The horrific gang rape of an 11-year-old girl by 18 men and boys in East Texas recently made news not only for the unspeakable act of violence but also because of the clumsy reporting by the New York Times.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before this crime was exploited by politicians. According to the Broward Palm Beach New Times, during a Florida Legislature subcommittee hearing on HB 61, the “sagging pants bill,” which includes dress code regulations for public school children, GOP Rep. Kathleen Passidomo shared this insight with the subcommittee:

There was an article about an 11 year old girl who was gang-raped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed up like a 21-year-old prostitute. And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn’t happen to our students.

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…to the shores of Tripoli.

U.S. Navy warships and submarines are launching missiles at Libya. French fighter jets are flying over Tripoli attacking Gaddafi’s troops.

UPDATE: The military has named this “Operation Odyssey Dawn” —  who the hell comes up with these idiotic names for military operations?

[NYT]

The Georgia Uterus Police are soooo two weeks ago.

Remember H.R. 3, the GOP’s “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion” bill?  You might also know it as the “When is Rape Not Rape” bill? Although for more than 25 years the Hyde Amendment has prohibited the use of federal money for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the woman, the new bill would forbid using any tax benefits (i.e. deductions or credits) to pay for health insurance that covers abortion or to pay for abortions themselves.

On Wednesday, Thomas Barthold, the Chief of Staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee testified to a House subcommittee that under H.R. 3, the Internal Revenue Service, when auditing individuals who may have used their own money from Health Savings Accounts to pay for an abortion, would require documentation from said taxpayers proving the abortion was from a pregnancy caused by rape or incest.  If a taxpayer who used such a benefit were to be audited, Barthold said, the burden of proof would lie with the taxpayer to provide documentation that her abortion fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.

It appears that the GOP’s concern with cutting taxes and taking on the so-called jackbooted thugs of the IRS does not extend to getting the jackboots off of  the lady-bits.

[Think Progress and apologies to the late George Harrison]

Kansas State Rep. Virgil Peck (R-No Fashion Sense) yesterday suggested in an appropriations committee hearing on funding for a program to control feral pigs that the state’s population of undocumented immigrants could be similarly controlled — through hunters shooting at them from helicopters.

Peck refused to apologize for his comments, later saying, “I was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person,” and that he was just joking.

Your Stinque News Team is researching whether the Westboro Baptist Church is part of his constituency.

[H/T JNOV: ThinkProgress]

The earthquake destruction in Japan, especially from the tsunami, has been devastating. Now we wait for the waters to hit – CNN saying they’ll hit Vancouver and Seattle by 8 am PDT, and then sweep down the west coast. Meanwhile, in Japan, they’re digging through the damage and trying to get the nuke plants shut down before their cooling systems fail. Friend in Tokyo’s FB update said this was a more violent and longer earthquake than any she has been in (and she went through the Northridge quake in LA).

And yesterday I was planning to post a piece today making fun of the “Supermoon will Trigger Earthquakes” kook.

ADD: Updated to include some tsunami maps from NOAA after the jump.

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If anyone’s watching at home, New York Congressman Peter King (R-IRA), Chair of the Homeland Security Committee, has started his witchhunt hearings on Mooslems in Amerikuh.

For those of you with stronger stomachs, you can watch it live on C-SPAN or CNN. For the rest of us, enjoy this picture of Peter King back in the good old days hanging with some of his buddies in Belfast:

In today’s edition of the GOP pissing on women, Republican Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin has introduced H.B. 1 in the Georgia Legislature, which, along with outlawing abortion, requires that all miscarriages (which the bill calls “spontaneous fetal deaths”) be reported to the local county registrar within 72 hours, along with documentation that the miscarriage occurred with “no human involvement whatsoever.”

If a woman cannot prove sufficient facts or details as to the circumstances of her miscarriage, investigators may obtain information from “relatives or other persons acquainted with the facts” to determine whether the miscarriage occurred naturally.  Any “fetal death” that cannot be proven to have occurred without “human involvement” will be classified as a felony offense. Along with ignoring Roe v. Wade, let’s just ditch the whole concept of innocent until proven guilty.

Franklin has previously introduced legislation abolishing paper money in the state and outlawing income taxes, so he has a track record of far-right teabaggery.