Four years ago, some conservatives created an uproar when pro-choice President Barack Obama was invited to deliver the commencement address at Notre Dame University. (That protest was more than a little hypocritical, given the school's tradition of featuring pro-choice speakers including Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.) Now, Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley has announced he will boycott next week's graduation speech at Jesuit Boston College by Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny.

For Cardinal O'Malley, Kenny's offense is his support for new legislation allowing Irish physicians to perform emergency abortion procedures only in those dire circumstances in which the life of the mother is in immediate jeopardy. That bill arose after the 2012 case of Savita Halappanavar, who needlessly died in agony after doctors refused her pleas to terminate her already miscarried pregnancy. While the legislative debate continues, Halappanavar's husband has since accepted apologies from both University Hospital Galway and the midwife who told him as his wife was dying that "this is a Catholic country."

But as Huffington Post reported, Cardinal O'Malley is apparently in no mood for apologies:

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The title of this clip by MSNBC is odd, because Rand Paul really isn't mentioned, but his unique version of conservative libertarianism is of discussion.

I've truly never understood how one can be conservative AND libertarian in the way that Paul embraces, because the notion of limited government and personal liberty seems to fall apart when it comes to civil rights. And that is what reproductive rights for women is: it is the denying of personal agency over a living, breathing, walking-around actual woman, it is determinative of her economic choices, her personal health, her emotional health and sometimes even her physical safety. It is absolutely restricting the personal liberty of a citizen over what can only be considered a hypothetical human at that point (remember, an estimated 31 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage and some suggest the rate is actually much higher and miscarriage occurs before a woman is even aware she is pregnant).

Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) points out rightfully that there is absolutely nothing libertarian about Paul's political stances. Wanting to be able to smoke pot and pay less taxes answers nothing when you choose to expand government over half the population.

It's a tragic story, but one that reveals the hypocrisy of those same Catholic hospitals who argued against allowing their employees the right to make reproductive choices for themselves and who pressure and terrorize women at their "pregnancy centers." When it's a woman seeking legal medical assistance for an unwanted pregnancy, it's all about taking her needing to take responsibility and God's will and giving that fetus inside her personhood status. But when it's about medical negligence allowing the death of two potentially viable fetuses, well then, personhood goes right out the window.

When 31-year-old Lori Hodghill went into a Colorado Catholic hospital on New Year's Day 2006 because she wasn't feeling well, it didn't take long for things to rapidly spiral downhill. Seven months pregnant with twin boys, she passed out due to a blockage in an artery, which led to a heart attack. The obstetrician on call did not respond to his page and less than an hour after she entered the emergency room, Lori Hodghill and the twins she was carrying died.

Hodghill's husband filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital on behalf of himself and their daughter, claiming that even if the obstetrician couldn't make it in, he could have instructed the ER staff to conduct an emergency caesarian section and at least save his sons when his wife couldn't be resuscitated.

That's where Catholic practices in hospital care gets a little complicated:

The lead defendant in the case is Catholic Health Initiatives, the Englewood-based nonprofit that runs St. Thomas More Hospital as well as roughly 170 other health facilities in 17 states. Last year, the hospital chain reported national assets of $15 billion. The organization’s mission, according to its promotional literature, is to “nurture the healing ministry of the Church” and to be guided by “fidelity to the Gospel.” Toward those ends, Catholic Health facilities seek to follow the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church authored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Those rules have stirred controversy for decades, mainly for forbidding non-natural birth control and abortions. “Catholic health care ministry witnesses to the sanctity of life ‘from the moment of conception until death,’” the directives state. “The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn.”

[..]

But when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on their head. Catholic organizations have for decades fought to change federal and state laws that fail to protect “unborn persons,” and Catholic Health’s lawyers in this case had the chance to set precedent bolstering anti-abortion legal arguments. Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights.

That, my friends, is trying to have your cake and eat it, too. I could respect Catholic Health's stance on contraception and abortion far more if it was at least consistent.

If for nothing else, you have to give the 2008 and 2012 GOP tickets for getting their lines straight. On Thursday, John McCain rejoined Mitt Romney in support of embattled Indiana Republican Senate hopeful Richard Mourdock. That McCain would come around after accepting Mourdock's "apology" for proclaiming rape-induced pregnancies gifts from God should come as no surprise. After all, McCain like Romney is a former supporter of Roe v. Wade who turned anti-abortion champion in order to secure the Republican nomination. And as it turns out, McCain mocked the very idea of a "health of the mother" exception to the abortion ban his party demands. That's just like Paul Ryan, who dismissed it as "a loophole wide enough to drive a Mack truck through."

As this handy chart shows, in their perpetual quest to erase women's reproductive rights, Mourdock, Todd Akin and others among the GOP's best and not-so-brightest have been trying to "shut down" rape as a legitimate basis for abortion. But during an October 2008 debate with then Senator Barack Obama, John McCain used "air quotes" to dismiss "an exception for the mother's health and life" altogether:

"Just again, the example of the eloquence of Sen. Obama. He's [for] health for the mother. You know, that's been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That's the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, 'health.'"

As it turns out, McCain was just echoing the position of Mitt Romney's running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.

Ryan's jaw-dropping disregard for the health and safety of American women came during the 2000 debate over the so-called "partial birth abortion" bill. As NPR explained, the very rare intact dilation and extraction (used only 2,200 times out of 1.3 million procedures performed in 2000) was resorted to precisely to protect the health of the woman in certain late-term pregnancies. The alternative, NPR noted, "can involve substantial blood loss and may increase the risk of lacerating the cervix, potentially undermining the woman's ability to bear children in the future."

Mitt Romney's new running mate was having none of it. During House debate on April 5, 2000, Wisconsin Rep. Tammy Baldwin told the House that "the women I have spoken to wanted nothing more than to have a child and were devastated to learn that their babies could not survive outside the womb. They made difficult decisions with their doctors and families to terminate pregnancies, to preserve their own health and in many cases their ability to try to have a child again." Afterwards, Paul Ryan rose to denounce that position:

Mr. Speaker. I just have to take issue with the comments that have been preceding this debate. This is not a political issue. This is a human issue. Let me just say this to all of my colleagues who are about to vote on this issue, on the motion to recommit. The health exception is a loophole wide enough to drive a Mack truck through it. The health exception would render this ban virtually meaningless.

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FSM, grant me the strength not to strangle this idiot.

After a bizarre, rambling speech of how great America is because we value life (citing the examples of firefighters running into the World Trade Center and Marines protecting Iraqis), Republican Missouri Senate nominee Todd Akin tells local Missouri Fox News host Charles Jaco that "real" rape victims can "shut down" a pregnancy.

No, really:

This morning, Akin told the anchor of the Jaco Report that, from what he "understands from doctors" (which doctors, he does not say), that assuming we are talking about "cases of legitimate rape" the "female body has a way of shutting that down" (i.e. preventing pregnancy).

So ladies, according to Mr. Akin, if you are raped, you not only have to prove to Mr. Akin that your rape was "legitimate," you also are at fault for allowing yourself to become pregnant.

WTF???? I really am beginning to feel strongly that men who have not a single clue on the reproductive system of women have absolutely no right to opine on it, much less legislate. However, this is par for course for Akin:

Akin is perhaps the boldest among a crop of conservative 2012 nominees who could hamper GOP efforts to take back the Senate in the fall. Akin has called for an end to the school-lunch program and a total ban on the morning-after pill. [..]

Nor is this Akin’s first time suggesting some types of rape are more worthy of protections than others. As a state legislator, Akin voted in 1991 for an anti-marital-rape law, but only after questioning whether it might be misused “in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband,” according to a May 1 article that year in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The PollTracker Average shows Akin leading McCaskill by a margin of 49.7 percent to 41.3 percent.

For the love of everything holy, I have issues with Claire McCaskill, but she is light years more evolved than this troglodyte. We cannot allow Todd Akin a seat in the Senate.

Updated with facts: (h/t Matt Yglesias) Akin wonders dismissively how prevalent rape-related pregnancy occurs. Turns out, pretty often:

Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency. It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic violence. As we address the epidemic of unintended pregnancies in the United States, greater attention and effort should be aimed at preventing and identifying unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual victimization.

I'm sure Akin will say those women are just not trying hard enough to shut down the pregnancy.

UPDATED: Ruh-roh. Someone figured out that this might not have been the right thing to say. After fellow Republicans (!!!) called for him to step down from the Senate race, Akin released a statement saying he "misspoke" about the notion of "legitimate" rape. Oddly enough, he hasn't walked back the shutting down pregnancy part. I'd like to see him name the medical "professionals" who gave him that information.

This was a night when Tweety was really in the zone, going into great detail about the ripple effects of the positions Paul Ryan takes on the rights of fetuses over women and calling it "radical social engineering."

He points out that no matter what your moral or ethical position on abortion, you have to look at the legal results of these fetal personhood crusades. Kate Michelman talks about how Paul Ryan has been a major mover in trying to take away reproductive rights from woman.

Huffington Post also is turning the spotlight on Ryan's anti-woman record:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) cosponsored a bill that would give fetuses full personhood rights from the moment of fertilization, which was even rejected by voters in the socially conservative state of Mississippi. He voted to defund federal family planning programs, authored a budget that dismantles Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, all of which disproportionately aid and employ women, and voted multiple times to prevent women in the military from using their own money to pay for abortions at military hospitals.

Ryan also supported a highly controversial bill that Democrats nicknamed the "Let Women Die Act," which would have allowed hospitals to refuse to provide a woman emergency abortion care, even if her life is on the line.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund said in a statement on Saturday morning that Ryan has earned zero percent on its women's health voting scorecard, and other women's rights group expressed similar alarm.

We already know what Republicans believe. Now we have to stop them from imposing those beliefs on the rest of us.

By most accounts, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is a devoted father, dedicated family man and committed church leader. But as his record sadly shows, Romney's family values often take a back seat to his presidential ambitions. Just last week, he cast aside his father George Romney, the man whose rags-to-riches success story Mitt uses as a proxy for his own, all in the name of keeping his mysterious tax returns secret. His wife Ann Romney, the woman who now heads his Women for Mitt Coalition and who her husband says "reports to me regularly" regarding what American women care about, has been hung out to dry over issues including Planned Parenthood, abortion and the family's personal finances. And as it turns out, Mitt's betrayals hardly end there.

In his interview with David Muir of ABC last week, Governor Romney trotted out a new defense of keeping his secret tax returns secret:

"From time to time I've been audited as happens I think to other citizens as well and the accounting firm which prepares my taxes has done a very thorough and complete job pay taxes as legally due. I don't pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don't think I'd be qualified to become president. I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires."

Put another way, if you paid a penny more to Uncle Sam than you could've, you're not just a sucker; you should be disqualified from becoming President.

Just like Mitt's dad, George Romney.

Mitt's idol didn't merely establish a precedent by releasing 12 years of tax returns during his failed 1968 presidential campaign. As Paul Krugman recently reminded voters, the auto magnate and Michigan governor not only paid a lot to the U.S. Treasury, but probably much more than he needed to.

Those returns also reveal that he paid a lot of taxes -- 36 percent of his income in 1960, 37 percent over the whole period. This was in part because, as one report at the time put it, he "seldom took advantage of loopholes to escape his tax obligations."

(The contrasts between father and son hardly end there. As Rick Perlstein documented, George Romney didn't merely develop an innovative profit sharing plan for his employees at AMC and return bonuses if he thought them too high. He also believed that "rugged individualism" is "nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.")

But if Mitt Romney has turned his back on the legacy of his late father, he has similarly shown no compunction about tossing his wife Ann overboard when political circumstances dictated.

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No one, I repeat, no one cheers for the existence of abortion. However, it is still a legal practice that women may avail themselves of if they so choose. And until such time as men evolve the ability to conceive and carry a baby to place that onus upon them, it remains a necessary option for some women. With all due respect to the legislators of Mississippi, I trust women are fully capable of making this decision for this legal medical procedure without their concern of "unscrupulous practioners."

A federal judge in Mississippi on Wednesday ordered an extension of his temporary order to allow the state's only abortion clinic to stay open.

The order will be in place until U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan can review newly drafted rules on how the Mississippi Department of Health will administer a new abortion law. He then plans to rule on whether the temporary order will become permanent, or whether the clinic must shut its doors.

The law took effect July 1 and requires all abortion providers in Mississippi to be certified obstetrician/gynecologists with privileges at local hospitals. Doctors at Jackson Women's Health Organization, the only abortion provider in the state, come in from other states, and only one of its doctors is authorized to practice at a nearby hospital.

Supporters of the new law say it is intended to protect women from unscrupulous practitioners, but others say it's part of a move to outlaw abortions in the state. Even Republican Gov. Phil Bryant called it "the first step in a movement, I believe, to do what we campaigned on: to say that we're going to try to end abortion in Mississippi."

Again, it's a legal procedure. The demand for abortions does not go away simply by making clinics disappear. That demand will result in women making riskier choices that could have life-altering (or ending) consequences.

Would that Governor Bryant be as concerned with providing the citizens of Mississippi with accurate and inexpensive access to birth control to prevent the demand for abortion in the first place.

Two funny things happened this week on Mitt Romney's way to the White House. First, the man who cried "let Detroit go bankrupt" announced "I'll take a lot of credit" for President Obama's million-job saving rescue of the American auto industry. But just as telling was the Republican's claim that, despite Obama's "Forward" campaign slogan, it was the President who was "looking backward." After all, Mitt Romney isn't merely offering an even more reactionary resurrection of George W. Bush's failed policies. As it turns out, from his charges on immigration reform and women's issues to labeling Obama an out of touch "Marie Antoinette" and so much else, Romney's strategy is call to the kettle black.

(Click a link below for the details on each.)

• "Looking Backward"
• "Fairness"
• "Out of Touch"
• "Spent Too Much Time at Harvard"
• "Hide-and-Seek Campaign"
• "Broke His Promise to Hispanics"
• "Respect Women in All Those Choices That They Make"

"Looking Backward"

In April, the RNC's Alexandra Franceschi gave away the game when she explained that even after the calamitous Bush recession which began over four years ago, the2012 GOP economic platform would be the Bush program, "just updated." As a quick glance at Mitt Romney's proposals shows, Franceschi has a gift for understatement.

Romney, after all, is promising massive tax cuts which would deliver the lion's share of their winnings to the very richest Americans, his family included. (His 20 percent across-the-board tax cut is simply a tired retread of Bob Dole's failed 1996 plan, one that nevertheless steers a third of its benefits to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of Americans.) He nevertheless pledges to balance the budget even while boosting defense spending. And this latest scion of a proud Republican family would like to privatize Social Security and leave Americans to fend for themselves in the private health insurance marketplace.

Undaunted, Romney slammed the President this week in East Lansing, Michigan:

"Looking backward won't solve the problems of today, nor will it take advantage of the opportunities of tomorrow," Romney said. "His are the policies of the past. The challenges of the present and the promise of tomorrow must be met by a new and bold vision for the future, and I will bring it."

Despite the conclusion of the nonpartisan CBO and the overwhelming consensus of economists that Obama's actions saved the U.S. from "Great Depression 2.0," Romney has insisted for months that the President "made the economy worse." Unfortunately for Mitt, "we are not stupid."

"Fairness"

Barack Obama has made "fairness" a central theme of his reelection campaign. And with good reason. After all, at a time of record income inequality and the lowest federal tax burden since 1950, Both Mitt Romney and his budgetary twin Paul Ryan would deliver a massive tax cut windfall for the rich, paying for it by gutting the social safety net each pretends to protect. Each would end Medicare as we know it with a premium support gambit that would dramatically shift health care costs to America's seniors. While increasing defense spending, the House Budget Chairman and the GOP frontrunner would repeal the Affordable Care and leave at least 30 million people without insurance. And despite their mutual pledges to end many tax loopholes and deductions to fund their gilded-class giveaway, neither Paul Ryan nor Mitt Romney has the courage to say which ones. As a result, these supposed deficit hawks would actually add trillions more in red ink to the national debt.

Nevertheless, Romney used the occasion of his Northeast primary sweep three weeks ago to portray himself as the crusader for fairness:

"We will stop the unfairness of urban children being denied access to the good schools of their choice; we will stop the unfairness of politicians giving taxpayer money to their friends' businesses; we will stop the unfairness of requiring union workers to contribute to politicians not of their choosing; we will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the taxpayers they serve; and we will stop the unfairness of one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next."

Afterwards, The Democratic Strategist translated Romney's cynically transparent gimmick, "We will twist and distort the concept of fairness to justify bashing government workers, crushing labor unions and privatizing public schools."

"Out of Touch"

Four years ago, the campaign of John McCain - a hundred-millionaire who literally lost count of how many homes he owned - unsuccessfully tried to portray Barack Obama as an out-of-touch, arugula-eating elitist who vacationed in exotic Hawaii. Now Mitt Romney has branded President Obama a modern day Marie Antoinette, an "out of touch" occupant of the White House whose message to financially struggling Americans is "let them eat cake."

That might not be the wisest strategy.

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Conservatives this week were quick to mock the Obama campaign's "The Life of Julia," an online slideshow highlighting how government investments in education, health care, small business and retirement security help enable the children of working families to climb the ladder of social mobility. Republican critics dismissed that common path to the middle class as the "condescension" of "cradle-to-grave, government-supported existence" supposedly championed by Democrats.

It is only fitting, then, that the Romney campaign offers its alternative vision. So here is "The Life of Mitt," a tale of a winner-take-all America in which government exists to ensure a privileged few stay that way.

Age Minus 9 Months: The son of American Motors magnate and Michigan Governor George Romney, Mitt fondly recalls being with his father for Detroit's Golden Jubilee. That celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the American automobile occurred on June 1, 1946, "fully nine months before Romney was born." Years later, Mitt would similarly "remember" seeing his dad march with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Age 8: Young Mitt Romney is living his American Dream; that is, being born to a father who achieved his own. "Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car." In Michigan, Mitt learned to love cars and trees which were the right height. He also begins to soak up valuable life lessons from his dad, like "Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win election to pay a mortgage." As for the millions of Americans unable to pay theirs, Mitt later concluded:

"Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up."

Despite his filial devotion, Mitt forgets his father's warning that "rugged individualism" is "nothing but a political banner to cover up greed."

Age 12: After attending a public elementary school, young Mitt is sent to the prestigious Cranbrook School in elegant Bloomfield Hills. This experience leads him to declare he's just "a guy from Detroit," one who happens to support school vouchers and tax breaks for home schooling, while slashing funds for public schools.

While Mitt Romney would certainly never had to worry about "getting a pink slip," he stills gets a chuckle thinking about those who did when his father moved AMC jobs from Michigan to Wisconsin. It's no wonder he chides his former home town in 2008, declaring, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

Age 16: In 1963, Mitt confronts personal tragedy, as "dear, close family relative" Ann Keenan dies as a result of an illegal abortion. As he later explained during a 1994 Senate debate with Ted Kennedy, it was that searing experience which made him a pro-choice Mormon:

"It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that."

Age 19: In 1966, Stanford student Mitt Romney takes part in his only college protest, one in favor of the Vietnam War. But thanks to the generous 4-D exemption from military service, Mitt like many Mormon young men of his age was able to secure multiple deferments in order to perform his church mission. During that two and half year period when other American men were fighting in the rice fields of Vietnam, Romney faced hardships in the vineyards of France. These apparently included pooping in a bucket during his of roughing it in a palatial church mansion in Paris. As he revealed in a 1994 interview with the Boston Herald, Romney was not exactly racked by guilt as the war raged in Southeast Asia:

"Romney, however, acknowledged he did not have any desire to serve in the military during his college and missionary days, especially after he married and became a father," the newspaper wrote. "'I was not planning on signing up for the military,' he said. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft. If drafted, I would have been happy to serve, and if I didn't get drafted I was happy to be with my wife and new child.'"

Thirteen years later, candidate Mitt Romney explained he passed on that tradition to his five boys:

"My sons are all adults and they've made decisions about their careers and they've chosen not to serve in the military and active duty and I respect their decision in that regard. One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

Age 24: In 1971, Ann and Mitt Romney head to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, Mitt starts a "terrific" four year program to get his JD and MBA at Harvard Business School, completing both degrees 37 years before accusing Barack Obama of spending too much time in the Harvard faculty lounge. Even with small children and Mitt in school, Ann avoided the "dignity of work" because "Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time. The stock came from Mitt's father."

That history might explain why Romney offered this advice in March to college students struggling to pay for his education:

"If you can't afford it, scholarships are available, shop around for loans, make sure you go to a place that's reasonably priced, and if you can, think about serving the country 'cause that's a way to get all that education for free."

Pell grants, schmell grants.

In 2012, Mitt tells college students to borrow money from their parents to start a business, advice his son Tagg took to the tune of $10 million.

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