Buh Bye

Anti-abortion firebrand Tim Murphy (R-PA) was caught pressuring his mistress to get an abortion.

First, he announced that he would not be running for reelection, and now he has resigned from Congress

Rep. Tim Murphy said Thursday that he will resign from Congress this month, a day after the eight-term Pennsylvania Republican announced that he would not seek reelection amid a personal scandal.

“Upon further discussion with my family, I have made the decision to resign my position” effective Oct. 21, Murphy wrote in a letter to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan. “I am grateful for the opportunity to have served the people of southwestern Pennsylvania and to have worked with the talented and dedicated men and women of the United States Congress.”

………

The resignation of Murphy, a clinical psychologist, comes after a news report claimed that the married Republican had asked a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair to get an abortion.

Alpha Mike Foxtrot, Mr. Murphy, Alpha Mike Foxtrot.

Republican Family Values

Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA 18), a prominent anti-abortion wingnut, has been caught trying to convince his mistress to get an abortion.

A text message sent in January to U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy by a woman with whom he had an extra-marital relationship took him to task for an anti-abortion statement posted on Facebook from his office's public account.

"And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options," Shannon Edwards, a forensic psychologist in Pittsburgh with whom the congressman admitted last month to having a relationship, wrote to Mr. Murphy on Jan. 25, in the midst of an unfounded pregnancy scare.

A text from Mr. Murphy’s cell phone number that same day in response says, "I get what you say about my March for life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don't write any more. I will."

The congressman has been lauded by the Family Research Council, for his stance on abortion, as well as for family values, generally. He also has been endorsed by LifePAC, which opposes abortion rights, and is a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus, an affiliation that is often cited by his office.

As Atrios notes, "I am sure that there isn't a single anti-abortion male who would object to an abortion if an inconvenient pregnancy happened." (This is true of many of the women as well.)

The article actually covers a whole litany of what is called "Mishugas" by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, including an office environment that his chief of staff described as, "A hostile workplace in which Mr. Murphy repeatedly denigrated employees, threatened them and created a state of terror."

Hail Satan

How could I not invoke Monty Python?

In response to a Texas law requiring burial or cremation for fetuses, the Church of Satan is launching a campaign to have its supporters mail semen covered items to the governor and legislature:

Earlier this week, Texas officials finalized a set of rules requiring funeral services for fetuses in what many see as a transparent and particularly callous ploy to restrict abortion access in the state. In response, Satanic Temple spokesperson Jex Blackmore has announced plans to engage in a crass counter-attack.

Having mailed a ejaculate-covered sock to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, along with a handwritten note that says, "These r babies. Plz bury," Blackmore is publicly encouraging others to send Governor Abbott semen-encrusted materials of their own (or, for those wary of sending bodily fluids through the mail, items coated in non-seminal-but-semen-esque substances).

According to Blackmore, this campaign, which is evocatively titled "Cumrags for Congress," is meant to expose the absurdity of forcing people to treat fetal tissue as human remains. (Lucien Greaves, another spokesperson for the organization, tells Broadly that the campaign isn't officially endorsed or encouraged by the Satanic Temple.) "The concept of the state mandating a non-medical ritual as part of the abortion procedure is offensive and crude, essentially demanding that all citizens adopt the moral, philosophical opinion that fetal tissue is comparable to a living human," she tells Broadly. "Fetal tissue has the 'potential' to become a human, but is not a human yet, does not have consciousness, and cannot exist without the mother host." She points out that semen and ova have the potential to become human life, yet "we do not mourn every ejaculation."

I am not a usually big fan of guerilla theater, but the Church of Satan has been doing some magnificent trolling lately.

Not The Onion

In attempting defend their antiabortion law, the Kansas Solicitor General has cited Dred Scott v. Sanford:

The question of what's the matter with Kansas has become even deeper and darker since Governor Sam Brownback completed his project of turning the entire state into a lab rat for bad economic theories, and since the state elected Kris Kobach, the big daddy of voter-suppression—and of demanding that brown people carry their papers at all times—to be its secretary of state. But now the state's Solicitor General, Steven McAllister, is getting into the act in a spectacular way.

………

We now present a portion of the latter brief.

Courts across the country have recognized that "[t]he Declaration of Independence is a statement of ideals, not law." Schifanelli v. U.S. Gov't, 1988 WL 138496, at *1 (4th Cir. Dec. 22, 1988). See also Swepi, LP v. Mora Cty., N.M., 81 F. Supp. 3d 1075, 1172 (D.N.M. 2015) (same); Minyard v. Walsh, 2014 WL 1029835, at *4 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 17, 2014) ("Claim 4's assertion of a violation of Plaintiff's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not cognizable. Those principles, described in the Declaration of Independence, do not guarantee enforceable rights."); Black v. Simpson, 2008 WL 544458, at *2 (W.D. Ky. Feb. 27, 2008) ("There is no private right of action to enforce the Declaration of Independence."); Borzych v. Frank, 2006 WL 3254497, at *8 (W.D. Wis. Nov. 9, 2006) ("the Declaration of Independence is not binding law"); Coffey v. United States, 939 F. Supp. 185, 191 (E.D.N.Y.1996) ("While the Declaration of Independence states that all men are endowed certain unalienable rights including 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,' it does not grant rights that may be pursued through the judicial system."). See also Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 407 (1856)…

Wait. What was that again?

See also Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 407 (1856)…

Holy cow. The state of Kansas has a lawyer citing Dred Scott in support of its position. In defense of a law aimed at limiting a woman's right to choose. What in the fck is the matter with Kansas?

Dred Freaking Scott!

I am not a lawyer, nor am I a legal scholar, although I do function as one here in the shebeen. But there's a nice shiny nickel for anyone who can tell me the last time anyone cited that monstrous ruling in support of anything. Jesus, these people.

(emphasis original)

This is f%$#ed up and sh%$.

Women of American: 1 — The State of Texas: 0

The Supreme Court just ruled that Texas' antiabortion law is unconstitutional:

Putting the right to abortion back on the same constitutional footing the Supreme Court laid down nearly a quarter-century ago, a divided Supreme Court on Monday swept away new forms of state restrictions on the way clinics can function. Together with recent refusals by the Court to allow states to narrow the scope of the abortion right itself, the new ruling in Whole Woman’s Health Clinic v. Hellerstedt thwarted a wave of new laws against women’s choice to end pregnancy.

………

The Casey decision had partly reaffirmed the basic abortion rights ruling of 1973, Roe v. Wade, but still protected a wide range of choice for a women to seek an abortion up to “viability” — the point at which the fetus would be capable of living if delivered from the woman’s body. Many state legislatures have recently tried to ban abortions before that point, but the Supreme Court has refused to hear defenses of those new laws, and Breyer’s opinion noted that the Court still follows the 1992 standard.

At issue in the new case, named for an abortion clinic in San Antonio, were two parts of a Texas law (“H.B. 2”) passed by the legislature three years ago. Both provisions were ruled unconstitutional Monday: a requirement that any doctor performing an abortion have a privilege to admit patients to a regulate hospital within thirty miles of the clinic; and a requirement that every abortion clinic’s facilities be upgraded to equal those of a surgical center.

Unlike the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the five-Justice majority refused to accept the word of the Texas legislature that both of the measures it enacted would protect women’s health. The task of judging whether a law puts an unconstitutional burden on a woman’s right to abortion, the new ruling declared firmly, belongs with the courts, not the legislatures.

Both of the restrictions in H.B. 2, the Court declared, put an undue burden on a woman’s access to abortion, and thus cannot stand. Although the Court’s opinion never once questioned the motives of the state legislature, even though challengers to the two restrictions had argued that the health-and-safety argument was a cover for anti-abortion sentiment, his opinion was filled with findings that the legislation would do just the opposite, and imperil the health of pregnant women.

I expected a 4-4 tie.

There are about 20 states where new abortion restrictions are now likely to be reversed.

Good news today.

Chemical Coat Hangers

In Texas, women are going to Mexico to buy chemicals to induce n abortion, because it is next to impossible to get a safe abortion in Texas:

Susanna was young, single, broke and pregnant in southern Texas where, thanks to the state's strict laws, her chances of getting a surgical abortion at a clinic were slim to none.

So she did what an estimated 100,000 women or more in Texas have done - had a self-induced abortion.

With the help of a friend, some online instructions and quick dash across the Mexican border for some pills, she addressed the issue of unwanted pregnancy in a state where women are finding abortion services too expensive and too far away.

Restrictive laws took hold in Texas in 2013, forcing so many clinic closings that fewer than 20 remain to serve 5.4 million women of reproductive age.

The Texas legislature sees The Handmaiden's Tale as a blueprint for the file.

Have a Nice Warm Cup of Go F%$# Yourself

I am talking to Charles Camosy, of course, who is arguing that the problem with the Democratic Party is  that it is not friendly enough to people who want to criminalize abortion.

In 1964, the same sorts of people were saying that the Democratic Party needed to accommodate the sensibilities of segregationists.

F%$# that, and F%$# you, Mr. Carmosy.

You do not capitulate to tyranny or evil.

Your Daily Schadenfreude

Under pressure from the Texas Governor's Office, the Harris County prosecutor's office convened a grand jury to investigate the bogusly edited video from the so called "Center for Medical Progress" that alleged that Planned Parenthood sold fetal tissue.

They came back with indictments ……… of the antiabortion Taliban that created the video:

A grand jury here that was investigating accusations of misconduct against Planned Parenthood has instead indicted two abortion opponents who made undercover videos of the organization.

Prosecutors in Harris County said one of the leaders of the Center for Medical Progress — an anti-abortion group that made secretly recorded videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials trying to illegally profit from the sale of fetal tissue — had been indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record, a felony, and on a misdemeanor charge related to purchasing human organs.

That leader, David Daleiden, 26, the director of the center, had posed as a biotechnology representative to infiltrate Planned Parenthood affiliates and surreptitiously record his efforts to procure tissue for research. Another center employee, Sandra Merritt, was indicted on a felony charge of tampering with a governmental record.

………

On Monday, the Harris County district attorney, Devon Anderson, said in a statement that grand jurors had cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing.

………

The case here started in August, when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican and an outspoken opponent of abortion and Planned Parenthood, asked Ms. Anderson to open a criminal investigation into the organization. His request came after the release of an undercover video recorded at a Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast office in Houston with a research official for the organization. Mr. Patrick said the video showed the group “discussing the gruesome and barbaric work of Planned Parenthood and what appears to be its profiteering from selling body parts from aborted babies.”

………

This month in federal court in San Francisco, Planned Parenthood sued the center, Mr. Daleiden and other abortion opponents involved in the videos. The suit accused them of engaging in a three-year criminal enterprise to target the group.

“These people broke the law to spread malicious lies about Planned Parenthood in order to advance their extreme anti-abortion political agenda,” Eric Ferrero, a spokesman for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement Monday. “As the dust settles and the truth comes out, it’s become totally clear that the only people who engaged in wrongdoing are the criminals behind this fraud, and we’re glad they’re being held accountable.”

In making the videos, Mr. Daleiden and others have been accused of setting up a fake company called Biomax Procurement Services, creating fake identities and claiming to be part of a legitimate provider of fetal tissue to researchers. The charge of tampering with a governmental record appeared to be related to Mr. Daleiden’s and Ms. Merritt’s use of fake ID cards.

“We know that they used fake IDs that had their real photographs but fake names and fake addresses purported to be issued by the state of California,” said Josh Schaffer, a Houston lawyer who represents Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in the Harris County criminal investigation. Mr. Daleiden and Ms. Merritt presented those IDs to security at the Planned Planned office to gain entry to the building. “They never denied that they presented a fake ID,” Mr. Schaffer said.

Mr. Schaffer said he believed the misdemeanor charge stemmed from laws prohibiting offers to buy fetal tissue. He said that following the meeting with Planned Parenthood officials in Houston, Mr. Daleiden sent an email to them offering to buy fetal tissue for $1,600 per sample.

“It does not surprise me that a grand jury that chose to correctly apply the law to the evidence that was presented would return this result,” Mr. Schaffer said. “The written charges have not been released publicly yet, so at this point I am working on my knowledge of the investigation.”

I am so amused by all of this.

Considering the nature of their actions, I'm thinking that Homeland Security should put Daleiden and his co-conspirators on the no fly list, but that is probably a pipe dream.

Their Goal Is to Punish Women. Mission Accomplished

One of the not so tightly kept secrets of the abortion criminalization movement is that they want to ban birth control as well.

The reason for this is because they want to punish women for their sexuality, and now a study shows that when they get what they want, they succeed in punishing women:

In the US, there are many laws limiting when and how women can receive abortions. But there is almost no research on what happens to women who seek out abortions and are denied them. Now a team of health researchers at the University of California, San Francisco has completed a longitudinal study of a group they call "Turnaways," women who tried and failed to get abortions due to local laws. The researchers found that women who received abortions were over six times as likely to have and achieve positive life plans than Turnaways.

The Turnaway study

To gather their unusual Turnaway data set, the researchers spent two years interviewing 956 women who sought abortions at 30 different abortion clinics around the US. 182 of them were turned away. All the women were interviewed a week after being turned away or receiving an abortion and then again a year later to assess the longer-term outcomes of their experiences. The team has also just completed interviews with the women that will reveal where they are five years after being turned away or not.

In its first analysis of turnaway data published two years ago, the team found that women seek out abortions for complicated reasons, with the most common being a feeling of financial unpreparedness. This earlier analysis also showed that 86 percent of turnaways chose to keep their children, and 67 percent of them would up below the poverty line a year later. By comparison, 56 percent of women granted abortions in the study were below the poverty line a year later. This finding lent credibility to many turnaways' concerns that being financially unprepared would cause problems down the line.

………

Only 53 percent of the goals were aspirational among turnaways. Women who received abortions had roughly 85 percent aspirational plans. Women who had children but did not parent them had 80 percent aspirational plans. The upshot was that turnaways who kept their children had far fewer positive goals for the future than their counterparts who received abortions.

Of all the goals measured, 47 percent were achieved. There was little difference between turnaways and women who had abortions when it came to achieving their goals. However, as the researchers write in their paper, women who received abortions "were significantly more likely to have both an aspirational plan and to have achieved it" than turnaways who kept their children. Upadhyay was quick to point out that overall, most of the women's goals were aspirational. "They all had high hopes," she said. But Turnaways "were much more likely to have negative goals."

What this latest phase in the Turnaway study reveals is that not having access to abortion can negatively impact women's lives. As Upadhyay and her colleagues put it in their paper, "Whether or not a person has aspirational plans is indicative of her hope for the future. Without such plans or hopes, she misses out on opportunities to achieve milestones in life."

Put bluntly, the Turnaways had fewer hopes, so they had fewer reasons to push themselves toward what they defined as better lives.

Destroying these women's lives is one of the goals of the anti-abortion movement.

You won't ever hear them say it, but it is clear from what they do.

And Some Good News in the Justice Front

The Federal Court just cut the antichoice liars at the so called pregnancy crisis centers a new one:

Two federal judges in California delivered a one-two punch to anti-choice activists at crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) last week by declining to block the state’s new reproductive disclosure law.

The law, set to go into effect January 1, requires a public notice about access to abortion and birth control at pregnancy-related clinics statewide. CPCs have sought to block the California Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency (FACT) Act, arguing in a flurry of lawsuits that it violates their constitutional rights to 
freedom of speech, assembly, and free exercise of religion.

But federal judges at courts in the Northern and Eastern Districts of California rejected requests for a preliminary injunction on the law in separate decisions handed down Friday.

Judge Jeffrey S. White in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California held that the three CPCs behind one of the suits fell short of the “high standard” required for a temporary injunction, and “failed to demonstrate that they would face irreparable injury.”

The licensed clinics—the Livingwell Medical Clinic, the Pregnancy Care Center of the North Coast, and the Confidence Pregnancy Center—offer free pregnancy services like pregnancy testing and ultrasounds, espouse Christian beliefs, and oppose abortion rights, according to court documents. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the CPCs by the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based anti-choice legal organization.

Judge Kimberly Mueller of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California also rejected a request for a temporary injunction brought by the Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute, which represented three other CPCs. The 59-page decision held that “enjoining the act would interfere with the public interest regarding the health of state residents.”

A recent California undercover investigation found that CPCs, generally staffed by anti-choice activists, discourage patients from having abortions by routinely lying to women about their options. Other investigations found that CPCs convince women to remain pregnant with false promises of financial aid and housing.

The CPCs that brought the Northern District lawsuit contend they will not comply with the law, a fact that White noted in his decision: “Indeed, Plaintiffs maintain that their speech will not in fact be chilled.”

Operators of CPCs have said they’d rather close than comply with the state disclosure law.

Hopefully, we will see some arrests for fraud (they take money under false pretenses) and contempt of court in addition to their offices being terminated with extreme prejudice.

Sharia Law in Murfreesboro, Tennessee

It looks like the religious nut-jobs in the Murfreesboro district attorney's office have turned a personal tragedy into an The Handmaiden's Tale by charging a woman who attempted to abort her fetus with first degree murder:

A woman who attempted to perform an abortion with a coat hanger six months into her pregnancy has been indicted on a first-degree attempted murder charge, Murfreesboro Police reported.

Anna Yocca, 31, of 1939 Swindon Circle, was arrested Wednesday at Juvenile Court by Detective Tommy Roberts after the December session of the Rutherford County grand jury issued an indictment on the charge, according to the report. An employee at the Amazon fulfillment center in Lebanon, she was booked into jail on a $200,000 bond.

Roberts began investigating the case in September when evidence showed Yocca went to her upstairs bathroom, filled the tub with water, got in and tried to "self-abort" her pregnancy using a coat hanger, the report shows.

She became "alarmed and concerned for her safety" when she saw a great deal of blood in the tub, and her boyfriend took her to St. Thomas Rutherford Hospital emergency room. From there, she was transported to St. Thomas Mid-Town in Nashville where staff members saved "Baby Yocca," the report shows.

This is the world that anti-abortion forces want.

We've already seen a woman jailed to compel her to carry her fetus to term, a woman charged with murder for taking an abortion drug, prosecuting a mother for helping her daughter obtain an abortion, and passing laws making some miscarriages murder, among other cases in the past few years.

These folks won't be satisfied until every woman in America is back in chains.

(on edit)

The irony here is that a few years back, Murfreesboro was trying to prevent a mosque from being built in the area.

Taliban, Talibaptist, there is no difference.

Because the Anti-Abortion Movement is Al About Punishing Women for Having Sex, Not the Sanctity of Life

Fertility Clinics Destroy Embryos All the Time. Why Aren't Conservatives after Them?

This has been other episode of simple answers to simple questions.

Least Surprising News of the Day

There has been a study of the now infamous Planned Parenthood vids cobbled together by right wing activists, and has determined that the videos were deliberately deceptively edited:

Planned Parenthood on Thursday gave congressional leaders and a committee that is investigating allegations of criminality at its clinics an analysis it commissioned concluding that “manipulation” of undercover videos by abortion opponents make those recordings unreliable for any official inquiry.


“A thorough review of these videos in consultation with qualified experts found that they do not present a complete or accurate record of the events they purport to depict,” the analysis of a private research company said.

………

Planned Parenthood denies the charges and says that the videos were deceptively and misleadingly edited.

The analysis was by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research and corporate intelligence company, and its co-founder Glenn Simpson, a former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

………

A transcription service was hired to transcribe the videos, without being told that Planned Parenthood was the client, to compare with transcripts publicized by the anti-abortion group. That comparison, the analysis said, showed “substantive omissions” in the group’s version. Mr. Simpson was assisted in the analysis by several others, including a video forensics expert, Grant Fredericks, and a television producer, Scott Goldie.

According to the investigation, the reviewers could not determine “the extent to which C.M.P.’s undisclosed edits and cuts distort the meaning of the encounters the videos purport to document.”

But, it said, “the manipulation of the videos does mean they have no evidentiary value in a legal context and cannot be relied upon for any official inquiries” unless C.M.P. provides investigators with its original material, and that material is independently authenticated as unaltered.

This is exactly the same thing that happened with James O'Keefe and Acorn.

The 'Phants are threatening to shut down the government to defund Planned Parenthood.

The response to this threat should be 3 words, "Bring it on."

Never stop your enemy from stepping on their own dick:  Planned Parenthood is one of the most popular organizations in America, and the shutdown crap has never worked.

Why Alabama is a Punch Line

Alabama is seeking to terminate the parental rights of a woman incarcerated in Lauderdale County, Alabama so has to force her to carry a child to term that she wants to abort:

Alabama officials are currently seeking to prevent a pregnant prison inmate from obtaining a legal abortion by stripping her of her parental rights, in a case where a lawyer has been appointed to represent the interests of her fetus.

An unnamed woman, who is referred to in court documents only as Jane Doe, is asking for permission to travel to Huntsville to end her pregnancy. She says she was unable to get an abortion before she was taken into custody and is now feeling desperate. “I am very distraught, and do not want to be forced to carry this pregnancy to term,” she wrote.

Jane Doe — who has to get permission from the court to be transported to the nearest clinic because prison officials consider abortion to be a non-emergency procedure — is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which argues that it would be “cruel and unusual punishment” for the state of Alabama to deny her constitutional right to abortion.

Now, as Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly prepares to argue against this request, he is asking the court to strip Doe of her parental rights so that she will no longer have the right to end her pregnancy. In a hearing to determine the outcome of the case, which is expected to be decided by Friday, the state court appointed an attorney — known as a “guardian ad litem” — to serve on behalf of Doe’s fetus.

“It appears to me that what the state is attempting to do is turn Jane Doe into a vessel, and control every aspect of her life, forcing her to give birth to a baby, which she has decided she does not want to do,” Randall Marshall, one of Doe’s attorneys, told the Huffington Post. “The case has certainly moved to this new dimension, but welcome to Alabama.”

Yeah, welcome to Alabama.

The kind of gleeful evil doing by the District Attorney here is of biblical proportions.  We are talking Amalek and Sodom and Gemorra here.

This ratf%$# is trying to destroy a helpless (she is pregnant and in jail) woman to inflict his warped morality.

Why doesn't DA Connolly go to Syria and fight for ISIS, they are clearly his ideological bedfellows.

And the Handmaiden's Tale Progresses

First, we have the 5^th circuit court of appeals upholding Texas extreme abortion restrictions, and in Georgia, we have a woman charged with murder for taking an abortion inducing drug.

The war on women continues apace.

Some People Use The Handmaiden's Tale as a Manual

And they seem to be overwhelmingly Republicans:

Late Thursday night, the House of Representatives voted in favor of “H.J.Res. 43: Disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act of 2014.” If enacted, the legislation would make using employer-based health insurance for in vitro fertilization or birth control pills a fireable offense in Washington, D.C.

Planned Parenthood has been mobilizing its network against the bill. “Your boss shouldn’t be able to fire you for using birth control,” the organization states.

………

Also on the floor last night, Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) dubbed H.J.Res. 43 “Hobby Lobby on steroids,” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) called for D.C. statehood from the house floor, and numerous Republicans defended “religious freedom.”

………

With support from 225 Republicans and 3 Democrats, the U.S. Congress moved to overturn a democratically enacted law in the District of Columbia for the first time in more than 20 years.

As an FYI, the Democrats voting for this are:

• Dan Lipinski (IL-3)
• Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
• Colin Peterson (MN-7)

The distinguished gentleman from Minnesota is one of the founders of the Blue Dogs, Cuellar was Rick Perry's and George W. Bush's "Democrat" BFF, and Dan Lipinski is a right wing nut-job who got his job by nepotism when the Illinois Democratic party cleared the primary for him.

These are folks that the Democrats would be better off without, even if these seats were taken by Republicans.

They all need aggressive primary challenges, because there needs to be a certain level of party discipline, even in the Democratic party.

Women, Hit Your Congressman with a Clue Stick

After decades in politics, Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) has come up with the revolutionary idea that he should  actually talk to women about reproductive rights:

There are many factors involved when a woman decides to end a pregnancy, and over the past 14 years in political office, I have gained a deeper understanding of the complexities and emotions that accompany the difficult decisions that women and families make when confronted with these situations.

I was elected to political office at a young age, and being raised in a Catholic household, always considered myself pro-life. My faith is important to me, and like many Catholics I strive to adhere to its principles, especially one of the essential and highest teachings of “judge not, lest ye be judged.” I’ve heard firsthand from women of all ages, races and socioeconomic backgrounds about the circumstances and hardships that accompany this personal choice, which we should not judge.

I have sat with women from Ohio and across the nation and heard them talk about their varying experiences: abusive relationships, financial hardship, health scares, rape and incest. There are endless stories about women in troubling situations — the woman who became pregnant and has a violent spouse; the woman who lost her job and is unable to afford another child; or the underage girl worried she’ll be thrown out of her house if she reveals her pregnancy.

These are just a few of the many stories I have heard. Each of these women lived through difficult and personal situations with few options and no clear path to take. This is why there is no easy answer.

These women gave me a better understanding of how complex and difficult certain situations can become. And while there are people of good conscience on both sides of this argument, one thing has become abundantly clear to me: the heavy hand of government must not make this decision for women and families.

As my friend and colleague U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro says, “Nobody celebrates abortion.” No woman makes this decision lightly. Each and every American deserves the right to deal with these difficult situations in consultation with their families, close friends or religious advisers. No federal or state law banning abortion can honestly and fairly take into account the various circumstances that make each decision unique.

Where government does have the ability to play a significant role is in giving women and families the tools they need to prevent unintended pregnancies by expanding education and access to contraception. We must get past the ignorance, fear and — yes — discrimination against women that lead to restrictions on contraception and age-appropriate sex education.

Only then can we hope to continue to make significant advances in what should be our true, shared objective: reducing the number of unintended pregnancies, which make up the vast majority of abortions. Isn’t that a simple approach on which we all could agree? This is not a partisan issue, but instead a personal one.

………

Today, I am a 41-year-old father and husband whose feelings on this issue have changed. I have come a long way since being a single, 26-year-old state senator, and I am not afraid to say that my position has evolved as my experiences have broadened, deepened and become more personal. And while I have deep respect for people on both sides of this conversation, I would be abandoning my own conscience and judgment if I held a position that I no longer believed appropriate.

I have come to believe that we must trust women and families — not politicians — to make the best decision for their lives.

I think that a part of this is that he realizes that his long held support for criminalizing abortion is a losing proposition, a part of this is some maturity that comes with time, and part of this is that he realized that his former anti-abortion fellow travelers don't just want to ban abortion, they want to ban all forms of birth control, because they want to punish women for having sex.

In either case, it is an indication that the Democratic party is becoming a less friendly place for those would restrict a women's reproductive choices, which is a good thing.

I am a Cynic

I think that the Supreme Court issuing an injunction against the most egregious parts of the Texas anti-abortion laws is just a ploy to push the political effects until after the midterms:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed more than a dozen Texas abortion clinics to reopen, blocking a state law that had imposed strict requirements on abortion providers. Had the law been allowed to stand, it would have caused all but eight of the state’s abortion clinics to close and would have required many women to travel more than 150 miles to the nearest abortion provider.

The Supreme Court’s order — five sentences long and with no explanation of the justices’ reasoning — represents an interim step in a legal fight that is far from over. But abortion rights advocates welcomed what they said was the enormous practical impact of the move. Had the clinics been forced to remain closed while appeals went forward, they said, they might never have reopened.

State officials said the law’s requirements were needed to protect women’s health. Abortion providers said the regulations were expensive, unnecessary and a ruse meant to put many of them out of business.

This is just a temporary injunction, and I'm thinking that either Roberts or Kennedy (Scalia, Alito, and Thomas voted against) will flip once it is sufficiently removed from the midterm elections.

Scott Walker is Betting that the People of Wisconsin are Unbelievably Stupid

The goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, as the inestimable Charlie Pierce calls him, is trying to sell himself as a pro choice candidate:

How do you know Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is in serious re-election trouble? He just tried to declare himself pro-choice.

Of course, he didn’t use those words specifically. What the Republican governor did do, however, is attempt to repaint himself as someone who is not an extremist when it comes to abortion and birth control, despite a decade in politics that shows otherwise.

It is impossible to deny Walker has an extensive political career promoted on blocking the right to abortion and birth control access. Walker’s legacy on women has been clear: He proposed cuts to Badgercare, the health care insurance program for low-income Wisconsinites; defunding Well Women programs, which provide free preventative health care screenings to women; limiting birth control access to teens; signing anti-abortion legislation that was so restrictive that it ended all medication abortion in the state (before a court overturned it) and later attempted to closed nearly every abortion clinic. He has been a one-man war on women. Signing bills on holidays to hide his actions doesn’t change that.

Now, in the waning days of his re-election campaign, all of these moves are coming back to haunt him. Walker and his Democratic challenger, Mary Burke, continue to be tied in the polls, and, when it comes to women voters, Burke is leading him by a whopping 14 points.

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Walker, too, has been on a personal crusade against reproductive autonomy since he stepped into office, and yes, that means birth control, too. In the most recent example he attempted to use the Hobby Lobby decision to ban birth control coverage in Wisconsin’s own insurance plans, which is mandatory under the state’s contraceptive equity law. Pile that on top of the efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, quest that has shut down a number of clinics across the state that did not offer any abortion services, and it’s clear that contraception is just as big of a target to him as abortion is.

The question here is a simple one:  Whether or not the people of Wisconsin are so stupid that they cannot be trusted to cut their own meat, or not.

Anyone who buys Walker's line of baloney about his seeing abortion and contraception as an issue between a woman and her doctor should really be kept away from pointy objects.

The Handmaiden's Tale, Alabama Edition

In the can you top this world of Talibaptist abortion restrictions in the United States, Alabama has started giving legal counsel to the embryo, but not the girl:

Ever since Sandra Day O’Connor resigned from the Supreme Court in 2006, anti-abortion activists have been playing a game of chicken with the justices. On one side are the activists, who want to push anti-abortion laws as far as they can without getting slapped down by the court. On the other side is Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wants to let states make abortions harder and harder to obtain without actually outlawing them. For more than 20 years, Kennedy has approved literally every anti-abortion law he’s encountered, leading some liberals to fear he’d finally abandoned Roe v. Wade altogether.

Soon, however, Kennedy may finally be forced to balk. On Tuesday, the ACLU sued to halt an extreme new Alabama law targeting minors who are seeking abortions. The measure is very clearly designed to degrade and humiliate teenage girls, far beyond what any state has previously attempted (and what the Supreme Court has allowed). Alabama already requires a minor to secure parental consent before obtaining an abortion, but if she cannot—if, for instance, it was her parent who raped and impregnated her—she can ask a judge to bypass this requirement. The new law takes that judicial bypass and turns it on its head, permitting the judge to appoint a lawyer to represent the minor’s fetus and advocate for its best interests. The judge may bring the district attorney into court to question the minor. And, worst of all, the district attorney can call witnesses to testify against the minor—and in favor of her fetus.

All of this is quite heinous. But it gets much worse. If the judge rules in favor of the minor, the district attorney is now permitted by law to appeal the ruling and make his case all over again to a higher court. By letting the district attorney call an endless number of witnesses then appeal an unfavorable ruling, the law creates a loophole that could let the state delay a minor’s abortion to the point that she couldn’t even legally receive one. (In Alabama, that’s 20 weeks, unless there is a threat to the mother’s health.) If Alabama gets away with this law, in other words, it’ll have effectively nullified young women’s constitutional right to an abortion.

I would also note that parental notification laws, in more than a few of the cases, means that the girl has to ask permission from her rapist.

This is undiluted evil, and should no more be compromised with than we would with Osama bin Laden,