You have to see this. Bob Fitzsimmonds is the treasurer of the Republican Party of Virginia who served as Ken Cuccinelli's legislative aide in the Senate, and is a close adviser to the man who very well may be Virginia's next governor:

1. Starting at 7:45, Fitzsimmonds starts ranting about sex education and "the spread of STDs." He claims that "HIV's kind of hard to catch, abortion happens if you get pregnant, but we're on the trajectory for 50% of the American people to have herpes... and that is a profound not only health but sociological crisis that's facing this country, and it's not even as prevalent as HPV." Fitzsimmonds adds, "we have a disease [HPV] out there that's killing women more than HIV is, and we don't even talk about it."

Hmmm...actually we do talk about vaccinating young people against HPV (see this video of Del. Patrick Hope, for instance) but isn't Cuccinelli against that?

2. Starting at 9:10, Fitzsimmonds claims, "We have an entire generation of children who are in their teens, 50% of the ones that are sexually active have an STD...we never lived with this kind of crisis; so I think we absolutely have to address that, and I think Ken will do it." Alrighty then.

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If you thought that the Obama administration's recent changes to the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act would quell the Fox News/right-wing fear mongering over religious liberty, think again. Fox & Friends Weekend this morning conducted an all-male discussion over the new guidelines in which their guest, Jim Towey, president of Ave Maria University, said that the contraception mandate is a “new federal entitlement, something like 'contraception stamps.'” It was very telling that he meant that as a slur, rather than a government safety net.

As Karoli described in an earlier post, the new rules allow religiously-affiliated organizations to avoid having to directly cover contraception yet still provide an opportunity for women employed by those organizations to get that coverage at no charge through a separate policy.

Think Progress has reported that a number of Catholic leaders have already come out in favor of the new regulations, including Bill Donahue of the Catholic League, normally a good pal of the Foxies. Think Progress also noted that “The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a statement to say they 'welcome' the new Obamacare regulations, and plan to comment further after a more thorough review of the rules.”

But the Friends held two discussions (this one and another with Father Jonathan Morris) about the new rules with two male, Catholic detractors without mentioning the support received elsewhere.

It wasn't clear to me whether Towey's Catholic university would qualify for the opt-out. Towey did, however, vow to continue fighting its lawsuit against the Obama administration, via the largesse of the Koch-supported Becket Fund.

But what host Mike Jerrick did make clear is what we should think about the new contraception compromise. Jerrick said, “They call it an accommodation. What do you call it?” But before Towey could answer, Jerrick added, “I mean other people say it's a gimmick.”

Speaking of gimmicks, Towey responded by characterizing the contraception mandate as some kind of welfare program. He called it “obviously” a “new federal entitlement, something like 'contraception stamps.' And so they've made this now available for free to all individuals, all women in the country and a lot of people are upset... If the federal government wants to do this kind of expansion, this kind of new entitlement, why involve religious organizations?”

It was also very telling that neither host objected to using food stamps to smear the mandate.

As Karoli emphasized in her earlier post, there's another question looming just behind all this self-righteous outrage: Why do the religious beliefs of employers who are out of step with mainstream American opinion, trump the beliefs of their employees? Especially when it's the employees who will or will not use the contraception coverage?

Yet this question was never asked, much less answered, in either of the segments.

In case you really, really missed the editorializing, Jerrick made it even more explicit as he wished Towey good luck with his lawsuit at the end of the discussion.

Yesterday, the Obama administration released new and improved guidelines concerning how free contraception under the Affordable Care Act is handled for religious organizations or organizations which serve a broader community but are church-sponsored.

On first blush, they appeared to be a cave to the Catholic bishops and screaming tea party gangs, but in practice, they're not that much different than the other ones were, as Ezra Klein explained on The Last Word Friday night.

For women, nothing changes. If they're employed by a religious institution or non-profit organization with religious purposes, their employer-provided coverage will not cover birth control, but they will receive a separate card which will cover it to the minimum standards required under the Affordable Care Act and regulations.

But if you fundamentally have a problem with the hissy fit they threw which takes us to this place, then yes, it's a compromise. Charles Pierce at Esquire:

Whatever you may thing of the compromises that were necessary to get the Affordable Care Act passed, the very nature of them, and the sheer number of them, has produced a mechanism uniquely vulnerable to political sabotage. This extended hissy fit is a very good example. The president made one compromise before he was re-elected, even though he didn't have to, and then he got re-elected with a whopping gender gap because he stood up for the right of ladies to manage their own ladyparts free from Bible-banging interference. Now, with absolutely nothing to lose, we have another compromise, this one open to all sorts of new mischief no matter how often we are told that the new deal merely "simplifies" the problem and brings the act into more complete compliance with IRS guidelines. This, of course, presumes there was a "problem" to begin with, and not just an ensemble hissy fit among meddling clerics and theocratic pests.

The big change would be that "a house of worship would not be excluded from the exemption because, for example, it provides charitable social services to persons of different religious faiths or employs persons of different religious faiths," according to the fact sheet. According to HHS, the change is meant to codify the intent of last year's rules, and is not expected to "expand the universe of employer plans that would qualify for the exemption."

Except, of course, that it will expand that universe in practice rather dramatically. It certainly seems to expand the universe of "religiously affiliated organizations," at least for the purposes of denying contraceptive coverage. More to the point, the individual consciences of the employees -- our Presbyterian charpersons -- are not accounted for at all. What we have here are regulations that codify the primacy of the employer's conscience over the consciences of the people who work for him, especially when we consider the institutions under discussion here.

The proposed rule would eliminate the need for such an entity to (via the HHS fact sheet): 1) have the inculcation of religious values as its purpose; 2) primarily employ persons who share its religious tenets; and 3) primarily serve persons who share its religious tenets.

These are loopholes you could slip St. Peter's through. In other words, to qualify for the religious exemption from the contraception mandate, an institution doesn't have to teach religion, hire the religious, or even serve much of a religious purpose, as far as that goes. And, in return, of course, the administration will be the beneficiary of the good will of those organizations with which it has tried to compromise.

It is the highlight in the second paragraph which concerns me most. Here's the problem. Pierce is absolutely 100 percent correct. I have absolutely no argument with what he says.

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After the Supreme Court denied Hobby Lobby's request for a stay on the contraceptive requirements under Obamacare, the company has announced that they will refuse to comply, penalties be damned. Thank God for our corporate overlords who are going to make sure we stay pure and make our health choices for us, right?

Via NewsOK.com:

With Wednesday’s rejection of an emergency stay of that federal health care law by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Hobby Lobby and sister company Mardel could be subject to fines of up to $1.3 million a day beginning Tuesday.

“They’re not going to comply with the mandate,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of The Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the company. “They’re not going to offer coverage for abortion-inducing drugs in the insurance plan.”

As for the potential fines, Duncan said, “We’re just going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Well, there you go. Their argument is that it goes against the family's beliefs to include birth control coverage in their plan. I confess that I don't really understand that. Do they expect all of their employees to share those beliefs? If they don't, are they fired? Do they cover maternity benefits for single mothers who become pregnant while working there, or are they fired, too? Since when is it a requirement that employees share employers' beliefs?

As long as we're talking religious freedom here, shall we ask Hobby Lobby whether they screen all potential employees before hiring to see if their beliefs align with their future corporate master?

I hope the government levies that penalty immediately, if not sooner.

No matter how many times Bible-thumpin' fetus worshippers insist contraceptives cause abortions, they just don't. But they do like to torture themselves (and everyone else) with their insistence that they do. When this case and the ones like it make their way to the Supreme Court, we will see the reality vs. non-reality split the court once again:

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court declined Wednesday to put a temporary hold on a controversial provision in the new health care law requiring employers to provide health insurance coverage for contraceptives.

Two businesses challenging the act -- the nationwide chain of 500 Hobby Lobby Stores and Mardel, a chain of Christian bookstores -- contended that the law violates their religious freedom. Their legal battle is continuing over the merits of their claim. In the meantime, they asked the US Supreme Court to put a temporary hold on the law, which takes effect January 1, 2013.

On Wednesday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who handles emergency appeals from the courts where the companies are based, declined to grant an injunction.

In a brief written opinion, she said the Supreme Court has never addressed similar freedom-of-religion claims brought by for-profit corporations objecting to mandatory provisions of employment benefit laws.

"Lower courts have diverged on whether to grant temporary injunctive relief to similarly situated plaintiffs," she said, "and no court has issued a final decision granting permanent relief with respect to such claims."

If the two companies ultimately lose in the lower courts, the justice said, they can still appeal to the Supreme Court.
Lawyers for members of the family that owns the two businesses, based in Oklahoma, told the court that the law will expose them to "draconian fines unless they abandon their religious convictions."

While they do not object to the provision of insurance coverage for all contraceptives, they do object to coverage for "certain drugs and devices that they believe can cause abortions," their lawyers said.

In a column which she complains about how mean and partisan and "extremist" Democrats have been this week, Nooners actually wrote this.

The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I've never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one.

Wow. Totally speechless.

And this is super classy.

What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they're not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That's not a stand, it's a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.

The spittle-inducing rage that Sanda Fluke inspires in wingnuts is just remarkable. (And for the millionth time, regulating insurance plans that people pay for out of their own pockets isn't the same thing as "making other people pay" for their birth-control pills. Geez.)

When she's not tweeting nonsense, Jedediah Bila is one of Fox News' favorite go-to "real feminists are Republicans" spokespersons. And while on "Fox & Friends" discussing why women are lazy, dependent dupes going to yet again vote for Democrats in November for the 142nd straight election, she did what she's paid to do.

BILA: Well I think historically, if you look back through all the elections throughout time, women have gone Democrat, they do lean Democrat. I think that's because in a large part the feminist movement has been telling women for a long time that Democrats are their alley [sic], ally, and somehow these big government policies have become their friend. They have sort of exchanged the values of self-sufficiency and autonomy in favor of government dependence. Instead of relying on men, now they're relying on government to be their big daddy or whatever you want to call it.

Yes, those devious feminists have tricked women into believing that the GOP is trying to destroy an organization committed to their health, wants them to submit to mandatory vaginal probing, seeks to criminalize abortion, even when the mother's life is threatened, thinks health insurance companies should be able to deny coverage of basic medications -- not to mention, is perfectly content to let women work for less pay.

So are women gullible or just stupid? Jedediah reports, you decide.

Jedediah Bila is a professional wingnut who makes the rounds on Fox & Friends, Hannity, Fox Business and Glenn Beck's glorified YouTube channel. And her twitter feed is full of nonsensical little rants like this.

Now, the contraception debate we had in this country -- touched off by Bila's homeboy El Rushbo calling Sandra Fluke a "slut" -- wasn't about the government "paying for everyone's birth control." It was, in fact, about whether the federal government can regulate private insurance plans. But wingnuts can't win that argument, so they lie about it.

Anyway, what I want to know is this: does Jedediah Bila have an insurance policy that covers her contraception, and if so, does she refuse the coverage and pay for it out of pocket?

I'm guessing no.

Republicans didn’t set out to have a war on women; they wanted a war on religion. Their intention was to march two Republican-created boogiemen into a battle that would make the War on Christmas cringe: ObamaCare and ObamaIsAMuslim. The Affordable Care Act stipulates birth control be included in insurance coverage instead of forcing women to pay out of pocket for such medications. This was the shot across the bow for the GOP to start their war. Republican sage, Congressman Darrell Issa, called a bunch of men of faith (yes, all men) to testify to Congress how the provision in the health care law regarding birth control would adversely affect them.

Then the right-wing echosphere spent the next week bouncing the sound bite: “This isn’t about contraception, this is about religious freedom.”

America’s right-wing: Afraid of Muslims, suspicious of Mormons, terrified of atheists and martyrs of religious freedom.

Republicans botched their war on religion with the word “slut.” Oh and by proposing laws against women getting equal pay, and a right to privacy or recourse if a doctor lies to them. The Chairman of the RNC, Reince Priebus, said the war on women is imaginary at the same moment Republican legislators around the country were introducing bills eroding women’s rights. So the war over what kind of war this was – religion or women – was lost by Republicans. Their best efforts to get a fruitful campaign about religious liberty backfired into a debate about gender equality.

To quote Rick Perry, “Oops.”

This party used to be better at getting traction with these wedge causes-they-call-wars. This has been their modus operandi to pummel artists, single mothers, monogamous gay couples, pot smokers, public employees and other subversives for decades: They create a fake crisis, say it will kill us all and then repeat it until our ears bleed.

How have they fumbled manufacturing a war on religion?! This is a John Carter level of a stink bomb: It’s totally formulaic – how can it fail?

Perhaps it’s just hard to convince Americans we are a Christian nation founded in religion with a tradition of religion in every facet of our lives from our money to our pledge of allegiance AND that faith is somehow being threatened. It’s like saying you’re the size of Goliath but everyone should view you as David.

Republicans really need a war on religion. Badly. A common foe would not only glaze over the fact their nominee is from a new sect distrusted by other sects – it would unite (they hope) all people of faith into their special brand of ultra-conservative gospel. A gospel that mega-church pastor, tax-free status enjoyer, Rick Warren, summed up nicely: “I don’t believe in wealth redistribution,” he said on the holiest of Easter Sundays on ABC’s This Week. Yes, when Jesus wasn’t hunting quail with his Glock sub-compact semi-auto – he was all over trickle down economics and scapegoating the poor for political gain.

A war on religion would give Republicans back their big tent. It would be a giant diverse group of people who would put faith in the Grand Old Party looking out for their eternal souls instead of just soulless corporations. All the hacking away at women’s rights, the social safety net and consumer protections would be given a pass under “religious freedom.”

Try it: “This isn’t about toxic drinking water/corporate welfare/millionaire tax breaks – it’s about religious freedom!” It works for nearly everything.

This will all go perfectly if they find an enemy. One good enough, or bad enough as the case may be, to compel all Americans of faith to give up their petty differences and come together as Republicans. Since the GOP needs this war on religion to push through their ironically social Darwinist agenda – they’re not going to give up trying to create one.

What does a preemptive victim searching for a persecutor look like? It looks a lot like the Republicans’ “war on religion.”

Earlier this week, President Obama released a special message to Planned Parenthood and women. It didn't get a lot of attention in the mainstream at all, but it's important nevertheless. I confess to being so preoccupied with the Supreme Court arguments I let it get away from me.

Here's the transcript:

For you, and for most Americans, protecting women's health is a mission that stands above politics. And yet, over the past year, you've had to stand up to politicians who want to deny millions of women the care they rely on, and inject themselves into decisions that are best made between a woman and her doctor.

Let's be clear here: Women are not an interest group.

They're mothers, and daughters, and sisters, and wives. They're half of this country. They're perfectly capable of making their own choices about their health.

So we're grateful that, through it all, you never forgot who you're fighting for: The woman with a new lease on life because a mammogram caught her cancer in time; the woman who can sleep easier at night because of a cervical cancer screening; the woman who is able to choose when to start a family, because she could afford contraception.

So when some professional politicians casually say that they'll "get rid of" Planned Parenthood, don't forget what they're really talking about: Eliminating the funding for preventive care that millions of women rely on, and leaving them to fend for themselves.

That's why, last year, when Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government unless we stopped funding Planned Parenthood, I had a simple answer: No.

But we know this debate is far from over. We must continue to send the message loud and clear: If you truly value families, you shouldn't play politics with a woman's health.

It's why I know that Planned Parenthood will continue providing care, no matter what. I know you'll never stop fighting to protect the healthcare and the choices that America's women deserve.

As long as I have the privilege of being your president, neither will I. Thanks.

Planned Parenthood appreciates the support, and if you want to show your appreciation, they have a petition here.