Lying About “Abortion Hurts Women”


Last time I checked in on the South Dakota abortion ban legislation, opponents (the pro-choice side) had easily gathered enough signatures to put it on the ballot this November. If it’s approved by voters, the law would ban all abortions, including for rape and incest victims. The only exception is to save the life of the mother. Oh, and maybe for a young woman who was a raped and sodomized virgin. Surely you remember State Senator Bill Napoli’s creepy description of a possible exception, during an interview on the NewsHour:

“ A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

Makes you pray that the guy doesn’t IM anybody, doesn’t it?

But it turns out to be more than a window into a disturbed imagination. It was also a window into the tactics and philosophy used by the bill’s supporters.

They’re making it all about "protecting" women. Yes, women who, according to their one-sided task force report, would never choose to have an abortion if they weren’t being unfairly pressured by forces beyond their control. Choosing on their own to have an abortion would violate “the mother’s fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child.” Yes, they really said that. They really are claiming that women are just poor, dumb vessels whose maternal instincts override all else.

This is a tactic they’ve chosen because they think it resonates with women. Another tactic they’ve chosen is lying—they claim the bill does make exceptions for rape or incest, but the only provision is the morning after pill, which is available in about half of the pharmacies in South Dakota. Pharmacists are not required to prescribe it or even refer a woman to a drug store where she could get it.

There’s evidence that the anti-abortion side is making headway—polls last summer had the bill being defeated easily, but now it’s very close.

Wanna help defeat this bill? South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families is a good place to start.


And by the way…It looks like Bob Casey Junior will defeat Senator Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum in Pennsylvania. That’s a good thing, relatively speaking. But when you speak of it, and you will, please remember: Casey is anti-choice, or anti-abortion rights, or anti-abortion. He is routinely referred to in the press as a “pro-life Democrat”, sometimes even on liberal blogs. But adopting the anti-abortion movement’s term “pro-life” is like adopting the Dixiecrats’ phrase “states’ rights” in the 1950s and ‘60s. It’s lazy at best, and biased framing at worst. And, as we have seen in South Dakota, the words do matter.

Speaking of words that matter, have you got Naked Republicans, A Full Frontal Exposure of Right-wing Hypocrisy and Greed yet?

From Packwood to Foley: When “No” Means “Ewwww”







If you’re shocked by the Mark Foley affair, the nauseating sexual advances, the cover-up by the GOP leadership, you need a refresher course in Packwood 101. It’s deja vu all over (and over) again, from the covered up allegations of serial sexual harassment to the obligatory trip to rehab.

Bob Packwood, of course, was a powerful Republican senator from Oregon, from 1968 until he resigned in disgrace in 1995. Like Mark Foley, he was a vocal advocate for precisely the people he was victimizing—women, in Packwood’s case. He was a strong supporter of abortion rights, and women’s groups seemed to look the other way, at least at first, when persistent complaints about his groping, grabbing and slobbering began to surface. (His signature move was to come up behind a victim, spin her around and thrust his tongue down her throat.)

Like Mark Foley, at least one of Packwood’s victims was a teenager, a 17 year old intern.

And, like Mark Foley, Mr. Packwood enjoyed writing about his sexual adventures. This was the early ‘90s and there was no IM system, so he kept old fashioned diaries. Here’s an excerpt:


“About 4:30 we had a staff party. It started slow and got bigger. None of the professional Finance Committee came but the clericals came. We drank for about an hour and a half and played charades. At about 7:00 we began to dwindle and drift except for finally (name omitted). And we sat in the office. She is a very sexy thing. Bright-eyes and hair and that ability to shift her hips. . . . Well, I won't bore you with all the details of the evening. (Name Omitted) and I made love. . . . Now bear in mind this is an hour and a half after we've made love and we're both still nude and lying on the rug. What I didn't know until later -- get this -- is that (two names omitted) were still there in the outer office and they left us alone.”

Hold on a second, I just vomited in my own mouth. Let’s find something a little tamer. Here’s one, about styling his hair:

“I just blew it until it was about dry, combed it, and if it didn’t come out looking just right! It had just the right amount of bounce to it, and wave to it. I came back rather confident.”

You see, Foley fans? Straight guys care about their appearances, too!

As with the Foley case, a news organization got hold of the Packwood story weeks before the 1992 elections. But when Packwood vehemently denied (lied about) the accusations, the Washington Post held it until after the election. Once he was safely re-elected the story broke.

When his pattern of sexually assaulting staffers, lobbyists, elevator operators, and others came to light, Packwood did what any honorable Republican would do—he blamed it on booze, and went to rehab. Sound familiar?

In the Packwood case, there were similar calls for an immediate ethics investigation, and the Senate ethics committee began its probe of Packwood just weeks after the story broke. The investigation dragged on for oh, about two years. Today we learned that the GOP leadership had been warned about Foley three years ago. Republicans on the Senate Ethics committee protected Packwood by blocking repeated efforts by the Democrats to hold public hearings.

Packwood went about his daily Senate business until 1995, when the Ethics committee finally voted to expel him from the Senate, and he quit.

The Justice Department investigated allegations that he obstructed justice by altering his diaries to remove incriminating evidence, and shook down lobbyists to put his ex-wife on their payrolls so that he could stop paying her alimony. In the end, though, the government didn’t prosecute him.

Since he’d already been to rehab, there was nothing else for Mr. Packwood to do except set up shop as a lobbyist in Washington. You’ll find him, hanging with his old buddies, as if nothing happened.

(You can learn more—way more—about your favorite Republicans in Naked Republicans, A full Frontal exposure of Right-Wing hypocrisy and Greed.)

The Do-EVERYTHING Congress Gets Caught Again



It's impossible (almost!) to keep up with the Naked Republicans.





When the White House and the GOP congressional leadership look at their poll numbers and ask their advisers, “why do they hate us?” here’s a clue: they don’t hate you for your freedom (except for Tom DeLay, and Bob Ney, of course. But the courts should take care of that).

No, it’s not your freedom—it’s your arrogance and hypocrisy. You guys weren’t the Do-Nothing Congress, you were the Do-Everything Congress. Everything you could get away with.



We’ve all had a chance to digest the spectacular hypocrisy of discovering that ex-Representative Mark Foley, chairman of the House caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, was a cyber-stalker of young men, and kept that post even after his activities became known to the House leadership.

That was bad enough. But what’s even more galling is to watch the arrogance of the House leadership, who thought that the remedy for a scandal was a cover-up, and the remedy for being caught in a coverup was to lie about it. But this time, they’re busted.

Let’s say you’re Denny Hastert. (Right, I know it’s unpleasant, but go with me here). Some of your closest lieutenants come to you and tell you that another member of your crew is sending creepy/dirty/cybersexual IMs to high school pages.

Would you forget that conversation?

Neither would Denny, I’m sure, but that’s what he wants us to believe. He pretended to be surprised by the whole story, until Rep. Thomas Reynolds refused to take the fall for him. Reynolds told reporters that he had talked to Hastert and Majority Leader Boehner about Foley’s emails last year. Hastert then said he didn’t recall the conversation but hey, if Reynolds says it happened, then maybe it did. Boehner, too, barely remembered discussing the matter with the kid’s Congressman, Rodney Alexander of Louisiana.

No kidding? The old Sergeant Schultz (I know nnnnothing) defense worked on Hogan’s Heroes, but my guess is that the public ain’t going to buy it this time.

I’m assuming that the Republican congress did virtually nothing to clean up the lobbying rules after the Abramoff scandal because they thought the voters couldn’t understand the details of that one.

Guess what? We all understand, “what are you wearing? Wish I could slip those off of you and grab the one eyed trouser snake.”

"I don't think it will be just conservative voters that will shake their heads when they hear about this," Rep. Jim McCrery told the Washington Post.

Ya think?


The fact is, the Republican leadership doesn’t care much about the sexual behavior of its members (no pun intended), or they wouldn’t have poured big bucks into the campaign of Don Sherwood. As chronicled in detail in Naked Republicans, A Full Frontal Exposure of Right-Wing Hypocrisy and Greed, he’s the Pennsylvania congressman whose most recent term was highlighted by an out of court settlement with a former girlfriend who had accused him of choking her during their five year extramarital affair. Rick Santorum, Mr. “It takes a Family” has campaigned for Sherwood, too.

A Vermont Republican candidate for the House had the decency to return a one thousand dollar campaign check from Sherwood, citing her commitment to ending domestic violence against women. Her name is Martha Rainville. She’s currently trailing Democrat Peter Welch in the polls. It’s just as well for her if she loses. She’d obviously never fit in.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s three Republican members of congress who’ve resigned in disgrace this year, and one who remained in office while disgraced, Bob Ney, confessed Abramoff bribe taker.

The House leadership is braying now about Foley’s “obscene breach of trust,” which might be a perfect way to characterize the corrupted Congress.

Fits pretty well on a bumper sticker, too.