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At the National Review Conference (which was televised by C-Span), the overriding topic under discussion is how the right got things so very wrong. Reihan Salam interviewed the Jabba pundit emeritus John Podhoretz about how the Republican Party had gotten away from these great thinkers and have run away from the Bush legacy, ignoring the huge deficits they supported when Bush enacted them, pretending that the economy was booming until a black man moved into the Oval Office.

J-Pod's answer is that Bush's utter incompetence in Iraq made Americans distrust his domestic policy.

PODHORETZ: I think obviously politically Republicans distanced themselves from George W. Bush because it was the politic thing to do. Numbers don't lie. He became very unpopular. Parties tend not to embrace figures and politicians who become unpopular.

My view is that a lot of the distress over Bush's domestic agenda, from which Republicans fled, beginning really in 2005 had... it was an ancillary result of the failure to secure victory in Iraq early and to have a favorable reckoning...

SALAM: So Iraq sank what might have been a successful domestic policy agenda.

PODHORETZ: Right. Well, what I mean is that I think the entire country stopped listening to President Bush on what would be advantageous for the country when it lost faith that he was managing the war effectively and so he found it more difficult to get hearings on some of the issues that now are bedeviling the Republican party.

J-Pod isn't entirely wrong. I think that even the willfully blind loyalty of the Republican Party couldn't ignore that the Bush presidency was an exercise in failure. And so it was natural for many Republicans (including the talking heads, who couldn't turn their back on Bush fast enough) to distance themselves from that sinking ship, to keep the taint of failure off them.

But it also ignores the Frankenstein's monster the Republican Party have created in the tea party. Decades and decades of conservative talking points ("Everyone knows lower taxes means economic growth!' "The free market rises all boats!" "We must cut entitlements to strengthen the economy!" "Abortion is murder!") were given with a wink. Politicians knew that for all their talk about ending abortion, they really would never do it, because they needed that wedge issue to run on for elections. They knew that even though they cried for cutting taxes, they could always sneak tax increases in the forms of fees or adjustments, as Reagan did over and over. They understood that it was all stagecraft. But after decades of these talking points without substance, they have birthed a generation of true believers in the form of the tea party. And let's be honest, the tea party are merely Republicans with another name. These tea partiers have accepted these truisms without examining them and believe them wholly. They missed the winks; they've ignored the reality and they're ready to implement the Republican agenda full bore. The only problem is that the establishment Republicans aren't interested in doing so, because as Bush's presidency proved so well, the Republican agenda is a one way ticket to failure. And hence, the implosion of the Republican Party, between the cynicism of the establishment and the willful ignorance of the tea party.

But for J-Pod, it's all about Bush's suspicious immigration policy, not his disasterous economic policies, that killed the Republican Party. His proof? No conservative radio host wanted to talk about his nasty smear book on Hillary Clinton.

In 2006 I published a book on Hillary Clinton called Can She Be Stopped... (crosstalk)

The morning that I did my... I had 150 radio interviews scheduled. The book was sort of being sent off in a big way... the first book about Hillary Clinton in 2008 and I did eight interviews the first day and every single one of those interviews, I came on, on a conservative radio station somewhere in the country and I said, yes, I'm here to talk about my book, Can She Be Stopped? and the conservative radio talk show host would say, this is April 2006, I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about immigration and what Bush is doing and what is going on? Why is he doing this? What's the matter with the President? What's going on?

These were... this was supposed to be a friendly audience that hated Hillary and would love to hear about how she should be stopped in 2008 and no... no conservative in the country wanted to talk about the Democrats. They wanted to talk about Bush and distance themselves from him on immigration.

Republicans didn't want to talk smack about Hillary Clinton??? My god, they *are* in disarray!

Gov. Rick Perry is wasting no time in establishing his John Bircher/tea party credentials as he lashed out at Ben Bernanke and used thuggish and violent rhetoric to make his point.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who entered the presidential campaign on Saturday, appeared to suggest a violent response would be warranted should Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke “print more money” between now and the election. Speaking just now in Iowa, Perry said, “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion.” Treason is a capital offense.

Talking treason is something knows well since he has articulated his belief that Texas should secede from the U.S. The only thing that surprises me in this clip is that he didn't demand that America returns to the gold standard. If I were Ben, I'd stay clear of Texas. Perry seems to be in the race to take away Michele Bachmann's supporters so that Mitt Romney can be the nominee. And maybe Rick gets the VP job as a thanks. But any way you look at it, politicians in the United States of America should not be threatening individual members of the government. There's already been too much violence the last three years and some nut wouldn't hesitate to lash out at Ben.

What's even more hilarious is that Karl Rove, the mastermind behind one of the worst president's of all time is attacking Perry via GOP12:

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The right wing pundits and tea party operatives are trying to cover for all the heat they took for their outrageous behavior during the HCR debate and their ugly tea party town halls where spitting and violence took center stage so they have been trying to come up with a typical false equivalence narrative to offset it.

We liberals are all so mean to the tea party now for saying that they held the government hostage in their efforts to cut spending. Unfortunately for them, it's also only the truth. Judson Phillips, the TV face of Tea Party Nation went to Wisconsin to defend Alberta Darling, a Republican facing a tough challenge from Sandy Pasch in the recall elections this week. Phillips took his chips and went all in on the nasty:

The founder of Tea Party Nation claimed liberal ideology is responsible for "a billion" deaths over the past century during a raucous rally here Saturday in support of one of the six Republican state senators facing a recall election Tuesday.

"I will tell you ladies and gentlemen, I detest and despise everything the left stands for. How anybody can endorse and embrace an ideology that has killed a billion people in the last century is beyond me," said Tea Party Nation CEO Judson Phillips.

Phillips, who a day prior likened protesters of Gov. Scott Walker to Nazi storm troopers, urged a few hundred tea party supporters to turn out for state Sen. Alberta Darling, who is in a ferocious battle with state Rep. Sandy Pasch to hold onto her suburban Milwaukee seat.

But he wasn't the only speaker to use loaded language to gin up the crowd.

Vince Schmuki, a leader of the Ozaukee Patriot tea party group compared the recall effort to a terrorist attack.

"This is ground zero," said Schmuki. "You remember what the term ground zero means? We have been attacked."

He continued, "Tuesday is going to be the beginning of our takeover. And we're going to follow it up the following week, and then we're going to polish off the enemy in November 2012. Who's with me?"

Phillips believes that only land owners should have the right to vote. Calling the tea party caucus hostage takers is certainly a colorful way to describe their negotiation tactics since they refused to strike a deal on the debt ceiling vote that included any type of revenue being raised and needed to be done on their terms only. But it's not inaccurate. The debt ceiling was never used as an ideological tool before and for good reason. With the S&P downgrade on Friday, now we see the results of their actions. Phillips, a regular on MSNBC revealed himself to be an ideologue of the highest order who's basic goal has nothing to do with policy and all to do with his hatred of Liberals. Most of the conservative movement that got involved in black helicopter politics when Bill Clinton took office have been transmitted into the mainstream of the GOP and Judson's views typify their beliefs to the max. They've made a cottage industry out of their hatred for Liberals and Progressives. Not to mention that his Tea Party Nation group has come under a lot of fire by conservatives for their slimy accounting practices.

So, we're all murderers now on a scale of which Stalin would be jealous.

Blue America's Sandy Pasch is running so close to Scott Walker's biggest supporter, Alberta Darling that it's causing them a lot of concern. Here's why:

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Bill O'Reilly is trying to play the only adult in Republican politics so his analysis of the new Debt Ceiling bill is to forget eight years of George Bush, whose policies took a federal surplus into his presidency and turned it into massive debt. He conveniently forgets about the Bush tax cuts, unpaid wars, unfunded Medicare Part D and blames out of control Liberal policies, regulations and government spending for causing all our economic problems. In his Talking Points Memo segment which guides his entire show, he only blames Liberals for our economic problems. No mention of the corruption of Wall Street that led to the TARP bailout born out of the mortgage meltdown crisis, except of course blaming that on Barney Frank. He does have a talent for making right wing propaganda seem almost believable to his flock. (Transcript wasn't available at the time of the post)

BillO does make the case that the government needs to raise revenues which Grover Norquist would disapprove of, but the way he goes about it is to propose the absurd flat tax scheme that shields the rich and calls for a regressive national sales tax that will only hurt 98% of the the American population. See, adding a tax on basic goods is throwing down more taxation on the working class of Americans that can ill afford it. And his defense of it was that since drug dealers weren't paying any taxes we'd get them there to reduce the deficit. Insanity, I know.

On the Flat Tax, which is class warfare that benefits the rich as usual---economist Holley Ulbrich writes:

The attraction of simplicity hides a big change in the distribution of tax obligations among the poor, the middle class, and the rich. When think tanks like Cato and Heritage support changes that redistribute the tax burden in that way, they usually warn us of the evils of class warfare. But the proposed flat tax is, in fact, class warfare—yet another attempt to reduce the tax obligations of higher-income households in exchange for the unenforceable hope or promise that they might use the money to invest and create jobs, maybe even jobs in the United States.

Two considerations should give us pause before jumping on the flat-tax bandwagon. The first is the disruptive effect of eliminating deductions, credits and exclusions that benefit the middle class as well as the rich and that play important roles in our lives—pension contributions, employer-provided healthcare, and deductions for mortgage interest, property taxes, and charitable contributions that support everything from soup kitchens to education to the arts. Second is the role of our mildly progressive federal income tax in offsetting regressive taxes elsewhere in the system.
Second, there's no concealing that the flat tax would radically redistribute the tax burden. Adam Smith, to whom economists always turn to for economic wisdom, observed, "It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion." The current U.S. tax system consists mainly of taxes on income (personal and corporate), payroll (Social Security), sales, and property. In 2007, these taxes provided 92 percent of federal income and 51 percent of state and local government income. Sales taxes are regressive—they take a higher share of low incomes than higher incomes.

Robert McIntyre wrote about this shame in 1995 and it creepily applies to today.

There is little or no disagreement among serious analysts that replacing the current, progressive income tax with a flat-rate tax would dramatically shift the tax burden away from the wealthy--and onto the middle class and the poor.

You'll notice that Bill O'Reilly bashes only Liberals in his screed. What a shock. A national sales tax will never happen, but I believe you'll hear more talk coming from Republicans on the flat tax as the election nears because it's an easy phrase to sell.

Here he blows! Glenn Beck can always take a tragedy and make it darker for the victims. Apparently youth groups meeting from the left are now considered Hitler's babies. If you side with the people or labor, you must be a Nazi sympathizer.

The bomb in Oslo targeted buildings connected to the Labour Party government, and the youth camp on Utoeya island was also run by the party.

I doubt you'll hear Fox News or Beck mention that the shooter was a fan of right wing bloggers from the US.

In the New York Times, Scott Shane looks at the undeniable influence of people like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller on the Oslo terrorist: Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.
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And as usual, the most incoherent defense comes from hate group leader Pamela Geller:

Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among Web sites. Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of Islam who runs Atlas Shrugs, wrote on her blog Sunday that any assertion that she or other antijihad writers bore any responsibility for Mr. Breivik’s actions was “ridiculous.”

“If anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists,” she wrote.

As I wrote yesterday, the chain of responsibility in this case is much clearer than it was in the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. There’s no doubt whatsoever that Anders Behring Breivik was seriously influenced by these people, and they know it. Their guilty consciences are showing.

In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.

His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.

And Rep. Peter King still plans another fearmongering anti-Muslim hearing on Wed.

As Markos points out, right wingers gleefully jumped immediately in when this story broke to attack Muslims.

Right-wingers could hardly contain their glee when news first broke Friday of the terrorist attacks in Norway. None stepped in it more spectacularly than the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin.

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Oh, they desperately wanted Norway's attacks to be the handiwork of jihadists so they could continue justifying the trillions of dollars and countless lives wasted on our overseas adventures.

Then, it turned out the terrorist was a white Christian conservative, and poof! They lost interest. I mean, how dare you smear an entire group of people based on the actions of just one bad apple? Then those same conservatives shifted into damage control mode when it also turned out that the terrorist was hugely inspired by the tea party.

Jennifer Rubin should post an immediate apology or be fired from her job. C&L covers this topic as well as anyone ever has and since our book Over The Cliff hit the stands last year David and I do our best to be accurate about what's being reported as the rise of violence erupts in our society. It doesn't warm the soul to be right in the conclusion that we drew in our book.

I had to laugh after reading the Villagers proclaim Michele Bachmann the winner of CNN's GOP debate in NH simply because she was able to present herself as somewhat normal. And as many others wrote, she stole the spotlight because she announced on the podium that she was indeed running for President. Wouldn't any normal person viewing the debate have thought she was already running since she was part of the debate? Michele Bachmann’s star turn

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann came into Monday night’s presidential debate in the Queen City as an unknown commodity. She left it as the most talked-about candidate in the 2012 GOP field.

Bachmann stole headlines at the start by announcing that she had filed to run for president — skipping the exploratory phase entirely — and then proceeding to command the stage in the first hour of the CNN-sponsored debate with quotable answers on every question asked of her. The crowd assembled at Saint Anselm College broke into spontaneous applause after several of Bachmann’s answers.

And others were impressed that she has 23 foster children. It's a good thing to be a foster parent, but if anybody in the Beltway Media paid attention earlier, they would have known that and probably reported on it when she started making noises about jumping in the race. She is the head of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress and yet this still seemed to come as a surprise.

What we heard from the media since the debate is that she prepared well and had her answers down pat, but what we haven't heard from the MSM is what her views have beensince she's been in office outside of bashing Obama. They do know that she shares the same voters that Sarah Palin does.

Bill O'Reilly was suggesting that she would make a good VP pick for someone like Romney as he talked to Dick Morris last night because members of the House never get elected as President. Morris agreed with that but only because he believes she hasn't been vetted yet and there might be downside when the oppo research starts while Romney has already been through that process. That's the main reason Conservatives hate Romney.

The major reason Senators and members of the House have problems running for the Oval Office is because they take many, many votes in Congress which leaves a record that their rivals use against them. President Obama used Hillary Clinton's vote on the Iraq war as a big tool against her since he never had to take that vote and could later say he would have voted against it. It's Politics 101.

Anyway, Bachmann is as extreme as it gets and it's not like she's been hiding it. When she went McCarthy on Chris Matthews and told him that there are anti-American members in Congress and we should investigate them, it became an Internet sensation for lunacy. Before FOX News created the Tea Party, she was considered wackier than Rick Santorum and Dan Webster put together. In other words, she's the perfect Ralph Reed candidate.

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C&L readers know that I have my own spiritual beliefs, but I keep them private and rarely write about them because they are mine, not right or wrong---not better or worse than yours and certainly not in conflict if you have none at all. And then there's the RRRs: the religious right Republicans who can't stop telling you enough times how superior they are because of their belief in their GOD. I write this because not only does Tallman write a despicable column, but then he uses his GOD to justify it. He's terribly upset with Gail Collins because she --like most Liberals-- advocates for stricter gun controls in a countrywith an incredible amount of guns causing incredible amounts of harm. And unfortunately, it's only enabled by courts that are willing to rule that people drinking in bars in states like Arizona should have the freedom to carry guns. When Gabby Giffords was shot in the head by a lunatic packing a Glock, the debate on sensible gun control did come back to the forefront since most of us are civilized people.

Jamison Foser was the first person I saw write about Tallman's dressed-up psycho-philosophical debate about good and evil, making a rather odious analogy as a response to Collins' column:

Townhall columnist and talk radio host Andrew Tallman finds a rather inflammatory way to emphasize his dislike of the government:

[T]he government itself is made up of people: real, morally flawed people. Since bad people with power are capable of far greater evil than bad people without it, our country is predicated on the belief that we have more to fear from sinners in government than we do from sinners with personal freedom.

Remember, the government has guns, too. And their misuse of them in history has been exponentially worse than anything private individuals have done. But because Gail Collins has unshakeable faith in the inherent goodness of Government, she doesn't mind trusting its guns. As for me, I'd rather take my chances with the Jared Loughners of the world.

Anti-government right-wingers usually stick to denouncing Department of Education bureaucrats; Tallman goes further and suggests he sees the U.S. military and law enforcement personnel as a greater threat than Jared Loughner. Good to know.

This is a truly twisted thing to say, but not to conservatives like Tallman. They understand each other perfectly. Since he's from Arizona, I wonder if he knows of Pastor Anderson? Does he agree with Anderson's take on President Obama?

.Nope. I'm not gonna pray for his good. I'm going to pray that he dies and goes to hell. When I go to bed tonight, that's what I'm going to pray. And you say, 'Are you just saying that?' No. When I go to bed tonight, Steven L. Anderson is going to pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell.

I ask this because Tallman's column is riddled with his own religious vision and since he has his GOD on his side, life is all so easy to understand.

Any crime is the result of a variety of causes including but not limited to: education, genetics, parenting, social treatment, friends (or lack thereof), religion (or lack thereof), internalized sense of virtue, financial hardship (or excess), altered brain chemistry, peer pressure, dangerous ideas, a weak moral culture, psychological disorder, access to the instruments of crime, failure of others to notice warning signs and/or intervene, and (my own personal favorite) individual free will.

It’s incredibly rare that any one of these factors is solely or even mostly to blame for any particular crime, and you’ll notice that government isn’t even featured on the list. But if we do include government, it offers two main entries: inadequate police prevention and permitting too much freedom. Since police are primarily punitive rather than preventative, the remaining big governmental “defect” factoring into most crime is the existence of freedom.

And that’s the real point Governmentists miss: Just like any other problem in society, crime is primarily the result of people misusing their freedom. I’ll say it again because it’s really important to grasp this point: Just like any other problem in society, crime is primarily the result of people misusing their freedom.

I won't go into a whole long-winded piece to debate this bit of lunacy and just say this to Tallman:
If Loughner wasn't able to acquire a semi-auto gun with a high capacity magazine because of his obvious mental condition with some simple gun control measures (which wouldn't affect any normal person) then Gabby Giffords would have stood a much better chance of not being shot in the head on that tragic day and six others might not have lost their lives.

Now, those responsible government regulations wouldn't have prevented Kevin Harpham from allegedly planting a backpack bomb in Spokane on MLK day, but Gabby Giffords might have had a nice glass of ice tea with her day off because of the national MLK holiday while Christina Green might have had a few friends over to watch either High School Musical again or a Harry Potter movie. I'm just saying.

Larry Kudlow, the great business shill for CNBC, voiced an opinion that really is indicative of how conservatives think about the value of humans and corporations, and how they should be respectively treated.

Vanity Fair:

In these tough economic times, isn’t it nice to know that calamitous natural disasters needn't have an adverse affect on your investment portfolio? After the 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan failed to induce a market nosedive, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow expressed his relief in terms that seemed to appall even his fellow cheerleaders for capitalism: “The human toll here,” he declared, “looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that.”

To Kudlow, nothing matters more than stock market prices. Many people attacked him for this callous view towards human life, but I was not surprised by his statement. I don't believe it was really a flub.

I've watched Kudlow for a long time and his love for free market capitalism far outweighs his love for the well being of the American worker and how they support their families. He later realized he sounded like a ghoul and went into damage-control mode.

He apologized:

I did not mean to say human toll in Japan less important than economic toll. Talking about markets. I flubbed the line. Sincere apology.

I have to say, however, that from what I'm seeing on the financial news, his first instinct was indicative of the reaction of most economic observers. But they are now issuing perfunctory disclaimers before they bemoan the loss of possible new nuclear plants etc.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't flub some statements if I had a day job on the air -- I probably would -- but watching TV Stock Market Barkers over the last six years I haven't seen much that would make me believe the intent of Kudlow's original statement isn't the way he really feels. And let's remember the great piece Jon Stewart did on the horrors of the CNBC team that got much of the business reporting dead wrong leading up to the financial collapse, led by Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer.

Jon Stewart Eviscerates CNBC and Rick Santelli

Santelli apparently cancelled on him at the behest of his bosses. You remember his Howard Beale rant?

Santelli: President Obama, are you listening?

Stewart: Yeah man, Wall Street is mad as hell! And they're not going to take it anymore. Unless by it, you mean two trillion dollars of their own bail out money. That they will take.

Now Mr. Santelli was invited to come on this show and accepted the invitation and then on Friday canceled, or I guess the phrase would be bailed out.

Jon Stewart creams Jim Cramer on the Daily Show

Cramer whines about criticism from Stewart: He has a stock show so he can't be honest

Jon Stewart to Jim Cramer: 'F**k you!'

Are CNBC and Jim Cramer gaming the market with their shows? Do we need a Network Fairness Doctrine?

Tucker Carlson should go back to the bowtie

Pot, Meet Kettle: Tucker Carlson accuses Jon Stewart Of Being A Partisan Hack

Larry Kudlow blames Congress and low income families for housing crisis: 'Guilty Liberal Consciences' Forced Banks To Make Bad Loans

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One of the significant achievements of the Wisconsin protests is that this gathering of teachers and firefighters and public workers has been simultaneously forceful but peaceful.

This really is a surprise only for people who believe right-wing propaganda about the unions being populated by violent thugs. So that means it especially throws off the talkers at Fox News, who have been leading the right-wing media parade attempting to smear the protesters as violent thugs.

Notice how, in her interview on Thursday, the morning after the Republicans in the Senate rammed their union-bashing legislation through, Megyn Kelly tries to get Jesse Jackson to somehow hint at violence in the Wisconsin protests?

And Jackson simply wouldn't bite.

Let's hope it stays this way. Fuses are getting short in Madison, but it isn't the protesters who are losing their cools.

This is sick and twisted but entirely predictable, because extremist conservatives already in the government are now being emboldened by the arrival of the Fox News Tea Party Brigade in the halls of power.

Abortion Law: Mother Denied Abortion, Then Had To Watch Baby Die

Nebraska’s new abortion law forced Danielle Deaver to live through ten excruciating days, waiting to give birth to a baby that she and her doctors knew would die minutes later, fighting for breath that would not come. And that’s what happened. The one-pound, ten-ounce girl, Elizabeth, was born December 8th. Deaver and husband Robb watched, held and comforted the baby as it gasped for air, hoping she was not suffering. She died 15 minutes later.

The sponsor of the controversial Nebraska statute, Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk, told the Des Moines Register that the law worked as it was intended in the Deavers’ case. "Even in these situations where the baby has a terminal condition or there's not much chance of surviving outside of the womb, my point has been and remains that is still a life," Flood said in an interview with the Iowa newspaper

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Conservatives don't like the government intruding on their lives except when it intrudes on someone who doesn't share their religious beliefs. Ghouls.

Julie Schmit-Albin, who heads Nebraska Right to Life, told the AP in a Sunday interview that the tragic outcome was better than an abortion: "We acknowledge the tragedy that occurs with a poor prenatal diagnosis for the baby. But isn't it more humane for the baby to die in a loving manner with comfort care and in the arms of her parents than by the intentional painful death through abortion?"

Deaver believes that such a decision should belong to her and her husband. "It was very frustrating and added to our grief because the waiting compounded everything," she told the AP.

LGF writes:

Witness the inhumanity of the right wing anti-choice movement...And again, we see the fanatic’s absolute lack of empathy for the woman who was forced to bear a doomed child, and watch it die in agony. So heartless it boggles the mind.

That my friends is at the core of the Tea Party movement and don't let them tell you anything different. Julie Schmit-Albin and Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk remind me of Doctor Heiter of the cult classic The Human Centipede. If you've seen it you know what I mean. My heart goes out to Daniele Deaver.