Last Call

Laugh all you want to at Virginia's current GOP Attorney General and teabagger favorite for Governor in November, Ken Cuccinelli.  Yes, he's an ignorant fool, invoking the name of Dr. King in his war on birth control...

On Monday, MLK Day, Cuccinelli again made the comparison between his fight against the federal requirement that birth control be offered with no copay by insurance plans to King’s fight for equal rights for African Americans. Cuccinelli earned some headlines earlier this month when he told an Iowa show that opponents of the mandate need to be prepared to “go to jail” in protest of the law. (He later tried to walk that back a bit.)

Cuccinelli was asked Monday about the controversy on The John Fredericks Show, a conservative talk show in Virginia. He was shocked Democrats would raise the issue, casting the battle as a struggle for rights rather than an attack on contraception.

“Whenever I talk about religious liberty, you know they turn it around. All they talk about -they don’t talk about denying religious liberty. They talk about contraception. And I’m not talking about contraception. Government doesn’t have a role in contraception,” Cuccinelli told the radio show. “Government does have a role in protecting your civil rights especially today on MLK Day. The man who really came up with the American non-violent protest theory of civil disobedience. It’s pretty egregious that they can’t get any higher than contraception when we’re talking about protecting people’s religious liberty.”

...but even in a three way race he could very well win.

Republican State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe are in a dead heat in their race to be Virginia's next governor, even if Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling runs as an independent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, gets 40 percent to 39 percent for Cuccinelli, with one in five voters saying they are undecided. That compares to McAuliffe's 41 - 37 percent margin in a November 14 matchup by the independent Quinnipiac University poll.

If Republican Bolling were to run as an independent, McAuliffe and Cuccinelli would get 34 percent each and Bolling would garner 13 percent. The three-way choice was not offered in November. 

We'll see.

Roe v. Wade Turns 40

The Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in America was handed down 40 years ago today, and a new poll on the subject of abortion finds that there's a growing backlash against Republicans legislating clinics out of business at the state level.

According to the poll, 54 percent of adults say that abortion should be legal either always or most of the time, while a combined 44 percent said it should be illegal – either with or without exceptions.

That’s the first time since this poll question was first asked in 2003 that a majority maintained that abortion should be legal. Previously (with just one exception in 2008), majorities said abortion should be illegal.

In addition, a whopping 70 percent of Americans oppose the Roe v. Wade decision being overturned, including 57 percent who feel strongly about this.

That’s up from the 58 percent who said the decision shouldn’t be overturned in 1989; the 60 percent who said this in 2002; and the 66 percent who said this in 2005.

By comparison, just 24 percent now want the Roe v. Wade decision overturned, including 21 percent who feel strongly about this position.

Much of this change, the NBC/WSJ pollsters say, is coming from African Americans, Latinos and women without college degrees -- all of whom increasingly oppose the Supreme Court decision being overturned.

The GOP War on Women has profoundly affected the debate, mainly by reminding everyone that reproductive choice rights can and will be taken from all women if left up to Republicans.  No longer are Americans taking those rights and access to clinics for granted.  The winger side is making this a battle every step of the way, and that's galvanized the pro-choice side into actually fighting back...and winning.

Mostly, it's the passage of time.  Many women (and men!) though birth control and reproductive choice was a done issue.  Nobody's making that mistake now.

Senator Turtle Hides In His Shell

My senator, Mitch McConnell, wants you to fear the President...and maybe even do something based on that irrational fear.

In an email sent to his supporters on Sunday night, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warned that the President and his Democratic allies were planning to take Americans’ guns away.

“You and I are literally surrounded,” McConnell’s campaign manager Jesse Benton wrote. “The gun-grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out-assault on the Second Amendment.”

The email falsely claimed President Barack Obama planned to issue 23 executive orders “to get your guns.” Obama plans to nominate a director for the ATF and direct the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes of gun violence, among other executive actions. None of the executive orders he outlined last week involve anything remotely like gun confiscation.

“The gun-grabbers are in full battle mode,” Benton continued. “And they are serious. What’s at stake? There are almost too many schemes to list.”

It doesn't matter that President Obama is not taking guns away from anyone.  But why would Mitch tell the truth about the President's proposals?  He's running for re-election in 2014. And apparently, the only platform he feels he can run on is fear, paranoia, and rancor.


In other words, he's a Republican.  News flash, right?  If there's one thing that President Obama's second term truly means, it's four more years of unhinged Republicans deep into the paranoid style, pitching Obama Derangement Syndrome.


It's all they ever had, of course.

StupidiNews!

• Britain's Prince Harry has acknowledged that as a helicopter co-pilot gunner in the British Army, he and his crew have killed Taliban militants in Helmand province.
• The Library of Congress will take on the job of archiving and collecting America's Twitter feeds.
• North Carolina's Attorney General office says that undocumented immigrants under the President's two-year program should get driver's licenses.
• EU leaders have approved the latest payment to Greece's government, signaling confidence in the government of PM Antonis Samaras to trim the budget even further.
• A 20-year old Canadian computer science student has been expelled for probing and revealing a major security flaw in Quebec's student information system.