It seems as if the American Catholic Bishops are oh-so-upset with President Obama's decision to mandate all employers to cover contraception in all health plans, even those provided by religious institutions to employees.

“In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

No Cardinal-designate Dolan……Catholic Bishops burnt out their consciences when they decided to participate in covering up for child rapists under their employ. So, Obama isn't giving Catholic Bishops a year to "figure out how to violate" their own consciences. That steamboat done sailed. Obama is giving Catholic leaders a year to….comply with the laws of the nation……secular laws that those Bishops have been ordered by their Messiah to obey. Render unto Ceasar what belongs to Ceasar.

Through our nation's democratic process, Congress and the President passed into law a new national health care insurance program conservatives lovingly labeled ObamaCare. Health insurance exchanges are being structured right now….and so the details of what would and wouldn't be required to be covered by insurance companies to qualify for those exchanges are being ironed out.

Obama has ordered HHS Secretary Sebelius to include contraception coverage, without co-pay, as a requirement to qualify for the exchanges. All of the insurance plans made available on the exchanges in 2014 will include coverage for contraception. Contraception is legal to purchase in the U.S., and has been for decades.

The problem Catholic Bishops are having…..not Catholic parishioners, because 3 out of 4 Catholics simply ignore their Church's directives on the evil of contraception……is that Obama has ordered all employers, except for 100% sectarian employers, to make those contraception-including health care plans in the national exchanges available to all employees. The Catholic Church in America employs a lot of people. Many of whom are not Catholic. The Catholic Church in America also receives a lot of tax dollars from the federal government to assist them in their charitable operations.

All that said….here is where Catholic Bishops, most conservatives and even a few misguided quasi-progressives miss the mark on this alleged controversy….under the title "U.S. Bishops Vow to Fight HHS Edict", we find…

At issue, the U.S. bishops and other religious leaders insist, is the survival of a cornerstone constitutionally protected freedom that ensures respect for the conscience of Catholics and all other Americans.

Compare that claim with this…

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Did the Founders use the words "respect for conscience" in the first amendment? No. If the Founders would have included a provision in the 1st which stated that all citizens could disobey federal mandates which they deemed didn't "respect" their individual "consciences"…..Americans would be able to withhold their tax dollars from Washington on the basis that the use of those tax dollars violates their consciences. Do American citizens have the legal right to withhold their tax dollars from the federal government because, for example, their consciences are violated through the use of those tax dollars going for the wholesale killing of Muslims in Muslim lands? Of course not.

What U.S bishops claim as their right is not a right at all…..and that non-right is certainly not found in the 1st amendment. Congress is ordered by the 1st amendment to NOT make any laws which "establish" religion. The word "establish" means "institute, build, or bring into being". The U.S. Congress is prohibited from passing laws respecting the "building or bringing into being" of religion.

At the same time Congress is prohibited from respecting the establishment of religion through legislation…..religious citizens are guaranteed that government will honor the "free exercise" of religion without interference.

With Obama's new order to include contraception in all employer health plans….how are Catholics being denied their "free exercise" of religion? Catholics are not being forced by government to buy or use contraception. Catholics can still practice their religion as they wish. What Catholics cannot do….under Obama's order….is compel those who do not practice Catholicism….to practice Catholicism against their will.

The noise conservatives have been making on this Obama order has nothing to do with some Mother Goose version of a non-existent "protected freedom that ensures respect for the conscience of Catholics." Nothing could be further from the truth. The whining we're hearing is all about a misplaced sense of entitlement which many religionists are confusing with the 1st amendment.

When religious groups decide to enter the public arena, secular-government laws apply. Not religious laws, not conscience laws….secular-government laws. Religious groups are not forced into the public arena. Government does not compel religious groups to do charitable work for the public. They choose to do that work voluntarily.

But when Catholic groups enter the public arena…..offering health services to the general public while employing non-Catholics…..Catholic leaders insist that THEY still get to make the rules, or disobey any rules that government has imposed. That is a misguided sense of entitlement which the 1st amendment knows nothing about.

Question: Under Obama's recent health insurance plan order, are Catholics forced to buy, or use contraception?

Answer: No.

How, then, are Catholic "consciences" being "violated"?

As I mentioned the other day, the Iowa GOP caucuses are not representative of the larger, American electorate….and that's actually a good thing. Last night Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum ended in a dead heat for first place in the Iowa GOP caucuses. Romney received 30,015 caucus votes (24.6%)….Santorum with 30,007 votes (24.5%)…Ron Paul took in 26,219 votes (21.4%).

Iowa conservatives, apparently, have not settled on a presidential candidate. In winning by a photo finish, Romney received the lowest percentage of Iowa caucus votes since Bob Dole took 26% of the Iowa primary in 1996. As you may remember…Dole went on to take a thorough asskicking at the hands of incumbent president Bill Clinton that year.

I think it's safe to say that Republican voters are all over the board this election cycle. Not united…would be another way of saying it. As we've seen, Mitt Romney is not trusted by conservative voters to be an authentic conservative. Even though Romney is seen by many as the most electable candidate Republicans have to offer, his openness to compromise, his "liberal" past, and his Mormonism make him less than palatable to about half of conservative voters.

That explains the Keystone Kop Klown Kar parade we've been witnessing for almost a year now. Trump, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich…each getting their turn driving the other Klowns around on their way to the first primaries. Conservative voter dissatisfaction with Romney is also seen in the pitifully desperate cries for the obese, bigmouth Chris Christie and/or W's brother Jebby to jump into the GOP race.

Anyway, now it's Rick Santorum's turn behind the wheel. Santorum is the guy who, in 2006, lost his senate seat to fellow Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey….by 19%. Nevertheless, Santorum worked hard in Iowa. His hard work paid off. Good on him. Santorum will not be the GOP candidate this fall…you can bet on that…but Santorum's strong finish last night again illustrates the divisions within what's left of the conservative movement in America.

Yesterday I pointed out Santorum's apparent problem with "blacks" and government assistance. Today,I would like to point out Rick Santorum's problem with modernity in general. In October, Santorum told Shane Vander Hart, editor of CaffeinatedThoughts.com….

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” the former Pennsylvania senator explained. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Contraception? Really?

Santorum is seen as the social conservative in the race. Social conservatives make up a large percentage of Republican voters. Social conservatives say that their most important issue is ending abortion rights in America. The best way for sexually active women to avoid unwanted pregnancies is…..wait for it…..contraception. Yet, Rick Santorum, social conservative darling, claims that contraception is dangerous.

Why is contraception dangerous according to Santorum? "It's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

Contraception availability….and the choice women still have to determine their reproductive futures….runs "counter to how things are supposed to be."

This is the guy who basically tied Mitt Romney for first place last night in the Iowa GOP caucuses.

Just as I appreciated Santorum's honesty when he talked about how he, and many other conservatives, saw "blacks"…so too, I appreciate Santorum's honesty about contraception. For forever I've thought that the anti-choice movement in America was more about anti-women sexuality than anything else. In Santorum's recent remarks about contraception, he only confirms what I've always thought.

Access to abortion and contraception is understood by many social conservatives as a "license" to have sex. What's wrong with sex, you ask. Nothing, as long as sex is conducted the way "things are supposed to be." Which to Santorum means: only within the parameters of marriage….

SANTORUM: [Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.

Santorum's view is a religious view….based on religious teachings. In secular America we do not organize our society or our laws based on religious views. Santorum, and his fellow social conservatives, may think that sex outside of marriage, and not for the purpose of procreation, are not how "things are supposed to be"….but that train left the station a very long time ago….and it ain't coming back.

99 percent of women 15-44 in America have used at least one contraception method.

Remember the conservative drooling over defunding Planned Parenthood? Santorum's thinking on this matter helps to explain why. According to social conservatives like Santorum, if women have access to contraception and abortion, then they will consider that access as a license to be, I guess, slutty and promiscuous. And that is just not how "things are supposed to be."

For a long time I have been saying that the anti-abortion and anti-contraception movement has nothing to do with fetuses and "life"….but rather an unhealthy authoritarian attitude towards sexually active women. More than anything, anti-choicers are anti-women. Santorum represents a dying breed of outdated culture warriors who still want to keep women in the kitchen….pregnant. It's god's way…they tell us.

Along with Ohio's SB5 referendum vote in Ohio today…..is Mississippi's referendum vote on "fetal personhood." Voters in Mississippi today will be deciding whether they believe all fertilized human eggs are, in fact, "persons"…and thus entitled to all the protections guaranteed to all other U.S."persons."

Of course, this Mississippi referendum has nothing to do with granting personhood rights to fertilized human eggs…it has to do with denying all Mississippi women the right to choose their own reproductive lives. Ending abortion….that's what the poor southern state is putting to a vote today.

As with Ohio's Issue 3, if Mississippian's "personhood" referendum passes, it will not become the law of the United States and, most likely, will not become effective law even in Mississippi because of the court battles which will surely follow. But that could be the goal of radicalized forced-pregnancy conservatives in Mississippi. Even though Roe v Wade forces no female citizen to choose abortion, forced-pregnancy enthusiasts in Mississippi would force all pregnant women, whether they wanted to bear a child or not, to have no other choice.

To stimulate a bit of discussion on the "forced pregnancy" movement in Mississippi….I encourage you to read this short piece.

Hullabaloo's David Atkins sets forward 4 group-think examples which seek to encompass where the "passion" behind the forced pregnancy lobby comes from..

1) A small minority of the forced pregnancy movement are….

..seriously hardcore misogynists who want women to be little more than vessels to carry babies. This is actually a fairly small minority of the movement, but these are the folks who are against not only abortion, but birth control and abortion even in cases of rape or incest. These people would still be branding women with scarlet letters if they had the chance. The abortion issue isn't about babies for them. It's about controlling women and sexuality.

2) Pregnancy as punishment for having sex….a variation on #1…

The pro-punishment crowd that sees sex as inherently evil and carries around a softer version of the first group's misogyny.

3) The Christian conservatives who actually believe a god breathes a soul into every fertilized human egg at…fertilization.

The actual Bible-thumper crowd. A lot of these people obviously overlap with groups 1 and 2, but there is a segment of people who are legitimately convinced that all these little eggs and fetuses are imbued with a soul by the magic Creator, and that there is an unsung massacre ongoing everyday on a par with the Nazi Holocaust.

4) Those who are only following their leaders or role model figures…

…follow along with whatever their "pro-life" pastor, youth group leader or similar charlatan says is the right thing to believe. They don't have strong convictions about these things, but everyone else in their social group seems to have anti-choice beliefs, so they might as well, too.

Atkins goes on to explain what science has to say about this "a fertilized human egg is a person" issue….remember science?

This is what we know: During the period of embryonic development that begins with fertilization and ends with successful implantation, about 50 percent of human conceptions fail to survive. The main reason for this high failure rate is the inability of huge numbers of fertilized eggs to implant.

Either "god" is…well….similar to Hitler…or perhaps a fertilized human egg alone….does not qualify as a person.

Mississippi Governor Barbour has already voiced some concerns about the state's forced pregnancy referendum,….and he's certainly no liberal. Other conservatives have as well.

Let's hope voters in Mississippi pause to reflect on what they are really voting for…..they are voting to force women, against their legal will, to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Washington Post…

Antiabortion activists who have sought for months to shut down a Germantown (Maryland) clinic picketed its landlord outside a Montgomery County middle school where his daughter is a student, school and police officials said Monday.

Keep in mind here, picketers protesting abortion did so at the middle school where the daughter of the landlord of a building which rents space to an abortion clinic attends school. The picketing at the middle school can only be interpreted as an act of intimidation against the daughter in order to put fear into the father, enough to kick the abortion clinic out of his building.

A small group of protesters stood outside Robert Frost Middle School in Rockville on Thursday, holding signs and a banner, during back-to-school night, officials said.

The student’s father, who did not want to be named to protect the safety of his daughter, a sixth-grader at the school, said he saw the five protesters when he went to the school event.

Some held a large banner that showed his photo, his full name, his phone number and the words “Please STOP the Child Killing.” Others held posters showing aborted fetuses.

The man owns the property in the Germantown office park where LeRoy Carhart has been performing abortions late in a pregnancy at the privately owned Reproductive Health Services clinic. Antiabortion protesters have repeatedly demonstrated outside the clinic since Carhart arrived in Maryland in December.

Abortion is legal in the United States. No American woman has ever been forced to have an abortion against their own will. While I understand both sides of the so-called abortion debate, until federal laws are changed by Congress and/or the Supreme Court, there is no defense for so hatefully picketing a middle school where the daughter of a landlord who rents space to an abortion clinic attends school.

While, apparently, no laws were broken by the picketers in Maryland, what is being reinforced by their actions is the inhumanity, cruelty, guilt-by-distant-association tactics, and hate filled intimidation…which, more and more, have become the defining characteristics of America's extreme right.

As the Tea Party right sings the praises of "freedom", many members are often simultaneously working to keep other Americans from exercising theirs.

There's much to criticize about today's American right…but it's the basic inhumanity, I think,…the callousness…which disturbs me the most. With the election of Obama, for what ever reason, it seems like this inhumanity and callousness have intensified.

Anti-abortion folks often claim morality in defense of their rigid and intolerant positions. But isn't it true that many of today's anti-abortionists are also part and parcel of the Tea Party movement? Here are the results of the last two years polling of Tea Party members….

2010 CBS poll…

They are more likely than American adults overall to attend religious services weekly (38 percent do so) and to call themselves evangelical (39 percent). Sixty-one percent are Protestant, and another 22 percent are Catholic.

NY Times, CBS poll August 17, 2011…

So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today.

And, of course, it has been the Tea Party which has led the way in cutting government spending in the midst of our worst recession. You see, it is moral to picket at a middle school where the child of a landlord, whose renter runs an abortion clinic, attends school….because abortion is oh-so-immoral. But it's also immoral, according to the Tea Party, for the government to spend money to relieve the plight of the unemployed, the elderly and the poor in the middle of our deepest recession….because the country has a deficit.

It was at the CNN/Tea Party Express GOP "debate" the other night when audience members applauded Ron Paul's answer that everyone was on their own when it came to medical care. When Wolfie Blitzer followed up by asking if we should simply allow an uninsured 30 year old American to die because he couldn't afford pre-existing condition insurance….a few in the audience cheered "Yeah" and "let him die."

Honestly, who does stuff like that? The bloodlust was palpable.

To me, all of this is a result of the extreme right's continued self-radicalization. It is a self-radicalization that refuses to have it any other way than their way. It is marked by actions, policies and words of cruelty, intolerance and basic inhumanity.

But then maybe it's just me, maybe I'm just too sensitive.

How do you see it? Is the extreme right in the U.S., as seen in the words and actions of Tea Party members, just acting immorally moral? Or perhaps, just claiming morality, but, in reality, speaking and acting immorally?

It's been obvious for a long time that our national economic problem is being exacerbated by lack of demand for goods and services. This lack of demand is not because of lack of confidence. It is because of lack of jobs. Obviously, when working Americans lose their jobs, they lose a good deal of their buying power. When millions of Americans lose significant purchasing power all within a short period of time, the impact on demand is significant. That's where we are right now.

Major U.S. corporations, astute enough to protect their own financial interests, shed workers by the tens of thousands immediately when the Banksters evil deeds began to unfurl before our very eyes. Millions of American workers lost their jobs in just a few short months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009.

When the Republicans took back the House in 2010, promising jobs, jobs, jobs……..they didn't pass one bill to actually, you know, stimulate jobs. Not one. Instead, House Republicans began pushing bills to limit a woman's legal right to choose. House Republicans went after Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio. What House Republicans did not do was put forward, or pass, a job creation bill.

Now, as these same House Republicans return to D.C. after the August break to resume, I guess, legislating……we find House Whip, Eric Cantor saying that it's all going to be (again) about jobs, jobs jobs.

“It is essential that the House continue our focus on the jobs crisis,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) wrote in a memo to be sent to GOP lawmakers Monday.

This, from the guy who insists hurricane relief costs must be offset by other spending cuts. Cantor, a weasly character, often suffers from tone-deafness…perhaps it's his own version of compassionate conservatism…who knows? Whatever. But look at what Cantor means when he says the House focus will be on the "jobs crisis."

House Republicans are planning votes for almost every week this fall in an effort to repeal environmental and labor requirements on business that they say have hampered job growth.

Now, remember….the reason our national economy is dismal is because Americans do not have jobs which produce money with which to stimulate demand. The private sector is still not hiring, despite sitting on piles of cash….because there is not enough demand to justify expansion in the workforce. Fortune 500 companies are not sitting back, refusing to hire workers, because of environmental laws or national labor laws. That's simply ridiculous. They are sitting back because not enough customers are puchasing their goods and services.

Environmental laws have resulted in increased employment, not reduced employment. Doing away with environmental laws won't do a damn thing to rein in high unemployment any more than the House passing bills in January of this year to rein in a woman's right to choose created jobs.

The week of September 12, Cantor is planning on showboating the National Labor Relations Board ruling against Boeing's action to damage it's union workers by setting up a new shop in low-wage South Carolina. Making a big show about Boeing will not create any jobs, of course, but Cantor is hoping, just as he did when staging a war against Planned Parenthood back in January….to rally his hysterically nutty GOP base….yet again.

Then in October, Eric Cantor will focus the GOP-controlled House on the EPA. Doing away with as many EPA restrictions as possible. This also will not be successful but will satisfy the hysterical, anti-science, right's daily need to be fed with the red meat of hate against anything progressive. If, miraculously, EPA restrictions passed the Senate and were signed into law by Obama (they won't)….then jobs would be lost, not gained.

So, again, we have a House GOP promising jobs….just as they did while campaigning in 2010….while doing absolutely nothing to actually, you know, create jobs. Instead, as has been transparently clear forever, Republicans are only acting politically. Republicans are working while in power not to solve problems, unemployment or any other pressing problem…..but working to feed the hysterical, anti-science, anti-reason base of their's new red meat to chew on.

And prepare for their next hostage taking event.

Advocates for school vouchers have always insisted that voucher programs are for the purpose of saving children hopelessly lost in "failed" public school systems. This cynical Reverend never bought that nonsense. Now, it looks like Ohio's House Republicans don't buy that nonsense either….

The Ohio House of Representatives is considering legislation that would make….. vouchers available to any parent who met income requirements, regardless of the quality of the public schools their children attend.

That should end the lie that vouchers are all about the poor, poor quality of certain public schools.

Vouchers take money out of public school systems and redistribute it into private school systems. That has been the plan all along.

Opponents say an expanded voucher program would deplete district resources already stretched thin by cuts in the two-year budget and would spend money on kids who already are enrolled in private schools, thus adding to taxpayers' burden.

The objective in all of this seems obvious. The complete privatization of all public schools. It should be transparently clear by now that today's extremist Republican Party is at war with all things "public." Public schools are socialistic in nature….therefore, to our modern GOP, public schools are the enemy. And, of course, those overpaid, babysitting, teachers belong to unions…unions which traditionally support Democratic causes.

One of the other patented excuses given by pro-voucher folks in defense of debilitating the public school system is that 'parents deserve to have a choice.' Parents have always had a choice. Private K-12 schools have always been available in Ohio and nothing has prevented parents from sending their children there. Voucher advocates are not insisting that parents have a choice….they are insisting that tax dollars pay for the choices parents make. Big difference.

Ohio's Republicans in Columbus are now stripping away all the phony excuses they have spouted up til now about why vouchers are the only way forward.

While cutting state funds to public school districts all across the state….

Gov. John Kasich's proposed budget raises the current limit of 14,000 vouchers to 60,000 in two years.

Led by the very little man, John Kasich, Ohio's GOP is methodically hollowing out our state's public school system. And just like with Indiana, where another very little extremist man, Mitch Daniels, is slashing public schools while increasing private school vouchers……Kasich and his GOP Privatization Band would hand out vouchers to families making $100,000 per year.

Under…. House Bill 136, children attending the highest-rated school in their home county could get a voucher if they meet income qualifications.

A family of four with an income of less than $61,000 a year would qualify for a $4,600 voucher, based on current estimates. A family of four making up to about $100,000 still would qualify for smaller vouchers, based on a sliding scale.

Clearly, this has nothing to do with quality of schools. This is simply one of Grover Norquist's wettest of dreams playing out in real time. Starving the beast of public schools until they are so small and impoverished that they can be "drowned in a bathtub."

And to what end? So that revenue schemers like David Brennan can ride in with his White Hat Management for-profit K-12 private school systems and scoop up taxpayer money for himself.

Adding a profit motive to K-12 schools, we are told, will produce a better school system because, you know, there's an incentive. Either taxes will have to be raised to pay for those profits or Ohio's children will be offered an inferior education product.

Finally, my biggest beef with the plan by extremist Republicans to privatize K-12 education in Ohio is that much of the redistribution of taxes through vouchers will go to religious schools. Regardless of what a few radical judges here and there have spouted…..tax dollars going to religious education is a violation of the 1st amendment's prohibition of establishing religion.

The Bible-belt creep northward is already threatening the intelligence quotient of Ohioans. I have been amazed at how much more ignorant and superstitious Ohioans have become just during my lifetime. Now, Kasich's Klowns are planning on abusing the learning abilities of Ohio's children further by sending tax dollars to K-12 Schools for Jesus.

HB 135 should be stopped in it's tracks….umm….drowned in it's incubator. Ohio's extremist Republicans booted from office.

Last June, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, called for conservatives to declare a "truce" over divisive conservative social issues if Republicans planned on regaining the presidency in 2012.

That naturally led to many on the sanctimonious right to blast ole' Mitch. Example, the Huckster, and bass guitar playing Mike Huckabee….

Apparently, a 2012 Republican presidential prospect in an interview with a reporter has made the suggestion that the next President should call for a “truce” on social issues like abortion and traditional marriage to focus on fiscal problems.

In other words, stop fighting to end abortion and don’t make protecting traditional marriage a priority.

Let me be clear though, the issue of life and traditional marriage are not bargaining chips nor are they political issues. They are moral issues. I didn’t get involved in politics just to lower taxes and cut spending though I believe in both and have done it as a Governor. But I want to stay true to the basic premises of our civilization.

Translation….if you can't divide America, what's the point?

The family Research Council president rushes in to place the Jesus stamp of approval on what the Huckster said….telling ole' Mitch what he must do now that he has made the Lord cry….

Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, argued Daniels needed to do more to mitigate his earlier remark: he needed to renounce it.

“I think that’s how he gets himself out of this: he acknowledges that he was wrong in calling for a truce on social issues,” Perkins said.

Mitch "Truce" Daniels….yesterday…

Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels plans to sign a bill that will restrict abortions and make Indiana the first state to cut off all government funding for Planned Parenthood.

Daniels…..touted as a Serious GOP presidential hopeful….has agreed to be the first governor to entirely defund Planned Parenthood, cutting $4 million per year from the women's reproductive healthcare organization in Indiana.

As a result of this bill, Indiana women will have less access to birth control, breast exams, PAP smears, tests for cervical cancer and other female-related health services. This will lead to Indiana having more cases of female cancer, unwanted pregnancies, and venereal disease. All of which, in turn, will cost Indiana much more than $4 million per year.

But hey, that's the price a GOP presidential hopeful must make his state's female citizens pay for him to remain a viable future candidate. Life is all about, you know, trade offs.

If Indiana is our nation's future, then our future is bleak.

Contraception and abortion are legal in these United States….but to listen to the current Tea Party fueled Republicans…you would never know it.

The egregious nature of Daniels' signing such a divisive and heartless bill is seen in the fact that 60% of women served by Planned Parenthood are poor women. So, not only has Indiana declared war on women in their state, they have specifically declared war on poor women.

I hear many conservative types bloviate on about their main considerations being all about "fiscal responsibility." But today's Republican Party, as witnessed now in Indiana, is the same old party of the Moral Majority….huckstering their way to success on the backs of Jesus….and poor women.

What "moderate" Mitchy Daniels has proven with his declaration of war against Indiana women is that the cultural, hysterical, "Jesus is weeping over abortion and gays" conservative movement in America still controls the Republican Party.

So when some Tea Partier claims that their Republican Party initiatives are really, really, really all about less taxes and spending…..tell them to ask a poor woman from Indiana what she thinks about that.

I have argued until my keyboard keys are worn out that our current crop of Republicans in Washington do not care one whit about government spending….and really never have cared. The same goes for the deficit and the national debt. Talk is cheap and with today's Tea Party inspired Republicans….cheap talk has been on sale.

Every Republican administration in my lifetime has not only expanded government but has also expanded the deficit. Richard Cheney, the much beloved chicken hawk warmonger of the conservative persuasion, cynically told Paul O'Neil, former Treasury Secretary under Bush, the Younger, that "deficits don't matter…Reagan proved that."

Just three months ago, the same Tea Party inspired Republicans who will see to it that the federal governmnet closes later today, held the American governmental process hostage until President Obama agreed to add another $2 trillion to the national debt in the form of tax cuts primarily going to the top 5%.

The Republican Party, the same people who continually voted to double the national debt under their Commander Guy a few short years ago, are currently in the middle of the biggest confidence scam the country has ever witnessed. Using the outrageously dishonest pretext of cutting government spending, deficits and debt….the GOP is attempting to force their radicalized, 19th century version of what America should look like……down our throats.

You've probably heard about the policy "riders" which Republican extremists have made into a huge barrier to a compromise which would keep the government open. Those "riders" are a stereotypical social conservative wish list…. everything that the majority of Americans have repeatedly rejected over the past 50 years as too extreme and out of touch with a modern world.

The policy disputes involved a handful of provisions. One would greatly limit financing for Planned Parenthood and other family-planning agencies — in the United States and overseas — and prevent the District of Columbia from using its own tax dollars to help poor women pay for abortions.

Also at issue were measures that would restrict the regulatory powers of the Environmental Protection Agency, a favorite target of Republicans since they took over the House this year, by preventing the agency from enforcing significant portions of the Clean Air Act and regulating carbon emissions.

Read 'em and weep for your country. A minority of faith-based social conservatives have willingly joined forces with the worst of corporate-sponsoring henchmen to playact as though they really, really, really give a damn about government spending…..when all they care about is their theological-oligarchy kingdom. A kingdom where the rich get richer, women's lives are ruled over by men in black robes and the environment is destroyed for the sake of filthy lucre…..as Jesus intended.

The federal government will shut down later today. 800,000 Americans will lose their jobs in an 8.8% national unemployment environment……BECAUSE…..a minority of theo-cons want to dictate what women can and cannot do with their private parts. The "smaller government" slogan slingers are preventing the Armed Forces members from getting paid all because poor women in Washington D.C. currently have access to abortion services, and all reproductive age women have access to birth control.

National Parks and recreation centers will be shuttered later today because huge corporate titans, like the Koch Brothers, are not currently able to foul our atmosphere as they wish. The IRS will stop processing paper tax returns later today all because the EPA currently prevents the full-metal-jacket destruction of the air we breathe and the water we drink. The agency which guarantees 30% of all home mortgages, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), will quit working after today unless the Supreme Court rescinds it's ruling that the EPA can control carbon emissions.

All of what we've been hearing, reading and watching…..all the posing, lies, deceptions, and doubletalking we've seen and heard….all of it….has nothing whatsoever to do with cutting government spending or closing budget holes.

Instead, we're witnessing the grotesque ugliness of today's conservative movement gone to seed. The desperate and extortionistic last stand of a political group which has nothing to offer to a modern American civilization. Nothing, that is, but hate, division, greed, xenophobia, and the destructive exploitation of all that is valuable.

The day after the midterm election I wrote a blog posting entitled "Turn Out The Lights."

Later today…..Tea Party Republicans are flipping the switch.

One of the often heard slogans of libertarians and Tea Partiers is "smaller government." All problems that exist, according to libertarian types, exist because government is too intrusive and too big.

This smaller-government religion is epitomized in the words of one Grover Norquist, former College Republican dirty trickster. The Grover is famous for saying that the goal of conservatives should be to shrink the size of government down so it could be drowned in a bathtub. That Grover, he's so clever.

You may have heard the Boehner, or the Cantor, or Droopy Dawg say similar things about the size of government….and how oh-so-intrusive it is….wiggling it's way into every fiber of our lives the way it does.

Of course Grover, and his bathtub drowning Gang, don't mean a word of it. What they mean when they sling their "smaller government" slogans like they do is that regulations on big business and taxes on the wealthiest among us need shrunken down until neither exists any longer. That's all any of it means.

Here's the evidence that today's Republicans don't really believe in smaller government…

Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail through the House of Representatives, the Internal Revenue Service would be forced to police how Americans have paid for their abortions. To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. And one tax expert says that the measure could even lead to questions on tax forms: Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?

In testimony to a House taxation subcommittee on Wednesday, Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee, confirmed that one consequence of the Republicans' "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" would be to turn IRS agents into abortion cops—that is, during an audit, they'd have to detemine, from evidence provided by the taxpayer, whether any tax benefit had been inappropriately used to pay for an abortion.

Here's a link to the actual bill so you can read it for yourself.

In their zeal to reduce the size of Grover's government, Republicans are proposing a huge intrusive expansion of government. No, I don't get it either. But non-Republican, non-libertarian, non-conservative Americans are not supposed to get it. That's the beauty of it….or not.

And this smaller-government-through-larger-more-intrusive-government approach is not limited to the schitzoid talkers in D.C. In many blood-red states across America, state legislatures and Grover governors are saying one thing….our problem is that government is too big and intrusive…while doing just the opposite…..expanding the size and intrusiveness of government by imposing new regulations and bureaus of enforcement on reproductive-age women.

Just as today's Republicans do not care about today's deficits and debt, using deficits and debt as political sledgehammers to gain power in order to reward their rich Benefactors with further tax reductions and fewer regulations on corporations…..so too today's Republican slogan of "smaller government." They don't care about that either.

The proposal, which House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has declared a top priority of the new Republican Congress, has 221 cosponsors and is expected to pass the House easily.

How intrusive, how much bigger would government have to be if such a bill were actually passed?….

…..during Wednesday's hearing, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) highlighted the IRS enforcement issue, which has until now flown under the radar. He asked:

Would a woman have to certify that the Health Savings Account funds she spent on birth control pills or for a doctor's visit weren't used to pay for an abortion? If a woman were audited, would IRS agents be at her house demanding court documents or affidavits proving that her pregnancy was the result of rape or incest?

The answer….

Barthold replied that the taxpayer would have to prove that she had complied with all applicable abortion laws. Under standard audit procedure, a woman would have to provide evidence to corroborate facts about abortions, rapes, and cases of incest, says Marcus Owens, an accountant and former longtime IRS official. If a taxpayer received a deduction or tax credit for abortion costs related to a case of rape or incest, or because her life was endangered, then "on audit [she] would have to demonstrate or prove, ideally by contemporaneous written documentation, that it was incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger," Owens says.

See how small today's Republicans want to shrink the government? Small enough to fit into a woman's uterus.

So when you hear your Tea Party relative bloviating about how one of our biggest national threats is that the government is just too damn big….and intrusive of, you know, your liberties……simply remind them of their representatives attempts to expand the size and intrusiveness of goverment in this IRS-must-audit-your-birth-control-and-your-uterus bill.

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times.

Conservative opponents of President Obama tell us that what America needs is "smaller government." Smaller government is one of the primary concerns of the often-incoherent group known as the Tea Parties. Tea Partiers are mad as hell and they simply ain't gonna' take anymore of what Father Ronald called "big gub'mint."

Let me say right up front…..this cry for smaller government is a crock.

Let's take a look at South Carolina's Republican Senator, Jim DeMint……who, because of perhaps 4-5 Tea Party senatorial candidates advancing to the Senate next year, has already become the new father figure for the Bagger Brigade.

From DeMint's website…."He has been a tireless advocate for smaller government…"

The National Journal, not to be confused with a bunch of liberal commies, rated DeMint the most conservative member of of the Senate. DeMint is FOR smaller government and is considered the most conservative senator in the joint.

What does Big Jim DeMint mean when he says he's for smaller government?

Well, this is what he says….. DeMint said, (he) will demand a stop to “reckless government spending” and fight to repeal “Obama-care.”

But then Demint also says stuff like this…."politics only works when we're realigned with our Savior.” Guess Big Jim won't be working to dismantle Bush's old Department of Faith Based Initiatives any time soon, huh? In other words, smaller government must be at least big enough to contain an agency which openly violates the 1st amendment by establishing "religion."

I guess small government Jim thinks slowly turning our country into a theocracy which "realigns" the country with "our Savior"…..which would require a whole new regiment of….dare I say it?….big government agencies to keep us, you know, "aligned", simply won't increase the size and scope of the federal government's reach.

Now, THAT, takes some extra-hearty faith to believe.

However, Big Jim is not shy……so he has bravely, or brazenly, come forward to spell out what his new realignment of the country with the 1st century Jesus will look like.

"If someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend-she shouldn't be in the classroom."

DeMint's small government would include an entirely new federal government agency to protect public school children from being taught by homosexual teachers. A new morality police would have to be established, funded, and dispersed throughout the land to protect little Johnny from being taught by a gay teacher. Apparently, that is making the government's reach, smaller.

Furthermore, Big "small government" Jim DeMint wants to shrink the size of the federal government, limit it's reach, through Unmarried-Teacher Virginity Checkpoints. Your guess is as good as mine on how many tax dollars and how many new federal agencies would be necessary to man those Checkpoints…..to protect the children from those unworthy, whore-teachers…..but Jim DeMint is, by god, all in favor of smaller government.

When it comes to the right of women to choose their own reproductive path, Jim DeMint is for microscoptically-small government. No, not less government interference in the personal lives of it's citizens…..but instead, a government which obsesses itself with the microscopic.

From "On the Issues"…..DeMint wants to..

Apply 14th amendment protections to pre-born fetuses. (Jun 2008)
Declare preborn as persons under 14th amendment. (Feb 2009)

Can you even imagine how small our government could be with an entirely new set of government agencies policing for zygotes and week old fetuses? Just think of the endless opportunities DeMint's abortion-free society wll present to get government out of our daily lives. Why, the Department of Forced Pregnancies and Pre-born Fetus Identification, alone, would make our government so small that other industrialized nations would no longer be able to recognize us. And who could ever doubt the conservative cause of making our government's reach smaller with prospects like the Department of Impregnated Rape and Incest Partners?

Conservatives who are constantly screeching about smaller government, government which doesn't spend as much and has a more limited reach over America's citizens…….don't really mean it.

Republicans, Tea Partiers, conservatives…..all one and the same group of folks…..don't want smaller government. What they want is their own version of big government.

The most recent poll taken by the Public Religion Research Institute on the Tea Party found that….

…..activists were mostly social conservatives, rather than the general belief that they are libertarians. Almost two-thirds said that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while only 18 per cent said they supported gay marriage.

It also showed the movement was overwhelmingly aligned with the Republican party, contrary to assertions from organisers that it is not partisan. Eighty-three per cent of Tea Party members who are registered voters next month are aligned with the Republican party.

"Smaller government" is simply another conservative code phrase for "we want the big government that WE want."

Like I said…..a crock.