Uneasy lies the head of the Doughmagogue

When you hit bottom in politics, you have only yourself to compete with for King of the Muck.

In which case, put a crown on the Pillsbury Doughmagogue -- Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman. And if you're an all-'Mercun mouth-breather, the king wants to hear from you at 1-800-LYIN SOB. He's ready to talk "illegals" and "anchor babies" if you are; the fewer actual facts, the better.

And know that your "pro-life" monarch -- the one who vetoes funding for prenatal care for poor fetuses -- has what it takes to once again make the Cornhusker State (both in taxes and in complexion) "the white spot" of America. Sorry . . . 'Mercuh.

As promised, Gov. Dave Heineman on Friday vetoed a controversial bill that would restore prenatal services for illegal immigrants.

But the pro-life governor's veto message included a new and potentially explosive new charge: that some of the prenatal funds could find their way to a leading pro-choice organization, Planned Parenthood.

“I oppose providing taxpayer benefits to illegal immigrants,” Heineman said in a press release. “I oppose providing taxpayer funding to vendors that perform or promote abortions.”

A Planned Parenthood of the Heartland official said Friday that the organization doesn't provide prenatal services at its Nebraska clinics, which are in Omaha and Lincoln.

Supporters of the bill, including some anti-abortion officials, said the charge was a last-minute attempt to derail an attempted override of the governor's veto. The Legislature's override vote on Legislative Bill 599 is scheduled for Wednesday.

“This is nothing more than an eleventh-hour attempt to scuttle LB 599,” said Julie Schmit-Albin, the executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, the leading anti-abortion organization in the state.

State Sen. Kathy Campbell of Lincoln, the chief sponsor of the bill, said she was “disturbed” that the comment about Planned Parenthood wasn't raised until after the measure had progressed through three rounds of debate in the Legislature.

But Campbell said she did not think it would erode support for LB 599, to which 31 lawmakers gave final-round approval — one vote more than necessary to override the governor's veto.

OF COURSE, there is that veto-proof majority thing in the Legislature. Sigh.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

Don't fear the (bleep)er

There are times a writer needs a while and many words to say -- and say well -- what needs to be said.

Other times, however, one can say what needs to be said, and with clarity, in just a few words. This is one of those times.

Over the years, at least once a legislative session, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has exposed himself . . . philosophically and morally, that is. The result is about what one would expect if he had dropped trou and let it all hang out.

In the latter instance, we would see one. In the oft-recurring former, we see that Heineman is one.

Let me be clear. The Pillsbury Doughmagogue is a deeply cynical man. He does not hesitate to give himself over to evil whenever he thinks crossing over to the dark side will make him some political hay. He is a discredit to his office and to Nebraska.

"Why should illegal aliens receive millions of
taxpayer dollars when those funds should be
used for increased state aid to education?"

-- Gov. Dave Heineman, pretending to
care about state aid to public education

ONE OF NEBRASKA'S saving graces is that its people are so much better than its governors -- and most of its politicians, for that matter. Generally, Nebraskans understand "the common good."

Another Nebraska saving grace is that its legislature is usually better than its governors, is capable of learning from -- and fixing -- its mistakes, and is willing to bitch-slap a governor when bitch-slapping is called for. It does this to Heineman regularly.

Thus we have this "God bless the unicameral" moment in today's Omaha World-Herald:

The day after 30 state lawmakers advanced a controversial bill to restore taxpayer-funded prenatal care for illegal immigrants, Gov. Dave Heineman singled out for criticism a fellow Republican leader who helped push the bill.

Heineman, who has made a reputation for his staunch anti-illegal immigration views, called a press conference Wednesday to express his "extraordinary" disappointment in State Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk, the speaker of the Legislature and a leading pro-life senator.

"Why should illegal aliens receive millions of taxpayer dollars when those funds should be used for increased state aid to education?" Heineman asked.
Flood, who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor in 2014, was among senators giving first-round approval to the bill, under which an estimated 1,100 low-income, women, mostly illegal immigrants, would be eligible for prenatal care funded by the state. The bill would resume a decades-long policy that was ended in 2010.

Flood said Wednesday his support for the prenatal bill was linked to both pro-life and fiscal reasons. He said he had not talked to the governor.

During floor debate Tuesday night, Flood said that in balancing the "rule of law" with the "pro-life position," he has to side with the health of an unborn baby.

"The unborn child should not be punished for the actions of his or her parents," he said. "We should protect the life of an unborn child whenever possible."

At least 13 other Republicans voted "yes" on the 30-16 vote to advance Legislative Bill 599. Heineman said he singled out Flood for criticism because he had become a "leader" in the effort to pass the prenatal bill.

Heineman said that passing LB 599 with make Nebraska a "magnet" for illegal immigrants because neighboring states don't provide such prenatal care.

MIKE FLOOD is a good man. Unlike another Nebraska Republican in a high office.

Take this party and shove it

I used to be a Democrat.

More precisely, as soon as my change-of-registration form reaches the Douglas County Election Commission, I will be a former Democrat. Since there's no provision to register as "Catholic and the Lot of You Can Go to Hell," I will have to make do with being "non-partisan," which is what they call independent in Nebraska.

And what was my last straw, the one that drove me from disaffected Democrat to political independent and all the electoral exile that implies? Oh, just the outrage of the day from my former political party.

IT'S ALL on the ABC News website:

President Obama “reinforced” his stance on the controversial contraception mandate while speaking at the Democrats’ annual retreat at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. today, Senate Democrats said.

The retreat was closed to media.

Following President Obama’s speech at the retreat, a small group of Senate Democrats, mostly women, left the retreat early in order to hold a news conference on Capitol Hill to counter the Republicans’ news conference today at which they called for the mandate to be overturned.

Democrats said they will “fight strongly” to keep the mandate in place.

“It is our clear understanding from the administration that the president believes as we do, and the vast majority of the American women should have access to birth control,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said pointing out that 15 percent of women use birth control for medical issues. “It’s medicine, and women deserve their medicine.”

Democrats today called on Republicans to stop using women as a “political football,” and stop defining this debate, as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., did earlier in the day, as a religious issue.

“It’s time to tell Republicans ‘mind your own business,’” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. ”Ideology should never be used to block women from getting the care they need to lead healthier lives.

“The power to decide whether or not to use contraception lies with a woman – not her boss,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. “What is more intrusive than trying to allow an employer to make medical decisions for someone who works for them?”

I CAN THINK of one thing. And the Democrats are doing it right now.

And I want to be in the same party as such people about as much as I would have wanted to be in the National Socialist party in 1933 Germany.

Arrogance that surpasseth all understanding

In her latest Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan clearly sees that which Barack Obama couldn't due to the arrogance that blinds.

The president will pay for his lack of vision, as well as his particularly tricky blend of pride and political incompetence. The White House is the wrong place to get a bad case of Big Head, take two stupid pills and expect to get re-elected in the morning.

What am I talking about? Let Ms. Noonan explain:

But the big political news of the week isn't Mr. Romney's gaffe, or even his victory in Florida. The big story took place in Washington. That's where a bomb went off that not many in the political class heard, or understood.

But President Obama just may have lost the election.

The president signed off on a Health and Human Services ruling that says that under ObamaCare, Catholic institutions—including charities, hospitals and schools—will be required by law, for the first time ever, to provide and pay for insurance coverage that includes contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization procedures. If they do not, they will face ruinous fines in the millions of dollars. Or they can always go out of business.

In other words, the Catholic Church was told this week that its institutions can't be Catholic anymore.

I invite you to imagine the moment we are living in without the church's charities, hospitals and schools. And if you know anything about those organizations, you know it is a fantasy that they can afford millions in fines.

There was no reason to make this ruling—none. Except ideology.

The conscience clause, which keeps the church itself from having to bow to such decisions, has always been assumed to cover the church's institutions.

Now the church is fighting back. Priests in an estimated 70% of parishes last Sunday came forward to read strongly worded protests from the church's bishops. The ruling asks the church to abandon Catholic principles and beliefs; it is an abridgment of the First Amendment; it is not acceptable. They say they will not bow to it. They should never bow to it, not only because they are Catholic and cannot be told to take actions that deny their faith, but because they are citizens of the United States.

If they stay strong and fight, they will win. This is in fact a potentially unifying moment for American Catholics, long split left, right and center. Catholic conservatives will immediately and fully oppose the administration's decision. But Catholic liberals, who feel embarrassed and undercut, have also come out in opposition.

The church is split on many things. But do Catholics in the pews want the government telling their church to contravene its beliefs? A president affronting the leadership of the church, and blithely threatening its great institutions? No, they don't want that. They will unite against that.

The smallest part of this story is political. There are 77.7 million Catholics in the United States. In 2008 they made up 27% of the electorate, about 35 million people. Mr. Obama carried the Catholic vote, 54% to 45%. They helped him win.

They won't this year. And guess where a lot of Catholics live? In the battleground states.

RULE NO. 1 of politics: Don't push people too far on issues they're willing to go to jail over. Or die for. That's a fight you cannot win, because you can't jail or kill enough of your opponents, assuming even that the law allowed it and your country had the stomach for it.

If a Catholic is even halfway serious about what he or she professes to believe, this is that issue -- freedom of conscience and the sacred obligation to do what one believes God demands of him . . . or die trying.

A lot of us didn't agree with the president's social agenda, and we didn't vote for him, either. (Then again, neither did I vote for John McCain.) But we were supportive where conscience allowed, respected the office and respected the democratic process. And we didn't automatically assume ill will on his part while avoiding it on ours.

Obama and his administration mistook civility for passivity and a lack of non-negotiable principles and loyalties. That's the kind of arrogance born of pride that always goeth before a fall.

IT'S A PITY the Republican presidential candidates suck so. But, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what you want."

Continued national decline, I guess we can live with. Freedom to worship God and live as He requires, that's the kind of freedom of conscience we can't live without.

The road to hell passes through D.C.

So . . . the Obama Administration is trying to force every Catholic institution outside the clerical structure itself to insure contraceptive practices Catholic doctrine regards as intrinsically evil -- as mortal sin.

Well, that clarifies what contemporary Democrats regard as inalienable human rights -- as of this moment, I think the list has been whittled to "consequence-free f***ing" (of which the right to kill one's unborn child is a subset) and . . . no, that's about it.

The latest proclamation by the odious secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, pretty much declares the First Amendment -- particularly the Establishment Clause -- null and void. That this moral cypher calls herself a Catholic makes her action all the more disgusting, and that she technically still is one is a matter that ought to be addressed immediately by her bishop.

That said, there's nothing more I can add that possibly could top what Michael Sean Winters wrote in the National Catholic Reporter. So I'll merely say "What he said."

DO GO READ the entire thing on Winters' NCR blog:

I accuse you, Mr. President, of betraying philosophic liberalism, which began, lest we forget, as a defense of the rights of conscience. As Catholics, we need to be honest and admit that, three hundred years ago, the defense of conscience was not high on the agenda of Holy Mother Church. But, we Catholics learned to embrace the idea that the coercion of conscience is a violation of human dignity. This is a lesson, Mr. President, that you and too many of your fellow liberals have apparently unlearned.

I accuse you, Mr. President, who argued that your experience as a constitutional scholar commended you for the high office you hold, of ignoring the Constitution. Perhaps you were busy last week, but the Supreme Court, on a 9-0 vote, said that the First Amendment still means something and that it trumps even desirable governmental objectives when the two come into conflict. Did you miss the concurring opinion, joined by your own most recent appointment to the court, Justice Kagan, which stated:

“Throughout our Nation's history, religious bodies have been the preeminent example of private associations that have ‘act[ed] as critical buffers between the individual and the power of the State.’ Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 619 (1984). In a case like the one now before us—where the goal of the civil law in question, the elimination of discrimination against persons with disabilities, is so worthy—it is easy to forget that the autonomy of religious groups, both here in the United States and abroad, has often served as a shield against oppressive civil laws. To safeguard this crucial autonomy, we have long recognized that the Religion Clauses protect a private sphere within which religious bodies are free to govern themselves in accordance with their own beliefs. The Constitution guarantees religious bodies ‘independence from secular control or manipulation—in short, power to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.’ Kedroff v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church in North America, 344 U.S. 94, 116 (1952).”

Pray, do tell, Mr. President, what part of that paragraph did you consider when making this decision? Or, do you like having your Justice Department having its hat handed to it at the Supreme Court?

I accuse you, Mr. President, as leader of the Democratic Party, the primary vehicle for historic political liberalism in this country, of risking all the many achievements of political liberalism, from environmental protection to Social Security to Medicare and Medicaid, by committing a politically stupid act. Do you really think your friends at Planned Parenthood and NARAL were going to support the candidacy of Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich? How does this decision affect the prospects of Democrats winning back the House in districts like Pennsylvania’s Third or Ohio’s First or Virginia’s Fifth districts? How do your chances look today among Catholic swing voters in Scranton and the suburbs of Cincinnati and along the I-4 corridor in Florida? I suppose that there are campaign contributions to consider, but really, sacrificing one’s conscience, or the conscience rights of others, was not worth Wales, was it worth a few extra dollars in your campaign coffers?

I accuse you, Mr. President, of failing to know your history. In 1978, the IRS proposed a rule change affecting the tax exempt status of private Christian schools. The rule would change the way school verified their desegregation policies, putting the burden of proof on the school, not the IRS. By 1978, many of those schools were already desegregated, even though they had first been founded as a means to avoid desegregation of the public schools. But evangelical Christians did not look kindly on the government’s interference in schools they had built themselves and, even though the IRS rescinded the rule change, the original decision was the straw the broke the camel’s back for those who wished to separate themselves from mainstream culture. They formed the Moral Majority, entered that mainstream culture, and helped the Republican Party win the next three presidential elections. You, Mr. President, have struck that same nerve. Catholics built their colleges and universities and hospitals. They did so out of religious conviction and, as often as not, because mainstream institutions did not welcome Catholics. It is one thing to support a policy with which the Catholic Church disagrees but it is quite another to start telling Catholics how to run their own institutions.

CATHOLICS in this country -- and Catholic institutions in this country -- should have but two words for any civil authority, left-wing or right, that seeks to compel them to violate their consciences or the teaching of their church: "Non servium."

"I will not serve."

If America is hell-bent on going to the devil, the only thing we can do anymore is not to tag along.



HAT TIP: Rod Dreher

He said what?

What planet does this man live on, this Mitt Romney who wants to be -- urp -- president?

Not mine, I can tell you that.

Here's what Romney said about health care today:

I want people to be able to own insurance if they wish to, and to buy it for themselves and perhaps keep it for the rest of their life and to choose among different policies offered from companies across the nation. I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep people healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I’m going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me.

HUH? If you like to fire anyone, I'm sorry, but you're a freak. And you may be an evil one at that.

Firing someone -- or anything, even your insurance company -- is a last resort. It's unpleasant. It's a pain. It represents failure on many levels. It is not to be enjoyed.

If you get off on such, you are disturbed and you have not an empathetic bone in your sorry carcass. That's just the way it is.

Now, beyond that, just who in America -- apart from rich people like Mitt Romney, the ones who can afford individual health-insurance policies -- gets to fire his insurance company, anyway? Any candidate who says such a thing to ordinary folk and thinks it's persuasive is woefully out of touch.

Any ordinary Joe who falls for such an argument is too stupid to be allowed in public unaccompanied by a competent adult caretaker. Yet this is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination?

God help us, no matter whether Romney or President Obama wins in November, we are so screwed. In different ways, mind you, but screwed nevertheless.

Never mind the bollocks

Because we Americans seem to be, at heart, a most unserious people, we have outraged national campaigns over this.

A naughtily named new flavor of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, "Schweddy Balls," has inspired a national boycott call and hungry curiosity in Omaha, as elsewhere.

Members of OneMillionMoms.com want the ice cream company to stop making the flavor.

The limited-edition flavor, launched this month, is a tribute to "Saturday Night Live." The name refers to a 1998 sketch in which Alec Baldwin played holiday goodie baker Pete Schweddy.

Monica Cole, director of the online activist campaign, said she's seen the skit, but she's not laughing at it or its namesake dairy treat.

"We find it vulgar, not what we would like our children to be seeing or asking for at the supermarket or a Ben & Jerry's outlet," Cole said from the group's headquarters in Tupelo, Miss.

-- Omaha World-Herald,

Sept. 24, 2011

But not this.

Black babies are dying in Omaha.

That's the simple, straightforward message the group of about 40 people — most of them black women — had to work with. Their assignment was to take 10 minutes to come up with a way of spreading that message to the people who need to hear it.

The fact that the infant mortality rate is high among blacks in Omaha was no surprise to many of those at a community forum earlier this week at the Turning Point campus in north Omaha. That for every 1,000 black babies born in Douglas County, more than 14 will die in their first 12 months.

Or that the rate is three times higher than the county's white infant mortality rate: 4.7 deaths per 1,000 babies.

But a Douglas County Health Department map showing that the highest concentration of baby deaths was near 33rd and Lake Streets, in the area around Salem Baptist Church, surprised Thelma Sims, director of the Salem Children's Center.

Sims first saw the map about a month and a half ago.

"I was really devastated and sad," she said.

She lives and works in the area but hadn't known that from 2005 through 2009 the neighborhood's infant mortality rate was 27 to 33 deaths per 1,000 births — in the range of the rates seen in Indonesia, Zimbabwe and Kyrgyzstan.

Rates are harder to grasp than actual numbers, so when looking at the state's vital statistics for 2005-2010, for example, you find that 113 black infants died in Douglas County during that period.

Of those, the leading causes of death were listed as sudden infant death syndrome, 21; maternal complications of pregnancy, 20; prematurity, 16; and birth defect, 14.

-- Omaha World-Herald,

Sept. 24, 2011

Really, America?

Really?

On this ship of fools, steerage is a dangerous place to book passage. Obviously.

The 'Party of Life'

Pro-lifers associate themselves with this bunch -- pols like Mitch McConnell and his ilk --at their own cultural, political and spiritual peril.

There is a big difference between anti-abortion and pro-life. Anti-abortionites have no problem with cheering for executions and demanding that society let people die for lack of health insurance; pro-lifers, on the other hand, are deeply troubled by the former and absolutely horrified by the latter.

The Republican Party is nominally anti-abortion, and the "pro-life" establishment is just fine with making that particular deal with the devil.

Even more distressing is how many Catholics have bought into such a limited vision of defending human life.

The church teaches that the sanctity of human life begins at conception and continues until natural death. It's therefore unacceptable to accept a vision of "pro-life" that ends the moment an infant emerges from the birth canal and gets a sharp slap on the buttocks. In a "pro-life" world, there is no room for "Let 'em die!" or wild applause for the death penalty.

THERE IS plenty of room for that under the banner of "anti-abortion," and plenty of lemmings to march beneath it.

Anti-abortion is what Republican presidential candidates like Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the nation's fastest and loosest executioner, really mean when they talk about the GOP being "the party of life." Pro-life is a bridge too far, as evidenced by the indifference toward "the least of these" who make it out of the womb.

For America's highly politicized "pro-life" operatives, letting vulnerable humanity shift for itself after the first nine months is "good enough for government work." Unfortunately for them, I suspect the Almighty doesn't grade on a curve.


HAT TIP: Think Progress.

Michele Bachmann goes viral. No, really.

If government injections are bad, does that mean private viruses are good?

Vaccinating young women against human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer, is somehow a violation of their "innocence," as Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann suggests in the above video from the CNN/Whack Job Tea Party Express debate for the GOP presidential field?

I know the social-conservative politics here -- the theory is that we're "slutproofing" teens, taking away a powerful disincentive to premarital sex and promiscuity. They believe that f***ing not only shouldn't be an entitlement, it also, in some form of Messing with Divine Wrath sense, shouldn't occur without the possibility of consequences.

Here's the transcript of the whole nutty exchange:

BLITZER: Gov. Perry, as you well know, you signed an executive order requiring little girls 11 and 12-year-old girls to get a vaccine to deal with a sexually transmitted disease that could lead to cervical cancer. Was that a mistake?

PERRY: It was. And indeed, if I had it to do over again, I would have done it differently. I would have gone to the legislature, worked with them. But what was driving me was, obviously, making a difference about young people's lives.

Cervical cancer is a horrible way to die. And I happen to think that what we were trying to do was to clearly send a message that we're going to give moms and dads the opportunity to make that decision with parental opt-out.

Parental rights are very important in state of Texas. We do it on a long list of vaccines that are made, but on that particular issue, I will tell you that I made a mistake by not going to the legislature first.

Let me address Ron Paul just a minute by saying I will use an executive order to get rid of as much of Obamacare as I can on day one.

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: Congresswoman Bachmann, do you have anything to say about what Governor Perry just said? You're a mom.

BACHMANN: I'm a mom. And I'm a mom of three children. And to have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong. That should never be done. It's a violation of a liberty interest.

That's -- little girls who have a negative reaction to this potentially dangerous drug don't get a mulligan. They don't get a do-over. The parents don't get a do-over. That's why I fought so hard in Washington, D.C., against President Obama and Obamacare.

President Obama in a stunning, shocking level of power now just recently told all private insurance companies, you must offer the morning-after abortion pill, because I said so. And it must be free of charge. That same level coming through executive orders and through government dictates is wrong. And that's why again we have to have someone who is absolutely committed to the repeal of Obamacare and I am. I won't rest until it's appealed.

BLITZER: Let's let Gov. Perry respond. Was what you signed into law, that vaccine for 11 and 12-year-old girls, was that, as some of your critics have suggested, a mandate?

PERRY: No, sir it wasn't. It was very clear. It had an opt-out. And at the end of the day, this was about trying to stop a cancer and giving the parental option to opt out of that. And at the end of the day, you may criticize me about the way that I went about it, but at the end of the day, I am always going to err on the side of life. And that's what this was really all about for me.

BLITZER: Sen. Santorum -- go ahead.

BACHMANN: Can I add to that, Wolf? Can I add to that?

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Hold on a second. First Congresswoman Bachmann, then Sen. Santorum.

BACHMANN: I just wanted to add that we cannot forget that in the midst of this executive order there is a big drug company that made millions of dollars because of this mandate. We can't deny that...

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: What are you suggesting?

BACHMANN: What I'm saying is that it's wrong for a drug company, because the governor's former chief of staff was the chief lobbyist for this drug company. The drug company gave thousands of dollars in political donations to the governor, and this is just flat-out wrong. The question is, is it about life, or was it about millions of dollars and potentially billions for a drug company?

BLITZER: All right. I'll let Sen. Santorum hold off for a second.

You've got to respond to that.

PERRY: Yes, sir. The company was Merck, and it was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them. I raise about $30 million. And if you're saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I'm offended.

(APPLAUSE)

BACHMANN: Well, I'm offended for all the little girls and the parents that didn't have a choice. That's what I'm offended for.

(APPLAUSE)

SANTORUM: I think we need to hear what Gov. Perry's saying. He's saying that his policy was right. He believes that what he did was right. He thinks he went about it the wrong way.

I believe your policy is wrong. Why -- ladies and gentlemen, why do we inoculate people with vaccines in public schools? Because we're afraid of those diseases being communicable between people at school. And therefore, to protect the rest of the people at school, we have vaccinations to protect those children.

Unless Texas has a very progressive way of communicating diseases in their school by way of their curriculum, then there is no government purpose served for having little girls inoculated at the force and compulsion of the government. This is big government run amok. It is bad policy, and it should not have been done.

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: I'm going to move on, Gov. Perry, unless you want to say anything else.

PERRY: Look, I think we made decisions in Texas. We put a $3 billion effort in to find the cure for cancer. There are a lot of different cancers out there. Texas, I think, day in and day out, is a place that protects life.

I passed parental notification piece of legislation. I've been the most pro-life governor in the state of Texas. And what we were all about was trying to save young people's lives in Texas.

SANTORUM: Then give the parents the opt-in, as opposed to -- teach them, let them opt in, but do not force them to have this inoculation.

THERE ARE still plenty enough serious consequences to teen sex, if you ask me, without insisting upon a horrible death from cancer being among the "deterrents." At some point, you're not standing up for virtue and divine morality so much as you are being as mean as the devil.

Republicans like Bachmann and the equally loony yet somehow less entertaining Rick Santorum clearly have crossed that line.

Jesus God, I'm defending Rick Perry here! This is just one more ominous sign of the total insanity -- and unseriousness -- of a major political movement and of an entire political party.

I DON'T THINK "depraved" would be too strong a word for such a political culture.

If only someone could mandate inoculations against bat-s*** crazy, that might go a long way to fixing what's wrong with American politics.

Death: Love it. Live it. Cheer it.

The prospect of President Rick Perry scares me. The prospect of President Ron Paul, however faint, scares me more.

And the fact that, presumably, universal suffrage applies to a loud -- and monstrous -- contingent at Monday night's CNN/Tea Party Republican debate scares me most of all.

Let me be clear: If crowd reactions are any clue to what the tea-party movement really stands for (and I think they do, given the weirdness of America's present "tea" totalism), then this present darkness, this "constitutionalist" mass insanity not only threatens the American republic but also, if left unchecked, mortally threatens civilization itself.

It represents, in the ironic name of God and country, a mass restating of Cain's guilty query of the Lord: "Am I my brother's keeper?" For Cain had just slain his brother, Abel.

Or let him die because he didn't buy health insurance. One or the other.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

YOU KNOW your political base is a bunch of hateful lunatics when the man who had been pandering to them so effectively admits to NBC News that he was horrified by the tea-bag rabble's heartless reaction.

The morning after a sometimes-rocky appearance in front of a Tea Party debate audience, Gov. Rick Perry said he was "taken aback" by cheers from some crowd members on a hypothetical question of whether a young man who decides not to buy health insurance should be refused care if he develops a life-threatening illness and be left to die.

"I was a bit taken aback by that myself," Perry told NBC News and the Miami Herald after appearing at a breakfast fundraiser in Tampa.

"We're the party of life. We ought to be coming up with ways to save lives."

Perry distinguished from that the issue of "justice," reiterating his strong support and "respect" for the death penalty on a state-by-state basis. "But the Republican party ought to be about life and protecting, particularly, innocent life," he added.

PERRY'S GOT it all wrong. His is not the party of life -- it is the Party of Greed. The Party of Self-Righteousness. The Party of Endless War. The Party of American Hubris. The Party of Demagoguery. The Party of Willful Ignorance. (How 'bout them drought- and heatwave-fueled Tejas wildfires, Governor? No climate change to see here . . . move along.)

And the Democrats are just as bad. Just different -- right-wing extremists cheer for letting the uninsured die of dread diseases, left-wing ones cheer for killing babies in the womb.

Our age has become one where shell-shocked Jeremiahs spend much time invoking, and desperately defending, moral propositions once so obvious they required little discussion and almost no debate. What are tea-party Republicans going to rethink next? The 13th Amendment?

What are "progressive" Democrats going to try to enshrine as a "right" next? Incest?

Don't answer that. Just allow me the small comfort of feeling vaguely foolish for having felt the need to write this flippin' post at all . . . for all the good it'll do.

Such is the state of the nation in this land far, far right (and left) of Eden.

The rich man's burden: Poor folks voting

Over the past couple of years, writers at The American Thinker have had trouble keeping their demagoguery straight.

Basically, they can't decide whether President Obama is a mortal threat to the republic because he's too Nazilike or because he's not Hitlerian enough. If you ask me, it'd be a trip to sit in on their editorial meetings.

For his part, Washington "investigative journalist" Matthew Vadum comes down squarely on the side of "more Hitler, dammit!" The least the government could be doing, he writes this week, is to keep the parasites away from the voting booth.

You don't say.

ACTUALLY, I took liberties in describing his position. Vadum didn't actually call the poor "parasites." He just referred to "nonproductive segments" and how the poor "burden society."

And said that "empowering" them is "antisocial" and "un-American."

Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?

Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

(snip)

Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor. It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers.

Registering the unproductive to vote is an idea that was heavily promoted by the small-c communists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, as I write in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

In an infamous 1966 Nation magazine article, the radical university professors urged that the welfare apparatus be used to destroy the American system. Borrowing a phrase the ultra-leftist Leon Trotsky used in one of his many anti-Stalin tracts, The Platform of the Joint Opposition (1927), they titled their blueprint for radical change "The Weight of the Poor."

By "weight," Cloward, Piven, and Trotsky meant power or influence. All three wanted to use the poor as a battering ram against the systems they sought to overthrow.

Trotsky thought too many bureaucrats and middle-class people were involved in the Soviet Communist Party and that it was moving too slowly in its efforts to change that society. He wanted more poor people in the party in order to overthrow Stalin's obstructionist bureaucracy and clear the way for "true" communism.

Stateside, Cloward and Piven wanted to use the "weight" of the poor to bring down American capitalism and democracy.

IT IS but a small leap one makes from lebensunwerten das Wahlrecht to lebensunwerten Lebens -- "life unworthy of the right to vote" to "life unworthy of life." This is especially true when one uses rhetorical trampolines such as "antisocial," "un-American," "nonproductive segments" and "burden to society."

Vadum's paranoid vision is that of a Marxist Obama destroying society with all manner of collectivist insanity made possible by registering parasitic hordes of poor Americans and making sure they vote early . . . and often.

A couple of years earlier, though, Cliff Thier fretted over the president's nascent "Obamacare" plan for polar-opposite reasons -- that a Naziesque Obama would deny medical care to old folks because they no longer were productive. From The American Thinker of Aug. 24, 2009:

Under ObamaCare, the older you get, the more likely it will be that you will not be permitted to have an operation, or to receive the optimal medicines. The reason is that you likely will be taking more out of society than you will be contributing in taxes. Which leaves us with a simple question: Who in his right mind would dare to retire?

[An aside. In Nazi Germany, the mentally ill and physically disabled were labeled as "unproductive members" of society. As were, of course, the Jews. Euthanasia was the inevitable and logical result of such thinking then. It is also the inevitable and logical result of such thinking today.

The prophet Ezekiel was supposed to have resurrected the dead. That it is an Ezekiel authoring the Obama Administration's "Robert's Rules of Death" must be God's little joke.

That it's an Israeli doctor who is advocating this system of rating the values of different human lives must be Dr. Mengele's little joke. ]

You and I will have no choice but to continue to work into our 80s (God willing) and beyond. We will have to do everything we can to convince the government that we put more into society than we take out.

If, however, you are younger than 15, older than 40, you've got a problem. If you're younger than 2, or over 65, or mentally ill, or physically disabled, you've got an even bigger problem.

If you love someone who is over 65 or physically disabled and they contribute something important to your life, that won't count. Only if they pay taxes will their lives be rated as worthy.

Good luck to you.

AND GOOD LUCK to The American Thinker and its contributors as they wrestle over whether they want to fight phantom Nazis or, instead, become real ones.

El socialismo, sí! Darwinismo social, no!

I remember standing in line at the local Sears service center years ago, out in the industrial hell of southwest Omaha, waiting to get a certain part for our lawnmower or something.

The line was long, the service slow. Competence seemed negligible. The vibe was not one of "How do we improve the customer experience today?"

Finally, one guy closer to the front of the line had had enough. I know I had had enough, and this guy had been standing in line longer than me.

"This is worse than Russia!" he erupted. I mean, he screamed that. And then he stormed out the door, part not in hand.

Mind you, this was when the Cold War still raged. When "Russia" meant the Soviet Union. Land of communism . . . and craptastic workmanship.

IN THE NEWS today, we learn that American babies are more likely to die than those in 40 other countries -- most all of which Republicans deride for their allegedly inferior pinko "socialized medicine."

But their babies are alive. Too many of our fine, capitalistic progeny aren't.

From My Health News Daily:

Babies in the United States have a higher risk of dying during their first month of life than do babies born in 40 other countries, according to a new report.

Some of the countries that outrank the United States in terms of newborn death risk are South Korea, Cuba, Malaysia, Lithuania, Poland and Israel, according to the study.

Researchers at the World Health Organization estimated the number of newborn deaths and newborn mortality rates of more than 200 countries over the last 20 years.

The results show that, while newborn mortality rates have decreased globally over that period, progress to lower these rates has been slow, the researchers said.

In 2009, an estimated 3.3 million babies died during their first four weeks of life, compared with 4.6 million in 1990, the report found. About 41 percent of all deaths of children under 5 occur in the first month (the neonatal period). Progress to reduce newborn deaths has been particularly slow in countries in Africa, the researchers said.

A BANANA REPUBLIC, if you ask me, is one where "family values" politicians yell and scream about the genocide of abortion -- which it is -- but are perfectly content to let babies croak once they exit the womb unmolested. Particularly poor babies, who most depend on the ebbing Medicaid kindness of federal and state lawmakers.

In other words, "This is worse than Cuba!"

I guess there are worse things in the world than socialism . . . like whatever the hell it is the United States does now.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Don't mess around when burtations strike

In Los Angeles, when a reporter does this, it's cause for alarm and much legitimate speculation about on-air strokes or possible brain tumors. Scary stuff.

In Omaha, when a reporter does this, it means you must be watching Channel 6.

A simple solution to the 'anchor baby' problem

Remember when Nebraska cut off prenatal care to pregnant illegals and some other poor women?

Now the results are starting to come in some eight months later, and I think I've figured out the philosophy of "pro-life" Gov. Dave Heineman and all the other Republican defenders o' the border. It's as ingenious as it is simple.

But before I tell you what it is, why don't you get yourself up to speed with what the Omaha World-Herald is reporting today? Basically, it's that doctors are reporting levels of stillbirths they haven't seen in years and years and years among poor women:

Health-care providers for the poor have seen five stillbirths in Columbus and Omaha since March 1, when the state decided to end prenatal services for illegal immigrants, they said Friday.

The providers said they could not definitively link the stillbirths to the policy shift by Gov. Dave Heineman's administration.

But they said it was clear women had forgone or delayed the preventive care, which has been proven to head off expensive and complicated deliveries and higher long-term expenses for birth defects and special education services.

As little as $800 worth of prenatal visits, they said, can head off $5,000-a-day stays in intensive-care units for children who automatically become U.S. citizens at birth.

"It's shocking that the State of Nebraska has chosen to disregard the huge weight of medical evidence about preventative (prenatal) care," said Dr. Paul Welch, an obstetrics/gynecology physician from Columbus.

THIS IS Tea Party America. I frankly am shocked that the doctor is shocked. It's going to get worse.

Anyway, back to the story.

Advocates for prenatal care said they are already seeing some of the higher costs and poor medical outcomes associated with a lack of such care.

Rebecca Rayman of the Good Neighbor Community Health Center in Columbus said her clinic has seen four unborn babies die since March after having no stillbirths in the previous six years.

“Only God knows” whether those deaths were directly attributable to the lack of prenatal care, Rayman said. She had evidence at least one was directly linked to lack of care.

Two emergency births took place at a South Omaha clinic because women are afraid of the costs of going to a hospital.

One infant, delivered at 20 weeks of gestation, died, said Andrea Skolkin of OneWorld Community Health Centers. The infant's mother had received no prenatal care.

Skolkin joined former U.S. Rep. John Cavanaugh, who now heads an effort to improve education for the poor in the Omaha area, in asking legislators to restore the prenatal services.

“This is a domino of destruction that will follow (these children) and us,” Cavanaugh said, in terms of higher costs for special education and poorer academic performance.

“There is not one word of testimony about the positive impact of this change,” he said.

NOW THAT you've been filled in, here's Heineman's brilliant strategy -- in the sense, of course, that Lex Luthor comes up with brilliant strategies for thwarting the Man of Steel. Like I said before, its brilliance lies in its very simplicity.

There's only one sure way to keep the Mexicans, and other impoverished opportunity-seekers, from flooding across our besieged borders and overwhelming the Greatest Nation on Earth (TM). And that, children, is to make America into Not the Greatest Nation on Earth.

You stop Mexicans, etc., and so on, from "flooding the zone" by taking away any advantage we have over places like Mexico. If Mexico sucks and we suck, too, there's no percentage in risking life, limb and la Migra by sneaking across the border, now, is there?

Accomplishing this while also making sure Mexican mommas deliver more dead "anchor babies" -- and doing it all while you proclaim your "pro-life" bona fides -- is just a bit of panache that borders on showing off.