In just their latest failed effort to peel away supporters from one of the Democratic Party's most reliable constituencies, Republicans in 2012 still lost among Jewish voters by over a 2-1 margin. The reasons for the GOP's consistently dismal performance are no mystery. Survey data show that Jewish Americans overwhelmingly reject the Republicans' reactionary social policies and mockery of education and science. Worse still, many of the right's hardline supporters of Israel see God's chosen people as biblical cannon fodder needed to fulfill End Times prophecy. And then, as Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) showed this week, Republicans routinely compare Democratic positions on guns, education, health, taxes, the debt--and almost everything else--to the Holocaust.

During a speech Tuesday to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the North Carolina Republican appropriated the famous Holocaust maxim to protest federal regulation of for-profit colleges. As Inside Higher Ed reported, Foxx complained that private institutions should have joined in their defense:

"'They came for the for-profits, and I didn't speak up'...Nobody really spoke up like they should have."

For her part, Foxx was only following in the footsteps of her GOP colleague, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland (video above). Federal student loans, he cautioned last fall, weren't merely unconstitutional, but the first step to the gas chambers:

"If you can ignore the Constitution to do something good today, tomorrow you will be ignoring the Constitution to do something bad...The Holocaust that occurred in Germany -- how in the heck could that happen? And when you start down the wrong road, it can be a very slippery slope."

Virginia Foxx's previous claim to fame was her high-profile role in propagating the "death panels" slander of the Affordable Care Act that became Politifact's 2009 Lie of the Year. Democratic health care reform, she warned, will "put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government."

And that, some Republicans suggest, makes Obamacare little different from the Holocaust. State exchanges helping to enable 30 million people in the United States to obtain insurance, Idaho state senator Sheryl Nuxoll darkly warned last week, are the equivalent of a final solution for health care:

"The insurance companies are creating their own tombs. Much like the Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps, private insurers are used by the feds to put the system in place because the federal government has no way to set up the exchange."

As it turns out, she's far from alone in crying Holocaust over health care reform. In Maryland, the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County explained four years ago that "Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common." Last summer, Maine Republican Governor Paul LePage reacted to the Supreme Court's ruling upholding Obamacare:

"We the people have been told there is no choice. You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo -- the IRS."

LePage was not the first Republican to compare the Internal Revenue Service to the Hitler's henchman. During the GOP's successful crusade to gut the agency in the late 1990's, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott decried the IRS' "Gestapo-like tactics" while Alaska's Frank Murkowski protested, "You don't need to send in armed personnel in flak jackets."

Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee couldn't agree more.

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Back in December 2005, John Yoo was asked if any law or treaty could prevent the President of the United States from torturing someone, "including by crushing the testicles of the person's child." Yoo, then head of President Bush's Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, responded, "I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that." To put it another way, the American people just have to take the President's word for it.

That's what makes the revelations in the Obama DOJ's white paper on lethal strikes targeting American members of Al Qaeda so disappointing--and so disturbing. President Obama or an unspecified "informed, high-level government official" will decide if an American citizen anywhere in the world represents an "imminent" threat to the United States, even if no evidence of a planned attack exists. With no oversight from Congress or review from the equivalent of a FISA court, the President and his team will act as judge, jury and executioner. Trust, but don't verify.

Voices as diverse as the Center for American Progress, former Bush assistant attorney general Jack Goldsmith and a bipartisan group of Senators have called for a new legal regime to govern America's expanding campaign of clandestine drone strikes and special operations. The concern arises not because the targeting of the enemy's operational leaders is a violation of U.S. or international law. (As Attorney General Eric Holder explained in his March 5, 2012 speech which first hinted at the existence of the DOJ guidelines, the killings of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto during World War II and Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan provide ample precedent for the President to exercise his powers as Commander-in-Chief under Article II of the Constitution.) Still, drones are rapidly transforming American national defense itself, with potential surveillance at home and the rising number of deadly strikes abroad altering the very definition of warfare. (It is worth noting that American drone warfare has not only triggered a probe by the United Nations, but more importantly is producing blowback in Pakistan, Yemen and other battlefields in the war against Al Qaeda and its affiliates.) But the targeting of American citizens is new territory altogether. And in the wake of this week's disclosures, Attorney General Holder's pledge to guarantee Americans' due process rights under the Fifth Amendment in March seems woefully insufficient:

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There are a lot of very good reasons for women of any age to need a transvaginal ultrasound: abnormal cells in a PAP smear, pelvic pain, irregular bleeding that could indicate cysts, fibroid tumors, polyps, twisted ovaries, infections, endometriosis, endometrial hyperplasia, ectopic pregnancies, and even outright cancer.

It can even be a useful diagnostic instrument in testing for urinary and kidney disease as well, transvaginal ultrasounds being the best way to obtain the clearest and most detailed internal images possible outside a MRI or CT scan. I’ve had one myself recently, for good medical reasons, and have reason to be grateful such amazing and wonderful technology exists. So it is appalling when something that was designed to promote women’s health and welfare is being abused by politicians to hurt the very people it was meant to help.

If you are pregnant, ultrasounds are quite common and sensible early on to determine the presence of more than one fetus, and to calculate your due date. Later, an ultrasound helps to check the health of the baby, the location of the placenta, the amount of amniotic fluid around the baby, the baby’s position and to calculate its expected weight at birth. But all these can be determined with a simple topical ultrasound – transvaginal ultrasounds are not a common prenatal procedure and are not used unless there is some additional medical problem that needs closer examination by a doctor.

While being pregnant, in and of itself, doesn’t medically require a transvaginal ultrasound, any woman who intends to have an abortion certainly doesn't need one, either topical or transvaginal. There is no medical reason for forcing a woman to look at clear anatomical images of a fetus she and her doctor intend to abort, other than to traumatize women, make it often prohibitively expensive to obtain abortions, and more difficult for doctors to perform them. It’s the so-called “pro-life” mindset that wants to push their self-righteous moral agenda down your throat – or in this case, up your vagina.

Last year, US officials expanded the legal definition of rape to include men as well as women, any victim who is unable to consent to sex, and – this is the relevant bit – anyone who is violated with an object, any object, not just a penis – be it a beer bottle or hairbrush or rolling pins or scissors or mop handles or radio antennae or any myriad of foreign objects that have been recorded used against abuse victims. Rape is all about power – of completely dominating another person against their will.

All women are not the same, not cookie cutter patients who can easily be treated all the same. So if a doctor tells me she needs to do a transvaginal ultrasound for medical reasons, and I as a reasonable, informed, intelligent person consent, it’s not rape. I can tell you from personal experience that a transvaginal ultrasound is neither humiliating nor all that painful, but it is deeply and intimately personal. The radiologist who did mine was kind, gentle and very professional - and outraged when I told her about women in the States being forced to have transvaginal ultrasounds before any abortion, not just as a woman but because her medical expertise should never be used for political purposes, ever. But the procedure not being painful isn't the point - even when it's not humiliating and painful, it's still rape if it's unnecessary and against your will. A breast exam in itself isn't humiliating or painful - but if someone were squeezing your breasts and pinching your nipples when it was unnecessary and against your will, that would still be sexual assault.

So when rightwing Republican legislators introduce a bill that would require women to submit to a mandatory transvaginal ultrasound before an abortion, against her will and regardless of medical necessity, they are reaching for power they are not entitled to, and attempting to legalize rape.

They are also doing the medical community a vast disservice, since this is not only becomes sanctioned rape where such laws are in force, the media attention surrounding the issue causes distrust and reticence in women who might have a genuine reason to need a transvaginal ultrasound.

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Goblinbooks - Karl Rove can fix the GOP's image problem; he can fix anything!

His Vorpal Sword - Benghazi! Skeeters! Wingnuts desperately seeking new Whitewater!

Instaputz - shorter Bobby Jindal: We don't need better candidates, we need better lies!

Mock, Paper, Scissors - shorter GOP establishment: our very clever plan to oust the cranks, haters, and bigots just might work!

PERRspectives - the U.S. of America - now with fifty percent more drones!

blogenfreude blogs at Stinque and recommends the Spanish drama La Isla Interior - the movie will blow you away.

Weather warning as only a Bay Stater can. Open thread below....

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God bless the brave and brilliant ladies of Code Pink, who were apparently the only people attending the Senate confirmation hearing for CIA nominee John Brennan willing to stand up against the horrors of drones and torture. They interrupted the hearing five different times, got their message out, and most important of all, made the talking heads repeat that message again and again:

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called Thursday’s hearing to recess barely a few minutes after it had started, as protesters one-by-one interrupted CIA Director-nominee John Brennan during his opening statement.

“The next time, we’re going to clear the chamber and bring people back in one by one,” Feinstein said after a third protester interrupted Brennan. “This witness is entitled to be heard, ladies and gentlemen, so please give him that opportunity.”

After a fourth protester stood up, Feinstein made good on her promise.
The demonstrators appeared to be members of the activist group Code Pink. One held a sign reading, “Brennan = Drone Killing.” Another yelled out that she was protesting on behalf of mothers in countries including Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.

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Here we go again with Captain Obama's search for the Great Grand Bargain. Hopefully, Democrats in the House and Senate are smart enough to know that we're coming for every single Democrat who votes to cut Social Security and Medicare, because as predicted, the president hasn't given up:

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama told congressional Democrats on Thursday he is willing to agree to a "big deal" with Congress on spending cuts and tax reforms to end the fiscal uncertainty over the U.S. deficit, but insisted that new revenues be part of the package.

"I am prepared, eager and anxious to do a big deal, a big package, that ends this governance by crisis where every two weeks, or every two months, or every six months, we are threatening this hard-won recovery," Obama told House of Representatives Democrats attending a three-day retreat.

I don't even think the president believes what he says anymore, because his rationale for the Grand Bargain keeps changing. He wants his Social Security and Medicare cuts, and he will always find a reason he can use to justify it. Remember, he's been talking about this since before he was elected. Don't believe any of it.

But this rationale is especially insulting to our intelligence. Let's be real: Every single time Obama has placated the Republican extremists, it's only emboldened them to come back for more.

And let's not forget when we hear talk about "shared" sacrifice -- we're done sacrificing:

So it turns out that 43% of the projected Social Security shortfall is due to …. income inequality!

Let that sink in. This is yet another way that the looters want the victims to pay for their victimhood and hold the looters lossless. The CEO class has worked for three decades to create an economy where working people have a far less share of the economic growth than they used to have. One of the results of that inequity was an unexpected shortfall in the income collected by Social Security.

Delicious reading in Politico about the largely meaningless GOP "Civil War."

One high-profile Republican strategist, who refused to be named in order to avoid inflaming the very segments of the party he wants to silence, said there is a deliberate effort by party leaders to “marginalize the cranks, haters and bigots — there’s a lot of underbrush that has to be cleaned out.”

It's largely meaningless because, while the DC-wing of the Republican Party has always had a fair amount of contempt for the Teabaggers and Snakehandlers -- Lee Atwater used to call them "extra-chromosome" conservatives -- there aren't any serious policy differences between the two groups.

This mostly about the fact that the GOP keeps losing elections, with a few class and culture conflicts thrown in for good measure. But Karl Rove doesn't want to raise taxes on rich people or curb greenhouse gases or make it easier for working people to earn a living wage or regulate guns any more than Glenn Beck does.

But it's sure fun to watch, isn't it?

I’m sure I could grill John Brennan for hours. But after a lot of thought, here are the five questions I believe most important that should be asked of him today.

1) Do you plan to continue lying to Americans?

You have made a number of demonstrable lies to the American people, particularly regarding the drone program and the Osama bin Laden raid. Most egregiously in 2011, you claimed“there hasn’t been a single collateral death” in almost a year from drone strikes; when challenged, you revised that by saying, “the U.S. government has not found credible evidence of collateral deaths,” even in spite of a particularly egregious case of civilian deaths just months earlier. On what basis did you make these assertions? What definition of civilian were you using in each assertion? (More background)

In addition, in a speech purportedly offering transparency on the drone program, you falsely suggested we know the identities of all people targeted by drones. Why did you choose to misrepresent the kind of intelligence we use in some strikes?

2) What was the intelligence supporting the first attempt to kill Anwar al-Awlaki?

The US government’s first attempt to kill Anwar al-Awlaki with a drone strike was December 24, 2009. WikiLeaks cables make it clear that Awlaki was a primary target of that strike, not just intended collateral damage. Yet the Webster report makes clear that on that day — that is, until the Underwear Bomber attempt the next day — the Intelligence Community did not consider Awlaki to be operational. Thus, the strike seems to have been approved before he fulfilled the criteria of the white paper released the other day, which authorizes the targeting of senior operational leaders of groups like AQAP. What was the legal basis for targeting this American citizen at a time when the IC did not believe him to be operational? (More background)

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