And It Continues In Earnest, Part 2

Texas isn't about to let any county mountie in East Nowhere, Kentucky take the prize for the most unhinged response to gun control regs.  No sir, one Lone Star State Republican wants the state to not only refuse to enforce any federal firearms regulations at all, but to imprison anyone in the state who tries to enforce them.

State Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican, is looking to push his “Firearms Protection Act,” which would prevent any Congressional or Executive act banning or restricting so-called assault firearms and extended clips from affecting the state. In fact, any such action would be considered illegal, 1200 WOAI news of San Antonio, Texas, reported Tuesday.

Toth’s measure would make it a felony for federal officers to enforce any such ban in Texas, carrying the heavy punishment of a $50,000 fine and as many as five years in prison.

“If a federal official comes into the state of Texas to enforce the federal executive order, that person is subject to criminal prosecution,” Toth told the news station.

The lawmaker added that there needed to be a showdown between state and federal government over the Supremacy Clause, which dictates that federal law take precedence over state laws.

“It is our responsibility to push back when those laws are infringed by King Obama,” he said

Hey moron, nullification's been tried before.  Ask South Carolina what happened when it tried.   But these assholes want a rematch on the Civil War, well hey.

Let's see who wins that.

StupidiNews!

• After months of Republican delay, the House has passed the rest of the $50 billion Sandy relief measure, with a 241-180 vote.
• 18 human heads, misplaced medical specimens from Italy, turned up at Chicago's O'Hare Airport discovered by TSA officials.
• Japan's All Nippon Airways has grounded all of its new Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes after one was forced to make an emergency landing due to a battery fire Tuesday.
• McDonald's new McBaguette sandwich in France is debuting to solid reviews as the continuing EU recession drives more people to fast food offerings.
• Officials are reviewing how two US power plants were infected by a computer virus spread by a USB flash drive in November and December.

Last Call

The Washington Post's Sarah Kliff has a very sobering (if not outright depressing) piece about access to abortion in 2013. Here's a hint:  Seven out of eight women live in counties where there are no doctors providing abortion services.  That number is expected to get significantly worse.

It’s been almost 40 years since since the Supreme Court legalized abortion on Jan. 22, 1973, galvanizing people on both sides. Abortion clinics sprang up across the country. The National Right to Life Committee was founded. Opponents and proponents girded for an epic conflict.

But today, the battle is a slog of legislative fights and piecemeal regulations. Here, in a city where the battle over abortion was frequently and sometimes violently joined, combatants on both sides agree: They are dead-tired of the struggle over this clinic’s existence.

Claire Keyes, the longtime director of the Allegheny Reproductive Health Center, recalls thinking that the Supreme Court had settled the abortion argument, once and for all. “When I came into the clinic for the first time, the feeling that we had was this sense of giddiness,” she said. “Women had gained the right to control their own destiny.”

That was then.  This is now.

As the 40th anniversary of Roe approaches, Keyes is fearful about the future of abortion rights — and the clinic.

“It’s never been this frightening before,” she said. “I don’t know if we’re going to make it.”

A Pennsylvania law passed in 2011 requires surgical abortion clinics to become certified as ambulatory surgical centers and meet other rules.

Eight of Pennsylvania’s 22 surgical abortion providers failed to gain approval under the new law.
They can offer medical abortions, using a prescription drug, but not perform surgical procedures. To comply with the regulations, abortion clinics will need to install hospital-grade elevators and have a set number of parking spaces.

“Sometimes I think the regulations are what will actually get us, more than what we saw in the early years,” said Thompson, one of the clinic’s three doctors. He’s in his late 60s and isn’t sure who will take his place when he retires.

Pennsylvania had 50 providers of abortion care in 2008, an 11 percent decrease since 2005, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

With other clinics closing and the facility she spent three decades directing in jeopardy, Keyes now finds it difficult to find the optimism she has held for decades.

And at every turn, states are making abortion increasingly impossible for women to get, and increasingly impossible to provide.  Nobody seems to care much, frankly.  Republicans are passing rafts of abortion measures in state after state.

But frankly, the vast majority of women don't have access to abortions, not without an increasingly crazy maze of social shaming, expensive multiple trips, and assumption of mental incompetence that they are unable to make decisions about their own body.  The same "small government" types have no problem using the full power of the state to legislate morality.

Funny how that works.

And It Continues In Earnest

Obama Derangement Day continues as here in Kentucky, Jackson County Sheriff Denny Peyman says as Regent of the Known Universe, he simply won't enforce any gun ordinances the black guy wants to order.

Sheriff Peyman, 59, held a news conference Saturday afternoon at a restaurant in McKee to talk about his position on gun control. He said in a phone interview that it attracted more than 100 people.

Peyman, an Idaho native who came to Kentucky 15 years ago to work with high-risk children, said he is concerned that new gun control laws could lead to bans and even the confiscation of guns.

"American citizens already have given up too much power over guns," he said.

Peyman said citizens in his county need guns for defense.

"I'm for people defending themselves," he said. "There are some places in this county that takes me 45 minutes to get to. If they have a gun, they could do a better job of defending themselves than waiting for me."

Peyman acknowledged that the Kentucky State Police also patrols Jackson County, "but it often takes them a long time, too, to get to places here."

Asked what he thinks about doing away with AK-47s, Peyman said, "If they pull them off the market, what will they pull off next?"

Peyman is of course being considered a patriot for standing up to the tyranny of a Democrat, no Republican president would ever issue gun control regulations by executive...wait a minute.

The [George W.] Bush Administration declared a permanent ban today on almost all foreign-made semiautomatic assault rifles. Imports of the weapons have been suspended since spring.

The permanent ban affects all but 7 of the 50 models included in the spring suspension. It does not affect the far larger number of virtually identical weapons manufactured domestically, nor does it affect foreign-made semiautomatic weapons already in the United States.

Poppy Bush did that in 1989.  I'm sure this assault weapons ban by executive order caused a near civil war in the US.  Oh it didn't?

In the Presidential campaign last year Mr. Bush, a hunter and longtime member of the N.R.A., opposed to any bans on assault weapons. But a public outcry after a drifter armed with an AK-47 killed five schoolchildren in Stockton, Calif., in January helped convince others in the Administration that some limits were needed.

Huh.  Sounds familiar somehow.  And then the Assault Weapons ban lapsed and more schoolkids were gunned down, only this time, since we have a black President, we've got jagoff white Kentucky sheriffs acting like they know better.

I'm betting the FBI says you don't, son.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/01/14/2475649/kentucky-sheriff-says-he-wont.html#storylink=cpy

And It Begins In Earnest

Even before the President announces the steps he plans to take to tighten up gun regulations through authority Congress has already given the executive branch to use, at least one Republican in Congress is threatening immediate impeachment proceedings should the President try.

Please proceed, Rep. Stockman.

The conservative discord in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. massacre went up another octave on Monday when Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) threatened to file articles of impeachment if President Obama uses an executive order to try to reduce gun violence.

“The White House’s recent announcement they will use executive orders and executive actions to infringe on our constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms is an unconstitutional and unconscionable attack on the very founding principles of this republic,” Stockman said in a statement. “I will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary, including but not limited to eliminating funding for implementation, defunding the White House, and even filing articles of impeachment."

Go for it, skippy.  Shut down the government.  Defund the implementation for the entire executive branch while you're at it.  Turn your absolute derangement against President Obama into something that lays off tens of thousands of people, shuts down national parks, and delays tax refunds and government checks.  You do that.

Then watch what happens to you.  You want to open the Clinton Payback Playbook?  By all means, that worked out so well for you in the 90's, guys.

StupdINews!

• Lance Armstrong has reportedly admitted to doping to increase his cycling performance several times in an interview with Oprah Winfrey airing Thursday night.
• An abused 12-year-old boy has been found guilty of second degree murder in the shooting death of his Neo-Nazi father.
• As Vice President Biden delivers his task force recommendations on gun control to the President today, some in Congress want to take a closer look at online ammunition sellers.
• Computer giant Dell is looking at a leveraged buyout by private equity firms as the company looks to go private, 25 years after being the stock market's tech darling.
• A Java software vulnerability discovered in 2011 has been at the heart of a five-year campaign to infect PCs around the world.

Pulling The Trigger On The Economic Hostage

If Politico is right on the GOP being ready to start tossing bodies out the window to prove they're serious (I know, I know, the WIN THE MORNING crew is rarely so, but let's work through the scenario) then President Obama's victory will be total.

House Republicans are seriously entertaining dramatic steps, including default or shutting down the government, to force President Barack Obama to finally cut spending by the end of March.

The idea of allowing the country to default by refusing to increase the debt limit is getting more widespread and serious traction among House Republicans than people realize, though GOP leaders think shutting down the government is the much more likely outcome of the spending fights this winter.

 “I think it is possible that we would shut down the government to make sure President Obama understands that we’re serious,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state told us. “We always talk about whether or not we’re going to kick the can down the road. I think the mood is that we’ve come to the end of the road.”

The GOP has done this before.  Obama didn't bite then, he's not going to bite now.  The House GOP is pushing the only leverage they think they have:  the Tea Party nutjobs going crazy.

Republican leadership officials, in a series of private meetings and conversations this past week, warned that the White House, much less the broader public, doesn’t understand how hard it will be to talk restive conservatives off the fiscal ledge. To the vast majority of House Republicans, it is far riskier long term to pile up new debt than it is to test the market and economic reaction of default or closing down the government.

GOP officials said more than half of their members are prepared to allow default unless Obama agrees to dramatic cuts he has repeatedly said he opposes. Many more members, including some party leaders, are prepared to shut down the government to make their point. House Speaker John Boehner “may need a shutdown just to get it out of their system,” said a top GOP leadership adviser. “We might need to do that for member-management purposes — so they have an endgame and can show their constituents they’re fighting.”

This is an absolute bluff.  Wall Street and the hedge fund titans will never allow the GOP to blow up the markets like this.  The second President Obama goes on TV and says that the GOP is forcing hundreds of thousands of government employees to be laid off, national parks to close, the markets to sink and Social Security checks to be late, the Republicans lose just like they did in 1995-96.  The real effort behind this story is to make the President blink.  He won't.

Republicans are betting that shutting down the government in order to force massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare is a winning hand?  It'll never happen.  But the GOP is convinced the threat of this alone will make Democrats panic and give in...an even worse idea.  Meanwhile, they are sure they will get those sequestration cuts.

GOP officials said 90 percent of their members are prepared to allow the cuts to take effect, rather than compromise, based on their preliminary head counts. This seems like the most likely outcome right now.

So please proceed, Tea Party nutjobs.  We just might get the House back after all.

You Don't Speak For Me This Time, Ma'am

I can no longer say that I don't regularly expect posts like this from Digby.  Every single time President Obama butts heads with the GOP, she screams NOW IS WHEN OBAMA WILL SELL US OUT ON SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE except he hasn't.  But it's always this time, this time she swears that the rotten crypto-conservative bastard is going to leave everyone under 60 in the streets with rags and dying by the thousands once they're too old to work anymore, forced to eat catfood and scrape by on fumes or just dead on the streets like vermin.  It's been the same song since 2009.

This battle is no different.

I'm sure the White House believes this and it's possible they will stare down the GOP this time on the debt ceiling and the GOP will back down. But after all that's come before the GOP has every reason to believe it will be the White House that blinks. We all do. It's almost impossible for me to believe that they will allow Armageddon (for real, this time, honest) to happen on their watch.

No.  Not all of us think the White House is going to blink, Digby.  Some of us have seen the President come out of battle after battle with the GOP having actually accomplished something, and we think the President will win again this time.

But as I wrote earlier, the truth is they're being very cute about all this and I don't think this is the play at all. It's not a coincidence that the sequester can was kicked down the road to ripen right after the debt ceiling. It means that while we are all watching the debt-ceiling showdown at the OK Corral, it's entirely possible the real negotiation will be happening on the separate sequester track. And that's unlikely to end well for the people. These wingnuts are hungry --- they feel they got robbed in the last go-round and they believe they were promised some major spending cuts in the next one. 

They always feel they were robbed.  They've felt robbed since November 2008.  Hell, some of us have felt robbed since much earlier in 2008, frankly.  The funny thing is, Digby never seems to think the President is intelligent enough to see the completely obvious GOP play here, and yet every time the President gets the better of John Boehner and his nihilistic friends.

Giving the President credit, well, that would be silly.  She can't do that, she has a narrative to cover.

It's a good thing for the country if the White House is able to stop this ongoing debt ceiling hostage situation. And maybe the Republicans want to stop it too, who knows? For all we know, Biden and McConnell prayed at the portraits of Tip 'n Ronnie and worked it all out in advance. Certainly it can't have entirely escaped the GOP leadership that they are playing with fire. But my read on the House crackpots is that they really want to make the President cry Uncle after that last one. Whether they have the nerve to cause an economic earthquake in order to do that is another question but I honestly don't know that they care whether anyone "blames" them. Their voters will support their actions. 

Gosh, if only the same could be said of our side.  Because like it or not, the results of voting in America these days is a binary outcome in a world full of grey.  Either the Democrat wins, or the Republican wins.  Choose.  Because if you haven't noticed, the President won in November.  We're acting like there's nothing we can do about the GOP in Congress.  There is, that would require us going after them at the local, state, and national level.

But it's much easier to blame Obama than to work for it.

You don't speak for me, Digby.  And I doubt in the future you ever will.

StupidiNews!

• Saudi Arabia is defending the death of a Sri Lankan maid, executed by beheading for allowing an infant in her care to die.
• The Obama administration is expected to announce a comprehensive immigration plan quickly, perhaps at the State of the Union address on February 12.
• The remaining $50 billion in aid for Northeastern states slammed by Hurricane Sandy faces an uncertain fate in the House as they take up the votes this week.
• 'Argo', 'Les Mis' and 'Homeland' were the big winners at Sunday's Golden Globes, 'Lincoln' only received one award out of seven nominations.
• MIT President Rafael Reif is calling for "thorough analysis" of the university's involvement in the suicide of Reddit co-founder and digital activist Aaron Swartz.

Last Call

Last week I mentioned that Illinois lawmakers were going to take up authorizing same-sex marriage, and that the plan had the blessing of state GOP chair Pat Brady, who said that the "true conservative position" is in favor of same-sex marriage.  Unfortunately, the vote never materialized as Republicans went bonkers and were able to scuttle the plan.

That of course, was last week.  This week, Illinois Republicans want Pat Brady destroyed and thrown out of the party leadership as Brady has a full-fledged revolt on his hands.

State GOP Chairman Pat Brady faces growing calls for his resignation, at a time when some Illinois Republicans are rethinking the party’s image and stance on social issues, following a dismal showing in November’s elections.

Conservative groups and activists pounced on Brady shortly after he released a statement last week offering his “full support” of a bill before the General Assembly that would legalize same-sex marriage.

But now the public demands for his ouster are coming from party leaders themselves.

“Pat Brady is a total disgrace,” said Bobbie Peterson, a Republican state central committeewoman from Beecher, Ill.

“He’s a pretty face for TV. He can speak well. Period,” Peterson said. “But what’s coming out of his mouth is not what the Illinois Republican party is about.”

It’s unclear whether the party bosses opposing Brady have enough votes to oust him. But even those who stop short of asking for his resignation plan to take him to the woodshed for neglecting to notify party bosses before he publicly contradicted the party’s platform plank on gay marriage.

“I was shocked,” said State Sen. Jim Oberweis, a committeeman from west suburban Sugar Grove who has asked Brady to resign.“Very surprised. Did not expect that and didn’t know why he would have done that.”

Now don't get me wrong, Pat Brady is still a Republican.  But he's the first to figure out that maybe, just maybe, the institutionalized bigotry and intolerance of the GOP platform may be a huge reason as to why the state is completely dominated by Democrats.  And if you're wondering "Gosh, why aren't more Republicans taking a stand against this kind of hatred" look no further than the Illinois GOP doing everything they can to rid themselves of somebody who thinks that in America equality should be the law of the land.

But equality is "not what the Illinois Republican party is about."  Might want to keep that in mind.

Bang-Bang Play

Once again, if you want to know why the NRA is screaming about "Obama taking your guns away" let's understand that they are the largest gun and ammo manufacturer's lobby in the country, and they are accomplishing their goals: raising membership, and selling more guns and ammo.

“Obama wants to take everybody’s guns away,” said Bob Daziel, who stood in line with hundreds on Saturday to get into the Crossroads of The West event in Daly City, California. “So they’re down here buying ammo, buying guns, they’re getting ready for the next revolution.”

Organizers told KGO-TV they were surprised at the record turnout, believing it to be spurred on by the recent discussions headed by Vice President Joe Biden regarding gun safety.

“It was constructive dialogue,” said Bob Templeton, the event’s president, who attended the meetings this week between Biden and members of the firearms industry. “But I think they had their minds made up when they came in the meeting.”

Templeton said his organization’s stance echoed that of the National Rifle Association: “Further restrictions on the Second Amendment are not on the table for discussion.”

Biden is expected to deliver recommendations to President Barack Obama on Jan. 15.

“That’s why we all need to get them now before they take them away,” said Jayleen Heres, who bought an AR-15 assault rifle — the same weapon used in last month’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. “I have three more at home. This is the fourth.”

Meanwhile, lines at the show for everything from firearms to ammunition swelled throughout the day. Templeton said he expected the latter to sell out before the show concludes on Sunday.

“I’m like the hundredth [person] in line right now,” said another attendee, Frank Andtetta. “There’s like more than 500 people on line to get ammunition.” 

These are people who are convinced that government troops are going to search everyone in America's homes and take their weapons and ammunition.  They believe that they must buy more now so that they can be prepared to shoot and kill anyone who tries to do this.  They believe that basically everyone in their family must be armed and trained to use these weapons to defend themselves, to shoot and kill if necessary.

They believe a revolution is coming, where patriots like themselves will be forced to take those weapons and ammunition and shoot and kill their fellow Americans.  And they freely admit their willingness to do this if they feel they have the right to use that ultimate sanction.

It's ridiculous, and yet millions of Americans are doing this right now, and have been stockpiling firearms and ammo for the last four years (and some long before that).

The vast majority of these folks will never fire a shot in anger.  But some will.  And it's going to be a bloody time in our history.  I'm not frightened about our government.  I'm frightened of these people believing they are above it.

Oh, and speaking of buying at a gun show, the other reason why gun shows are stocked to the gills and attract record numbers of buyers is the loophole that buying a gun at a gun show means no background check necessary if you're not selling as a registered dealer.  (You do have to do a spot background check if you are.)  But then after all, we're dealing with people who think there should be no background checks at all, because they don't work.  That's a bit like saying "driver's licenses don't prevent all auto fatalities, let's get rid of them."

So yeah, felons, criminals, nutjobs, can walk into a gun show like this and buy all the "second hand" guns they want to.  There's no regulation of private sales like this.  But we can't regulate firearms, nope.

Hyprocrisy Of The Year Award

And it's only January.  However, I'm pretty sure this story will hold up as the most blatant example of outright hypocrisy of 2013.

A New Hampshire lawyer who works with a virulently anti-gay Christian-right organization has been found guilty of child pornography charges after videotaping her own daughter having sex with two men on multiple occasions.

Lisa Biron, 43, of Manchester faces a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison after a jury convicted her yesterday. The jury deliberated for less than an hour.

Biron, arrested by the FBI last November, was accused of eight felony counts involving the videotaping of men having sex with a 14-year-old girl who was identified by the Associated Press as her daughter. She also allegedly made a cellphone video of herself having sex with her daughter.

Biron, who claimed on her Facebook page (which was taken down, according to the Concord Monitor) that the Bible was her favorite book, had worked with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, in defending a Pentecostal church in Concord in a tax fight against the city.

The Arizona-based ADF calls itself a “servant ministry” that seeks to transform the legal system and advocate “for religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family.” The group issues dire warnings about “the homosexual agenda” and offers a book (available for a donation of $35) by its president, Alan Sears, and senior director Craig Osten, with that title. In the book, the authors claim that “the homosexual agenda” will destroy religious liberty and free speech. In one chapter, they claim that homosexuality on college campuses leads to pedophilia, and that homosexuality and pedophilia “are intrinsically linked,” a falsehood long perpetuated by the anti-gay right to demonize LGBT people.

To recap, Jesus-loving lawyer working with rabidly bigoted anti-gay group is convicted of pimping out her own underage daughter and taping having sex with her.   Remember, homosexuality leads to pedophilia according to these jagoffs, and yet it's the anti-gay lawyer sexually abusing her own child. 

25 years in prison isn't nearly enough for this one, ugh.

Last Call

The "trillion-dollar platinum coin" idea is officially dead, and good riddance.  Ezra Klein has the autopsy:

The Treasury Department will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. If they did, the Federal Reserve would not accept it.

That’s the bottom line of the statement that Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, gave me today. “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” he said.

So why should we all be glad this didn't happen?

The platinum coin idea gained some powerful adherents during the debt-ceiling crisis of 2011, but it really developed traction following the 2012 fiscal cliff deal, as politicians and economics writers realized that the country would, indeed, be facing another debt-ceiling crisis in a matter of months. A Twitter campaign by Joe Weisenthal, of Business Insider, and Josh Barro, of Bloomberg View, forced it into the conversation, and subsequent endorsements by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and former U.S. Mint director Philip Diehl gave it further legitimacy.

But others, including myself, worried that the coin would be seen as an unprecedented power grab by the president, leading to a far more bitter standoff over the debt ceiling, a possible panic in the financial markets and a showdown in the courts. There was also the simple fact that it would, indeed, represent an admission that the government’s executive and legislative branches could no longer be trusted to come together and effectively manage the country’s finances.

And furthermore from a purely political standpoint, minting the coin would have been a response that was a tacit admission that the GOP had the right to default on our already appropriated obligations.  The debt ceiling isn't to stop further spending, it's to block our existing financial obligations.   That means we would be in default.  And that would destroy our economy:

The Treasury may have some ability to choose which payments to default on, and when to default on them, but the bottom line will be the same: The Treasury will only be able to pay about 60% of the bills that are owed.

In relatively short order, therefore, the United States will stiff about 40% of the people and companies it owes money to.

Importantly, this default is different from the "government shutdowns" that have happened from time to time (in the 1990s, for example). In those cases, Congress had yet to authorize government spending. This time, the spending has been authorized: Congress has already promised to pay these bills. This time, in other words, we will be choosing not to pay people and companies we have already promised to pay.

This has never happened before in the history of the United States.

The full faith and credit of the United States would disintegrate overnight.  The GOP would be responsible for destroying our economy.  This statement by the Treasury and Fed make it unequivocally clear that if Republicans in Congress plunge us into default, they will take the full blame for the recession (if not depression) it would trigger.

Republicans know this.  They are bluffing.  President Obama has already said he will not negotiate with these terrorists.  So please proceed, congressional Republicans.

I'd love to have the House back in 2014.

Legitimate Rape Repeat

Sigh.

I really thought we were past this, folks.  But here we are again, with Phil Gingrey saying Todd Akin really did sort of kind of if you really work it over through a few hoops know what he was talking about when he brought up legitimate rape.

“In Missouri, Todd Akin … was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, ‘Look, in a legitimate rape situation’ — and what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say I was raped: a scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, ‘Hey, I was raped.’ That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape. I don’t find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman’s body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He’s partly right on that.”

“And I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things. It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, ‘Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.’ So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak. And yet the media took that and tore it apart.”

Got it.  Women can't be trusted.

The next bit is the priceless stupidity that only Akin and his intellectual brethren can accomplish.  When facts won't hold up, the next thing to do is run it through some ass backwards logic to try to confuse folks.   That wasn't what he said, guys. That wasn't really what he meant, you know.  It's the public's fault for believing it and it's the media's fault for putting his direct quote out there for people to read.  But hey, now that we're on that subject, let's read it one more time just for giggles:

"From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," Akin said of pregnancy caused by rape. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist."

Akin says it's really rare that legitimate rape creates babies.  Funny, there's no mention of ovulation.  Kind of like how our doctor friend doesn't mention that his deep understanding of Todd Akin's remark would only matter if you were being raped within hours of ovulation. Never mind this comes from a physician and a man who sits on the House Committee for Science, Space and Technology.  Don't concern yourself with the fact that Gingrey is repeating this nonsense for no reason except to try to make a point.  That is medically proven to be false.  Through science.

The silver lining is that we are adding quotes to the library for the next round.  Let these twits run at the mouth and commit political suicide, I'll just document it.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Spanish police officials say they intercepted material bound for Iran's nuclear program in the northern Spanish province of Alava.
• Leaders of Canada's First Nations are meeting with PM Stephen Harper to try to settle grievances brought by decades of aboriginal poverty and treaty violation.
• A draft leaked of the quadrennial US National Climate Assessment report indicates that the country is already feeling the effects of man-made climate change.
• French troops have entered the battle for northern Mali as PM Francois Hollande calls Islamist rebels there a "threat to the entire world".
• FOX News has declared war on global warming, asking NOAA scientists to update their climate findings repeatedly over the last several years.