The Montana Human Rights Network recently released a report on the activities of April Gaede - the mother of the "Nazi Pop Twins," Prussian Blue. Apparently, she's partnering with Hope Pregnancy Ministries to raise funds for their organization:
According to a posting on a popular white supremacist website, Gaede said she's given to Hope Pregnancy Ministries in the past, and it is a good way to "help save White babies." She stated a fundraising mailing from the Ministries said a local donor would match all donations dollar for dollar.
Gaede's posting continued by saying she has "personally met many of these people" (Ministries' staff). She told her peers to tell staff members that they were supporters of Stormfront, the white supremacist website where Gaede made her request, when making a donation. She included the mailing address and website address for the Ministries. Gaede encouraged her fellow white supremacists to send funds, because "our local population is over 95% White so they would be pretty much guaranteed to be helping to save White babies."
Hope Pregnancy Ministries essentially set up fake medical clinics - which aren't staffed by medical professionals, but instead are created as lures to persuade pregnant women not to have abortions.
As the report points out, this isn't the first time that the anti-abortion movement and Montana white supremacists allied. Montana Right to Life endorsed self-identified Nazi state house candidate, Shawn Stuart. The organization later admitted Stuart shouldn't have been endorsed when it became clear that the National Socialist Movement supports "eugenic abortions for non-whites." MHRN:
In other words, the National Socialist Movement, like April Gaede and other white supremacists, only oppose abortion when it comes to "white babies." Otherwise, they support abortion and sterilization for women of color.
Given the views of Gaede and her peers, the Montana Human Rights Network has asked Hope Pregnancy Ministries to donate the money raised by Stormfront members to the Montana Indian Education Association.
We'll have to wait and see if Kalispell's pro-life community values fetuses of color as much as they do those that are white.
Update: Apparently saving white babies isn't the only item on Gaede's agenda: she's also interested in creating them.
What a joke that something called "health reform" could withhold affordable medical care from patients. Abortion is a safe, legal procedure that one in three women has before age 40. I feel totally sold out.
What exactly did Congress do to your rights? It's not good.
Senate Version:
Creates major administrative burdens for people with health plans and stigmatizes abortion care. You wouldn't get the abortion coverage that you currently already have, unless you wrote a separate check for the portion of the premium related to that coverage. But it also would open a new front in the legislative fight over abortion, allowing states to pass laws barring insurers from including abortion coverage in policies for individuals and small businesses. The result could be a significant setback for abortion rights in states where social conservatives dominate the legislature. It could happen in Montana. It's happened before.
Why let states ban abortion coverage just for women not lucky enough to work for an employer who provides it? That doesn't make sense. It harms those folks who don't make a lot of money the most. Thanks a lot Ben Nelson.
83 U.S. Senators are men. If all the women who had ever served in the Senate since 1789 were still there we'd still only have 38.
House version:
The house version includes a total ban on abortion coverage in what's known as the "exchange." This would make abortion coverage unavailable, as in illegal, for millions of women who already have it. And it would prohibit people who receive "affordability credits" under the House health care bill from using those credits to purchase a policy with abortion coverage.
This amendment would inflict special punishment on those who are ready to become mothers but whose pregnancies are making their medical conditions worse. A lot of damage can be done before a woman reaches the life-threatening stage when the Stupak amendment would relent and allow payment for abortion.
Because of their health problems, these women must have their abortions in the hospital, racking up thousands of dollars in bills that destroy their families' finances. The Stupak-Pitts amendment would even prohibit an insurance company in the exchange from covering a patient's abortion if her health is in danger or if the fetus is malformed. You can read more here.
In the House, 441 members of Congress are male (83%) and 92 are female (17%).
I have a moral objection to paying for any kind of erectile dysfunction medicine in the new health reform bill and I think men who want to use it should just pay for it out of pocket. After all, I won't ever need such a pill. And anyway, it's no biggie. Just because most of them can get it under their insurance today doesn't mean they shouldn't have it stripped from their coverage in the future because of my moral objections. (I don't think there's even been a Supreme Court ruling making wood a constitutional right. I might be wrong about that)....
Given the makeup of the SCOTUS, I wouldn't make any bets...
I realize that many people disagree with my moral objections to men getting erections which God clearly doesn't want them to get, but my principles on this are more important to me than theirs are to them. So too bad. If you want a boner, pay for it yourself.
Sure, digby's jokingly responding to the justification behind Stupak amendment, and the House vote disallowing insurance purchased in the health insurance exchange from covering abortion...but, hell! She's got a point! Why does insurance cover Viagra? It's not like it actually affects any urgent medical condition...? And it certainly isn't as critical to men as abortions are to women...
But just as the members of the Republican party look to impose penalties on the rest of us that they don't feel apply to themselves, don't hold your breath that a bunch of old white guys will be preventing private insurers from paying Viagra claims...
Well...the healthcare reform bill passed the House, but not without a gut punch to women.
First, Democrats struck a deal over healthcare to win the support of Catholic bishops by allowing an amendment to reach the House floor that would disallow any insurance passed in the health insurance exchange to cover elective abortion procedures.
Jane Hamsher: "Democrats in Congress have just proudly signed a deal...which allows a bunch of old men who have spent the better part of the last century avoiding their own sexual issues to dictate access to abortion services..." Hamsher rips Planned Parenthood and NARAL for rolling over on this and other women's issues wrapped up in health care reform.
The idea that people are going to go out and purchase separate "abortion plans" is both cruel and laughable. If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure. Abortion coverage will not be outlawed in this country. It will simply be tiered, reserved for those rich enough to afford insurance themselves or lucky enough to receive from their employers.
A great day for women, that started off with the Democratic women's caucus being repeatedly shouted down by Republican Congressmen on the House floor.
It's hard to jump and down and cheer for a bill with so many bad compromises in it - how did we get here? In part, I blame the group of "moderate" or "centrist" Democrats who drag their feet on Democratic policies while taking in industry donations. But those Democrats exist and wield power because the Republicans are quickly ceding their role as rational political players. They vote against every piece of legislation in Congress, and refuse to even enter negotiations in crafting legislation. The effect is particularly dire in the Senate, where Republicans so far have filibustered, or threaten to filibuster, nearly every Democratic bill or judicial nomination. As a result, the worst Senators - Lieberman, Baucus, Nelson, Lincoln - are having the most influence on policy.
In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration's job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.
And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing - but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state's fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.
The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here - and it's very bad for America.
What do you know? A recent study shows banning abortion doesn't cut the rate of abortions. It jibes with what we know from other studies of abortion rates in countries where the practiced is outlawed. While abortion bans don't accomplish their primary task, we do, however, know what abortion bans actually do to the rights of women.
The best way to reduce abortions is not to criminalize them, but to provide women with good, affordable, and effective health care that includes neo-natal care and access to contraceptives. And if you really wanted to bite into the numbers, you should consider funding job training programs, beef up college assistance, and provide assistance for daycare. Well funded drug rehabilitation programs would probably help, too.
But we have tax cuts to hand out to major corporations!
Good news from the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday, which defeated two bad amendments by Utah's Orrin Hatch (R) that could have left women with worse health care coverage than they had before health care reform.
Hatch wanted an amendment to eliminate a major compromise that let private insurance companies continue to cover abortion care but not fund coverage for this care under any government or public option. He also proposed an amendment to prohibit all private companies participating in health insurance exchanges from providing coverage for abortion care.
Thanks Max for standing by women is this fight to retain our current benefits and for your help keeping these private decisions in the hands of women, families, and doctors.
For now, women can continue to make these tough decisions based on our own moral beliefs and medical needs--not Orrin Hatch's.
These guys have quite the reputation. So the Montana Pro-Life Coalition scoured their ranks for a front person they hoped would have as little baggage as possible--but Annie Bukacek is turning out to be every bit as much the self-aggrandizing wing-nut as the rest of them.
Not familiar with Bukacek? You should be, she's the new official face of extreme-right politics in Montana. Bukacek's all about giving rights to "the unborn"-- but once born, she doesn't want them to have healthcare.
Reporters I know have found that Bukacek is the only member of the so-called organization that is allowed to talk to the press.
If you're so inclined, you can seek out Bukacek's comparison of "islamofaciasts to christofacists" and her views on radical Islam being the "true" Islam of the Koran. Or her advice that husbands love their wives as Christ loved his church (ick.)
The treatises are a catalogue of her beliefs that the laws of Montana and the United states should reflect "God's laws." Montana Taliban anyone? How long before adultery is punishable by a weak without food in the stocks? And divorce? Forget about it. We should probably go ahead and cancel the NFL on Sundays, too. (There is no mention of abortion or NFL in the bible, so both are clearly abominations.)
Does Bukacek have a right to believe this stuff? Of course, but she doesn't have the right to force them on the rest of us by permanently amending our constitution.
If Bukacek really wanted to decrease the need for abortion in Montana, she would join the mainstream and work to increase access to affordable birth control and medically accurate sex-ed to decrease unintended pregnancy in the first place.
Josh Hafenbrack of the Orlando Sentinel reports on a group called "Personhood Florida" that is seeking to change Florida's constitution to define "personhood" as beginning with conception - in this case, when the sperm meets the egg.
But wait! There's more!
The amendment seeks to outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. Also criminalized: the morning-after pill and oral contraceptives taken by women, known as the pill. "There are some (birth control) methods that kill a child," said Pat McEwan, who is leading the Personhood Florida group.
A few questions immediately spring to mind. Are the backers of "personhood" initiative in Montana associated with the "national anti-abortion" group driving Florida's? And do Rick Jore's people also believe that oral contraceptives would be banned if their initiative passes?
And lest you still doubt that the primary goal of these folks is to control sexuality, and not to protect the "unborn," consider the 2010 California Marriage Protection Act, which would outlaw divorce in California.
I guess any woman in an abusive relationship can just go f*ck herself, right?
Reminds me of a comment I got in response to a post showing that the criminalization of abortion doesn't actually lead to fewer abortions, and suggested that, if the anti-abortion crowd really wanted to reduce abortions, they'd back things that work, like universal and affordable health care, subsidies of day care and higher education, and robust and realist sex ed. The response?
Do you really think that having a few less abortions happen is worth the increasing moral cesspool that we're tossing each new generation into? It's destroying souls (and society as a whole) to save a few bodies.
It's not about a "few bodies," stupid! It's about the morality!
As if to underscore Matt Yglesias' point the other day that terrorist attacks against doctors who perform abortions actually have consequences that discourage physicians to perform the procedure comes this LA Times article about the founder of a Colorado clinic, Dr. Warren Hern:
...Dr. Warren Hern leaves no window uncovered.
Full-length blinds shroud the bulletproof entryway; in his office, vinyl shades block a small window.
This is one of the facts of Hern's life -- no windows, ever. That was how Dr. Barnett Slepian's killer shot him in upstate New York, through a kitchen window. Slepian, like Hern, performed abortions.
"I can't sit in front of an open window. The shades have to be drawn," Hern said.
After Slepian's shooting in 1998, Hern predicted another would follow. "Will I get to live out my life?" he asked in a newspaper column in 2001. ". . . Who's next?"
And this is the comment from the local pro-life movement:
Bob Enyart, spokesman for Colorado Right to Life, which has demonstrated against Hern for decades, said that although his group doesn't condone Tiller's slaying, abortion providers should expect that violence begets violence.
"If a Mafia hit man gets killed, people recognize it's an occupational hazard," he said.
Remember, abortion is a legal and often necessary medical procedure. Scott Roeder, member of Operation Rescue, with links to the Army of God, murdered a man on the steps of his church. You tell me which person here resembles a hit man. You tell me which groups are using violence to intimidate its political opponents.
Meanwhile, Roeder himself is shocked - shocked! - that he's being treated "like a criminal" by Kansas officials. I guess he expected the pro-life's version of forty virgins or something...
A scant time after George Tiller was gunned down by a violent Christian extremist, two soldiers were gunned down in a Little Rock, Arkansas, recruiting center by a man with political and religious motives:
The suspect, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 24, had changed his name from Carlos Leon Bledsoe after converting to the Muslim faith....
It was not known what path Muhammad, a U.S. citizen who is a recent convert to Islam, had followed to radicalization.
My thoughts and condolences go out to the family and friends of the slain soldiers, William Long and Quinton Ezeagwula. Ezeagwula was 18.
Obviously, these killings were no less a terrorist act than the shooting of Tiller.
The lesson to take away here is that religious extremism is the problem, not any particular religion, whether it's Christianity or Islam. And just as commenters are quick to damn the mullahs that filled Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammed with the hatred that led him to take the lives of two men, so should we be decrying those that fuel the hatred and violence within the extremist wing of the anti-abortion movement.
Still, you read stuff like William Saletan's piece in Slate, "Is it wrong to murder an abortionist?" or Operation Rescue's Randall Terry's statement on Tiller's murder, and you realize just deeply embedded the double-standard on right-wing terror is for many conservatives. Can you imagine how a defense of Muhammad's murders would sound if written in the same logic? That the soldiers deserved to die because of..well...choose your rhetorical hyperbole. (For an antidote to the Saletan op-ed, check out Feministe's Jill reminding us that Tiller provided legal, legitimate health care, and the AmPro's Michelle Goldberg's piece on what late-term abortion is really like.)
This may be news for some, but we are a democratic society governed by law. Those that seek to dismantle our social structure and community standards with a gun deserve neither encouragement nor support. Period.
President Obama said this afternoon that he was "shocked and outraged" by the killing of abortion doctor George Tiller, who was shot while attending church in east Wichita.
Tiller's clinic was often a target of abortion protesters. His clinic was blocked by protesters during the 1991 "Summer of Mercy" and bombed in 1986. Tiller himself was shot earlier in 1993 by an anti-abortion activist.
The suspect in this case - Scott Roeder - is an anti-tax extremist who was convicted and sentenced for building bombs, and was a member of Operation Rescue. I'm guessing Tiller was killed for political reasons, which pretty much is the definition of "terror." In fact, as Jon Perr points out, "Tiller's suspected assassin Scott Roeder is a poster child for precisely the kind of the anti-government extremism detailed in the recent DHS report on right-wing terror threats..."
NARAL has a fact sheet on violence against abortion providers (pdf), and there hasn't been a murder since 1998, when Dr. Barnett Slepian was killed in his home by James Kopp. Anti-abortion terror was at a pretty high level during the 1990s, during the Clinton administration. Let's hope another Democratic administration doesn't re-up the terror activity of anti-abortion extremists.
Matthew Yglesias wrote a smart thing about this kind of right-wing extremism:
Random murder of civilians in order to coerce political concessions doesn't have a great track-record. But direct action terrorist violence against abortion providers has, I think, proven to be a fairly successful tactic. Every time you murder a doctor, you create a disincentive for other medical professionals to provide these services. What's more, you create a need for additional security at facilities around the country. In addition, the anti-abortion protestors who frequently gather near clinics are made to seem much more intimidating by the fact that the occurrence of these sorts of acts of violence.
In general, I think people tend to overestimate the efficacy of violence as a political tactic. But in this particular case, I think people tend to understate it.
Absolutely true. If you've ever been in a clinic that does family planning services, you know what he means. Security, bulletproof doors, etc & co. I know that clinic workers face an unrelenting barrage of threats and intimidation on a near-daily basis. And that's not even considering how intimidating it is to go into one of these places, especially when there's a pack of protesters outside.
Very few anti-abortion activists are violent. But the violence in the movement makes even peaceful demonstrations threatening. Especially when you read stuff like this:
I can't escape the conclusion that killing Tiller was the right thing to do. I am uncomfortable with this conclusion because it's dangerous. But nevertheless, it was the ethical thing to do. Tiller would have continued to take numerous lives. Nothing was going to stop him. So someone did stop him. And now fewer lives will be taken.
The Montana ProLife Coalition is proposing a 2010 constitutional initiative that ultimately could ban abortion by declaring that human life begins when an egg is fertilized....
Legislative efforts by Jore and Sen. Dan McGee, R-Laurel, failed in 2007 and 2009, respectively, to place similar proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. Jore and other backers of a separate initiative fell more than 18,000 votes short of qualifying it for the 2008 ballot.
And, it bears repeating:
"This dangerous measure would establish legal rights, starting at fertilization with the intent of banning legal abortion in our state and threatening stem cell research, in vitro fertilization and birth control," said Allyson Hagen, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Montana.
She called instead for Montanans to find common ground and work to reduce unneeded pregnancies and the need for abortion by increasing women's access to affordable reproductive health care and birth control and by providing teens with medically accurate sex education.
Remember, this initiative was a little too crazy for the Catholic Church, let alone Montanans.
What is interesting about this go 'round, however, is that ProLife Coalition board member, Roland Horst, claims the initiative grants rights throughout an individual's life, "including the aged, infirm, and people with disabilities."
Now, I don't have the wording of last election cycle's CI-100 before me, but all I recall about it was that it defined life as beginning with conception. There weren't really any other "rights" added on to that initiative - it was simply a way of outlawing abortion. So...how would that initiative extend to others? Is it currently legal to, say, kill old people? Or the disabled?
Most reasonable people might expect these folks to honor the "life" after it emerges from the womb. Guaranteeing, say, health care for all. Or day care for the children of low-income parents. You know, taking some responsibility in society, especially after using the state to force women to carry to term. But I wager most reasonable people would be mistaken. I'd wager Horst is getting all Terry Schiavo on us. I don't think Horst et al want to expend the energy and, especially, the money, to help care for the living.
Update: I just saw the language of the proposed amendment, which (correct me if I'm wrong) was pretty much identical to that in 2008's CI-100. Here it is, as it would appear in Section 1, Article II, section 3 of the state's constitution:
All persons have a fundamental and inalienable right to life.
With respect to the right of life, the word "person" applies to all human beings from the beginning of their biological development, including fertilization.
Again, it's easy to imagine a plethora of crazy legal ramifications from something like this. Would a mother of a miscarriage be a murder suspect? Should a fetus get a social security number? Do they count as a deduction on our taxes? Does this make the national guard illegal? Certainly killing someone out of self defense would be unconstitutional, never mind the death penalty.
Thanks to Dan Savage for this excellent editorial inspired by a recent Gallup poll that showed for the first time that a majority of Americans considered themselves "pro-life":
...I don't consider a fertilized egg the size of the period at the end of this sentence to be the equivalent of the Gerber baby, and find people who do to be curious, especially for the anger they bring to the debate. If being pro-life meant an across-the-board reverence for life -- if pro-life activists were also Human Rights Watch members, also fierce opponents to capital punishment and vigorous battlers of AIDS in Africa, and of course anti-handgun and anti-war -- then I could almost understand the compressed rage that pro-lifers often exhibit.
But they aren't. Nor are they in favor of the contraception that would prevent abortions, a tipoff that this -- at its core -- is not about preventing violence to the unborn so much as it is about unraveling a modern society where women are able to plan their pregnancies. Stealing is bad, and religion speaks against it, but no congregation ever took to the streets to protest theft. There is an intensity -- at times a frenzy -- behind the abortion debate, which hints that something else is going on, that religion is attacking modern sexually open society at its weakest point, taking a stand that requires them to not only see abortion as a morally significant act, which it is, but to insist that morality cannot shift under any circumstance, and that having an abortion is the same if you're 14, or 24, or 64.
The "abortion is murder" line is just that -- a slogan. The people saying it obviously don't really believe that, in their hearts, because otherwise they'd be even more extreme than they already are. If it's murder, then why aren't they talking about, not only banning abortion, but also conducting enormous public trials to prosecute the millions of women who have had one? That doesn't seem to be on the table.
...If you believe that sex is for procreation and nothing else, then a pro-life stance flows naturally. If you believe it's for procreation, at certain times, but also for fun, then you're pro-choice. Don't hate me for bringing the news, but the for-fun element seems to be winning, no matter what last week's poll numbers say.
Seems to sum it up pretty well. And let's remember that, of the people identifying themselves at "pro-life," only a small subset of that group wants to outlaw abortion in all cases. Most people want abortion to remain legal in some capacity.
It's ironic, then, that while the anti-abortion rhetoric over the decades has created doubt about abortions, especially in the later stages of pregnancies, that this propaganda hasn't changed many people's views about sex or women's rights. That's probably because all the ire and signs and videos and pictures have concentrated on pregnancy and the fetus; little of it has attacked sexual mores. When it does, it turns people off.
This is something I write about a lot, but there are ways to reduce abortion. Real sex-ed (which, by the way, should tout abstinence). Access to birth control. Accessible and affordable health care. Accessible and affordable day care. Continuing ed classes, more drug treatment programs, etc & co. But, oddly, you don't see many hardcore lifer activists working on any of those issues. In fact, many of the extreme anti-abortionists are expressly opposed to any of those reforms.
Reminds me of an encounter I had during last year's primaries when I was collecting signatures for the CHIP expansion at the Lolo polling place. There was a signature-gatherer for Rick Jore's anti-abortion constitutional amendment there - you remember, the one that would define life as starting at conception, the initiative that was too much even for the Catholic church - so I sauntered over for a chat and to ask her to sign my sheet, and maybe let folks signing her petition know we were there...
Only instead of a signature, the woman - I swear - burst a blood vein in her forehead while yelling at me, calling me a "socialist" and a host of other names unfit for this fine publication. Never mind that extending health care coverage to children of low-income families might actually sway some would-be mothers to carry to term. Never mind that her initiative, if passed and written into the Montana constitution, might cause some low-income families to sink into poverty (because abortion bans always impact the poorest among us the worst - a rich woman can always find a way to safely end her pregnancy).
Confronted with a choice between her ideology and the children she ostensibly was campaigning for, she chose her ideology.
But at the National Abortion Federation, a hotline for women seeking abortion information has been "ringing off the hook," according to the group's president, Vicki Saporta.
"We are currently getting more calls from women who report that they or their partner have recently lost their job, and we are also hearing from more women facing eviction," she said.
One recent inquiry came from a 24-year-old married woman in Colorado who was evicted after her landlord went into foreclosure. Another came from a 32-year-old pregnant mother in Virginia who had lost her job and health insurance.
"As more and more women and families are struggling due to the crisis, it's affecting more than just low-income families. Now more middle-class and working class families are facing the types problems that we've heard from low-income women," Saporta said.
As with many other nonprofits, abortion assistance groups are being inundated with requests for aid just as funding is drying up.
It'll be interesting to see conservatives contort themselves opposing abortion and health care reform, because apparently they're inversely related.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, the best way to reduce abortion is to improve access to health care and day care. Certainly the answer isn't to use the state to impose draconian, 14th-century morality on the people. And, h*ll, that didn't work too well back in the 14th century, either...
Man, when you turn over the rock that's the current Montana Republican party, all sorts of creepy crawlies scurry about.
The first bit of news comes via Pete Talbot and Planned Parenthood of Montana:
On Thursday, the Senate may hear an amendment from Dan McGee (R-Laurel) to strip state funding for Montana's family planning clinics from the state's budget.
1. This represents a 20% cut to family planning clinics statewide
2. 70% of Montana's family planning clients were at or below 150% of poverty.
3. Every $1 spent on family planning saves $4 down the road in public funding.
Dan McGee is Mr. Abortion in the 2009 legislature. He championed a constitutional amendment that would strip privacy protection for Montana's women so as to better monitor their pregnancies, and more recently threatened a civil war over abortion. And now this, an attack on the reproductive health of Montana's women. Obviously it's his little budetary salvo on Planned Parenthood's Fort Sumnter, but if there's a better way to spur more abortions, I can't think of one.
What does this dude have against women, anyway?
The other news comes from the Flathead Democratic party's website. Senator Greg Barkus of Kalispell slipped in a $600k appropriation to fund Swank Enterprises cleanup of the Kalispell Post and Timber Co. yard, which they recently purchased. (So much for free market principles, eh?) Besides being odious for obvious reasons, the Flathead Democrats point out that Dean Swank and his family have generously donated more than $25k to Montana Republicans over the years, and that Barkus, himself, is a recipient of Swank's largesse.
A $600,000 return on a $25,000 investment is a pretty good return, eh?
Wait! It gets worse! Barkus is, of course, one of the proponents of gutting the CHIP expansion that voters -- and Flathead voters -- overwhelmingly supported this November. Apparently -- if this amendment is indicative of GOP strategy -- they're gutting CHIP expansion so as to be able to raid the funds that were originally set aside for the expanded CHIP enrollment! And giving it to friends!
So. A 23-year-old kid opens fire on Pittsburg police and kills three. He donned a bulletproof vest and ambushed the officers with an "assault rifle." But the big news on the 'tubes is that the shooter -- Richard Poplawski -- had a thing for far-right conspiracy theories, and recently expressed a fear that Obama was going to take his guns. And the shooting took place three days after a screed on gun shows appeared in the Pittsburg Tribune.
Dave Niewert is all over this story, writing, "We've been reporting for a while on the surge in gun sales, and how the paranoia around guns is making the more unstable elements of the right particularly edgy. Inevitably, that edginess is going to break out into actual violence -- as it appears to have done today."
Of course, it's not ju st extremist rhetoric on firearms -- it's all over the place lately, even extending to calls to arms over sparkly dishes and embodied by the weird rantings that Glenn Beck has engaged in since getting his Fox News gig. But Poplawski obviously had mental issues. Kicked out of the Marine Corps. Arguing with neighbors. Shooting cops in the head. Is it fair to blame talking heads for this incident?
...when you point out that certain individuals with all their talk about "revolution" and "armed insurrection" are inciting this kind of behavior in unstable people, you will get howls of protest about the 1st Amendment and what not. Sure, crazy people do crazy things. But that doesn't make it responsible to encourage them, which is what a lot of really foolish people are doing right now for purely political reasons.
And that's a legitimate point, I think. This kind of insane chatter used to be reserved for late-night AM shows and obscure online forums, but mainstream media has abetted, even encouraged this kind of rabble-rousing. Just think of Dan McGee's recent rant over abortion:
McGee said Republicans attempted to work with Democrats on these issues but it did not seem to take. He also compared abortion with slavery and predicted an upheaval comparable to the Civil War. "You bet there will be," McGee said.
Certainly (I hope) this was overheated rhetoric -- start a war over abortion? -- but if a Montanan lays waste to a health-care clinic that provides abortions to women who want them, how responsible is McGee? Wouldn't the senator deserve some censure?
And yet...there is no reprimand for McGee from anyone, neither his fellow legislators, nor the newspapers that are supposedly serving our communities. Shouldn't someone -- besides a partisan hack blogger, I mean -- step forward and let McGee know that a violent solution to a political problem won't be tolerated and demand that he recant his statement? Shouldn't we let these people know that extremism won't be tolerated in a democratic society?
It is truly unfortunate that the big business of killing babies has so persuaded the Democratic Party that they will disallow the people of Montana the opportunity to express themselves on this extremely vital issue," [Dan] McGee said.
I can't figure it out -- is McGee a liar or deluded? Seriously, the belief that people support women's reproductive rights because they're beholden to some monolithic baby-killing corporate industry is...weird, to say the least. But then this isn't McGee's first foray off into unexplored territory, is it? I guess someone has to fill Roger Koopman's shoes...
McGee said Republicans attempted to work with Democrats on these issues but it did not seem to take. He also compared abortion with slavery and predicted an upheaval comparable to the Civil War. "You bet there will be," McGee said.
That's right! McGee's going to protect the "sanctity of life" by killing people that don't agree with him!
The Independent's Matthew Frank takes a look at SB 497 -- Jim Shockley's bill that would protect protesters at health-care clinics. The piece answers a basic question that both jhwygirl and I had surrounding this bill: is there really a problem that this bill addresses? Well...the article doesn't actually illustrate a need for the bill, but does explain its genesis:
According to city court records, protester Cathy Kulonis was charged with disorderly conduct for blocking the pathway of volunteer escort Carol Marsh outside Blue Mountain Clinic on September 12, 2007. But it was Marsh who initiated contact, allegedly inadvertently. The case was dismissed.
As clinic director Anita Kuennen describes the incident, Marsh was forced to step off the sidewalk to avoid Kulonis and "lost her balance and brushed up against her."
Shockley-the attorney who represented Kulonis-says the "brushed up against" was more of a "plowing into." In any case, he concluded protesters need a buffer, too.
Marsh had to "step off the sidewalk"? Seems clear that the protesters were overstepping their bounds and deserved to be found at fault. So...why might Shockley want to pass this bill? Other than, perhaps, to satisfy a personal vendetta against the court that ruled against him?
Missoula Blue Mountain Clinic director, Anita Kuennen: " Honestly, I think it's a bogus attempt at trying to make it seem like we're the aggressors in the situation."
Basically the bill seeks to use the law to equate clinic worker and patient behavior with the confrontational style of abortion protesters. Between clinic bombings, assassination of health care providers, and the anti-abortion crowd's former tactic of trying to barricade health care clinics, there's actually a need for a "bubble bill."
But this bill doesn't solve a problem, it's a gimmick. Do we really need laws to fulfill the fevered fantasies of anti-abortion extremists? Naturally this is a time for those self-proclaimed opponents of big and intrusive government to step forward, don't you think?
GOP legislators this week endorsed a measure to massively restrict abortion rights and also called for massive cuts to children's health insurance programs. Barney Frank said conservatives believe life begins at conception and ends at birth and this is a pretty example of that line of thinking.
Look, I'm a safety netter, a social Democrat, whatever. I think the government should ensure that all Americans have access to health insurance. But why the hell do conservatives think that compelled birth coupled with no assistance to low-income families to provide the basics like health care and food is a great idea for the little ones they're bringing into the world?
Last night, we had a class for Forward Montana and MontPIRG interns and we talked progressive values. I offered one approach that I'm a fan of -- Rawlsian justice. I just can't imagine the mindset that thinks that a fetus 3 days before being born is a defenseless human, but upon departure from the womb should be a self-actualized individual fully capable of providing health care for itself.
I should note -- to their credit, Sens. John Brueggeman and Ryan Zinke voted against the McGee abortion measure. And the CHIP cuts haven't faced a wider hearing. There may be more sanity yet. Time will tell.
Looking over the Missoulian's list of upcoming legislative hearings -- and there are a lot of potentially contentious topics here, increasing taxes on those making more than $250K, capping payday loan rates, a "right to work" bill, etc & co -- I see they're featuring Dan McGee's SB 46...but kinda missing its point. The Missoulian:
A proposed anti-abortion constitutional amendment, which declares that "the protection of unborn human life is a compelling state interest," tops the list of bills up for hearing this week at the Montana Legislature.
That measure, Senate Bill 46, by Sen. Dan McGee, R-Laurel, will be heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee at 9 a.m. on Wednesday in Room 303. It is expected to draw big crowds for and against the measure.
Yes, SB 46 would define unborn human life as a "compelling state interest" -- but as a reason to abrogate an individual's right to privacy as guaranteed by Montana's constitution. That is, if you're preggo, you've no constitutional protections against the state's incursions into your pregancy. What would keep the Dan McGees of the world from legislating access to your medical records, dictating how you steward your pregancy, and dictating which health care providers you could visit? And what's "unborn life" anyway? Does Senator McGee have a particular threshhold? Does a woman's right to privacy end at the third trimester? At conception? Or do her ovaries packed with viable eggs exclude her from constitutional protection until menopause?
