Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s budget would add $10.7 trillion to the debt and reduce federal revenues to just 15 percent of GDP, exploding the “prairie fire of debt” Romney warned the nation about in a speech last week in Iowa.

Romney isn’t the only one decrying the debt while ignoring that his budget would make it worse. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), in an appearance on Fox News this morning, made the laughable claim that a budget that explodes the debt will simultaneously prevent a debt crisis:

RYAN: More to the point, though, the kind of budget Mitt Romney is talking about is one that prevents a debt crisis.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: Paul Ryan Claims Romney Budget, Which Adds $10 Trillion To Debt, Will ‘Prevent A Debt Crisis’ | ThinkProgress.

Among Mitt Romney’s timid responses this week after President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality was an admission that he was “fine” with same-sex couples adopting children, saying, “that’s something that people have a right to do.” But by Friday afternoon, he was already backing away from that position, suggesting that he merely “acknowledges” that many states offer same-sex adoption:

ROMNEY: Actually, I think all states but one allow gay adoption. So that’s a position which has been decided by most of the state legislatures, including the one in my state some time ago. So I simply acknowledge the fact that gay adoption is legal in all states but one.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney’s Support Of Same-Sex Adoption Lasts One Day | ThinkProgress.

The GOP-led House’s version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) would not only strip away Senate-passed protections for undocumented, LGBT, and Native American victims, it also contains a dangerous provision that violates an undocumented victim’s confidentiality by allowing immigration officials to speak with, and ask for evidence from, his or her abuser.

Visas offered to undocumented victims of domestic violence are called “U Visas” and the Senate version of the bill expanded the number of U Visas offered to victims. The House bill not only strips out the additional visas, it also contains a new provision enabling government officials to inform “the accused” that their victim blew the whistle on their abuse:

During the adjudication of each petition under this paragraph, an investigative officer from a local service center of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services shall conduct an in-person interview of the alien who filed the petition. The investigative officer may also gather other evidence and interview other witnesses, including the accused United States citizen or lawful permanent resident, if they consent to be interviewed.

Full Story Here: House GOP Would Let Domestic Abusers Know Their Victims Called For Help | ThinkProgress.

At a fundraiser in Virginia last night, Mitt Romney touted his experinece running the Salt Lake City Olympic Games in 2002 — a familiar refrain — but also introduced a new rhetorical line about something more specific: lapel pins. He told a story about the “We Stand United” American flag pins he commissioned for the games, which took place just months after the terror attacks on 9/11. Romney touted his creation of the pins as a means to explain how he hopes to bring Americans together:

ROMNEY: And so we created a little pin and we notified people that we’re now going to be selling these pins and the proceeds are going to go [to charity]. … I just remember going downstairs after it was announced — we were in a big, tall skyscraper in Salt Lake City, and it must have been next door I think where they were selling these pins, and there was a line all the way down the street.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney Commissioned Pro-America Pins, Made Them In China.

A radio personality in Cleveland is facing tremendous backlash after telling a father that he should get one of his male friends to rape his daughter to force her to turn straight.

In response to an email from a father who suspected his daughter was gay after discovering her kissing another girl, DJ Dominic Deiter declared on the air that “You should get one of your friends to screw your daughter straight.”

You read that correctly. An apparently anti-gay radio personality told a father that he should arrange for his daughter to be raped repeatedly until she magically turns straight.

Full Story Here: Rape Away The Gay? Radio Personality Tells Father To Get A Man To Rape His Daughter Until She Turns Straight | Addicting Info.

“He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can’t even carry on a conversation about the budget. It’s an absolute and utter disgrace.”

–House Speaker Tip O’Neill, after a meeting with Reagan, November 23, 1981

“For the last 30 years he’s been in a dream world…. I think he actually believes that giving more to rich people will make them work harder, whereas the only way to make poor people work is to tax their unemployment benefits.”

–NAACP executive director Benjamin Hooks commenting on Reagan’s economic policies, January 25, 1983

“Reagan, who more than any president in history railed against government benefits and spending, set the standard for all members of his administration. In addition to his presidential pension of $99,500 a year for life and his annual pension as a former governor of California of $30,800…he received Secret Service protection from forty full-time agents and other security at a cost to the government estimated at $10 million annually, more than double that of other living presidents. A suite of offices atop a new thirty-four-story office building twenty minutes from his home, commanding a view that extended from the Pacific Ocean to the towers of downtown Los Angeles, cost the government $173,000 a year to lease.”

–Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years

“At his seventh press conference, President Reagan…responds to a question about the 17% black unemployment rate by pointing out that ‘in this time of great unemployment,’ Sunday’s paper had ’24 full pages of…employers looking for employees,’ though most of the jobs available–computer operator, for example, or cellular immunologist–require special training, for which his administration has cut funds by over 30%.”

–Paul Slansky, The Clothes have no Emperor

Full Story Here: Economic Policy – The Reagan Years.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) tried to send the message this week that, contrary to “urban legend,” he is not obsessed with philosopher and author Ayn Rand.

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan told National Review on Thursday. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.”

Best known for her novels “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand advocated a philosophy that emphasizes the individual over the collective, and viewed capitalism as the only system truly based on the protection of the individual. She has been a significant influence on libertarians and conservatives.

Full Story Here: Paul Ryan Suddenly Does Not Embrace Ayn Rand’s Teachings.

OPS: Anybody really buy this????????

Speaking during a campaign stop Friday, Mitt Romney encouraged students at Otterbein University in Ohio, to show enterprise by going into business — with a little help from their parents, if necessary.

Romney cited the example of Jimmy John’s owner Jimmy John Liautaud, who borrowed money from his father to start his successful sandwich franchise.

“We’ve always encouraged young people: Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business,” Romney said.

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney Tells Otterbein University Students To Borrow Money From Their Parents.

Conservatives in government have fetishized violence. Why?

What is it about being a great power that renders the imagining of its own demise so potent? Why, despite all the strictures about the prudent and rational use of force, are those powers so quick to resort to it?

Perhaps it is because there is something deeply appealing about the idea of disaster, about manfully confronting and mastering catastrophe. For disaster and catastrophe can summon a nation, at least in theory, to plumb its deepest moral and political reserves, to have its mettle tested, on and off the battlefield. However much leaders and theorists may style themselves the cool adepts of realpolitik, war remains the great romance of the age, the proving ground of self and nation.

Exactly why the strenuous life should be so attractive is anyone’s guess, but one reason may be that it counters what conservatives since the French Revolution have believed to be the corrosions of liberal democratic culture: the softened mores and weakened will, the subordination of passion to rationality, of fervor to rules. As an antidote to the deadening effects of contemporary life—reason, bureaucracy, routine, anomie, ennui—war is modernity’s great answer to itself. “War is inescapable,” Yitzhak Shamir declared, not because it ensures security but “because without this, the life of the individual has no purpose.” Though this sensibility seeps across the political spectrum, it is essentially an ideal of the conservative counter-Enlightenment, which found its greatest fulfillment during the years of Fascist triumph (“war is to men,” Mussolini said, “as maternity is to women”)—and is once again, it seems, prospering in our own time as well.

Full Story Here: Armchair Warriors: Why Are Conservatives the Biggest Warmongers? | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet.

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant (R), in defending his decision to sign a bill that could shut down Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, told conservative radio host Tony Perkins on Tuesday that Democrats’ “one mission in life is to abortion children.”

“Even if you believe in abortion, the hypocrisy of the left that now tried to kill this bill, that says that I should have never signed it, the true hypocrisy is that their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter, they don’t care if the mother’s life is in jeopardy, that if something goes wrong that a doctor can’t admit them to a local hospital, that he’s not even board certified.”

Full Story Here: Phil Bryant, Mississippi Governor: Democrats’ ‘One Mission In Life Is To Abort Children’.

Ann Romney is still talking about the job requirements of stay-at-home moms. At a Republican fundraiser in Connecticut Monday night, Romney described her life as a mom, a job she says her husband would constantly remind her was “more important than his.”

“I know what it’s like to wake up early in the morning and get them off to school; I know what it’s like to be up in the middle of the night when they are sick; and I know what it’s like to struggle and to have those concerns that all mothers have,” she said, according to ABC News.

Romney acknowledged that some women have to both work outside the home and raise their children, according to Politico.

Full Story Here: Ann Romney Talks Motherhood, ‘Emotionally Draining’ Campaign.

Former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, a Republican now hoping to unseat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), said recently that she was unfamiliar with the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the landmark anti-domestic violence legislation whose re-authorization is now stalled in the Senate.

Senate Republicans are objecting to re-upping the 1994 law, which has already been extended several times, because of amendments that would extend protections for Native American women, gay victims, and others.

Full Story Here: Missouri GOP Senate Candidate Sarah Steelman ‘Not Sure’ What VAWA IS.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) shocked the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence this week when he vetoed $1.5 million in funding for 30 rape crisis centers in the middle of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. State lawmakers allotted the money to offset an increase in need and a lack of sufficient funding for victim services.

A spokesperson for Scott said he vetoed that particular line item in the state budget because the state already funds sexual violence programs, and nobody was able to make it clear to him why rape crisis centers needed the new funding.

“Governor Scott approved funding for many projects that have statewide impact and do not duplicate programs already funded by the state,” Lane Wright, Scott’s press secretary, told HuffPost. “This new funding of $1.5 million would have been duplicative, since, as a state, we already fund sexual violence programs. There was no information suggesting any needs in this area weren’t already being met. The state already provides about $6.5 million for rape prevention and sexual assault services. That is in addition to the funds available for domestic violence programs — $29 million to be specific. Many victims of sexual violence seek refuge at domestic violence shelters.”

Full Story Here: Governor Rick Scott Vetoes Funds For Rape Crisis Centers During Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Education is the new Republican enemy. No more free thinking and empirical evidence, just the Bible, rumour and Fox News

Not content with merely waging war on women, Republicans are targeting another enemy of conservatism: education. New Hampshire state Republican Jerry Bergevin recently railed against science and the atheist eggheads who call themselves teachers: “I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It’s a world view and it’s godless.”

While New Hampshire didn’t end up passing Bergevin’s anti-evolution law, Tennessee did. Its new statute allows – even encourages – teachers to express scepticism toward, as the bill says, “scientific subjects, including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, and global warming”. The American Institute of Biological Sciences, the National Earth Science Teachers Association, the National Centre for Science Education and all eight of Tennessee’s members of the National Academy of Sciences oppose the new law, calling it “miseducation”. But what do these no ‘count heathen elitist PhD Darwinites know? The government of Tennessee wants you to know they ain’t kin to no monkey

Full Story Here: The Republicans who want ignorance to get equal time in schools | Diane Roberts | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Yesterday, Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) unveiled the members of his task force assigned to investigate the effects of the state’s “Stand Your Ground” laws that have come under intense scrutiny and criticism in recent weeks after the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin.

But critics were quick to notice some of the curious appointments made by Gov. Scott’s selection committee.

Take State Representative Dennis Baxley for instance. He was chosen as a member of the task force despite the fact that he authored H.B 249, Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. His version of the bill was used by corporate front-group ALEC as a template for similar pieces of legislation that are now in the books in half the country. And in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, Baxley has repeatedly defended the law.

Full Story Here: Half The Lawmakers On Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ Task Force Are ALEC Members, All Supported Stand Your Ground | ThinkProgress.

At a campaign fundraiser last week, Tea Party Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) warned attendees that President Obama would commit treason if reelected in November.

Fitzpatrick was listing the reasons why voters should not support the President, and for reason number three, he told the audience that President Obama would have no qualms auctioning off state secrets to foreign countries.

The Huffington Post flagged Fitzpatrick’s comments, which were distributed by the progressive advocacy group Credo SuperPAC:

Full Story Here: Tea Party Congressman: Obama Will Commit Treason If Reelected | ThinkProgress.

OPS: We don’t have to speculate wildly about Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II. They DID commit Treason

Tennessee has long had a law that allowed prosecutors to charge someone for harming a “viable fetus” — defined as about the 32nd week after conception — when someone kills or assaults a pregnant woman. Last year, lawmakers expanded that definition to apply to any fetus.

Now, they’re looking to criminalize harm to embryos, the cells that are formed before a fetus develops eight weeks after conception. Proponents of the bill say it would clarify last year’s expanded fetal harm bill, but critics say it will be difficult to prosecute because some pregnancies end naturally at that stage. They argue this is simply a fight over abortion:

[I]t will be difficult for prosecutors to prove that an embryo miscarried because of someone else’s action and not from natural causes, predicted Rep. Jeanne Richardson, D-Memphis. [...] “I think your original bill may have been OK and we voted for that. I think extending that would be iffy.”

Full Story Here: Tennessee House Passes Bill To Allow Criminal Prosecution For Harming Embryos | ThinkProgress.

David McCurdy and four other co-plaintiffs are suing Sorenson Capital Partners (SCP), Care Holding Co., Care Senior Living, and SCP Care Acquisition because they say the private equity firm fired them from their jobs at Care Senior Living because they were not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), according to Courthouse News Service.

“Despite the promise of 5-years employment, in mid-November 2011, after only 7 months Plaintiffs were told that their employment would be terminated effective February 2012,” the lawsuit (PDF), which was filed in federal court in Oregon, states.

Full Story Here: Lawsuit: Former Bain execs fired employees for not being Mormon | The Raw Story.

Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, defended the House Republican budget at a tax policy summit yesterday — as well as the broader idea that taxes on the wealthy need to be cut while taxes on lower-income Americans should be raised. When asked by ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes to square the GOP’s explicit desire to cut taxes for the rich with the fact that it’s budget would raise taxes on low-income working Americans, Tiberi responded by saying that to do otherwise would be to “beat up on people who are trying to be successful.” He then made the case for raising taxes on the poor by lamenting that they don’t have any “skin in the game”:

TIBERI: I think the federal government has an obligation to make sure that we deal with people who have difficulties. But at the same time, the tax code shouldn’t be used as a tool to just bring revenue in and beat up people who are trying to be successful…So I think we’ve got to lower the tax rates, both for corporations and for American individuals. And let them try to grow our economy and grow jobs so people like you and me can have an opportunity to work.

KEYES: But you’re only talking about lowering tax rates on individuals in the upper income areas. You’re talking about raising taxes…

Full Story Here: GOP Rep. Tiberi Defends Tax Hikes For The Poor Because They ‘Don’t Have Skin In The Game’ | ThinkProgress.

Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign have offered a misleading explanation for why the likely Republican presidential nominee will only release one additional year of tax return data during the rest of this campaign.

The topic of additional disclosure has come up in various interviews and press events during the past few days, as President Barack Obama’s campaign has demanded that Romney release more than his 2010 and 2011 tax returns, the latter of which will become public sometime in the next six months. At each interval the Romney camp has had a ready answer: He’s meeting the same standard prior candidates, including Democrats, have met.

“John Kerry released two years of taxes,” Romney recently told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow. “I’ve released one already, put the estimate out for the next year. We’ll have two years of taxes.”

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney Misled About John Kerry’s Tax Returns.

In Oklahoma, state lawmakers are poised to enact an “open carry” law which would allow residents with a permit to display their guns in grocery stores, libraries, and anywhere else in public. The measure is expected to be passed by the legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Mary Fallin.

Oklahoma law currently requires that people must generally conceal their handguns. In 2010, then-Gov. Brad Henry (D) vetoed an open carry bill because state police expressed concern that it would make it hard for them “to distinguish criminals from law-abiding citizens.” Keith Barenberg, the president of the Oklahoma State Troopers Association, maintains his concern: “Law-enforcement officers will be that much more jumpy and nervous if they see a gun.” And such confrontations could lead to loss of innocent life. As Norman McNickle, president of the Oklahoma Association of Police Chiefs, put it: “How does the first arriving officers know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are? It makes their job exponentially harder.”

Proponents of the “open carry” legislation, like Tim Gillespie, director of the Oklahoma 2nd Amendment Association, claim the measure is necessary because “we live in a dangerous world.” So dangerous, according to Republican state Senator Ralph Shortey, that people need the open display of guns to help fend off attacks from wild turkeys:

Full Story Here: Oklahoma State Senator Justifies Need For ‘Open Carry’ Gun Law Due To Threat From Wild Turkeys | ThinkProgress.

Like any state legislature dealing with 8 percent unemployment and thousands of its residents facing disenfranchisement, the Tennessee Senate is targeting the menace of underage hand-holding.

Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as “gateway sexual activities.” Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor.

Since the bill specifically bans teachers from “demonstrating gateway sexual activity”, educators would be prohibited from even demonstrating what hand-holding is. Breaking these laws could result in a lawsuit, as Hunter from Daily Kos notes:

Full Story Here: Tennessee Senate Approves Bill To Warn Students That Hand-Holding Is A ‘Gateway Sexual Activity’ | ThinkProgress.

In a new column rife with his usual brand of audacious conjecture, Keith Ablow of Fox News’ Medical A-Team takes aim at Hilary Rosen and all working moms (and arguably all feminists), suggesting they are “anti-gender” and “despise the parts of themselves” drawn to motherhood:

These “anti-gender” women have it in for anyone who embraces her femininity, maternal instincts and capacity to nurture as their highest priority — postponing or passing up other laudable opportunities to work at, say, a law firm or as a marketing executive. They despise the notion that some women may indeed be drawn — instinctively and happily — toward creating special and loving environments in which to raise their children, while spending all their available time sustaining and enriching those environments and those children.

They despise the parts of themselves that may be drawn to such roles, as well. That’s why women like Hilary Rosen make such outlandish statements, to begin with. They’re essentially talking to themselves — albeit, with the rest of the world forced to listen — trying to reassure themselves that their own choices in life weren’t only equally as good as those of other women, but better. Far, far better. They feel like their choices are better because they have thrown off the shackles of roles that were once “expected” of them, leaving them not only freer than, but superior to, those women who don’t feel enslaved at home, but feel fulfilled at home.

Full Story Here: Ablow: Working Moms Like Rosen Despise Themselves | ThinkProgress.

Our guest blogger is Melissa Boteach, Director of the Half in Ten project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Raising children is hard work. And no one is arguing that Ann Romney — who has been the center of attention since Democratic strategist Hillary Rosen contended that she “never worked a day in her life” — or any other stay-at-home mom doesn’t deserve our respect. But the question is not whether child-rearing is work. It’s whether the policies championed by the candidates afford the same respect and deference to the moms who have no choice but to balance the demands of being a breadwinner with the demands of motherhood.

Ann Romney has tweeted, “All moms are entitled to choose their path.” But unfortunately for low-wage working moms and nearly half of private sector workers, the” choice” is either “go to work and send my sick kid to school” or “stay at home with my sick child and risk losing my job or needed income.” That’s a choice no parent should have to make. Does Mitt Romney agree?

Women are now half of all workers on U.S. payrolls and breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of all families. Their incomes are sorely needed to provide basic economic security for their families.

Yet the U.S. also faces high rates of work-family conflict with few laws to support working families. One of the biggest culprits is workers’ lack of paid sick days to care for themselves, an elderly parent, or a sick kid – an issue that has been largely absent in the election debates.

Full Story Here: Does Mitt Romney Support Paid Sick Days? | ThinkProgress.

After all, his complaint was that the GOP had moved so far right, and intransigently so, that it was wrong to create a false “equivalence” by blaming both parties equally for the Washington gridlock. To a skeptic that comment, coming from a Democrat, sounded suspiciously partisan itself.

But while the president was making the kind of argument you would expect of the nation’s top Democrat, he actually had the support of science — well at least political science research that maps that rightward GOP shift.

Full Story Here: Political Scientist: Republicans Most Conservative They’ve Been In 100 Years : It’s All Politics : NPR.

Former Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra, who is now running to unseat Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), weighed in on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act on Thursday, saying the law was a “nuisance” that shouldn’t be in place.

The issue came up during a campaign event in Royal Oak, Mich. An attendee asked whether Hoekstra would support or “work to repeal” the law if elected to office.

“Will, you know, will repealing it be a priority? If you came back and said, you know, that’s really the thing that’s hurting my business the most. My guess is there are other things that we can do that have a higher priority in terms of what I, what I believe might need to be done. I think you know we need to create — that thing is a nuisance. It shouldn’t be the law,” replied Hoekstra.

Full Story Here: Pete Hoekstra On Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: ‘That Thing Is A Nuisance’.

Proving definitively that Arizona is the worst place in the country to be a woman, or even a biped, Gov. Jan Brewer has signed into law three extreme anti-abortion measures including a so-called “egg drop” bill that effectively bans abortion after 18 weeks, except in cases of medical emergency, by redefining pregnancy as beginning two weeks before conception. Also under the richly named Women’s Health and Safety Act, schools and the state must promote adoption and birth as the best outcome for an unwanted pregnancy, in part by displaying images of fetuses. And clinics must have signs warning against abortion “coercion” – all this, in the name of “protecting women from the serious health and safety risks of abortion.” We’re speechless.

Full Story Here: In Arizona, Life Somehow Begins Two Weeks Before Conception. Don’t Ask. | Common Dreams.

Arizona Abortion Bill: Legislators Pass Three Bills, Including One That Redefines When Life Begins

Arizona lawmakers gave final passage to three anti-abortion bills Tuesday afternoon, including one that declares pregnancies in the state begin two weeks before conception.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill to prohibit abortions after the 18th week of pregnancy; a bill to protect doctors from being sued if they withhold health information about a pregnancy that could cause a woman to seek an abortion; and a bill to mandate that how school curriculums address the topic of unwanted pregnancies.

The 18th week bill includes a new definition for when pregnancy begins. All of the bills passed the Senate and now head to Gov. Jan Brewer (R) for her signature or veto. Passage of the late-term abortion bill would give Arizona the earliest definition of late-term abortion in the country; most states use 20 weeks as a definition.

Full Story Here: Arizona Abortion Bill: Legislators Pass Three Bills, Including One That Redefines When Life Begins.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) quietly repealed his state’s equal pay law last week, a decision that will make it harder for victims of wage discrimination to sue for lost earnings and back wages. The law was enacted primarily to address the massive pay gap that exists between male and female workers, which is even bigger in Wisconsin than in other states.

Repealing the law was a no-brainer for state Sen. Glenn Grothman (R), who led the effort because of his belief that pay discrimination is a myth driven by liberal women’s groups. Ignoring multiple studies showing that the pay gap exists, Grothman blamed females for prioritizing childrearing and homemaking instead of money, saying, “Money is more important for men,” The Daily Beast reports:

Whatever gaps exist, he insists, stem from women’s decision to prioritize childrearing over their careers. “Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers,” he says. “But the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week, going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off, raises kids, is not go go go. Now they’re 50 years old. The husband is making 200 grand a year, the woman is making 40 grand a year. It wasn’t discrimination. There was a different sense of urgency in each person.” [...]

Full Story Here: Wisconsin State Senator Says Money Is Less Important To Women.

The National Review’s John Derbyshire isn’t just an avowed racist and a homophobe. He’s also a misogynist. In 2009, he authored a book that contained a chapter titled “The Case Against Women’s Suffrage.” In it, he argued the country would be better off if women didn’t have the right to vote. He discussed his views in a Sept. 2009 interview with Alan Colmes:

DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.

COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?

Full Story Here: In 2009, Derbyshire Argued Women Shouldn’t Vote: ‘Women Voting Is Bad For Conservatism’ | ThinkProgress.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is facing a June 5 recall election, privately signed a slew of legislation on Thursday that some Democrats see as evidence of an ongoing “war on women.”

“Instead of a jobs and economic priority from the state legislature, we’ve had a series of bills introduced, passed and now signed into law, that really turn back the clock on women’s health, safety, wellness and economic security,” said Sara Finger with the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health.

Among the dozens of bills signed by Walker is a repeal of the state’s Equal Pay law, a bill barring abortion coverage through health insurance exchanges, and a repeal of the Healthy Youth Act so that now sex education teachers do not have to teach contraception.

Full Story Here: Recall-Facing Wis. Gov. Walker Continues ‘War on Women’ With Flurry of Bills | Common Dreams.

With the mainstream media in the hands of the mostly conservative wealthy, it’s difficult for average Americans to learn the truth about critical issues. The following five conservative claims are examples of mythical beliefs that fall apart in the presence of inconvenient facts:

1. Entitlements are the Problem

Beyond the fact that we’re ‘entitled’ to Social Security and Medicare because we pay for them, these two government-run programs have been largely self-sustaining while supporting the needs of millions of Americans.

Medicare is much less costly than private health care. Social Security, which functions with a surplus, would not be in danger of a long-term shortfall if the richest 10% (those making over the $106,800 cutoff) paid their full share.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently reported that 91% of entitlements go to the elderly or disabled, or to members of working households needing supplemental assistance. Only 9% of entitlement dollars go to non-working but employable individuals, and most of that is for medical care, unemployment, and survivor benefits.

Full Story Here: Five Preposterous, Persistent Conservative Myths | Common Dreams.

Better-educated Republicans are more likely to doubt global warming and believe Obama’s a Muslim. Here’s why

I can still remember when I first realized how naïve I was in thinking—hoping—that laying out the “facts” would suffice to change politicized minds, and especially Republican ones. It was a typically wonkish, liberal revelation: One based on statistics and data. Only this time, the data were showing, rather awkwardly, that people ignore data and evidence—and often, knowledge and education only make the problem worse.

Someone had sent me a 2008 Pew report documenting the intense partisan divide in the U.S. over the reality of global warming.^. It’s a divide that, maddeningly for scientists, has shown a paradoxical tendency to widen even as the basic facts about global warming have become more firmly established.

Those facts are these: Humans, since the Industrial Revolution, have been burning more and more fossil fuels to power their societies, and this has led to a steady accumulation of greenhouse gases, and especially carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. At this point, very simple physics takes over, and you are pretty much doomed, by what scientists refer to as the “radiative” properties of carbon dioxide molecules (which trap infrared heat radiation that would otherwise escape to space), to have a warming planet. Since about 1995, scientists have not only confirmed that this warming is taking place, but have also grown confident that it has, like the gun in a murder mystery, our fingerprint on it. Natural fluctuations, although they exist, can’t explain what we’re seeing. The only reasonable verdict is that humans did it, in the atmosphere, with their cars and their smokestacks.

Full Story Here: The ugly delusions of the educated conservative – Salon.com.

Full Story Here: Michele Bachmann Thinks People ‘Choose’ To Not Have Health Insurance, Not Because They Can’t Afford It | ThinkProgress.

In an interview with Politico yesterday, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) downplayed his opponent Tammy Duckworth’s military service and injury.

Duckworth, who served in Iraq and then at the VA, lost both legs and part of her arm in combat. Walsh’s response? Ehhh:

“I have so much respect for what she did in the fact that she sacrificed her body for this country,” said Walsh, simultaneously lowering his voice as he leaned forward before pausing for dramatic effect. “Ehhh. Now let’s move on.”

Full Story Here: Rep. Joe Walsh Says Of Opponent: “Female, wounded veteran … ehhh.” | ThinkProgress.

While the controversy over the killing of Trayvon Martin largely skirted partisan politics in its first month, some conservative media outlets apparently saw an opportunity in the case and have spent the latter part of the week alternately smearing Martin, defending Zimmerman, or screaming about the dangers of viewing the case through a racial lens.

The conservative Daily Caller, a purportedly reported and fact-based news outlet, published parts of Martin’s life on social media, but only “selected [items that] reinforce the argument that the victim of the fatal shooting was a menacing figure who might plausibly have been mistaken for a criminal,” the New York Times’ Robert Mackey noted. They skipped over pictures from prom night or of Martin’s friends, cherry-picking shots of Martin flipping the bird or wearing fake gold teeth.

Former Republican congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called the posthumous vilification of Martin “beneath contempt” and “disgusting.” “I guess it’s because the President actually said something to comfort the parents, and I guess they just can’t handle that,” he said this morning.

Full Story Here: Fox News Host Thinks ‘The Blacks’ Are Making Too Big Of A Deal About Trayvon Martin | ThinkProgress.

Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, Director of Fiscal Reform at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Earlier today ThinkProgress reported that the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to approve a proposal by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) that is misleadingly entitled the Small Business Tax Cut Act.

People who have read the bill and not just its title, however, have noted that it is extremely poorly targeted at small businesses. It is, in fact, just another tax cut for rich people. Among the biggest beneficiaries would be the owners of extremely profitable businesses like Oprah Winfrey’s production company and professional sports teams like the Super Bowl champion New York Giants, as well as highly paid professionals like lawyers, lobbyists, doctors, and consultants.

The Tax Policy Center has now estimated who benefits from Cantor’s bill. Among TPC’s findings:

Full Story Here: Cantor’s ‘Small Business’ Jobs Bill Gives Millionaires An Average Tax Cut Of $45,000 | ThinkProgress.

Mitt Romney is known for his sometimes awkward sense of humor, and some of his biggest campaign missteps have come when he has made statements that seemed out of touch with Americans’ economic struggles.

During a tele-town hall meeting with Wisconsin voters Wednesday, those two issues converged.

At the outset of his 35-minute conference call, Romney told what he thought was a “humorous” story about how his father once shut down a factory in Michigan and moved production to Wisconsin, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Full Story Here: Mitt Romney Tells ‘Humorous’ Story About Father Closing A Michigan Factory.

After President Obama weighed in on the shooting on Trayvon Martin, the GOP presidential candidates also rushed to condemn the African-American teenager’s death. But Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were equally as quick to blame Obama for making it a racial issue after the president said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Gingrich called Obama’s remark “disgraceful,” and Santorum accused Obama of trying to “drive a wedge in America” by using race.

But on CNN’s State of the Union, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the attacks by his fellow Republicans are unhelpful. He told Candy Crowley that, yes, there is a racial aspect to the case, but said that doesn’t mean the president would be insensitive if it had been a white teenager:

Full Story Here: Graham: ‘We All Know There’s A Racial Component’ To Trayvon’s Death.

Outside group spending is up 1600 percent this election cycle, given the rise of Super PACs. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims it still peddles the most influence in politics, as the radical right-wing industry group plans to spend a record amount of more than $50 million for 2012 this campaign cycle.

U.S. Chamber Political Director Rob Engstrom dubbed the Chamber’s role in elections as an “old-school Super PAC“:

We’re the old school Super PAC. Brand matters and message matters, but messenger matters as much or more in my opinion… at some point relatively soon people are going to turn off if it says “Concerned Citizens for Change.”

Full Story Here: U.S. Chamber Of Commerce: ‘We’re The Old School Super PAC’ | ThinkProgress.

: ‘Half Of It Is The Way The Young Men Look’ (VIDEO)

Geraldo Rivera doubled down on his incendiary comments about Trayvon Martin during a Friday appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor,” saying that hoodies reminded people of criminals like the Unabomber and thus put them in danger.

The Fox News host caused a firestorm on Friday morning when he said that Martin was shot to death in part because he was wearing a hoodie. “I’ll bet you money, if he didn’t have that hoodie on, that nutty neighborhood watch guy wouldn’t have responded in that violent and aggressive way,” he said.

Instant outrage, and a fair amount of ridicule, followed. Rivera admitted that his own son told him he was ashamed of him. But he stood staunchly behind his comments when speaking to O’Reilly. The two began talking about New York’s controversial “stop and frisk” laws, which disproportionately affect people of color. Rivera said he supported the laws, and then brought up hoodies again.

Full Story Here: Geraldo Rivera Doubles Down On Trayvon Martin Hoodie Comments: ‘Half Of It Is The Way The Young Men Look’ (VIDEO).

In a debate over Georgia House Bill 954, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks even if the baby is not expected to live, England recalled the time he had spent with livestock.

“Life gives us many experiences,” he explained. “I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive — delivering pigs, dead and alive. … It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.”

Full Story Here: Georgia lawmaker compares women to cows and pigs | The Raw Story.

Mary Brown, a 56-year-old Florida woman who owned a small auto repair shop but had no health insurance, became the lead plaintiff challenging President Obama‘s healthcare law because she was passionate about the issue.

Brown “doesn’t have insurance. She doesn’t want to pay for it. And she doesn’t want the government to tell her she has to have it,” said Karen Harned, a lawyer for the National Federation of Independent Business. Brown is a plaintiff in the federation’s case, which the Supreme Court plans to hear later this month.

But court records reveal that Brown and her husband filed for bankruptcy last fall with $4,500 in unpaid medical bills. Those bills could change Brown from a symbol of proud independence into an example of exactly the problem the healthcare law was intended to address.

Full Story Here: Plaintiff in healthcare law challenge went bankrupt – with unpaid medical bills – latimes.com.

On Christian Youth America‘s Crosstalk radio show.

Inhofe: Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ my point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.

Full Story Here: Sen. James Inhofe: Bible Refutes Climate Change « Alan Colmes’ Liberaland.

Recent national kerfuffles over abortion and contraception access bring up many important questions: Should employers retain control over your wages and benefits after they sign them over to you? Is contraception, a service used by 99 percent of American women, really so controversial? How much state regulation should there be over women’s most private decisions? But amidst all those questions is one overarching one: Do conservatives need a crash course in sex ed?

Usually, when we think of the sex education debate, we think of junior high and high school kids putting condoms on bananas. But recent events indicate that this country needs remedial sex education for adults, specifically social conservatives who wish to hold forth on reproductive rights without seeming to know the basics regarding who has sex and how it works in 2012. With that in mind, I designed a quick curriculum for these surprisingly necessary courses.

Full Story Here: A Sex Ed 101 Curriculum for Conservatives | Common Dreams.

Rick and Karen Santorum claimed that fears about how the Affordable Care Act would affect their youngest daughter’s medical condition inspired them to embark on their campaign for the presidency and suggested that the law would ration care to sicker or disabled Americans. “What did it for me was Obamacare,” Karen said in explaining her support for Rick’s decision to pursue the White House on Glenn Beck’s show. “Because we have as you know a little angel, little Bella, special needs little girl, and when Obamacare passed, that was it, that put the fire in my belly.” Rick agreed, arguing that the law would ration care based on the “usefulness” of an individual:

Full Story Here: Rick Santorum: Americans With ‘Special Needs’ Won’t Survive Under Obama’s Health Reform | ThinkProgress.

OPS: Every time they open their mouths, they spew Orwellian drivel.  The problem is that their brain-dead base buys it.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) refused to give President Obama any credit Wednesday for recent economic and business improvements in the country, arguing instead that “anyone who’s paying attention knows that this president has done irreparable harm to the economy.”

ThinkProgress spoke with Franks to get his thoughts on the recent stock market gains and what they say about Republican critiques that President Obama is supposedly “anti-business.” (The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 13,000 at points earlier this week after a low of 6,626 in March 2009.) The five-term Arizona congressman dismissed the notion that Obama’s policies could have aided the economic recovery. There’s “no question” that the economy is improving in spite of President Obama, Franks said. “It’s a strong country, but Mr. Obama seems to be doing everything he can to hold it back.”

Full Story Here: As Stock Market Crosses 13,000, Rep. Franks Says President Obama ‘Seems To Be Doing Everything He Can To Hold It Back’ | ThinkProgress.

The Constitution provides that acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land” which is why states do not have the power to ignore federal law. Nevertheless, five Georgia state senators — including Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R) and senate President Pro Tempore Tommie Williams (R) — apparently do not believe that the Constitution applies to them. All five lawmakers introduced a wildly unconstitutional plan to have Georgia and its citizens simply ignore laws that its conservative leadership doesn’t want to follow:

(1) There is created the Joint Commission on Recommendation, which shall be charged with recommending and proposing for a vote by a constitutional majority the nullification in its entirety of a specific federal law or regulation which is deemed to be outside the scope of the powers delegated by the people to the federal government in the United States Constitution or at odds with the Georgia Constitution . . .

(4) Upon recommendation for nullification, the General Assembly may vote to nullify following such recommendation. The appropriate documentation reflecting the vote shall be documented in legislative journals of the House and Senate. In the event the General Assembly votes by a constitutional majority to nullify any federal statute, mandate, or executive order on the grounds of constitutionality, neither the state nor its citizens shall recognize or be obligated to live under such statute, mandate, or executive order.

Full Story Here: Georgia Senate Majority Leader & President Pro Tempore Introduce Unconstitutional Nullification Bill | ThinkProgress.

Irony Still Not Dead Dept: Indiana’s ousted top elections official, former GOP Secretary of State Charlie White has been convicted of six felony counts of voter fraud – an almost unheard-of offense, despite a slew of voter I.D. laws nationwide and White’s support for a particularly onerous Indiana law, upheld by the Supreme Court, which turned out to be no protection against an actual fraudulent voter, ie: himself. Good thing he wasn’t black or poor or young or he never would have made it to the (bogus) polls.

“I never intentionally meant to do anything I was convicted of. All I wanted to do was to vote… Even though I have been politically active, I am human.”

Full Story Here: All I Wanted To Do Was To Vote: Indiana Official Way Worried About Voter Fraud Is Convicted of Voter Fraud | Common Dreams.

But with Santorum – a conservative Roman Catholic and member of Opus Dei – there’s a truly manic edge to his religious pronouncements and activities. It was Santorum and Mrs S, don’t forget, who took their still-born baby home from the hospital and laid it among their living tots, telling them, “he’s with the angels now,” an episode Mrs Santorum later recorded in a memoir.

Santorum doesn’t believe in the right to privacy. Not that Obama has any qualms about taps on your phone and powers of arbitrary arrest, but he probably doesn’t care too much about whatever human combos are being tried out in the bedroom. Santorum frets 24/7 about beastliness and unnatural acts, and yearns to restore full rights to snoops to kick down the motel door, twitch aside the blankets and haul couples off for all manner of moral abominations.

Full Story Here: Time on the Cross With Rick Santorum » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) said on Friday that he changed the terms of his support for a controversial GOP-sponsored mandatory ultrasound bill at the last minute this week because he didn’t realize until that point that the law would require an invasive, transvaginal procedure. Instead, he and a few Republican delegates rewrote the bill to mandate regular abdominal ultrasounds before an abortion, even though they are ineffective during the earliest weeks of pregnancy.

During the amendment process, McDonnell told a Politico panel, “We realized there was [sic] different kinds of ultrasounds, so what I recommended to the General Assembly, and they adopted the other day is, let’s make the requirement for an abdominal ultrasound. We found out through the medical community that in most cases if it’s not sufficient, on their own they already do other kinds of ultrasounds. So I said let’s make those amendments. I also got legal advice from various people that these kinds of mandatory, invasive requirements might run afoul of Fourth Amendment law.”

Full Story Here: Bob McDonnell, Virginia Governor, Didn’t Realize Ultrasound Bill Mandated Invasive Procedure.

In 2009, the Wisconsin legislature made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court. That law is now on the verge of repeal.

The Equal Pay Enforcement Act was meant to deter employers from discriminating by giving workers more avenues to press charges. Among other provisions, it allows individuals to plead their cases in the less costly, more accessible state circuit court system, rather than just in federal court.

In November, the state Senate approved (SB 202) rolling back this provision. On Wednesday, the Assembly did the same. Both were party-line votes. The legislation is now in the hands of Gov. Scott Walker (R). His office did not return a request for comment on whether the governor would sign it.

Full Story Here: Equal Pay Enforcement Act On Verge Of Being Repealed By Wisconsin Republicans.

The bill, which passed 16 to 12, would prohibit anyone in the state from “creating or attempting to create an in vitro human embryo by any means other than fertilization of a human egg by a human sperm.”

The measure would also outlaw “transferring or attempting to transfer a human embryo into a nonhuman womb,” “transferring or attempting to transfer a nonhuman embryo into a human womb” and “transporting or receiving for any purpose a human-animal hybrid.”

Louisiana passed a similar law in 2009, the same year Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) introduced the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act of 2009. The Senate did not take up Brownback proposed law.

Full Story Here: Arizona bill targets ‘human-animal hybrids’.

OPS: 30-40 million Americans out of work and gas going to $5/gal this summer, and THIS is what Republicans spend their tiem and tax money doing.

In a 2008 speech at Ave Maria University, Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic, warned about the dangers of “the NBA” and “rock concerts,” but also said that while Protestants founded America, mainline Protestantism is in such “shambles” that “it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it”:

We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. [...]

Full Story Here: Santorum Excommunicates 45 Million Christians: Mainline Protestants Are ‘Gone From The World Of Christianity’ | ThinkProgress.

The hearing succeeding in becoming one of the more bizarre and obtuse displays in recent political theater. Highlights included:

– Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) use of self-aggrandizing posters of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Mahatma Gandhi.

– The committee’s failure to include even one woman as a witness in their first panel.

– The ominous insistence that an honest disagreement over a health policy that’s already followed without complaint in multiple states and enjoys wide-spread support is a threat to fundamental American principles and liberties.

– A long and rambling speech comparing a fictional “national pork mandate” to important women’s health drugs.

ThinkProgress has the video round-up:

Full Story Here: VIDEO OF THE WEEK: The GOP’s ‘Utterly Surreal’ Contraception Hearing | ThinkProgress.

The donation may help Newt inject himself back into what has increasingly become a two-man race between Santorum and Romney.

CNN and CBS News are both reporting that billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson will soon fork over an additional $10 million to the Super PAC supporting the former House speaker’s presidential campaign. Adelson and his wife have already given Winning the Future roughly $11 million, a donation that closed the gap—at least somewhat—between Gingrich and Mitt Romney earlier this year.

Full Story Here: Sheldon Adelson-Winning the Future: Casino magnate set to donate another $10 million to Gingrich Super Pac.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) defended his decision to not allow a women to testify at his hearing on the Obama administration’s new birth control rule yesterday, telling Fox News host Greta Van Susteren last night that the woman’s story wasn’t at all relevant to the hearing.

Democrats had originally planned to have Rev. Barry Lynn, a prominent supporter of the separation of Church and State, testify, but decided that a woman’s voice was needed, as every single other witness was a man. They tried bring in someone who has been personally affected by the issue — Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church and does not insure birth control for students — but Issa refused.

Appearing on Fox News with host Greta Van Susteren last night, Issa defended the decision, saying Fluke was unqualified to speak and that her first hand experience “wasn’t in any way related” to the issue at hand:

Full Story Here: Issa Defends Denying Female Witness At Contraception Hearing: She ‘Wasn’t In Any Way Related’ | ThinkProgress.

“Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him,” Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul confirmed in an email to The Huffington Post. “We support his decision.”

In a press conference on Saturday, Babeu said the allegations are false but confirmed that he is gay, something he had not previously discussed.

Full Story Here: Paul Babeu, Arizona Sheriff, Steps Down As Arizona Co-Chair Of Mitt Romney’s Presidential Campaign.

Fox News’ infamous psychiatrist Keith Ablow has today joined the network’s personal attacks on Media Matters’ David Brock, suggesting Brock is “dangerous” because he “is an adopted boy”:

ABLOW: He’s a dangerous man, because having followers and waging war… this isn’t accidental language. It’s about violence, destruction, and he feels destroyed in himself. [...] This is an adopted boy who needs to plumb the depths of his psyche. He was adopted. Many adopted children are tremendously well-adjusted, but for some reason, this man feels he’s unloved and unloveable, shunted to the side, and that’s the antidote he feels: unlimited power. Guess what? It never ever works.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: Fox News ‘Expert’ Keith Ablow: Media Matters Founder Is ‘Dangerous’ Because He Was Adopted | ThinkProgress.

On Feb. 2, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation (S. 1925) reauthorizing VAWA. The bill was sponsored by Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) — who is not on the committee — and cosponsored by 34 senators from both parties. Nevertheless, the legislation attracted no GOP support among committee members and passed out of committee on a party-line vote of 10-8. It was, according to Leahy’s office, the first time VAWA legislation did not receive bipartisan backing out of committee.

“Helping victims of domestic violence shouldn’t be partisan,” said Leahy in an interview with The Huffington Post. “I remember when I was a prosecutor and I’d go to a crime scene at 2:00 in the morning where [there were] victims of domestic violence. … I never remember the police saying, ‘Well, we can only investigate this if it’s a Democrat or a Republican or whatever else. Their reaction was, ‘How do we find the person who did this?’ It’s outrageous to make this a partisan issue.”

Full Story Here: Violence Against Women Act Becomes Partisan Issue.

Earlier today, in response to criticism from Catholic groups, the White House altered its regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide no-cost contraception coverage as part of their health care plans. Churches and religious nonprofits that primarily employ people of the same faith are still exempt from the requirement, but now religiously affiliated colleges, universities, and hospitals that wish to avoid providing birth control can do so. Their employees will still receive contraception coverage at no additional cost sharing directly from the insurer.

But Republicans and some conservative Catholic groups are not satisfied with the accommodation and hope to use their false claim of “religious persecution” to deny women access to preventive health services. Despite Obama’s decision to shield nonprofit religious institutions from offering birth control benefits, next week Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) is expected to offer an amendment that would permit any employer or insurance plan to exclude any health service, no matter how essential, from coverage if they morally object to it:

Full Story Here: GOP Ups The Ante, Introduces Legislation To Allow Any Employer To Deny Any Preventive Health Service | ThinkProgress.

Shortey explained his reasoning to local radio station News Talk Radio KRMG in Tulsa:

There is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors.

Full Story Here: Oklahoma Lawmaker Wants To Outlaw Use Of Human Fetuses In Production Of Food | ThinkProgress.

OPS: These people are insane, and proud of it.  We MUST start treating them as the insane sociopaths they are.

Pro-choice Republicans are begging their party to drop this fight over contraception before it’s too late. Turning to a discussion about access to birth control will be nothing short of a disaster, they say.

The new and unexpected war over contraception may not end up as only a battle between the White House and the Republican party. It could end up as a fight between the GOP and itself. As we saw during the 2011’s push to defund Planned Parenthood — when some Republican Senators rebuked their colleagues in the House for attacking the organization — Republicans on Capitol Hill do not speak with one voice on matters of women’s health. Now, as Speaker John Boehner seemingly prepares to turn the House GOP’s attention to contraception, pro-choice Republicans are warning that the GOP may become the next Komen For The Cure.

“I think this week’s outrage over the Komen decision should be a warning to the Republican party about how quickly there was a mass outrage over further and further attacks on general women’s health,” Kellie Ferguson, executive director of Republican Majority for choice, told me Wednesday. “You could see the same backlash on attacks on contraception.”

Full Story Here: Pro-Choice GOP Warns Party That Contraception Fight Will Be A Disaster | TPM2012.

SANTORUM: It was a secular revolution on which we relied on the goodness of eacother. This is the left’s view of where America should go. And of course where did France go? To the guillotine. To tyranny. If there are no rights that government needs to respect, then what we see with ObamaCare is just the beginning of what government will do to you.

Watch it:

Full Story Here: Santorum Doubles Down: ‘ObamaCare’ Is The First Step To The ‘Guillotine’ | ThinkProgress.

New Hampshire’s GOP legislature has come up with all manner of absurd bills recently, including a proposal making public school curriculum optional, another to prevent police from protecting domestic abuse victims, and even a measure mandating that new laws be based on the Magna Carta. Some of the Granite State’s GOP lawmakers have even proposed doing away with the law that requires employers to give their workers time off for lunch, under the rationale that all employers will simply grant lunch breaks out of the goodness of their hearts:

“This is an unneeded law,” [Republican state Representative Kyle Jones] said. “If I was to deny one of my employees a break, I would be in a very bad position with the company’s human resources representative. If you consider that this is a very easy law to follow in that everyone already does it, then why do we need it? Our constituents have already proven that they have enough common sense to do this on their own.”

The bill’s sponsor, state representative J.R. Hoell, argued that companies failing to provide lunch breaks would be shamed over social media, thus rendering the law unnecessary. “If they are not letting people have lunch, they could put it out though the news media, though social media. I don’t think that abusive behavior would continue, the way communications are today,” he said.

Full Story Here: New Hampshire Republicans Propose Bill To Eliminate Workers’ Lunch Breaks | ThinkProgress.

Full Story Here: UPDATE: Komen confirms continued involvement of Ari Fleischer on Planned Parenthood strategy | ThinkProgress.

During a radio appearance on Thursday, conservative pundit Ann Coulter revealed that she once had a rather revealing private talk with GOP candidate Mitt Romney. Coulter was speaking with conservative talk show host Sean Hannity.

Hannity asked Coulter who she thinks Romney will “surround himself with” if he were to be elected president. Coulter, who is a staunch Romney supporter, said, “well I better have his ear.” Coulter added that she was once at a fundraiser and approached Romney just before she was leaving the event. “I just wanted to go up to him and tell him, ‘You owe me and you better be as right-wing a president as I’m telling everybody you’re going to be,’” Coulter said.

Hannity asked how Romney responded to Coulter’s demands. “He laughed about it and acknowledged the point and said something to the effect ‘don’t worry,’” Coulter said of Romney.

Full Story Here: Ann Coulter Confronts Mitt Romney: ‘You Owe Me’ (AUDIO).

In a speech expounding on the rift between rural America and Washington D.C., Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) vowed Thursday to use his funding powers to stop the Obama administration from implementing new child-labor rules pertaining to agricultural work, accusing the “urban” Labor Department of meddling in a “rural” industry it doesn’t understand.

“This is one of those situations where I think the Department of Labor is overstepping its boundaries, its knowledge base, and frankly I think you’re sitting around watching reruns of “Blazing Saddles” and that’s your interpretation of what goes on in the West,” Rehberg, who holds the Labor Department’s purse strings for the House of Representatives, said as he lectured a labor official during a hearing Thursday. “And it’s not anymore.”

Last year, the Labor Department proposed new rules governing what kinds of potentially dangerous tasks minors can and cannot perform on farms and in grain facilities. Although child and worker advocates said the new rules were long overdue, the proposals created an uproar among farmers and agricultural trade groups, who argued that the rules could hurt family-farming traditions.

Full Story Here: Denny Rehberg, GOP Congressman And Senate Hopeful, Blasts Child Labor Regulations.

Someone alert the unions: raising teacher pay will actually make for worse teachers–according to one GOP lawmaker.

Alabama state Sen. Shadrack McGill said that increasing teacher pay is against “a biblical principle” because it might attract people who otherwise wouldn’t do the job.

“Teachers need to make the money that they need to make,” McGill said, according to the Times-Journal. “If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach … and these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It’s just in them to do. It’s the ability that God give ‘em.”

McGill’s comments came at a prayer breakfast this week in Fort Payne, Ala. State legislators are currently weighing raising teacher pay. One GOP leader proposed raising salaries of newer teachers by 2.5 percent, but critics argue that it isn’t fair to longer-serving educators, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.

Full Story Here: Shadrack McGill, Alabama State Senator, Says Keeping Teacher Pay Low ‘A Biblical Principle’.

A new poll shows U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh trailing Democrats in Illinois’ 8th District.

The poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling on behalf of House Majority PAC, shows Walsh’s approval rating at 28 percent. Testing the congressman against a generic Democrat, PPP reports that voters chose that unnamed Democrat 49 percent to 35 percent, Politico reports.

Democrat Tammy Duckworth’s campaign said Walsh is “extremely vulnerable” in the 8th, and believes she has the best chance to beat the outspoken, staunchly conservative congressman. According to a poll of 500 registered voters in the 8th, 65% of voters believe former Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs Duckworth has the best chance of defeating Walsh.

Against her opponent, former deputy State Treasurer Raja Krishnamoorthi, Duckworth held a 59% to 17% lead.

“I have never seen anyone overcome a 42-point deficit this late in the race,” President Obama strategist and Duckworth supporter David Axelrod said in a statement.

Krishnamoorthi’s campaign, however, begs to differ.

Full Story Here: Joe Walsh Trailing Democrats In Illinois 8th District Poll: Duckworth Leading Krishnamoorthi.

Abandoning any pretense that they’re focused on job creation, Colorado Republicans have clarified their priorities for the new legislative session: guns rights. Specifically, they are doing their best to ensure that citizens have the unfettered ability to carry guns anywhere — including into elementary, middle, and high schools:

Colorado Republicans are reloading previous attempts to expand gun rights, bringing back legislation that would allow concealed weapons in schools and let businesses use deadly force against intruders.

Republicans say they want to protect Second Amendment rights, but Democrats accuse them of straying from the job-creation platform both parties promised to focus on this year.

A proposal running simultaneously in the House and Senate would allow concealed weapons on school grounds and college campuses if a person has a permit and another bill would let business owners and employees use deadly force against intruders.

Full Story Here: Colorado Republicans Push Bill To Allow Guns In Elementary Schools | ThinkProgress.

A little more than a year after the conservative-led state board of education in Texas approved massive changes to its school textbooks to put slavery in a more positive light, a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country’s founders being slave owners.

According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”

“The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed, to everybody — not all equally instantly — and it was their progress that we need to look at,” Rounds said, according to The Commercial Appeal.

Full Story Here: Tea Party Groups In Tennessee Demand Textbooks Overlook U.S. Founder’s Slave-Owning History.

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum explained his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape during an interview Friday, saying that women who face such circumstances should “make the best out of a bad situation.”

Asked by CNN’s Piers Morgan what he would do if his own daughter approached him, begging for an abortion after having been raped, Santorum explained that he would counsel her to “accept this horribly created” baby, because it was still a gift from God, even if given in a “broken” way.

“Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice, I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or she doesn’t, it will always be her child, and she will always know that,” Santorum said.

Full Story Here: Rick Santorum On Opposition To Abortion In Cases Of Rape: ‘Make The Best Out Of A Bad Situation’.

Two years ago today, the Supreme Court struck down longstanding restrictions on corporate money in American elections, paving the way for super PACs and major third party spending.

Since January 21, 2009, the Citizens United case has had a major effect on money in politics. Already in this year’s Republican presidential primary, we’ve seen a number of freespending super PACs play a major role in the race, including the pro-Mitt Romney Restore Our Future PAC, financed in large part by hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, and the pro-Newt Gingrich Winning Our Future, for whom casino mogul Sheldon Adelson recently cut a $5 million check. In fact, the total amount of money spent by outside groups thus far has outpaced spending by the campaigns themselves.

Despite the proliferation of super PACs and massive uptick in outside spending, former Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty still sees our campaign finance laws as too restrictive.

Full Story Here: Pawlenty Defends Unlimited Campaign Donations As Citizens United Celebrates Two-Year Anniversary | ThinkProgress.

At a recent town hall in Osage, Iowa, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) responded to a question about the Labor Department’s stricter limits on child labor by claiming that they could exacerbate the child obesity epidemic by making kids less “active”:

Concern was raised about the proposed Department of Labor’s intent to greatly limit child labor on family farms.

“This farm bill will greatly affect our FFA and 4-H programs,” said Grassley. “Kids won’t be able to help on farms not owned by their parents.

“It’s interesting that this child labor bill goes against Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity initiative,” said Grassley. “How can kids be active if they are limited by this law?“

Full Story Here: GOP Senator: We Need ‘Child Labor’ To Fight Obesity Epidemic | ThinkProgress.

In an article about the reasons Rep. Michele Bachmann’s campaign fizzled, the Des Moines Register points to “sexism among conservatives,” singling out an offensive email written by a staffer to Rick Santorum:

Rival presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s Iowa coalitions director, Jamie Johnson, sent out an email saying that children’s lives would be harmed if the nation had a female president. [...]

“The question then comes, ‘Is it God’s highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will, … to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?’ ” Johnson’s email said.

Johnson, who remains on Santorum’s staff, complained that the email was “blown out of proportion” and should not be held against him because it was sent from a personal email account.

Full Story Here: Santorum Staffer Says Women Shouldn’t Be President Because It’s Against God’s Will | ThinkProgress.

To avoid a government shutdown at the end of 2011, Republicans succeeded in their campaign to cut the federal Pell Grant program by effectively kicking up to 100,000 low-income students off the rolls.

Last week, Arkansas constituent Kelly Eubanks, a college student who has two jobs and two children, confronted her Congressman, Rep. Steve Womack (R), at a town hall meeting over his attack on the program she now relies on. But instead of any explanation, Womack lashed out at Eubanks, telling her to pay her own way by “joining the military” like he did. After refusing to answer her question, he finally just asked her to “be quiet and listen.” Blue Arkansas reports:

According to Kelly and a handful of other witnesses, Womack happily retorted that it wasn’t the federal government’s job to pay for education (he’s doing this in a college town mind you) and then quickly added that he paid for his education by joining the military, apparently suggesting that the mom of two do the same and totally oblivious I guess to the fact that it was, in fact, the federal government that paid for his education then. Well Womack tried to skirt the rest of Ms. Eubanks question and she proceeded to try and get him to address the discrepancy she pointed out. Well at this point, according to Kelly and several other people that were in the room, Womack blew a gasket.

Full Story Here: GOP Rep. Berates Student Concerned About Pell Grant Cuts, Tells Her To Join The Military | ThinkProgress.

‘There Was A Well-Orchestrated Campaign Against Me’ 

The Republican Party’s dogmatic Islamophobia is increasingly self-destructive. With the majority of rank-and-file Republicans insisting that Muslims innately pose a threat to American society, Muslim Republicans are fleeing or being forced out of their own party. Florida Republican Nezar Hamze endured the latter when Broward County’s Republican Party Executive Committee rejected his bid for committee membership by a 11-158 vote. The chief charge against him? “Terrorist.” The committee even changed the rules for applicants just so Hamze could be subjected to an interrogation for five minutes, a rule he jokingly called the “Hamze rule.”

Last night on the Daily Show, correspondent Jason Jones sat down with Hamze to discuss the “well-orchestrated campaign” against him. Hamze noted that an individual had printed handouts before the vote that labeled him a “terrorist” and insisted “Islam is evil.” Jones sought out Joe Kaufman, the founder of the organization Americans Against Hate, to enlist his “help” considering that the group’s “goal is to be an active voice against those who spread bigotry and violence.” As it turns out, this “anti-bigotry crusader” actually distributed the fliers smearing Hamze as a terrorist. His chief reason for the charge? Hamze is the head of the local chapter of CAIR:

Full Story Here: Florida Republican Muslim Declared A ‘Terrorist’ By Own Party: ‘There Was A Well-Orchestrated Campaign Against Me’ | ThinkProgress.

One way to settle the issue would for the former speaker to publicize his contract with Freddie Mac. Gingrich has not done thus far, saying he would like to, but is bound by a confidentiality agreement. A campaign lawyer contacted Freddie Mac, the campaign said, to request the waiver from the agreement. “They wouldn’t do it,” Gingrich said this week of the prospect of Freddie Mac allowing him to break the contract.

However, Bloomberg News reports today that Freddie Mac is okay with releasing the contract:

Full Story Here: Freddie Mac Lets Gingrich Release His Contract — Will He? | ThinkProgress.

This week, defense and aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing announced that it will be closing the Boeing Defense, Space & Security facility in Wichita by the end of 2013, which “means the loss of 2,100 well-paying jobs at its Kansas facility, which was once considered the centerpiece of Wichita’s claim as the air capital of the world.” Boeing will instead be performing the operations that were scheduled for Wichita in San Antonio and Oklahoma City.

Boeing’s decision — which it blames on possible defense cuts that may take place in the future — is devastating to Wichita community, which also includes more than four hundred Boeing suppliers. Local news station Fox 4 covered the closure in a video report. Watch it:

Full Story Here: Hit And Run: Boeing Leaves Kansas After Promising The State Jobs For $35 Billion Contract And Slew Of Tax Breaks | ThinkProgress.

MOTHER: The comments I heard you make in New Hampshire, comments that you support insurance companies’ right to refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions and that you also agreed with higher premiums for people who are sick, well my son graduated college and I pray that he gets a good job. Why is it alright for him to possibly be denied health care insurance or have to possibly pay a fee that he would not be able to afford or for a company not to hire him because he was five years old and he had cancer? …

SANTORUM: Insurance works when people who are higher risk end up having to pay more, as they should. In your case, your son obviously did nothing wrong. Obviously there are a lot of other people that increased their health risk that did do things wrong and as a result, it resulted in higher health care costs.

Full Story Here: Santorum to Mother of Cancer Survivor: Sick to Blame for Pre-Existing Conditions Should Be Charged More | Truthout.

Patrick J. Lott, who was arrested last week, was arraigned Wednesday on charges he videotaped students in a communal shower area at Immaculata High School in Somerville starting in January 2008. He did not enter a plea.

The prosecutor’s office said that there were at least 22 victims and that nine boys identified in the videos are currently under the age of 16. To protect the boys’ identities, they were referred to only by their initials in court filings.

Lott, 54, is an assistant principal at a public middle school who volunteered at the Catholic high school. Authorities declined to provide further details about his volunteer position.

Full Story Here: Authorities: Educator videotaped boys in showers at NJ Catholic high school for 3 years – The Washington Post.

On Wednesday the Virginia State Board of Elections approved a request from the Virginia GOP that will require voters to sign a loyalty oath in order to participate in the state’s presidential primary on March 6. A spokesman for the state’s election board tells ABC News that although some details are still in the works, voters wishing to cast a ballot must take the pledge.

“We’re still working out the details for how things will work on election day,” says Justin Riemer, spokesman for Virginia’s State Board of Elections, “but the instructions state that they must sign before voting.”

Full Story Here: Virginia GOP Will Require Voters To Sign ‘Loyalty Oath’ – ABC News.

Recently, Ron Paul has been subject to intense criticism over controversial newsletters written under his name in the 80s and 90s that frequently included racism, bigotry, and conspiracy theories. Over the last few days, Paul has responded that he did not write the newsletters and disavowed their contents, claiming this has been his consistent position for 20 years. Here’s what Paul told CNN on December 21:

PAUL: I never read that stuff. I never — I would never — I came — I was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written… Well, you know, we talked about [the newsletters] twice yesterday at CNN. Why don’t you go back and look at what I said yesterday on CNN, and what I’ve said for 20-some years. It was 22 years ago. I didn’t write them. I disavow them and that’s it.

Paul’s denials, however, are not supported by the public record. When the newsletters first arose as an issue in 1996, Paul didn’t deny authorship. Instead, Paul personally repeated and defended some of the most incendiary racial claims in the newsletters.

In May 1996, Paul was confronted in an interview by the Dallas Morning News about a line that appeared in a 1992 newsletter, under the headline “Terrorist Update”: “If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be.” His response:

Full Story Here: FACT CHECK: Ron Paul Personally Defended Racist Newsletters | ThinkProgress.

Nixon’s Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America’s Most Troubled President by Don Fulsom (Thomas Dunne Books, $25.99), former correspondent for United Press International, makes several eye-catching accusations, including that the former president had a gay affair with Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, a banker apparently with ties to the mob.

The allegation is especially noteworthy because, as gay news website Queerty reports, Nixon was known to have made homophobic remarks.

Full Story Here: Richard Nixon Had Gay Affair, ‘Nixon’s Darkest Secrets’ Claims.

Ron Paul may now be backing away from controversial newsletters published in the 80s and 90s, but he took a different tone in a 1995 interview.

Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski unearthed this video of Paul taking credit for the newsletters.

“I…do a newsletter, it’s called the Ron Paul Survival Report,” he said. “It’s expressing concerning about surviving in this age of big government.”

Full Story Here: Ron Paul Took Credit For Controversial Newsletters In 1995 Interview (VIDEO).

John Nichols :-:

There is something painfully fitting about the fact that the race for the GOP presidential nomination is hitting its peak during the Christmastide. The open disdain for the least among us, for the toilers in the vineyards, for strangers that has been expressed by Newt “End Child Labor Laws” Gingrich, Mitt “Corporations Are People Too” Romney and their immigrant-bashing, union-hating compatriots has given the 2012 race a distinct 1843 character.

In her exceptional new biography of Charles Dickens, Claire Tomalin explains that the novelist’s tale of that latter year, A Christmas Carol, was “Dickens’ response to the condition of the working class.” And she is right, up to a point. But A Christmas Carol is, as well, Dickens’s response to those who would blame the conditions imposed by economic inequality on children who have not taught themselves how to “rise.”

In seeking to awaken a spirit of charity in his countrymen, Dickens called attention to those who callously dismissed the poor as a burden and the unemployed as a lazy lot best forced to grab at bootstraps and pull themselves upward.

Full Story Here: A Conservative Christmas Carol of Scrooge, Marley, Gingrich and Romney | Common Dreams.

Kallie Durkit: Relatability has been a large issue for you on this campaign trail, and as a college student many people in my generation find it especially hard to relate to you as a candidate. Why should we mobilize for you as a candidate instead of Obama, which we did in 2008?

Mitt Romney: What I can promise you is this –- when you get out of college, if I’m president you’ll have a job. If President Obama is reelected, you will not be able to get a job. That’s the reason I will hopefully get young people who are in college is to say, You know what, I understand what it takes to get jobs in America.

Full Story Here: Romney: If I’m President, All College Grads Will Have A Job; If Obama Wins, They Won’t | ThinkProgress.

OPS: Should be be titled: Romney’s Desperation

More proof that republicans really believe the conservative base is completely brain-dean

National security advisers to the Republican presidential candidates have ties to defense, homeland security and energy companies that have received at least $40 billion in federal contracts since 2008.

Five of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s 41 national security and foreign policy advisers have links to companies that last year alone received at least $7.9 billion in federal contracts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Government analyst Christopher Flavelle. Of that, $7.3 billion came from the Department of Defense.

Romney and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who are leading in the polls, have advisers who sit on the board of directors of BAE Systems Inc., which has received at least $37 billion in U.S. government contracts since 2008, the most of any of the companies with ties to Republican national security advisers.

Full Story Here: Republican Security Advisers Tied to $40 Billion in Contracts – Bloomberg.

Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) emergence as the front-runner in the Iowa GOP primary is bringing new scrutiny on Paul’s newsletters from the 1980s and 1990s. The newsletters, published under his name, included content claiming that African-Americans are trying to give white people HIV, suggested that Washington, DC is “anti-white and proud of it,” provided instructions on how to murder African-Americans, and warned of “malicious gay(s)” who spread HIV.

Yesterday, Paul walked out of an interview after CNN’s Gloria Borger pressed him on his role in publishing the racist content:

PAUL: I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it ten years after it was written. And it’s been going on twenty years that people have pestered me about this. And CNN does it every single time.

BORGER: Is it legitimate? Is it a legitimate question to ask that something that went out under your name? [crosstalk]

Full Story Here: Ron Paul Walks Out Of Interview After Facing Questions About Racist Content In Newsletter | ThinkProgress.

Independent groups supporting Republican presidential candidates have sprung to life, funding a flurry of new commercials in recent days to influence the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses and other early primary contests.

Restore Our Future, a conservative “super” PAC promoting Mitt Romney, is running $300,000 worth of ads in Florida that question the conservative credentials of GOP front-runner Newt Gingrich. The group also is spending $3.1 million in Iowa.

The Red White and Blue Fund, a super PAC backing former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum’s presidential bid, recently launched a $200,000 Iowa advertising campaign.

Full Story Here: Outsider campaign spending, ads surge – USATODAY.com.

While appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney praised Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) plan to replace Medicare with a voucher system in a shot at fellow presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.

During the Sunday show, Romney criticized Gingrich, the former House Speaker, for making a statement in May that “cut the legs out” from under the plan, part of a 2012 budget Ryan proposed back in April.

“Are we going to deal with entitlement reform or not?” Romney asked. “Republicans came together, Paul Ryan was the author of the plan. But almost every single Republican voted for it, and the Speaker said this is ‘right-wing social engineering.’”

Full Story Here: Romney Challenges Gingrich On Medicare, Opposes Tax Cuts For The Rich.

Texas’s longest-serving Governor, Rick Perry (R), is retiring at the end of his term in 2015, promising to walk away from his $150,000 annual salary. But by “officially” retiring early, the Texas Tribune reports that the 61-year-old has been taking home not only that salary, but also “lucrative pension benefits” that, altogether, ad up to a 60 percent boost in compensation:

Perry officially retired in January so he could start collecting his lucrative pension benefits early, but he still gets to collect his salary — and has in turn dramatically boosted his take-home pay.

Perry makes a $150,000 annual gross salary as Texas govenor. Now, thanks to his early retirement, Perry, 61, gets a monthly retirement annuity of $7,698 before taxes, or $6,588 net. That raises his gross annual salary to more than $240,000.

Full Story Here: Rick Perry’s ‘Early Retirement’ Allows Him To Boost His Income By 60 Percent | ThinkProgress.

Full Story Here: Bashing School Meal Programs, Limbaugh Calls Poor Children ‘Wanton Waifs And Serfs Dependent On The State’ | ThinkProgress.

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said on Thursday he would end federal assistance for heating bills and cut down on unemployment benefits, adding that the programs are not necessary to help the country’s unemployed and low-income people.

“There were a lot of programs I supported in the past, but we’re just not in a position to do that anymore,” Santorum told a crowd of about 35 Iowans gathered in a small coffeeshop, referring to federal assistance for heating. “Just because these people need help doesn’t mean the federal government needs to help.”

Former Sen. Santorum (R-Pa.) previously supported the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides assistance to low-income families to pay for heat and cooling. He said he now sees it differently, and believes heating assistance should be done at the state or local level, or perhaps left to the private sector.

Full Story Here: Rick Santorum: Cut Heating Assistance, Unemployment Benefits.

Fox News got all het up about the Muppets being anti-Capitalist before coming to their senses. So it seems strange that conservatives would follow up that loser of a battle by criticizing Sesame Street’s campaign against child hunger by arguing that it’s “Brought to you by the letters ‘B’ and ‘G’… for Big Government.”

This is, of course, a depressing reflection on the state of the current conservative movement. It was a Republican, Sen. Bob Dole, who worked with Sen. George McGovern to make it easier for families to get food stamps and to expand school lunch programs (his commitment may originally have come from his agricultural constituents, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t help people get food assistance). It might be nice to believe that private charity can totally alleviate hunger, but that seems like an optimistic assumption even in the best of times. It doesn’t seem like a tragedy of bureaucratic overreach to suggest that in case of emergency, the government should provide its most vulnerable citizens with access to the minimum essentials they need to be able to work, or study—or live.

Full Story Here: Conservatives Now Mocking Sesame Street for Fighting Food Insecurity | ThinkProgress.

The Florida Family Association (FFA) has attracted national attention this week for convincing Lowe’s and other companies to drop its advertising on the acclaimed new TLC reality show, All-American Muslim. Claiming a membership of 35,000 individuals, FFA’s only paid staff member is its president, David Caton, and it is not affiliated with any national organizations.

FFA is an organization devoted to manufacturing faux outrage. Here is an extensive — though likely quite incomplete — list of the organization’s attention-grabbing complaints over recent years:

Protests annual “Gay Days” at Walt Disney World: Every year, FFA objects to Walt Disney World’s “Gay Days,” when gay and lesbian people create visibility for themselves throughout the theme park. Disney does not officially sanction the event, but FFA calls on followers to complain to Disney officials that it takes place. This year, the organization even paid to have a banner flown over the Interstate 4 corridor warning travelers that Gay Day was that weekend.

Protested “Godless” Family Guy: FFA objects to Family Guy‘s “Godless, Christian bashing and depraved content” and has targeted advertisers such as Chrysler, General Mills, and others.

Claimed Modern Family “degrades marriage”: In 2009, the FFA complained about Toys R Us advertising on the Emmy-winning ABC sitcom Modern Family because it “degrades marriage and promotes same-sex couples and gay adoption.”

Full Story Here: Meet The Florida Family Association: A Faux Outrage Generation Factory | ThinkProgress.

In an article published by New York Magazine in late November, Frum had argued that conservative media like Fox News and talk radio “immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.”

In an appearance on CNN Sunday, Frum cited claims made on Fox News that President Barack Obama was proposing a “new Christmas tree tax,” something that was found by both The Florida Times-Union and PolitiFact Oregon to be not true.

Full Story Here: Frum: Fox News creates an ‘alternative knowledge system’ | The Raw Story.

As Iowa’s FAMiLY Leader prepares to endorse a presidential candidate ahead of the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Newt Gingrich has issued a statement affirming the Leader’s pledge to oppose marriage equality for gays and lesbians, deny women access to abortion, and reduce the debt. Read his full response here and the marriage excerpt below:

Defending Marriage. As President, I will vigorously enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, which was enacted under my leadership as Speaker of the House, and ensure compliance with its provisions, especially in the military. I will also aggressively defend the constitutionality of DOMA in federal and state courts. I will support sending a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification. I will also oppose any judicial, bureaucratic, or legislative effort to define marriage in any manner other than as between one man and one woman. I will support all efforts to reform promptly any uneconomic or anti-marriage aspects of welfare and tax policy. I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.

Full Story Here: Gingrich Pledges Not To Commit Infidelity A Third Time, Reaffirms Opposition To Marriage Equality | ThinkProgress.

Back in September, our own Christina Wilkie teamed up with Shawn Alff of Creative Loafing to talk with some small-business owners in the Tampa, Fla., area about how they were shaping up their operations in preparation for next year’s Republican National Convention. The proprietors went into great detail about their small business, the local economic climate, and their overall strategy for both dealing with and profiting from the economic opportunity that comes with hosting a large, historic political convention. One comment in particular, from a Joe Redner, caught my eye:

In the meantime, Redner’s got a few bones to pick with GOP policymakers. “[Republicans] keep saying this stuff about how if we tax the rich, then small businesses won’t be able to grow. But I’m a small-business owner, and I put all my money right back into my businesses in the form of capital improvements, which I don’t pay taxes on anyway. So their argument isn’t how reality works.”

Now on its own, this is just a stray piece of anecdotal data, wrapped in a complaint. Sure, we take Redner at his word that from his perspective, he is experiencing life as a business owner in the way he describes. And we need to remember that in any survey, there are always outliers. Plus, Redner runs a very specific business — the Mons Venus strip club — and that’s a pretty unusual entrepreneurial undertaking. (Also, all of the small-business owners Wilkie and Alff spoke with work in the local adult entertainment industry. I was just being coy in the lead paragraph!)

Full Story Here: Do The Small-Business Owners The GOP Claims To Listen To Even Exist?.