The House of Representatives has voted 240-185 in favor of Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment cutting off funds for Planned Parenthood.  The organization’s more than 900 clinics receive approximately $75 million a year in Title X funds to provide birth control, STD treatment, and cervical cancer screening to several million low income women each year.  The organization receives additional federal funds through Medicaid reimbursements for serving poor women.  No federal funds have gone to abortion since the Hyde Amendment was enacted in the mid-70s.

UPDATED: Couple of kick-ass speeches by female CongressCritters are posted after the jump.

Read more »

Just a few things that need go away in my humble (and often correct) opinion:

1) “back in the day …” – when?  The 60s?  The 70s?  June 22, 1874?  No – say “I remember when …” Say “when I was in my teens …” Don’t be a douchebag.

2) “robust” – it’s so Condoleezza Rice. People who use “robust” in a sentence also use “proactive” all the time. Fuck ’em.

3) “it is what it is …”. – No, often it isn’t.  String theory, whatever. It sometimes is not what it is, not as it appears.  What a stupid fucking observation. Don’t do it – makes you sound like David Fucking Brookes.

4) “take a step back” – use “reconsider” unless you like to be kicked in the ‘nads.

5) “circle back” – makes you sound like you’re in a bad Western.

Read more »

“No wonder Michelle Obama’s telling everybody, ‘you’d better breastfeed your baby.’ Yeah, you’d better, because the price of milk is so high right now!“

Sara Palin, apparently unaware that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children not be fed cow’s milk before their first year.

It kinda makes you wonder if Palin is the real mother of any of her children.

Speaking at a “gathering of business officials in Long Island” — appearance fee not reported — Sarah Palin® demonstrated the commanding leadership style that will make her the runaway winner in 2012:

“I am still thinking of leading this country. I am still thinking about it. I haven’t made up my mind.”

Sarah Palin: In Your Heart, You Know She’ll Get Around To It Sometime.

Palin talks 2012, mocks Michelle Obama [CNN]

So we got Democratic senators hiding out somewhere in northern Illinois.  Meanwhile, back at the Capitol… well, I’ll let the Madison altweekly scribe pick up the story, seeing as he wrote the damn thing:

If anyone thought Gov. Scott Walker — in his frantic push to extract unilateral concessions from state employees and break the back of public employee unions throughout the state — could not possibly be more arrogant, they were wrong. Walker took this aspect of his character to a whole new level late this afternoon, in a press conference in his office.

…

In what he obviously thought was an effort to be diplomatic, Walker said the teeming masses of protesters, who, even as he spoke, packed the Capitol inside and out, had “a right to be heard.” But, he added, they don’t have the right to “drown out” the millions of state residents he claims support his moves.  Walker called on the Democratic members of the state Senate to return to work to do the job “they were elected to do.” Again, he insisted this is what the state’s residents want, overlooking that the Democrats’ decision to not show up for work today was drawing audible cheers from many thousands of people.

…

I asked if he thought his proposal — which called on the Legislature to act six days after it was introduced — did not amount to ramming things through. He denied it absolutely, and chided me for editorializing.  Walker reiterated that it should have been obvious to everyone what he had in mind before he announced it, saying, “If anyone doesn’t know what’s coming, they’ve been asleep for the last two years.”

It certainly appears, if the activists don’t suddenly get bored with it all, that we could all be on this story for a while.

“Democratic State Senators who protested the budget repair bill by leaving the state have been found. The lawmakers are in the Best Western Clock Tower Resort in Rockford Illinois.” [WTMJ]

So, folks have been asking where Americans draw the line on federal budget cuts. We think we’ve found it:

Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) alerted Capitol Police Thursday after a threatening fax arrived at her office attacking her proposal to strip Pentagon sponsorship from NASCAR teams.

It’s very, very nasty. And it’s yours, after the jump.

Read more »