Subverting Democratic Process

Why does Mitch McConnell(R-KY) Hate Americans : I’m ‘Not Convinced’ Congress Should Prohibit Insurers From Discriminating Against The Sick

Sleaze Bag of the Week - Scott Brown (R-MA) is Getting Desperate and Dirty with Sexist Attack On Warren

Sleaze Bag of the Week - Scott Brown (R-MA) is Getting Desperate
and Dirty with Sexist Attack On Warren

In my latest column, “Dems' war FOR women,” I suggested that a power-hungry politics and rightist extremism has led Republicans into attacks on programs vital for women and against pay equity for women. These attacks at times veer into personal campaigns against the women themselves. Witness the many efforts against Hillary Clinton over the years and now, in Massachusetts, witness the slander against Elizabeth Warren by Scott Brown.

In a recent column suggesting that Warren is the great voice of workers, consumers and men and women who are the backbone of the nation I did suggest that Scott Brown was decent. It did not take long for Brown to prove me wrong about that. His dishonest and scandalous attacks against Elizabeth Warren put to shame Brown's argument that he is some sort of "bipartisan" "reasonable man.”

In the end, Scott Brown is just another politician, a handsome and charming guy who will ultimately do anything to win when he fears he could lose.

First Brown implied that Warren was a Harvard elitist. Presumably Brown would attack John F. Kennedy for the same reason. Now Brown suggests that Elizabeth Warren is not really qualified to teach at Harvard. Huh? Brown's using the old Karl Rove-style "dog whistle" attack, suggesting Warren just maybe got the Harvard job because of affirmative action.

What sexist garbage it is that Scott Brown is trying to sell?

Elizabeth Warren got the Harvard job because she was supremely qualified, as are most women who are attacked in this way.

Elizabeth Warren is outstanding by any and all measures at Harvard, admired by her peers and respected by her students.

What is special about Elizabeth is that given her enormous talents she could have sold out like so many others, and made her fortune with any law firm or investment bank, but did not. Instead:

She has fought for women and men who are workers and consumers, fought for economic fairness and financial integrity, fought for lower credit card rates and against banks that charge Mafia-like rates, fought for homeowners against banks that would foreclose upon them (which is why many of those banks hate Warren and support Brown).

If you like the banks, vote for Brown. If you like the consumers, vote for Warren.

Warren has fought in support of active-duty military troops, in support of America's military families, and against those who cheat and abuse our military families and vets (who desperately favor Brown).

Warren has fought for the middle class, for the poor, for the workers and military families and consumers of Massachusetts.

No, Sen. Brown, Elizabeth Warren is not some woman who got a job through affirmative action. She is partially Native American but she has achieved much in life not because of her gender or heritage as you, Sen. Brown, and your great ally, Karl Rove, would suggest, but because of her talent, ability, integrity and hard work.

Elizabeth Warren could have made tens of millions of dollars selling out to greed, as so many of Scott Brown's campaign donors have, but instead, she is one of the most courageous fighters on behalf of workers and consumers and veterans who has ever served in public life in Washington or anywhere else.

Shame on you, Scott Brown.

Thank goodness there are still good people like Elizabeth Warren who are still willing to serve in public life in a system too often dominated by charmers who use dirty politics to support those who cheat the workers and consumers and vets Elizabeth Warren has used her God-given talents fighting for throughout her career.

Many Americans were wondering just who Scott Brown is, he has so many faces it is hard to keep up. Now desperate that he might lose the election to someone who is genuinely concerned with working families, brown has shown his real face. he is a petty pathetic little wing-nut conservative in the pocket of special interests and he cannot compete with a woman of substance and the kind of integrity America needs in Washington. What is Elizabeth Warren's big unforgivable crime? her parents told her she was part Native-American.Conservatives, you know those people who lied us into a 3 trillion dolar war and bankrupted the country wants an election decided on what might be slight exaggerations from someone's parents. Conservatives are once again taking Americans for fools. Let us hope for the future of this great country that this time conservative smears do not work.

11 Ways Mitt Romney Shows He is a Clueless Rich-Guy

The Austerity Agenda is just an excuse to give working class Americans the shaft.

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Freedom Hating Sleaze Bag of the Week - Brown Event Hosted By Anti-American Plantation Owner Where Workers labored 12-hour days to earn just $2 a day.

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Freedom Hating Sleaze Bag of the Week - Brown Event Hosted By Anti-American Plantation Owner Where Workers labored 12-hour days to earn just $2 a day.

Locked in a tight re-election battle, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) has been doing a lot of travel lately to expand his already sizable war chest of money from wealthy special interests. But one recent, little-noticed Florida fundraiser was hosted by a highly controversial sugar magnate.

On February 22, Brown attended a Palm Beach luncheon featuring Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). One of the official hosts for the event was José “Pepe” Fanjul, the vice chairman, chief operating officer, and president of Fanjul Corp. and Florida Crystals Corporation, two Fanjul-family-owned sugar production companies (subsidiaries include the Domino sugar company).

Who is Pepe Fanjul?

He and his brother has been called the “Koch Brothers of South Florida” for their long record of political involvement and lobbying against industry regulations. A 1998 Time magazine article by legendary reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele called the Fanjul’s “the First Family of Corporate Welfare,” with more than $60 million in corporate subsidies benefiting their companies annually from the federal government.

But most disturbing are reports about the Fanjul’s Dominican Republic operations. In January, the Palm Beach Post reported that Wikileaks documents revealed the Fanjuls and their companies “muscled” lawmakers to kill the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which might have increased competition. A lawyer for the family dismissed any allegations of illegal or inappropriate lobbying as “chatty gossip.”

Big Sugar, a 2005 CBC documentary raised an even bigger concern. According to their investigation, workers for the Fanjul-owned Central Romano plantation work 12-hour days to earn just $2 a day. The workers go hungry in conditions that have been compared to slave labor. In a 2001 Vanity Fair article, attorney Edward Tuddenham called the treatment of sugar cane pickers under the Fanjul’s “modern-day slavery.” Their treatment of workers and the Florida everglades has been heavily questioned. Pepe Fanjul and his brother denied being barons, denied harming the everglades, and denied receiving subsidies in a 1997 New York Times letter to the editor. And in the CBC documentary, he said Centro Romano is the “most progressive employer in the Dominican Republic.”

Fanjul also made news in 2010 when the New York Post reported that his executive assistant is the ex-wife of former KKK leader David Duke and current wife of the former KKK grand wizard who runs a white-supremacist website. A company spokesman told the paper “While we may not agree with someone’s politics, we wouldn’t terminate them for that.”

Florida Sugar Company did not respond to an email requesting comment for this story.

When he kicked off his re-election campaign, Brown boasted, “Once again I won’t have the political establishment behind me – not the one on Beacon Hill, and certainly not the one on Capitol Hill.” Now we see it is the Florida GOP establishment he has in his pocket. But even with more than $750,000 in political contributions over the years, mostly to Republicans, one still has to wonder why Brown would risk aligning himself with a figure like Fanjul.

Time for the Anti-American smiley faced fascists like brown to retire from politics. Brown and his ilk should not be allowed to be anywhere near the public policy of the USA.

Smearing Sandra Fluke wasn't enough, misogynists move on to Anti-Semitic attacks on her boyfriend

Conservative Catholic Bishops threaten women's health and religious freedom in the USA.

How Very Unfortunate That Mitt Romney Hates Medicare and America

How Very Unfortunate That Mitt Romney Hates Medicare and America

On the day of Mitt Romney’s 65th birthday, making him eligible for Medicare — though he’s not signing up for it — his campaign has released five questions about Medicare for President Obama, ranging from why the president is “ending medicare as we know it” to why he’s “creating an unaccountable board to ration care.”

The only problem? None of the issues Romney’s questions point out are true. Here’s why:

QUESTION: Why Is President Obama Ending Medicare As We Know It By Allowing It To Go Bankrupt In Less Than 15 Years?

    FACT: Medicare is not going bankrupt. The Congressional Budget Office reports that one portion — Medicare Part A or hospital insurance — will become “insolvent.” As Igor Volsky has reported, “Dedicated revenues will not be sufficient to pay all of its bills and the hospital fund will meet about 90 percent of its commitments, rather than the full 100 percent. In the succeeding years that shortfall will slowly widen and then contract, so that in 2085, Medicare could pay out 88 percent of its obligations.” By lowering annual payment updates to providers, savings from the Affordable Care Act will extend the life of the trust fund by nine years.

QUESTION: Why Is President Obama Ending Medicare As We Know It By Funding Obamacare Through $500 Billion In Medicare Cuts For Today’s Seniors?

    FACT: The health law does not cut Medicare’s current budget. As ThinkProgress has previously explained, it slows the growth in the program by removing $500 billion from future spending over the next 10 years — not cutting from current senior’s benefits. The cuts help stabilize Medicare by eliminating overpayments and slowly phasing in payment adjustments that encourage greater efficiency. As a result, the law extends the life of the Medicare trust fund by nine years and allows seniors to retain all of their guaranteed Medicare benefits.

QUESTION: Why Is President Obama Ending Medicare As We Know It By Creating An Unaccountable Board To Ration Care For Today’s Seniors?

    FACT: The proposal is statutorily prohibited from rationing benefits or increasing co-pays and will go into effect unless Congress acts to alter the proposal or discontinue automatic implementation. And the board will be composed of doctors, economists, and consumer representatives who will be confirmed by the Senate and will be tasked with designing a savings plan if health care spending increases beyond a certain threshold.

QUESTION: Why Is President Obama Ending Medicare As We Know It By Destroying Medicare Advantage For Today’s Seniors?

    FACT: Far from destroying Medicare Advantage, the choices available through the program are “stronger than ever,” the White House reported in February. Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House deputy chief of staff for domestic policy, explained that premiums for Medicare Advantage are lower and enrollment has been higher since the Affordable Care Act made the changes to Medicare Advantage, which Republicans derided. “As reported last year, 99.7 percent of people with Medicare still have access to Medicare Advantage plans,” DeParle said.

QUESTION: Why Is President Obama Ending Medicare As We Know It By Ending Access To Care For Today’s Seniors?

    FACT: As has been explained, the Afforable Care Act does not cut current benefits, is not disappearing, and has actually expanded options for seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage. And many presidents have made changes to Medicare since 1965, including Republican idol Ronald Reagan, without ending care for seniors or destroying Medicare. Reagan even instituted a series of reforms that are strikingly similar to some of the payment changes included in the Affordable Care Act (policies Romney now refers to as cuts or price controls).

It does not seem to matter what denomination they belong to, conservatives always seem to ignore the Ten Commandments and that part about lying. If Romney had any respect for the United States of America he would stop lying. He, like most conservatives have no respect for the USA. On the contrary they want to make the US into a plutocratic authoritarian state like Medieval Europe. 


Georgia Republican Compares Women to Cows, Pigs, And Chickens

Rick Santorum's Crazy Campaign Co-Chair Says Blacks Won't Vote for Mitt Romney Because Mormonism is Racist


Sarah Palin: Obama Twisted My Words In New Ad (VIDEO). Palin claims that President Obama wants to take America back to the days of slavery. Does Palin ever listen to herself. A Democratic president who is half-black wants to reinstate slavery? Perhaps its time for Palin to get some therapy.

Refund Please - Why Are Taxpayers Forced to Support Broadcasting Conservative Smiley Faced Fascist Rush Limabugh

Refund Please - Why Are Taxpayers Forced to Support Broadcasting Conservative Smiley Faced Fascist Rush Limabugh

Rush Limbaugh's defiant, halfhearted apology didn't convince anyone that he'd mended his ways.

As of Tuesday evening, Limbaugh's program had shed 35 advertisers, according to ThinkProgress. The count includes AOL, Sears, Allstate Insurance, Geico, and John Deere. As advertisers increasingly respond to pressure, online and off, from angry customers, other activists are turning their anger directly against the radio outlets that broadcast Limbaugh's show.

So far this week, two stations have dropped the program. WBEC in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and KPUA in Hilo, Hawaii, were the first, and if the pressure continues, they may not be the last. WBEC's general manager, Peter Barry, said in a statement, “The nature of Rush's programming has always presented challenges for us and he's always pushed the envelope. But this time he's taken it too far."

Iraq war veterans Miranda Norman, Kayla Williams and Robin Eckstein, and Katherine Scheirman, the former chief of medical operations for the U.S. Air Force, all with the organization VoteVets, released a statement calling for Limbaugh's show to be removed from taxpayer-funded American Forces Network, which is heard by troops serving overseas. (Like all who syndicate Rush's program, AFN pays for the privilege.) They wrote:

    Rush Limbaugh has a freedom of speech and can say what he wants, but in light of his horribly misogynistic comments, American Forces Radio should no longer give him a platform. Our entire military depends on troops respecting each other – women and men. There simply can be no place on military airwaves for sentiments that would undermine that respect. When many of our female troops use birth control, for Limbaugh to say they are “sluts” and “prostitutes” is beyond the pale. It isn’t just disrespectful to our women serving our country, but it’s language that goes against everything that makes our military work. Again, we swore to uphold our Constitution, including the freedom of speech, and would not take that away from anyone – even Limbaugh. But that does not mean AFN should broadcast him. In fact, it shouldn’t.

The Pentagon, though, doesn't seem interested in dropping Limbaugh yet. A spokesman told the AP it would continue to air a variety of programming. But VoteVets has a petition to remove Rush, and other sites have more information on who to contact to stop spending taxpayer dollars on Limbaugh.

But the real test is how Clear Channel, the mega-conglomerate that distributes Limbaugh's show, will react. A petitioner at MoveOn's SignOn.org Web site is asking for Clear Channel to drop Limbaugh's show, and 200,939 people had signed it as of press time. Curt Hopkins at the Christian Science Monitor pointed out that, “unlike Limbaugh, the San Antonio-based company has quarterly revenue targets to meet and has to be concerned about the immediate reaction of shareholders. Clear Channel operates 866 stations in 150 markets in the United States.”

Clear Channel has been the largest owner of radio stations in the U.S. since telecom ownership rules were relaxed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The company has faced charges of censorship, and has consolidated its hold over radio in part by getting rid of local hosts and programs and syndicating national shows instead. It was bought out in 2008 and taken private by Bain Capital (founded by presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who still rakes in the cash from Bain and who has remained mostly quiet on the Limbaugh issue) and Thomas H. Lee Partners.

Limbaugh's 2008 contract with Clear Channel goes through 2016, and was worth $400 million in total. Limbaugh broadcasts his show from a 24,000-square-foot mansion in Florida, and has a private jet that alone is worth $54 million.

Premiere Networks, the subsidiary of Clear Channel that distributes shows like Limbaugh's, makes money not only from advertisers, but from the stations that pay to play its programs. A Daily Kos blogger, giving instructions on how to take action against Limbaugh at local radio stations, pointed out that Limbaugh's show is probably the most expensive program the station carries. The combination of advertisers dropping out and stations ditching Rush might be enough to spur the parent company into action.

Or maybe not.

"As long as the Limbaugh show maintains its ratings and notoriety, there will be advertisers eager to utilize it," Michael Harrison, publisher of the talk radio trade magazine, Talkers, told the Christian Science Monitor. “I would imagine Clear Channel is already picking up new sponsors to replace the ones that have publicly defected and I wouldn't be surprised if some of those that have canceled come back after the dust has settled....The American advertising industry is not necessarily known for its taste or dignity.”

 In no way has Limbaugh's "free'speech been infringed upon. he can say anything he likes. The public and businesses also have a right to their free speech and to respond as they wish. Limbaugh is losing because he went too far. or at least this time among millions of hateful smears the public drew a line and said that is enough. he appeals mostly to uneducated rubes who believe the urban myths Limbaugh makes faster than Hostess can manufacture Twinkies. Limbaugh reassures these infantile man-children that all their weird imagined wrongs, conspiracies and fake patriotism are true. Rush is like a warm bottle of milk for right-wing losers. That's fine, this is supposed to be a free country, but tax payers shouldn't have to pay for it.

Conservative Republicans Move So Far to The Anti-American Extreme They Oppose Violence Against Women Act

Conservative Republicans Move So Far to The Anti-American Extreme They Oppose Violence Against Women Act

Does one really need another example of Washington gridlock? Likely not, especially if you read this blog from time to time, where obstruction of judicial nominations is noted often. But we’ll note one anyway, not for the process, but more as an example of just how ridiculous it’s all becoming.

As noted, possibly wryly by an editorial from The New York Times even in the “ultrapolarized atmosphere of Capitol Hill,” one would think that reauthorization of a once wildly bipartisan effort to combat violence against women could remain an exception to the out-of-control congressional obstructionism.

Last month, however, the Senate Judiciary Committee could not muster one Republican vote in favor of “a well-crafted reauthorization,” of the Violence Against Women Act, which has been reauthorized twice with bipartisan support since its inception in 1994. Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Michael Crapo (R-Idaho), not a member of the Judiciary Committee, are sponsoring the reauthorization measure.

Reporting for The Huffington Post, Amanda Terkel, notes that several of the measure’s enhanced features have irked conservatives. Not surprisingly increased protections for minorities, specifically for the LGBT community, Native American women and immigrants, have spurred conservative lawmakers’ opposition.

The reauthorization measure for instance includes more funding for tribal groups to prosecute domestic violence, and provides some limited jurisdiction to tribal courts to prosecute violence committed on tribal lands by those who are not living on the land or not members of the community.

As Terkel notes, Sen. Charles Grassley the Judiciary Committee Ranking Member has also complained about the reauthorization bill’s enhanced support of services for undocumented women.

Committee Chairman Leahy (pictured) blasted the opposition for thwarting a noble proposition to provide protections to a larger number of women who are daily victims of domestic violence.

Norma Gattsek, director of government relations for the Feminist Majority, also knocked Republican opposition of the reauthorization. She called it an “outrage” that Republican’s on the Senate Judiciary Committee refused to support it.

The Times’ Feb. 9 editorial said the Republican opposition appeared “driven largely by an antigay, anti-immigrant agenda.”

A group of academics, as noted by the Gender & Sexuality Law Blog, is urging reauthorization of the VAWA, albeit with a call that more actually needs to be done to confront ongoing and pervasive violence against a wide array of women.

Violence against varying groups of women, the professors explain, is having profound effects on the ability of those women to succeed in this country, and is adding to the nation’s festering economic inequality, the professors write.

The group includes Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, University of Miami School of Law, Donna Coker, University of Miami School of Law, Julie Goldscheid, CUNY Law School, Leigh Goodmark, University of Baltimore School of Law, Valli Kalei Kanuha, sociology department, University of Hawaii, James Ptacek, sociology, Suffolk University, and Deborah Weissman, UNC School of Law.

Though the professors applaud the reauthorization bill for funding for “critical services and includes important law reform that will improve women’s access to justice,” they note that it also falters.

For instance, Congress should focus more on fighting economic inequality that research shows helps domestic violence fester.

“Research shows that downward mobility and economic inequality weakens social controls in neighborhoods, giving rise to increases in domestic violence,” the professors write.

Federal legislation should, they continue, “encourage jurisdictions to link job training or job placement with batterer treatment programs, incorporate domestic violence awareness and programs within every community-based response to the economic crisis, provide more meaningful and targeted funds to help women achieve economic stability, and amend the Trade Adjustment Assistance and Workforce Investment statutes to include domestic violence screening and services.”

Among other suggestions, the professors highlight dwindling legal services funding. “Poor women of color, immigrant women and undocumented women, and Native American women face substantial bias both from service providers and courts, particularly in child abuse and neglect proceedings and in family court. It is critical that victims of domestic violence have zealous advocates who can ensure equal access to justice.”

For more information on another sticking point for conservatives, see the ACS Issue Brief on the efforts to counter domestic violence “in Indian Country by Restoring Tribal Sovereignty” by law professor Matthew L.M. Fletcher.

Fletcher, professor at Michigan State University College of Law, wrote that many violent crimes against Native American women are not prosecuted, in part because the tribal governments are unable to prosecute non-Indians.

Fletcher says the states and federal courts that do have jurisdiction are not helping the matter because “they rarely prosecute these kinds of cases due to lack of resources and other factors have not helped the lack of jurisdiction over these crimes Congress has the authority to fix this gap in the law, but has not done so.”

The conservative opposition to the VAWA reauthorization measure doesn’t bode well for the senators trying to effectively help more victims of domestic violence. 

Conservatives like to say they believe in American exceptional-ism - the idea that the USA is just a little better than everyone else. One thing we all know in our hearts and minds is that you cannot be exceptional if you lose the moral high ground. Conservatives keep pushing American values into the gutter, making it difficult to claim any moral high ground. Conservationism has become exceptional in its own sick twisted way by adhering to a philosophy that denies basic moral principles. So conservatism has just become another fake political movement that promises paradise, but ends up delivering hell.

Why Do Conservative Republicans Hate Freedom of Religion and American Tradition

Freedom of and From Religionby Bill Moyers

The president did something agile and wise the other day. And something quite important to the health of our politics. He reached up and snuffed out what some folks wanted to make into a cosmic battle between good and evil. No, said the president, we're not going to turn the argument over contraception into Armageddon, this is an honest difference between Americans, and I'll not see it escalated into a holy war. So instead of the government requiring Catholic hospitals and other faith-based institutions to provide employees with health coverage involving contraceptives, the insurance companies will offer that coverage, and offer it free.

The Catholic bishops had cast the president's intended policy as an infringement on their religious freedom; they hold birth control to be a mortal sin, and were incensed that the government might coerce them to treat it otherwise. The president in effect said: No quarrel there; no one's going to force you to violate your doctrine. But Catholics are also Americans, and if an individual Catholic worker wants coverage, she should have access to it -- just like any other American citizen. Under the new plan, she will. She can go directly to the insurer, and the religious institution is off the hook.

When the president announced his new plan, the bishops were caught flat-footed. It was so ... so reasonable. In fact, leaders of several large, Catholic organizations have now said yes to the idea. But the bishops have since regrouped, and are now opposing any mandate to provide contraceptives even if their institutions are not required to pay for them. And for their own reasons, Republican leaders in Congress have weighed in on the bishops' side. They're demanding, and will get, a vote in the Senate.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, says:

"The fact that the White House thinks this is about contraception is the whole problem. This is about freedom of religion. It's right there in the First Amendment. You can't miss it, right there in the very First Amendment to our Constitution. And the government doesn't get to decide for religious people what their religious beliefs are. They get to decide that."

But here's what Republicans don't get, or won't tell you. And what Obama manifestly does get. First, the war's already lost: 98 percent of Catholic women of child-bearing age have used contraceptives. Second, on many major issues, the bishops are on Obama's side -- not least on extending unemployment benefits, which they call "a moral obligation." Truth to tell, on economic issues, the bishops are often to the left of some leading Democrats, even if both sides are loathe to admit it. Furthermore -- and shhh, don't repeat this, even if the president already has -- the Catholic Church funded Obama's first community organizing, back in Chicago. Ah, politics.

So the battle over contraception no longer seems apocalyptic. No heavenly hosts pitted against the forces of Satan. It's a political brawl, not a crusade of believers or infidels. The president skillfully negotiated the line between respect for the religious sphere and protection of the spiritual dignity and freedom of individuals. If you had listened carefully to the speech Barack Obama made in 2009 at the University of Notre Dame, you could have seen it coming:

The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem-cell research may be rooted in an admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son's or daughter's hardships might be relieved. The question then is, "How do we work through these conflicts?"

We Americans have wrestled with that question from the beginning. Some of our forebearers feared the church would corrupt the state. Others feared the state would corrupt the church. It's been a real tug-of-war, sometimes quite ugly. Churches and religious zealots did get punitive laws passed against what they said were moral and religious evils: blasphemy, breaking the Sabbath, alcohol, gambling, books, movies, plays ... and yes, contraception. But churches also fought to end slavery, help workers organize and pass progressive laws. Of course, government had its favorites at times, for much of our history, it privileged the Protestant majority. And in my lifetime alone, it's gone back and forth on how to apply the First Amendment to ever- changing circumstances among people so different from each other. The Supreme Court, for example, first denied, then affirmed, the right of the children of Jehovah's Witnesses to refuse, on religious grounds, to salute the flag.

So here we are once again, arguing over how to honor religious liberty without it becoming the liberty to impose on others moral beliefs they don't share. Our practical solution is the one Barack Obama embraced the other day: protect freedom of religion -- and protect freedom from religion. Can't get more American than that.

Conservative Republicans do not care one bit about freedom of religion. What they care about is using the government to shove their dogma down the throat of every American. Gee, that would be fun, America transported back in time to when religious zealots hang and burned people who did not conform to the dogma of the state's official religion.

Republicans Come Out of the Closet, They Just Don't Like Anyone Having Sex, Unless its With Them

Republicans Come Out of the Closet, They Just Don't Like Anyone Having Sex, Unless its With Them

The Republicans ban women from having sex (except with them)

In 2011 America's right wing, and especially the Christian right wing, at last let slip what their problem is with contraception and abortion: it's not squeamishness, morality or a fondness for hanging outside Planned Parenthood clinics toting misspelt placards – they just don't like women having sex. At all. As Amanda Marcotte wrote this week, in 2011 the anti-choice movement "stopped trying so hard to manage mainstream perceptions of themselves as somehow just great lovers of fetal life, and are coming out with their anti-sex agenda". This was borne out in their frankly unhinged attacks on Planned Parenthood, the HPV vaccine, insurance coverage of contraception and, as I discussed last week, the puritanical mood they created that encouraged President Obama to restrict access to Plan B, or the morning-after pill, none of which have much to do with abortion and everything to do with women's temerity to have sex.

Thus, in 2012 the Republicans propose the female anti-sex bill, in which women are expressly forbidden from having sex with anyone other than the occasional lecherous politician who happens to hurl himself, bodily, sweatily, in her lucky, lucky path.

Newt Gingrich becomes the face of the family values party

And here's one Republican politician who definitely doesn't mind women having sex, as long as it's with him. And there does seem to be a surprising number of candidates for the job, considering he looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters, and his name is Newt.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure – of meeting him, I mean, of course, of meeting him – here is a crash course in the Republican party's current presidential front runner. This champion of family values cheated on his second wife with a woman 22 years younger than him at precisely the same time he was attempting to impeach Clinton for – and maybe you saw this part coming – cheating on his wife with a woman 22 years younger than him.

Gingrich claimed that his actions stemmed from "how passionately I felt about this country" and, truly, nothing says "patriotism" more clearly than taking your pants off and banging a congressional aide – as long as you're Newt Gingrich, of course. He declined to attend the wedding of his lesbian half-sister, Candace Gingrich-Jones, having referred to gay marriage as "a temporary aberration" and, really, there is no one better placed to sound off on the sanctity of the institution of marriage than Newt Gingrich. Sadly, space prevents me from getting too deeply into other subtleties of Newt's character – that he condemned Freddie Mac for its part in the housing collapse while omitting to mention that he had received $1.6m from them as a consultant, say – but let's just say that he is the perfect summation of all the ticklish and self-serving contradictions one now expects of a party that argues for tax breaks for the rich while pretending to be a friend of the working man. Newt for 2012!

Conservatives constantly betray their small government platform. Name one segment of private or personal life in which conservatives have not tried to get government to regulate, spy on or dictate about. OK, conservatives are sure the individual right for any America to dump their toxic waste on other Americans is in the Constitution. Conservatives are also sure that just about everyone - women, people of color, non-right-wing Christians, people with disabilities and everyone who exercises has fewer rights than they do.

Conservatives Force Poor Women Into More Unwanted Pregnancies

Conservatives Force Poor Women Into More Unwanted Pregnancies

In denying undeniable human nature – that people will have sex, regardless of how much moralizing they're exposed to or whether or not they receive abstinence-only education or wear “chastity rings” – the Christian right, which claims that abortion is “murder,” is doing its part to bring the long decline in the number of abortions in this country to a halt. In fact, they've succeeded. After a quarter-century-long decline in abortions -- from 29.3 per 1,000 women in 1981 to under 20 per 1,000 in 2005 -- the rate began to tick up again in the latter years of the Bush administration.

A number of factors impact those numbers. One of them is the belief that by limiting women's access to contraceptives, they'll be less likely to have sex outside of marriage. Give a high-school girl access to a condom, and get a reckless slut; deny her that access and she'll be as chaste as Doris Day until her wedding night. It's self-evident nonsense that only leads to more unintended pregnancies.

A new study (PDF) by Lawrence Finer and Mia Zolna of the Guttmacher Institute tells the tale. It found that the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States has remained relatively stable over the years – about 5 percent of women will have one each year. But those overall numbers obscure a dramatic story of racial and class division; while unintended pregnancies among women aged 15-44 whose incomes were at least double the poverty line declined by 29 percent between 1994 and 2006, among women struggling to get by beneath the poverty line they rose by 50 percent.

The sharp rise in unplanned pregnancies among low-income women – disproportionately women of color – leads to a higher rate of abortions; according to Guttmacher, 43 percent of unintended pregnancies are terminated. And with a threadbare social safety net providing scant support and the least-flexible workplaces on the planet, those who choose to bring a pregnancy to term often end up trapped in a grueling cycle of poverty. That's because of a sad truth in this country: women are punished economically for giving birth. And significantly so -- Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University found that a first child lowers a woman's earnings by 7.5 percent and a second child lowers her income by another 8 percent.

According to Guttmacher, “In contrast to the high rates among certain groups, some women in the United States are having considerable success timing and spacing their pregnancies.”

Higher-income women, white women, college graduates and married women have relatively low unintended pregnancy rates (as low as 17 per 1,000 among higher-income white women—one-third the national rate of 52 per 1,000), suggesting that women who have better access to reproductive health services, have achieved their educational goals or are in relationships that support a desired pregnancy are more likely than other women to achieve planned pregnancies and avoid those they do not want.

It also suggests that women who rely on publicly funded family planning services have seen a surge in unintended pregnancies while those more likely to have the means to buy contraceptives – or a high-quality health plan that pays for them – have had a different experience.

The study speaks to this point, noting that “family planning programs are under unprecedented attack.”

Some of these attacks appear purely ideological. For example, the House of Representatives earlier this year moved to strike all funding for Title X for the remainder of the current fiscal year... Although the Senate blocked that move, funds for the program were eventually cut by $17 million. Such cuts were disproportionately higher than those made to other programs, ultimately leaving Title X at 64% below what the program had been funded at in 1980, when inflation is taken into account...

Moreover, both in Congress and in the states, opponents of family planning are taking aim at the network of family planning providers. The funding bill approved initially by the House would have denied federal funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates, a move that ultimately was... blocked. Nonetheless, opponents of family planning have tried to emulate this approach on the state level, with efforts (some of which currently are being litigated) in five states...to either limit or deny funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates specifically or specialized family planning providers more generally.

Social conservatives have also championed “conscience clauses” allowing fundamentalist health-care providers to pick and choose which drugs and services they find sufficiently moral, and fight laws compelling insurers that cover other prescription drugs to pay for FDA-approved contraceptive drugs and devices. Again, more than four in 10 unintended pregnancies end in abortion, so whether or not they know it, the religious right is driving an increase in what they call “baby-killing.”

One really has to question the bottom line of right-wing social conservatives. Do they want fewer abortions or do they want control over women's bodies. It seems to be the latter when we study the facts.

Rick Perry Sought State Profits From Teacher Life Insurance Scheme

The 10th Amendment is sacred to right-wing conservatives except when doing so does not get them what they want

The 10th Amendment is sacred to right-wing conservatives except when doing so does not get them what they want

During the last two weeks, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, by most accounts on the brink of a presidential candidacy, has reversed himself on the question of the proper venue for dealing with the two of the hoariest cultural issues in American politics, same-sex marriage and abortion.

First, at a Republican governors meeting on July 22, he referred to the recent decision by the New York legislature to legalize gay marriage as something that was "fine with me," and said further: "That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business." But then, in a matter of days, he was performing what can only be described as a public act of penance on Christian right potentate Tony Perkins’ radio show, trumpeting his support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage nationally.

Meanwhile, on July 27, Perry took another hard-line states’ rights position, this time on abortion:

Despite holding personal pro-life beliefs, Texas Gov. Rick Perry categorized abortion as a states’ rights issue today, saying that if Roe v. Wade was overturned, it should be up to the states to decide the legality of the procedure.

"You either have to believe in the 10th Amendment or you don’t," Perry told reporters after a bill signing in Houston. "You can’t believe in the 10th Amendment for a few issues and then [for] something that doesn’t suit you say, 'We’d rather not have states decide that.'"

By August 1, though, after public criticism of Perry from anti-abortion leaders, he backtracked again and made clear his support for a federal constitutional amendment banning abortion as well.

Aside from making Perry look like a flip-flopping pol who is afraid of conservative activist groups, these incidents probably confused some folks about what the authorized "true conservative" position on these issues actually is. Do they favor states’ rights or federal domination of state policy-makers on cultural issues? And if it’s the latter, how come so much recent conservative activism on abortion and same-sex marriage has played out on the state level?

The history of cultural conservatives on these issues is very clear: They favor the maximum legal heft the political market can bear in support of their views. From their point of view, a federal constitutional ban is ideal; federal statutes would be less effective but better than state action; and state action (via either state constitutional amendments or statutes) is a useful fallback position if national bans aren’t practical. Though conservatives often vary in their sense of whether federal or state efforts are most effective at any given moment, it is hard to find conservative activists who actually think the 10th Amendent’s reservation of non-enumerated powers to the states should be dispositive on these issues, which they consider a matter of fundamental, global, eternal issues of right or wrong.

Same-sex marriage is a relatively recent issue that first exploded into the national political arena in 1993 when Hawaii courts appeared to be moving towards a ruling banning discrimination against same-sex couples in the issuance of marriage licenses. The ensuing agitation led to the enactment of the federal Defense of Marriage Act by Congress in 1996, which supposedly protected states (and the federal government) from any obligation to recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in other states, and then to a vast array of politically-driven state-level statutes, ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments banning such marriages or even civil unions and domestic partnership arrangements.

While some conservatives appeared to be happy with the idea of same-sex marriage being confined to a few liberal states, the steadily proliferation of states allowing gay marriage, along with court decisions undermining DOMA (followed by the Obama administration’s announcement that it wouldn’t pursue DOMA enforcement), has helped "traditional family" groups crack the whip among Republicans on behalf of a federal amendment. The 1996 and 2000 Republican Party platforms did not mention a federal amendment but instead simply endorsed DOMA and its enforcement. But the 2004 and 2008 platforms did endorse a federal amendment. With public opinion rapidly trending in favor of marriage equality, it has become far more common to hear Republican politicians argue against a big effort to enact a federal marriage amendment on practical grounds. In the current presidential cycle, Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich all favor a federal marriage amendment; only Ron Paul and Herman Cain have said they are opposed.

On the abortion front, the obvious difference is that federal constitutional law currently protects (to a greater or lesser degree) abortion rights, circumscribing the opportunities for anti-abortion activism. The fundamental position of the right-to-life movement, which has been enshrined in every national Republican platform since 1984 (the 1976 and 1980 platforms endorsed a constitutional amendment, but with ambiguous language about its scope) is in favor of a Human Life Amendment that would not only overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, but would establish fetal rights from the earliest moments of pregnancy (perhaps even prior to implantation of a fertilized ovum in the uterine wall, threatening many popular contraceptive methods) as a matter of federal constitutional law. There is sometimes confusion on this point, since the only constitutional amendment calling itself a “Human Life Amendment” that obtained a congressional vote, a 1983 measure that failed in the Senate, merely denied a constitutional right to abortion, which would have effectively reversed Roe and turned the issue back to the states. But the term now clearly refers to the more sweeping variety of amendment banning abortion nationally.

While the ultimate position of the anti-abortion movement and the GOP as a party (with fewer and fewer dissenters each year) couldn’t be much clearer, there has been an explosion of state-level anti-abortion activity during the last few years, much of it stimulated by the first real crack in the wall of Supreme Court protection of abortion rights, the 2007 Gonzalez v. Carhart decision that validated a federal ban on so-called "partial-birth abortion." By expressing a tolerant attitude toward restrictions that don’t directly ban abortions, and by stipulating that lawmakers (presumably at either the state or federal level) could make factual determinations about the actual necessity of certain post-viability abortions to protect the health of women or the interests of the fetus, the decision seemed to open the door to a variety of restrictions, some aimed at procedures, some at abortion providers, and some at women seeking abortions.

Very recently, conservatives in a number of states have pursued "personhood" bills, ballot initiatives and constitutional amendment proposals that would test the limits of the federal courts’ deference to legislative policy-makers on abortion, and/or set the table for total abortion bans in the case of a hypothetical future reversal of Roe. (Most conspicuously, a 2010 ballot initiative in Colorado pursuing a "personhood amendment" was routed at the polls, but another will appear on the ballot in Mississippi this November).

With much greater success, anti-abortion activists have been promoting "fetal pain" bills that seek to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy (a standard that flatly contradicts Roe’s prohibition on bans prior to the third trimester of pregnancy) on the highly questionable grounds that this is the point at which the fetus can experience pain. Such bills have been enacted in Nebraska, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, Indiana and Alabama. Legal challenges to these laws will eventually emerge, though some pro-choice advocates fear a rollback of federal constitutional abortion rights and note that only 1.5 percent of abortions occur after 20 weeks.

Lest anyone think the fetal pain bills reflect a retreat from the right-to-life movement’s commitment to a national "solution" to abortion, it’s noteworthy that the pro-life group the Susan B. Anthony List recently pressed on presidential candidates a pledge that included support for a federal fetal pain statute. Candidates Bachmann, Pawlenty, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul signed on to it while Romney, Huntsman and Cain declined. (Romney, for his part, did not mention the fetal pain issue in his objections to the pledge.)

Since he is not a candidate just yet, Rick Perry hasn’t had to make up his mind about a federal fetal pain law. But given his recent experience, he is likely to deal with future demands from the Christian right and other cultural conservatives by simply saying: "Where do I sign?"

Conservatism could be said to be that slate of issues wrapped up in a ball of hypocrisy, narcissism, hatred of women and spoiled brat syndrome. They want what they want. There really is no guiding political philosophy like there is for liberalism - the foundation for the establishment of American democracy.

15-Year-Old Girl Faces Life in Prison for a Miscarriage? Why Conservatives Are Criminalizing Pregnant Women

15-Year-Old Girl Faces Life in Prison for a Miscarriage? Why Conservatives Are Criminalizing Pregnant Women

Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.


"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaignNational Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."

Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in a prison cell in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On 23 December she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.

Shuai was rushed to hospital and survived, but she was 33 weeks pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.

In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state's "chemical endangerment" law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes.

Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way. During her pregnancy her fetus was diagnosed with possible Down's syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination, which Kimbrough declined as she is not in favour of abortion.

The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth.

Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with "chemical endangerment" of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.

"That shocked me, it really did," Kimbrough said. "I had lost a child, that was enough."

She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which if she loses will see her begin a 10-year sentence behind bars. "I'm just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids," she said. "They say I'm a criminal, how do I answer that? I'm a good mother."

Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalization of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs' case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi's highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.

"If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is," Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.

What is it exactly that validates the Republican claim that are against abusive big government. Republicans used big government and secrecy to sell arms to the Iranians during the Reagan years. They used the power and pulpit of big government to sell the nation lies about Iraq and WMD. Now they're using big government to persecute women for personal behavior. And apparently in some instances when they need evidence they just make stuff up.