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Hilary Rosen continues to be a great Democratic representative, turning the Fast and Furious conversation back to where it belongs: Why the Republicans are really targeting Eric Holder. On This Week with Jake Tapper:

WILL: Well, this is being played out in a context of executive aggrandizement, as Republicans see it. First of all, the president rewrites immigration law by executive fiat. Then, while it's saying we must shield the secrets here regarding Fast and Furious deliberations, there's a torrent of leaks on the most sensitive national security matters appearing on the front page of the New York Times. Finally, Mr. Holder himself has made himself obnoxious to Republicans by saying, unlike the Supreme Court, that photo I.D. laws constitute voter suppression, that is, if you have to present when you vote a photo I.D., the way you have to present a photo I.D. to get into Justice -- Attorney General Holder's Justice Department.

I just have to say here: Do you have any idea how frequently this happens, that a president decides where to place enforcement efforts? Ronald Reagan did not want to deal with the PR problems of repealing programs - he simply cut the budgets to make sure they were de facto repealed.. Under George W. Bush, the FDA simply stopped doing random inspections of drug manufacturing facilities, instead moving to a system of self-reporting. (Uh huh.) George Will knows this. He's just a hack who parrots the line of the day. He must hold the world's record for coasting on a Pulitzer Prize, because he hasn't done an honest day's work since.

ROSEN: Now we're getting to the real issue. This is why Republicans don't like Eric Holder, because he has challenged voter I.D. laws under the civil rights statutes as voter suppression rules that they are, because he has challenged the Arizona, you know, discriminatory immigration law, because he has refused to implement the discriminatory anti-marriage law.

So, you know, Eric Holder has shown a lot of backbone in the Justice Department, and the Republicans hate it. So what do they do? They call for his resignation; they throw him with document requests that are impossible to respond to; they just throw more and more stuff at him to distract him from doing the things that actually the president and the people hired him to do.

WILL: Let the record show that the Supreme Court, with Justice John Paul Stevens, liberal justice writing it, said that there's no constitutional flaw in photo I.D. voter laws.

Yes, Stevens did say that. In the same decision, Antonin Scalia wrote in his concurring opinion:

"It is for state legislatures to weigh the costs and benefits of possible changes to their election codes, and their judgment must prevail unless it imposes a severe and unjustified overall burden upon the right to vote, or is intended to disadvantage a particular class."

ROSEN: You know, they're going to have to review that in the courts. Thirteen states, George, have instituted new statutes since the Republicans took over those state legislatures in 2010, purely for the purpose of limiting voting.



And Now, Bill Donohue Attacks Hilary Rosen

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It's like clockwork. Hilary Rosen made an ill-phrased but cogent point about Mitt Romney hiding behind his wife when it comes to understanding women's issues. Rosen made no disparaging remarks on motherhood, nor dismiss the difficulty of raising children. Still, it was poorly phrased and tellingly, Democrats like President Obama, the First Lady and the DNC were quick to criticize and distance themselves from Rosen.

Rosen apologized and was made to do it again on Wolf Blitzer's show for good measure. So are we done with this? Can we move on to the substantive portion of the Rosen's comments regarding how Republican policies are so draconian that many American women are needlessly suffering?

Of course not, you silly liberal. Now it's time to attack Hilary Rosen for her "attack" (and again, could the people in the Republican Party please grow some thicker skin? I've been called worse names by members of my own family than what Hilary Rosen said of Ann Romney). And there's no one more opportunistic, more misogynistic, more willing to dive deep and wallow in the ugly morass than the Catholic League's Bill Donohue.

Democratic strategist and CAP Action board member Hilary Rosen is a single mother of twins who had to go through the expensive and challenging process of adoption with her then partner Elizabeth Birch. Now, she’s trying to stick up for other mothers who don’t have the luxury of millionaire husbands to help fund their child-rearing duties, and the backlash is getting ugly. Catholic League president Bill Donohue attacked her family on Twitter this morning:

@CatholicLeague: Lesbian Dem Hilary Rosen tells Ann Romney she never worked a day in her life. Unlike Rosen, who had to adopt kids, Ann raised 5 of her own.

Somehow, Rosen’s family is less valid, less worthy of respect because she adopted her children. This insults not just lesbian couples, but all non-birth mothers. In fact, it seems like few even recognize that Rosen is a mother at all, perhaps an inherent cultural consequence of her choice (or lack of choice) to not be a stay-at-home mom. Consider this Twitter quip from Alice Stewart, who until this week was Rick Santorum’s National Press Secretary:

@alicetweet: Being a mother is the most valuable work a woman can do, my heart goes out to @hilaryr children if she doesn’t believe that

So very classy, those Republicans. It's terrible for Hilary Rosen to diminish Ann Romney for her great good fortune to be able to make the choice to stay home with her kids. But it's perfectly acceptable to diminish Hilary Rosen for being a lesbian, an adoptive parent and a working single mother.




Long before she married Mitt Romney, Ann Davies had a pretty nice life. Her father, president of a manufacturing company, was the mayor of Bloomfield Hills, one of the five wealthiest cities in America. She went to a private school that had a fat endowment. So from the beginning, there was a certain difference between her life and ours — and she wasn't even married to Mittens yet.

But once they did marry, they had a baby while they were undergraduates. Unlike many of us, though, it's not likely they were living hand-to-mouth while her husband attended grad school. Now, taking care of a baby is no picnic, even with a nanny (or five) — but neither is it the same thing as getting up every morning, dropping your kid off at the babysitter's, and going to your job.

More to the point, I don't believe Ann Davies Romney understands what it's like to worry about keeping a roof over her family's heads. She's had her problems, including breast cancer and multiple sclerosis. But she has plenty of money to cushion that blow, and whether she understands it or not, it makes a huge difference. (I have a friend who's blown through her entire retirement fund and maxed out her credit cards to cover $30,000 a month in chemo for her brain tumor.)

Anyway, there was a big fake blowup yesterday when Hilary Rosen said Ann Romney's "actually never worked a day in her life." Republicans promptly clutched pearls and pulled out their smelling salts. "Why, I never!"

Rosen, from what I hear via a mutual friend, is a truly lovely person. (She certainly comes across that way on tee vee. And she's one of the better Democratic commentators.) But while that may be true, she's also worked for some organizations that just make my skin crawl. (Like the RIAA and BP oil.) She's made herself a nice bundle in the process — more than $1 million a year at RIAA.

So when Rosen is pointing out that Ann Romney's "never worked a day in her life," well, I'd like to point out that no matter what her roots, Hilary Rosen's work life and mothering experience isn't like most of ours, either. Like Ann Romney's, it's now comfortably cushioned by wealth and privilege. While her wealth and privilege was earned through her own hard work, it's still a life that's in an economic bubble.

There are some things I just wouldn't do. For instance, I wouldn't have single mothers indicted because their kid downloaded songs. And I wouldn't help an oil company cover up their ecological crimes. But whatever. We make the choices we can live with. I just want to point out that Hilary Rosen is hardly representative of economic suffering, either.

Just once, I'd like to see a Democratic spokesperson who is.

This whole fake controversy made me think about my idealistic friend M., who graduates from an Ivy League law school next month. Like Ann Romney, M. also has MS; she has four kids, two of them autistic - one of them, profoundly so. Her husband travels a lot for work and to assist his elderly parent, and as long as I've known them both, their finances are always close to going over the cliff. But somehow, she manages.

In the years before law school, she and her husband sold their house just ahead of foreclosure. With the proceeds, they bought a trailer and traveled around the U.S. (did I mention the part about the FOUR KIDS?) for more than four years, mostly staying in state parks. There were times when I tried to talk her into bagging it and settling down somewhere to get medical treatment. But, as she pointed out, they no longer had health insurance. And she really, really wanted to see the country with her kids "while I can still travel." Because the MS is always hovering.

I remember when she was taking a final exam and had an MS flareup. As a result, she couldn't even see to take the test. (And no, the school made no allowances for her illness.) She's had several flares during the school year, but as she says, "What are you gonna do?" She also had pneumonia and even pericarditis.

I'm proud of my friend and can't wait to see what she does next. But I think about how much easier her life would be if she had the advantages of an Ann Romney, or even a Hilary Rosen. (After all, once she graduates, she's no longer covered by the student health plan.)

My point being that one wealthy person criticizing a much wealthier person sounds a little crazy to the rest of us who are just struggling to stay afloat.