I can't think of a more appropriate way to begin the Republican caucus day in Iowa, than with Chris Matthews' closing segment of Hardball Monday night. This stinging rebuke should haunt Mitt Romney for years to come.

'"Let Me Finish" tonight with this", Matthews begins:

This Republican caucus in Iowa has the looks of a travesty, a victory of dollars over democracy, financial equity over equality.

Romney is destroying the only opponent he fears for the nomination, with the relentless wealth-driven advertising campaign the voter can only escape if he turns off his television set. He`s doing it without his fingerprints on the ads, without his face or his name attached to it. He`s doing it while he stands before crowds, reciting their verses from "America the Beautiful".

If there`s ever been a more cynical use of money and media, it is hard to recall it. And so, what exactly will Tuesday nights results mean, will they mean that Iowa likes Romney? Or will it say that the voters of Iowa have been used to destroy his most formidable national opponent?

What it looks like Iowa will say, in the headlines at least, is what it says often, that it likes the candidate who adheres most closely to the evangelical line. In this case, they have a perfect vessel, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. He`s pro-life, he educates his children at home, he`s opposed to same sex marriage. He is to the evangelicals and other Christian conservatives, one of them.

So, if Santorum gets up around the high 30s tomorrow night, that will be about right.

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The problem with the pro-life movement is their concerns for “life” end at birth.

While writing a story about the famed Octomom (who living up to her comic book villain moniker managed to incense both pro-life and pro-choice groups), one of the pro-life advocates I interviewed explained they were concerned with “life that needs to be protected and children’s welfare.” Then realizing the slip, she quickly corrected, “We don’t agree with welfare though.”

So in their view every pregnancy MUST be brought to term - but after that it’s hands off and there’s “freedom” from intervention. Then you should have your rights to privacy. Then you should make your own decisions.

The wedge issue of abortion is a red herring. It’s a giant distraction – a shiny thing we all focus on and a drain on resources which could actually be going to making “life” better for American children.

The easiest example is how the House GOP, riding on a wave of fiscal outrage with the promise of jobs, has spent their precious little time in session trying to criminalize a procedure for which only a minority of Americans are even eligible. Plus, numbers of abortions per year don’t change even with changing legality or availability of abortions. This means no matter how much money is thrown at making abortion not exist, according to data, the same amount of abortions still take place.

So no amount of activism or mouth foam has made the numbers of abortions fewer. But it still eats up plenty of legislative time around the country.

South Dakota tabled a law allowing certain people related to a fetus to be able to kill an abortion provider. Nebraska then doubled down and introduced a bill to de-criminalize all murders if the victims are abortion providers. How pro-life is that?

What we lack in this country is a pro-quality-of-life movement. You know what’s killing children more than abortion? Obesity. Lack of health care. Poverty.

I don’t understand how the Christian religion can be used as grounds to take a hard line on abortion, while simultaneously giving widespread poverty a pass because it’s a “personal responsibility” issue. The poor have no more famous an advocate than Jesus Christ. However, there’s a big swath of Christians who are like die hard Michael Jackson fans who have never heard his music: They admire the man but are missing what he was all about.

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**The Right: Very Respectful Of Human Rights

Yesterday, I pulled up to a drive-through ATM, and sitting in front of me in the line was a car with a license plate that simply stated, "Choose Life".

Who can argue with that? I support life, don't you?

The problem, of course, is the relationship between that phrase and the US right wing. You know, the ones who are petrified of everything from black presidents to black helicopters to Black Sabbath.

Yes, they piously claim to be "pro-life", but it is a simple platitude, for - to paraphrase Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride - I do not think that word means what they think it means.

To those not steeped in US politics, being pro-life might seem like it means what one would expect - to oppose policies and endeavours that duly result in a loss of human life. But, in the US political arena, it means something quite different. Generally, it is a way of telling everyone that it's your business to give a woman her marching orders - that she must eventually carry a three-day-old embryo to term, even if it's the result of rape or incest.

Or its corollary, that you're some kind of Nietzschean Superman for ensuring that 91-year-old patients in terrible pain due to pancreatic cancer must stick a tube in any empty orifice to force themselves to stay alive and suffer, even against their own wishes.

The sad reality is that, to be pro-life in the US today, which is to be conservative in almost all cases, is to love thy enemy by supporting illegal wars - or just plain stupid ones - that kill hundreds of thousands of innocents, cutting health-care benefits and nutrition programs for children and the poor, and turning the other cheek … of the person you're torturing.

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Digby wrote about this last week from this PBS show. It's always much more powerful listening and seeing the people who promote these draconian positions.
Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT (David Edwards)

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

When you hear Napoli's little monologue, he sounds like a man from one of those Satanic cult movies.

Digby then responds to a track-back:

"I got a track-back from the blog "Responding To the Left" to the post below, specifically the story of the woman who had an abortion because she already had two small children and couldn't afford another. I think it is an eloquent and honest representation of the way that many in the pro-life movement feel and it's great to see it out in the open so we can begin to debate this thing honestly:...read on

mcjoan over at Kos looks at John McCain's (having it both ways) view of SD's abortion ban:

"Well, Senator, the problem is that the South Dakota bill specifically ruled out exceptions for rape or incest, allowing only an exception for the health life of the mother, and by golly, the women of South Dakota were damned lucky to get that. I guess it's small comfort to know that their own lives rate just a little bit higher than a fertilized egg...read on"

(Update): Gov. Mike Rounds on Monday signed legislation banning almost all abortions in South Dakota....read on

via Ballon-Juice

Sullivan: Here's a question I can't get out of my head. What if Terri Schiavo had had a living will saying she wouldn't want a feeding tube to keep her alive for decades with no reasonable hope for recovery? Legally, of course, there'd be no issue. She'd get her chance to die in peace. But morally? The arguments of the proponents for keeping the feeding tube in indefinitely suggest that removing the tube is simply murder. If that is the case, then how can removing the tube ever be justified - even if she consented in advance? Murder is murder, right? Isn't a "living will" essentially a mandate for future assisted suicide? It seems to me that the logic of the absolutist pro-life advocates means that this should be forbidden too. They should logically support a law which forbids the murder of anyone, regardless of living wills. In a society that legally mandates the "culture of life," the individual's choice for death is irrelevant, no? Or am I missing something here?

You aren't missing anything. If some have their way, living wills will be invalidated:

Theology doesn't matter. Laws don't matter. Your wishes don't matter. Moral obligations are what matters to some of these folks. And before I get flamed, note the terminology Land used- he 'accepts' peoples wishes. If given the opportunity to mandate what he wants, he will. And you are a fool for thinking otherwise.

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I want to propose a new amendment be added during the conference committee when the House and Senate get together to merge the health-care reform bills. I know the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will love it, since they are officially members of Congress now. Here it is.

All pro-life male members of Congress who ejaculate without the express intent of making a baby will be considered to have had an abortion. (This will include airport-bathroom encounters.) Under this new rule, the male pro-life members then must fall in line with the same restrictions to health care as women will have to under the Stupak Amendment. Then starting in 2013, all pro-life men in America will be covered under this provision as well.

Remember, sex is for one thing and one thing only. I believe a man has an even greater responsibility than a women does just by the fact that the Congress is made up of mostly men.

Out of the 56 women in the Democratic caucus, only two voted for Stupak. All 17 Republican women voted for it.

What this adds up to is that 97% of the Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment were male. 90% of the Republicans were male.

I would have to guess that if more than 17% of the congress were women, there would be a little bit less likelihood that women's rights would be so often used as a handy tool to placate neanderthals.

If men want to lead this country in the debate about abortion, then they should show real leadership and take responsibility for their behavior. Are you with me, Bishops? A woman can't just stand around and get pregnant. She needs our seed to be planted in her garden, so why should a woman be held to a higher standard than a man? Is that the democracy and freedom our troops are fighting for?

I'm sure the USCCB will gladly jump on board with this because they are in the sex business and are considered the world's No. 1 experts in that field. They understand better than any living person how a baby is made -- after all, they are Bishops. Imagination is a wonderful thing and can inform and educate people who have never experienced sex. Wow, who knew?

And he's running for Larry Craig's old seat. What's the matter with Idaho?

CBS News:

A Senate candidate has legally changed his name to Pro-Life and will appear on the ballot that way this year, state election officials say.

As Marvin Pro-Life Richardson, the organic strawberry farmer from Letha, 30 miles northwest of Boise, was denied the use of his middle name when he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006 because the state's policy bars the use of slogans on the ballot.

Now, though, officials in the Idaho secretary of state's office say they have no choice because Pro-Life is his full and only name. He says he will run for the highest state office on the ballot every two years for the rest of his life, advocating murder charges for doctors who perform abortions and for women who obtain the procedure.

Craig failed to file the necessary re-election papers, thereby keeping his promise to retire.

Back in 2001, Republican activist Linda Chavez was Bush’s first choice to serve as Secretary of Labor, looking out for the interests of working people nationwide. She ran into a little trouble when the White House learned that Chavez failed tell the Bush gang about housing a Guatemalan woman whom she hired illegally to clean her house, and then encouraged a neighbor not to talk about the cleaning woman to the FBI when agents asked questions during her background check. Oops.

But never fear, this was a temporary setback for Chavez, who has built a successful network of political action committees. The problem, as the WaPo reported in a fascinating front-page expose today, is that Chavez’s PACs don’t appear to do anything — except raise money.

In the years since she was forced to pull her nomination as Bush’s labor secretary after admitting payments to an illegal immigrant, Chavez and her immediate family members have used phone banks and direct-mail solicitations to raise tens of millions of dollars, founding several political action committees with bankable names: the Republican Issues Committee, the Latino Alliance, Stop Union Political Abuse and the Pro-Life Campaign Committee. Their solicitations promise direct action in the “fight to save unborn lives,” a vigorous struggle against “big labor bosses” and a crippling of “liberal politics in the country.”

That’s not where the bulk of the money wound up being spent, however.

Josh Marshall has more.

It pays really well to be in the abstinence business. I'm going to apply for some of this cash myself. My new program is called "Abstinence Lite." Since we know abstinence doesn't work---maybe we can pay off people to try and control themselves a little bit. My Abstinence Lite program will pay you 1000 bucks if you don't have sex until your fourth date if you're under 30. And then we could pay you on a sliding scale for you to keep your hands off of each other after that. I know it's kinda silly, but is it any sillier than The Silver Ring Thing?: "Pro-life organizations are receiving millions of federal dollars in the name of “abstinence education.”

As Jane correctly asserts:

These people are nuts, and it would be nice if the press stopped coddling them and pretending they were either reasonable or rational.

Tristram Shandy: Bush throws pro-life supporters under the bus, is he wired again?

Looking for Someone to Lie to Me: Exonerated but still held at Gitmo

darrel plant: Clueless at NPR..the Kurds blame who?

Petrelis Files: Security net's holes...plus, Cheney's "Groundhog Day"

Senate Majority Project: This is starting to get old...McCain breaks McCain/Feingold yet again stumping for Chafee

This Modern World: U.S. foreign policy "experts" do a 180; now suspect sky may well be blue...also, it appears that some reporters don't like being reminded that their job is the illumination of the truth.