StupidiNews, Non-Election News Edition!

• Israeli police and Arab youth clashed at Jerusalem's Temple Mount, leaving 15 injured as police cleared Muslim protestors to make way for a rally for a Rabbi shot last week.
• NFL player Adrian Peterson will avoid jail time after taking a plea bargain on charges of child abuse and endangerment after admitting to disciplining his four-year-old son with a wooden branch.
• Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu has accused Syria of atrocities around the city of Aleppo, warning that Istanbul would face a massive refugee crisis if the city fell.
• A new Pentagon report dings the US Army for allowing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military equipment to go missing in Afghanistan.
• In large US cities, 30-40% of Americans have no internet access whatsoever, with five Ohio cities making the list of top 25 cities with higher percentage without access.

Last Call For A Long Night

Settle in, folks.  Odds are good we won't know who controls the Senate for days, if not months.

I'll have results tomorrow morning.

Barack Obama In The Runoff Man

Liam Donovan over at Ace of Spades Decision Desk brings up a very important point should tonight's elections in Louisiana and Georgia go to a runoff (as expected).  Will President Obama's post-election immigration decision affect these races?

After delaying his much-anticipated administrative action to spare vulnerable Democrats in the November elections, the President has promised to move on executive orders to legalize or otherwise stop the deportation of undocumented immigrants. He is expected to deliver on this promise during the lame duck, and with Republicans looking increasingly likely to take the Senate, time will be of the essence. Rumors suggest that he may push the move into December to spare Landrieu, a scenario conspicuouslyaccommodated by the demands of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. All of which points to a late December lump of coal in Nunn’s stocking to compliment the unwelcome gift that Obama gave her on talk radio last month. If the scale of Obama’s ambitions are anywhere near what the immigration hawks at Brietbart have suggested, Nunn would be dead in the water. In an economically fragile state where outsourcing attacks have surelydrawn blood, Georgia voters will not take kindly to anything seen as “executive amnesty.” 

Of course, Nunn could still win outright on election night, which would almost certainly be her best chance to put this race away. She benefits from a united Dem front, sharing a ticket and turnout operation with 4 CBC members (3 of whom represent majority-minority districts), a competitive gubernatorial nominee in state Senator Jason Carter (Jimmy’s grandson), and the last remaining southern Blue Dog in John Barrow. This broad-based synergy affords Nunn her best chance to summon the 30 percent African-American turnout she needs to have a chance, while at the same time attracting 30 percent of white voters. This math would be required to get over the 47 percent hump that Democrats bumped into in 2008. While Nunn is a far better recruit than the bland Martin, it is far from clear that she will be able to better his Obama-driven numbers, even with favorable demographic shifts in the interim. The President himself couldn’t match his 2008 showing campaign despite turning out a greater share of Georgia’s African-American vote during his re-election. Perdue has proved to be his own worst enemy in this race, giving Nunn a puncher’s chance of an outright win, but recent polls have shown him rebounding to the precipice of 50 percent.

In other words, if you're a fan of President Obama taking executive action on immigration, you should want Michelle Nunn to get 50% +1 tonight and obviate any need for a runoff.  You should want Landrieu to win outright in Louisiana too.  If both runoffs are avoided, then expect action sooner rather than later.

It's political, yes.  But that's how this shakes out.  That Georgia runoff especially would delay any action for at least two months, and you'd better believe the GOP will be running against OBAMNESTY the whole way.

The Once And Future Rand

MSNBC's Benjy Sarlin reminds us that the most important races in Kentucky today may not be Alison versus Turtle, but which party ends up controlling the Kentucky State House in Frankfort, and the aswer will have a direct impact on what Sen. Rand Paul does in 2016.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who is openly considering a presidential run, is not on the ballot this time, but his state’s legislative elections have enormous implications for his political future, however. Under Kentucky law, candidates are not allowed to run for two offices simultaneously, meaning that in order to run for president he would have to give up his seat in the Senate. Republicans are eager to change the law to accommodate him, but Democrats control the state house of representatives and aren’t having it. The GOP has been trying for years to flip the chamber and Paul is doing his part, but if they come up short the senator will have a hard decision to make about whether he wants to abandon his influential perch in Washington for a difficult presidential bid.

Right now the Kentucky State House is 54-46 Dems.  If the GOP can pick up 5 or more seats, then they can conceivably pass such a law.  That would put it in the hands of Dinosaur Steve for a possible, but his term is up in 2015.  That could mean that if a Republican wins in 2015 a new law could be in place in early 2016.  How soon Paul would need to decide would be one factor, given that campaigning for 2016 will effectively start Wednesday.

How that all shakes out, I'm not sure.

StupidiNews, Election Day Edition!

IT'S ELECTION DAY.
GO VOTE ALREADY.

You can find your exact polling place and hours here, courtesy of Google.

Please remember to take your driver's license or another form of ID.  If you live in a red state, make 3 just to be safe. 

Last Call For Our Good Friends In Tel Aviv

Reminder tonight, via Emily Hauser and as with 2012, the Israeli government is actively campaigning for the GOP in the 2014 midterm elections.  Haaretz's Barak Ravid:

It’s no secret that Netanyahu and his aides are praying for control of the U.S. Senate to fall to the Republicans, who already hold the majority of the House of Representatives. Based on recent U.S. polls, there’s a fairly good chance those prayers will be answered. However, Netanyahu won’t break open any champagne prematurely. He did that two years ago, before the presidential elections, only to see his favored candidate, Mitt Romney, lose to incumbent President Barack Obama. 

White House staffers don’t need the National Security Agency to guess what results Netanyahu would like to wake up to on Wednesday morning. They believe Netanyahu could integrate well in Congress as a Republican senator from Texas or North Carolina. They know that his envoy, Dermer, is investing most of his time lately meeting with Republican lawmakers, and they also remember that casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, Netanyahu’s patron and the publisher of his mouthpiece, Israel Hayom, shelled out $100 million to try to defeat Obama. 

Speaking of Dermer and Adelson, a few months ago U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice met with the leader of one of the major American Jewish organizations. When the latter asked Rice why she hadn’t met with Dermer. Rice responded, with her characteristic sarcasm, “He never asked to meet me.” 

“Besides, I understood that he’s too busy traveling to Sheldon Adelson’s events in Las Vegas.” 

Rice was referring to Dermer’s exceptional attendance as guest of honor at a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in March. That event served to prove to Obama’s aides that despite the “new leaf” Dermer had promised when he arrived in Washington only a few months earlier, he continued to dabble in American domestic politics as a sympathizer with the red, Republican side.

The fact that Israel is actively trying to affect US elections is no actual secret, but it's nice to remember that if both parties are the same, why does Bibi and his Likud Party want Obama out of the way so badly, to the tune of tens of millions and an ambassador at GOP fundraisers?

Not all the Obama Derangement Syndrome sufferers are in the US, or are even Americans.

Meanwhile In Louisville

Reminder: here in Kentucky there is no GOP racism towards African-Americans, there is no GOP War on Women, and both parties are the same.

Kentucky Republicans, who are trying to win control of the state legislature on Tuesday, may have underestimated Ashley Miller.

“I think they just said, ‘Oh she’s young, she’s brown, You don’t have to worry about her,’” said the 30-year-old nurse practitioner, who is running for state representative in the state’s 32nd district, in East Louisville. She would be the first black woman in the Kentucky legislature in 14 years; women currently make up only 18% of the assembly overall.

But Republicans seem worried indeed. In September, a website anonymously surfaced calling Miller “Trashley Miller,” singling out her job at Planned Parenthood for its connection to abortion. Miller is prochoice and and provides options counseling for pregnant women, among other services, but Planned Parenthood in Kentucky does not provide abortion services. It also pointed to her modeling career, which included appearing on the cover of a local rap group’s mix tape. The website referred to the group, Nappy Roots, as “a popular gangster RAP group,” a characterization that doesn’t match the group’s alternative image but seems to play on racial fears. (It’s unclear why rap was in all-caps.)

“There were several people in the community that felt like it was a dog whistle of sorts to remind the voters that I am a minority woman,” Miller said.

More recently, a supporter reached out to Miller, she told msnbc, to tell her she had gotten a robocall asking her if she would vote for Ashley Miller if she “knew that on my previous modeling Web site that I advertised to model lingerie in men’s homes for money.” Miller says that’s false. The call also attacked Miller’s Planned Parenthood affiliation.

You know when Republican say us black people need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make something of ourselves?

Miller was recruited by Mary Lou Marzian, a Democrat in the general assembly who first met her when Miller keynoted a Planned Parenthood event.

“She just blew me away,” Marzian told msnbc, saying Miller was “just poised intelligent, showed compassion for the women she served. I said, ‘This woman needs to run for office.’ Women just need to get other women out and recruited to run. A lot of women feel intimidated, we’re not smart enough, or we can’t do it. We wait to be asked. The men are never gonna ask you to run.”

All that was before Marzian knew how much Miller had overcome. Growing up in the West End of Louisville as the daughter of then-crack addicts, Miller’s family sometimes lacked electricity. “There was some times we didn’t have food,” Miller said. “There were times my dad would get food from a dumpster or would steal it from a local Thornton’s up the corner.”

Support from her grandmother, as well as competing in pageants and playing basketball, helped Miller find her way.

Supposedly this is exactly the kind of woman Republicans say we should be.  And this is how they're treated as a result.

So Where Do We Stand?

Heading into tomorrow, the final Senate predictions are on the table for the pundits:

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has the GOP chance at 74%, picking up 7.5 seats.

Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium pegs the GOP at 65%, with 6 seats.

NY Times' Leo model has the GOP chance at 70%, with 7 pickups.

WaPo's Election Lab gives the GOP a 96% chance, with 8 seats gained.

HuffPo's Pollster forecast has GOP Senate control at 77%, with 7 more seats.

Finally, Real Clear Politics has the GOP picking up 7 seats.

Most of the disagreement comes as to which party Greg Orman would caucus with, so there's some hedging on that.  Pollster says there's a 1 in 9 chance Orman would get to decide who controls the Senate, but don't overlook Angus King flipping parties either in Maine.

But all of the major poll models have the GOP gaining the Senate.  It's not a done deal (unless you believe WaPo) but the general consensus is that the proverbial Rubenesque diva is maintaining light vocal chord exercises for her final aria of the evening.

The thing is there's a thin line between the GOP getting seven seats, and the GOP getting five seats and the Dems keeping the Senate. Most likely there will be runoffs in Georgia and Louisiana anyhow, and should the independent Orman win as well, we may not know who controls the Senate until mid-December.  This is my gut feeling, that the GOP will pick up five seats, Orman will win, and Louisiana and Georgia go to runoffs.

As far as the House goes, well, TPM offers six races to watch.  General consensus there is that the GOP will pick up around the same number of seats they will in the Senate, so if it starts looking like the Republicans will gain 10 or more House seats, it's going to be a long night tomorrow in the Senate.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two space plane that killed both pilots aboard, the full investigation could take up to a year.
• Thousands of protesters lined up outside Minneapolis's TCF Bank Stadium to protest the visiting Washington NFL team's name in their game versus the Vikings on Sunday.
• Islamic State fighters claimed to have taken the Jahar natural gas field in Homs province in central Syria over the weekend, the second gas field seized in the last ten days.
• A suicide attack in Pakistan's busiest border crossing with India has killed 53 has been claimed by a Pakistani Taliban splinter group, who promises more such attacks are coming.
• Ten years ago tech futurists guessed at where Google, Microsoft, and Amazon would be now, and the predictions were mixed at best.

Last Call For The Late Great Planet Earth

The UN's big report on climate change is out, and it's basically a devastating, last-ditch warning to the planet that at this point without a global climate change plan, "irreversible" damage to our ecosystems will occur putting hundreds of millions of people at risk of climate-related disasters.

The gathering risks of climate change are so profound they could stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and hunger if greenhouse emissions continue at a runaway pace, according to a major new United Nations report.

Despite rising efforts in many countries to tackle the problem, the overall global situation is growing more acute as developing countries join the West in burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said here on Sunday.

Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.

“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the report declared.

In the starkest language it has ever used, the expert panel made clear how far society remains from having any serious policy to limit global warming.

Doing so would require finding a way to leave the vast majority of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels in the ground, or alternatively, developing methods to capture and bury the emissions resulting from their use, the group said.

If governments are to meet their own stated goal of limiting the warming of the planet to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level, they must restrict emissions from additional fossil-fuel burning to about 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, the panel said.

At current growth rates, that budget is likely to be exhausted in something like 30 years. Yet energy companies have already booked coal and petroleum reserves equal to several times that amount, and they are spending some $600 billion a year to find more. Utilities and oil companies are still building coal-fired power plants and refineries, and governments are spending another $600 billion directly subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels.

Bottom line:

• We're screwed.
• No, seriously, we're screwed big time.
• Fossil fuels have to be replaced.
• The multibillion dollar energy giants will never allow that to happen
• See point 1.

Anyone born after the year 2000 will probably be around to see just how awful this is going to get, and they will remember our response to this call.

And they will hate us for what we did to them.

That Didn't Last Long, Did It Mitch?

As I said earlier this week, Mitch McConnell isn't going to be able to get away with having both "Kynect is just a website" and "Repeal Obamacare root and branch" as his positions on the Affordable Care Act, and the Tea Party that really runs the GOP has made it clear that he's not getting off the hook that easily.

After McConnell downplayed the prospect of a GOP Senate fully repealing Obamacare on Tuesday, his office told the conservative Washington Examiner on Thursday that he would be willing to use a procedural option known as reconciliation to slice off parts of Obamacare with a simple majority of senators. 

"Leader McConnell is and has always been committed to the full repeal of Obamacare, and he'll continue to lead efforts to repeal and replace it with patient-centered reforms that enable greater choice at lower costs. He knows it won't be easy, but he also believes that if Republicans are fortunate enough to take back the majority we'll owe it to the American people to try through votes on full repeal, the bill’s most onerous provisions, and reconciliation,” McConnell spokesman Brian McGuire told the paper. 

There's a catch: reconciliation is only usable for changes to law which affect the budget.
"Reconciliation can only be used for tax/spending items. So yes, FULL repeal (to include items not subject to a reconciliation bill) would require 60. That has always been the case and always been on the table," Don Stewart, McConnell's deputy chief of staff, told TPM in an email. 

The process is tricky, but it's doable. The Senate would first have to pass a budget resolution, which also requires 51 votes, and include reconciliation instructions.

It would still get vetoed by the President, but clearly the Republicans believe after Democrats get destroyed Tuesday that they'll completely surrender and cave in on getting veto-proof margins on these votes, forcing a repeal.  If that happens, nobody will be able to save the Dems in 2016 from the base not showing up.

Maybe Mitch knows that.

Your Sunday Long Read: The Purge

A very depressing article from Al Jazeera America on the Interstate Crosscheck Program, a cooperative effort by 27 states to disenfranchise seven million mostly minority voters in this election and in 2016.

Until now, state elections officials have refused to turn over their Crosscheck lists, some on grounds that these voters are subject to criminal investigation. Now, for the first time, three states — Georgia, Virginia and Washington — have released their lists to Al Jazeera America, providing a total of just over 2 million names. 

The Crosscheck list of suspected double voters has been compiled by matching names from roughly 110 million voter records from participating states. Interstate Crosscheck is the pet project of Kansas’ controversial Republican secretary of state, Kris Kobach, known for his crusade against voter fraud. 

The three states’ lists are heavily weighted with names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel and Kim — ones common among minorities, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, fully 1 in 7 African-Americans in those 27 states, plus the state of Washington (which enrolled in Crosscheck but has decided not to utilize the results), are listed as under suspicion of having voted twice. This also applies to 1 in 8 Asian-Americans and 1 in 8 Hispanic voters. White voters too — 1 in 11 — are at risk of having their names scrubbed from the voter rolls, though not as vulnerable as minorities. 

If even a fraction of those names are blocked from voting or purged from voter rolls, it could alter the outcome of next week’s electoral battle for control of the U.S. Senate — and perhaps prove decisive in the 2016 presidential vote count. 

“It’s Jim Crow all over again,” says the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King, Jr. Lowery, now 93, says he recognizes in the list of threatened voters a sophisticated new form of an old and tired tactic. “I think [the Republicans] would use anything they can find. Their desperation is rising.”

Which is easier to believe, that millions of black, Asian, and Latino voters are criss-crossing the country to vote multiple times in different states, or that Republicans are trying to eliminate millions of Democratic votes in order to win?

Considering a variation of my name is on these lists, and under Interstate Crosscheck my voter registration could be terminated and I could lose my right to vote if challenged?  I'm going with option B there.

If Kobach is right, then there are literally millions of double voting felons that need to be imprisoned. If skeptics are right, then millions of innocent people could to lose the right to vote.  People who just happen to be minorities that favor Democrats.

Do read the entire story to see how much of a complete joke Insterstate Crosscheck is.  Basically, you can lose your right to vote if your name comes close to matching that of a person in another state who has moved.

Think about it.

Then vote.  While you still can.  And don't ever tell me that "there's no difference between the two parties."

Last Call For Judicial Overreach

And in about 30 seconds, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Judith French makes the best case I have ever seen about why judges should not be elected by partisan ballot.

An Ohio Supreme Court justice says she was talking judicial philosophy — not politics — when she addressed a Republican crowd about the court serving as a “backstop” for decisions made by GOP officeholders. 

Justice Judith L. French, an appointed Republican seeking to retain her seat in the Nov. 4 election, said her remarks at a GOP rally in Powell did not cross the ethical line that counsels judges to be cautious about partisan remarks. 

At a Saturday event at which she introduced Republican Gov. John Kasich, French said, “I am a Republican and you should vote for me. You’re going to hear from your elected officials, and I see a lot of them in the crowd. 

“Let me tell you something: The Ohio Supreme Court is the backstop for all those other votes you are going to cast. 

“Whatever the governor does, whatever your state representative, your state senator does, whatever they do, we are the ones that will decide whether it is constitutional; we decide whether it’s lawful. We decide what it means, and we decide how to implement it in a given case. 

“So, forget all those other votes if you don’t keep the Ohio Supreme Court conservative,” French said.

That's nice.

 

French explained her remarks yesterday, saying, “The policy decisions stay with the legislators, the policy makers. . . . I’m not going to support Republican legislation; I’m not going to support Democratic legislation. It’s not my role.

Except she just said that it was her role, and the most important role  In the end, they decide.

Of course, in the end, the US Supreme Court decides.  And those positions are filled by Presidents and approved by the Senate.

So in the end, yes, who controls the Senate does absolutely matter.

The Case Against Kasich

By all accounts, Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich should be losing by double digits to Democrat Ed FitzGerald.  Kasich has refused to participate in any debates, signed one of the nation's worst abortion laws that may soon close all abortion clinics in southwest Ohio for starters, passed a restrictive voter ID laws into effect disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of minority voters and worked to cut back early voting, fracked the state into an environmental mess, attacked Ohio's unions, and basically ran uncontested as a Tea Party nutjob.

But somehow, he's going to win re-election.  And this may be part of the reason why.

The editorial board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper, hosted a meeting recently with the state’s gubernatorial candidates: incumbent Republican Gov. John Kasich, Democrat Ed FitzGerald, and Green Party Candidate Anita Rios. The discussion got a little … odd. 

FitzGerald, behind in the polls, not surprisingly stayed on the offensive, and noted the Kasich approved a law that restricts what rape-crisis counselors can tell victims. “Why was it important to have a piece of legislation that literally imposed a gag rule on rape crisis counselors?” the challenger asked. 

The governor, slumped in his chair and visibly annoyed, decided to pretend that FitzGerald wasn’t in the room.

This isn't hyperbole, this is literally what happened.

One of the editors prompts him: “Would you like to answer that, governor?” 

“Do you have a question?” Kasich responds. The editor then tries to explain the question FitzGerald just asked. As much as the editor understands the question, anyway. 

“I assume that it had to do with, uh, there were limits on what they could say about having abortions,” the editor says. 

Kasich still says nothing, possibly because the reporter made the mistake of mentioning FitzGerald’s name while summarizing the question. Once more, Kasich spreads his hands and asks, “I mean, did you have a…?”   At which point FitzGerald jumps in and explains to the clueless reporter, “He’s trying to pretend he didn’t hear me say it, so you need to repeat it.”

Kasich apparently so does not care that he dismissed his opponent while in the room, while talking to the editorial board of the largest paper in the state.

The paper's response?

Keep in mind, Kasich refused to participate in any debates this year, so this editorial-board meeting was literally the only opportunity for Ohio voters to see their gubernatorial candidates talk about their ideas. It made the discussion, hosted by the Plain Dealer’s editors, arguably one of the more important political events in Ohio this campaign season. 

And initially, the newspaper did publish the video of the gathering online. But then the paper pulled the clip, posted an audio-only version, and threatened legal action against an Ohio-based news site that offered readers a YouTube version of the discussion. 

That site being our friends at Plunderbund, who apparently were the only people to realize the import of this chain of idiocy.  Kasich, by the way, still hasn't answered the question about why he signed into law a rule that literally forbids rape crisis counselors from mentioning abortion.  His answer, that he's "pro-life", makes it self-evident in Kasich's eyes.

Oh, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer endorsed Kasich despite that exchange.

So apparently, you don't need to do any debates if your Governor in Ohio anymore, and you don't have to answer questions from newspaper editorial boards either.  You get endorsed because the corporate masters at the news tell the paper to endorse the Republican and that's that.  Kasich could not give a damn about this, you're just wasting time until his corporate funded reelection is in place.

That's Ohio for you.  And four more years of red state lunacy may finally finish the state off.

That Personhood Amendment Again

Oh Colorado anti-choicers, you'll never give up trying to criminalize miscarriages and abortions through stupid, unconstitutional personhood amendments, will you?  Here we have Amendment 67, yet another attempt to give full legal rights to cells.  The ploy this time: making a poster child of Heather Surovik, a woman who tragically lost her unborn child in a car accident to a drunk driver.

Warning: FOX News link, only being used because of the admission of actual truth in FOX News story.

This time in Colorado, though, supporters have tied the measure to a tragic accident in July 2012. Heather Surovik was eight months pregnant and on her way back from a prenatal visit when her car was struck by a drunk driver.

"When she woke up in the hospital, she was told that her baby had not survived," Amendment 67 backer Jennifer Mason recalled. "But not only that, there would be no charges filed in relation to his death because under Colorado law, he was not considered a person."

Heather Surovik said, "They can't tell me that's not a baby. He was eight pounds, two ounces. Brady was the second victim, and nobody recognized it."

Yes, tragic, but Amendment 67 is not the solution, and backers of it know what it's really for.

Fofi Mendez, campaign manager of "Vote NO 67," sympathizes with Heather Surovik's loss but warns that redefining the words "person" and "child" to include the unborn would have the effect of banning all abortions, and even some forms of birth control.

"You end up giving legal and constitutional rights to a woman's fertilized egg and when you apply that definition to the criminal code and the wrongful death statute, you end up making criminals out of women and their doctors," Mendez said.

Which is the point of the amendment, to criminalize women for choosing not to carry a baby to full term.  Colorado state law would be amended to allow abortions to be literal murder under the law and/or miscarriages to be manslaughter.

Important point here, where the fundie nutjob admits it:

This is not something Mason denies. "Well, they could be [considered criminals]. If an unborn child is a person and we recognize that they are a person, should we say that some children should be protected and some shouldn't?" Mason said.

Lunacy.  Absolute lunacy.

Opponents also point out that in 2013, legislation inspired by Surovik's case was signed into law that criminalized the unlawful termination of a pregnancy. If the same accident happened today, the drunk driver who crashed into Surovik's car would be charged for the loss of her unborn child.

Oh, so there's no reason for Amendment 67 then.

Unless you're criminalizing abortions and miscarriages.

PS: GOP Senate candidate Joni Ernst in Iowa supports a national Personhood law/Constitutional Amendment too.  David Corn explains how Ernst is the future of the GOP.

If elected, Ernst would almost certainly be among the most conservative senators in the country. Yet she owes her rise to prominence not to the tea party, but to the Rotary Club types—the GOP establishment, which urged her to run and bet that her biography and folksy political charm would matter far more than her extreme policy positions. She is somehow both the handpicked champion of the mainline business-minded wing of the Republican Party and a hard-right conservative reactionary—the logical end-result of the ongoing merger of the tea party and the rest of the GOP. And if she wins on Tuesday, she'll set an example that Republican candidates will emulate for years to come.

That future includes criminalizing abortions with a smiling face and heartfelt stories of anguish over the unborn, but it'll also take rights away from tens of millions of women.

Or you know, you could just sit home and complain about how Obama failed you.

Your choice.  For now.  Soon you won't have a choice because it'll be gone.