FEDERAL INMATE NO. 11593-051, Keith Judd, receiving sizable percent of vote in West Virginia Democratic Primary – Judd, who is serving out a 17.5 year sentence for extortion, currently has received 40 percent of the vote, with 83 percent of precincts reporting, according to The Associated Press. Obama currently has received 60 percent of the vote. Obama’s lack of popularity in West Virginia has been well-documented. The state’s governor Earl Ray Tomblin and it’s junior senator Joe Manchin, both Democrats, have kept their distance from the president. – Yahoo! News
You might not be surprised to learn that exit polls reported that West Virginian voters thought Judd had a ‘real purdy mouth.’
Santorum wins in Mississippi and Alabama - Former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) pulled out narrow wins in the Alabama and Mississippi presidential primaries Tuesday, bolstering his claim to being the conservative alternative to Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. “We did it again,” Santorum told cheering supporters in Lafayette, La.; that state will hold its primary March 24. “Who would have thought . . . that ordinary folks from across this country can defy the odds day in and day out?”
Romney Blows Another Chance To Seal The Deal- It’s clear your candidate didn’t have a great night when you have to go on CNN and remind viewers not to forget about the American Samoa caucuses. And Eric Fehrnstrom — the senior Mitt Romney aide who found himself in that precarious position Tuesday night — would probably admit: this was not a great night for his candidate. Despite early attempts to temper expectations for Romney’s performance in Alabama and Mississippi, tight polls and the candidate’s own election-eve bravado created the illusion of an open door — another chance to seal the deal with a big, hard-fought win.
Mitt Romney Said He Was Going to Win Alabama - Making it worse, his advisor Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN tonight: “I don’t think anybody expected Mitt to win Alabama or Mississippi. As Mitt said, this was an away game for him, and I think that’s absolutely true.”
Romney: Forever Awkward / Tone deaf – Mornin’, y’all,” said Mitt Romney recently to a Mississippi crowd. He started his day off right, he said, with “a biscuit and some cheesy grits.” That would be cheese grits, but never mind. Would Romney greet an audience at a Jewish Community Center with: “Oy vey, did I ever enjoy my loxies and bagels this morning!”? Or African Americans with: “Yo, dawg, wassup?” Actually, yes, he might. Forever tattooed in the memory is the image of Romney approaching an African American baby at a 2008 Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade. Pointing to the baby’s necklace, he said: “What’s happening? You got some bling-bling here!”
3) Your 21st Century Republican Party / American Theocracy
McConnell: I’m Filibustering Seventeen Judges Because Reid Made Republicans ‘Look Bad’ - McCONNELL: It is highly unlikely any of these district judges are not going to be confirmed. We’ve done a number of them this year. We’ve done seven this year. District judges are almost never defeated. This is just a very transparent attempt to try to slam dunk the minority and make them look like they are obstructing things they aren’t obstructing. We object to that. We don’t think that meets the standard of civility that should be expected in the Senate. And, so, any effort to make the minority look bad or attempt to slam dunk them that is sort of manufactured as this is is gonna, of course, be greeted with resistance.
PA Passes The Most Anti-Democratic, Anti-Environmental Law in The Country- Pennsylvania, where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were signed and where the U.S. coal, oil and nuclear industries began, has adopted what may be the most anti-democratic, anti-environmental law in the country, giving gas companies the right to drill anywhere, overturn local zoning laws, seize private property and muzzle physicians from disclosing specific health impacts from drilling fluids on patients. The draconian new law, known as Act 13, revises the state’s oil and gas statutes, to allow oil companies to drill for natural gas using the controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking, where large volumes of water and toxic chemicals are pumped into vertical wells with lateral bores to shatter the rock and release the hydrocarbons. The law strips rights from communities and individuals while imposing new statewide drilling rules.
Romney Promises To ‘Get Rid Of’ Planned Parenthood’s Funding - ”The test is pretty simple. Is the program so critical, it’s worth borrowing money from china to pay for it?” Romney said of federal programs. “And on that basis of course you get rid of Obamacare, that’s the easy one. Planned Parenthood, we’re going to get rid of that. The subsidy for Amtrack, I’d eliminate that. The National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities.”Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s Dawn Laguens responds:When Mitt Romney says he wants to ‘get rid’ of Planned Parenthood, he means getting rid of the preventive health care that three million people a year rely on for cancer screenings, birth control, and other preventive care. This is dangerous and out of step with what most Americans want. Mitt Romney simply can’t be trusted when it comes to women’s health. He supports so-called “personhood laws, opposes making birth control affordable and accessible, and wants to undermine women’s health care… [RS] Romney attended a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood in 1994 and his wife donated to the group from their joint checking account.
4) Womenfolk (make me a sandwich!)
Another Religious Freedom®Law Will Allow Employers to Fire Women for Using Whore Pills- A proposed new law in Arizona would give employers the power to request that women being prescribed birth control pills provide proof that they’re using it for non-sexual reasons. And because Arizona’s an at-will employment state, that means that bosses critical of their female employees’ sex lives could fire them as a result. [...] Yesterday, a Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed Republican Debbie Lesko‘s HB2625 by a vote of 6-2, which would allow an employer to request proof that a woman using insurance to buy birth control was being prescribed the birth control for reasons other than not wanting to get pregnant. It’s all about freedom, she said, echoing everyone who thinks there’s nothing ironic about claiming that a country that’s “free” allows people’s bosses to dictate what medical care is available to them through insurance. [...] Further, Lesko states, with a straight face, that this bill is necessary because “we live in America; we don’t live in the Soviet Union.” [image: WWJD]
Obama team hits Romney for ‘get rid of’ Planned Parenthood comment- “Planned Parenthood is a vital health care provider for millions of American women, giving them affordable access to life-saving services like mammograms and cervical cancer screenings,” she added. “Even more offensive is that he would justify on fiscal grounds the elimination of Planned Parenthood, which represents 0.01% of the federal budget, even as he proposes a $5 trillion tax plan that would give massive tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. Whether it’s his support for the Blunt amendment, which would allow any employer to drop coverage for health care services like contraception because of personal beliefs, or these extreme comments today, it’s clear that American women cannot trust Mitt Romney to stand up for them.”
FLASHBACK: Limbaugh To “Feminazi[s]“: Love Your Body, “Because Nobody Else Does” - Rush Limbaugh is a pioneer in American misogyny: He popularized the use of the slur “feminazi” against women who seek to be treated equally in our society. Although he originally claimed that the word referred to “a specific type of feminist” and that there were “not many of them,” Limbaugh has routinely used it to attack feminists, abortion-rights advocates, and progressive women alike. In October 2008, he dragged out the slur to attack the National Organization for Women (NOW) for promoting “Love Your Body Day.” In a press release on its website, NOW said the day marked “another year in our campaign to educate and encourage women and girls to say ‘no’ to negative stereotypes and ‘yes’ to awareness, health, and a positive body image.”
5) President / Democratic Party
Obama files trade case against China, warns Beijing on ‘skirting the rules’- China produces at least 90 percent of “rare earths,” and U.S. officials charge that it imposes export restrictions that unfairly raise the prices paid by non-Chinese firms that need those raw materials, making these less competitive on global markets. “We want our companies building those products right here in America. But to do that, American manufacturers need to have access to rare earth materials which China supplies. Now, if China would simply let the market work on its own, we’d have no objections. But their policies currently are preventing that from happening,” Obama said, stressing that the high-tech manufacturing at stake is “too important for us to stand by and do nothing.” The decision struck another blow at China at a time when U.S. lawmakers and other critics of Beijing accuse the rising economic giant of unfair competition that costs U.S. jobs, notably in manufacturing.
AFL-CIO ‘enthusiastically’ endorses Obama for reelection - Leaders of the influential AFL-CIO labor federation announced Tuesday it voted “proudly and enthusiastically” to endorse President Obama’s reelection effort. “We feel that he’s put forth bold initiatives and put people back to work, put revenues back in the country, put out a vision that expresses opportunity and fairness,” said Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “We think he’s a good man.” The council spoke to Obama by telephone during its closed-door session, in which the president sounded “very engaged, very knowledgeable,” according to McEntee, who serves as chair of the AFL-CIO’s political education committee. The vote, among the AFL-CIO’s 57 member executive council, was unanimous.
Texas Democrats Look To Secure Alternative Federal Funding For Planned Parenthood In The State - Democratic lawmakers are trying to find alternative ways to keep Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas afloat just one day before the state officially bans the organization from receiving funding through the joint state-federal Women’s Health Program. Tomorrow, a new rule goes into effect stopping any clinic affiliated with an abortion provider from receiving WHP funds, and federal officials have said they will cut off funding to the state program if Texas bans Planned Parenthood from WHP. If the program stops, 130,000 women will lose their access to affordable health care.
Obama considers quicker exit from Afghanistan after Kandahar massacre - The president had those words for reporters from the White House this week, and echoed those sentiments again on Monday to KDKA in Pittsburgh. “It’s important for us to make sure that we get out in a responsible way, so that we don’t end up having to go back in,” said Obama. [...] But one day into the aftermath of the Sunday slaying of 16 civilians, the White House says they are looking for a faster way out of Afghanistan, even after already moving up the withdrawal date once in 2012. Prior to the latest episode, the US was expected to send 22,000 troops back to the States by September, leaving around 68,000 to stay until America formally forfeits in 2014. As for those remaining troops, though, Washington is now deciding if they should see an end to their tour as earlier as expected. [image: White House’s Flickr Stream]
6) Misc
Taking a time-out from trying to legislate women’s choices, Catholic Church Puts Legal Pressure on Survivors’ Network - Turning the tables on an advocacy group that has long supported victims of pedophile priests, lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church and priests accused of sexual abuse in two Missouri cases have gone to court to compel the group to disclose more than two decades of e-mails that could include correspondence with victims, lawyers, whistle-blowers, witnesses, the police, prosecutors and journalists. [...] “If there is one group that the higher-ups, the bishops, would like to see silenced,” said Marci A. Hamilton, a law professor at Yeshiva University and an advocate for victims of clergy sex crimes, “it definitely would be SNAP. And that’s what they’re going after. They’re trying to find a way to silence SNAP.” [...] William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a church advocacy group in New York, said targeting the network was justified because “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”
Bill Donohue: It’s ‘a Lot Less Expensive’ To Fight Victims Of Pedophile Priests - Donohue was one of the most vocal defenders of the Catholic Church during the height of the church’s pedophile scandal in the early 2000s, and more egregiously, he remains one of the only people to publicly attack the victims and their supporters. During a radio interview in 2009, Donohue downplayed the charges being leveled by victims because “almost everybody who was abused wasn’t raped.” He also dismissed complaints of priests kissing and engaging in “inappropriate sexual talk” to minors as a non-issue, saying that he “think[s] a lot of these people are gold diggers looking to get money from the Catholic Church.”
Celebrated war criminal / profiteer and beloved chickenhawk DICK Cheney says CANADA is ‘too dangerous’ for visit - Cheney was set to appear at an event in Toronto on April 24, but canceled on grounds that the risk of trouble from protesters was too great. Cheney’s last Canadian appearance in September of 2011 erupted in violence as protesters swarmed the entrance of the private Vancouver club where the former Bush administration official and Iraq War architect was speaking. The protesters rained down verbal abuse on attendees and, in once instance, choked a security guard. Vice President Cheney was trapped inside the venue for more than seven hours as police in riot gear attempted to disperse the crowd and quell to the resulting melee.
Americans hate regulations in the abstract, but love them in the particular - The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that government regulations of the food industry, car safety, workplace safety, prescription drugs, and even environmental protection should either be strengthened or be preserved as they are, with only a small fraction believing they should be reduced. [...] Americans also tend to favor more regulation when asked about specific industries: a plurality believe that the health insurance, energy, banks and big corporations are underregulated.
1) Howard Fineman: GOP Has Created America’s First Religious Party - Whatever happens on Super Tuesday, the Republican primary season already has made history. The contest has confirmed the establishment of America’s first overtly religious major political party. The signs are numerous, but it’s still easy to miss the big picture: that the GOP now is best understood as the American Faith Party (AFP) and its members as conservative Judeo-Christian-Mormon Republicans. The basement of St. Peter’s is just one clubhouse. “There has never been anything like it in our history,” said Princeton historian Sean Wilentz. “‘God’s Own Party’ now really is just that.”
One South Carolina county GOP will only accept you if you pledge not to have pre-marital sex and not to view porn.
2) What middle-eastern country does John McCain want to bomb today? – McCain, the GOP presidential nominee in 2008, said the goal of the U.S. air strikes should be to “establish and defend safe havens” in Syria where opposition forces can organize and plot political and military attacks against Assad. The international community could also deliver humanitarian and military assistance to these safe zones, including food, water, weapons and training. “Increasingly, the question for U.S. policy is not whether foreign forces will intervene militarily in Syria. We can be confident that Syria’s neighbors will do so eventually, if they have not already. Some kind of intervention will happen, with us or without us,” McCain said. “So the real question for U.S. policy is whether we will participate in this next phase of the conflict in Syria, and thereby increase our ability to shape an outcome that is beneficial to the Syrian people, and to us. “I believe we must.”
3) Let’s go to the tape - A few months ago, Mitt Romney sat down with Fox News’ Bret Baier, who asked the former governor about his support for a health care mandate. Romney, visibly agitated, repeatedly denied ever advocating a national mandate policy. When Baier reminded Romney, “Governor you did say on camera and other places that, at times, you thought it would be a model for the nation,” the Republican presidential hopeful got even angrier, snapping back, “You’re wrong, Bret.” Actually, you’re right, Bret. WATCH:
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4) Medicaid waivers pave way for reform - Medicaid waivers aren’t new. Nor were they created by President Barack Obama’s health law. But the waivers, which allow states some flexibility in how they deliver health care to the poor, can help the states prepare for the roughly 16 million people who will be newly eligible for Medicaid in 2014 under ACA. And the health care law did give states the opportunity to expand their Medicaid rolls early. The administration has granted waivers to states that have embraced the law, like California, and those that detest it, like Texas. Both of those states are getting billions, with the caveat that they undertake quality reforms, which happen to coincide with the goals of the ACA. [...] Waivers must be “budget neutral,” meaning the state must create savings equal to any new federal spending. But the health care reform law provides states with new incentives and tools to create savings, enabling them to draw down more federal dollars.
5) 70 Democrats Call For Government To Enforce Limits On Oil Speculation - Seventy Democratic House and Senate lawmakers are calling on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to enforce position limits on speculative trading in the oil markets passed by the CFTC in October 2011 under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. In a letter addressed to the CFTC, Democrats insist, “We have a responsibility to ensure that the price of oil is no longer allowed to be driven up by the same Wall Street speculators who caused the devastating recession that working families are now experiencing.” A wide range of experts believe that speculation in energy futures markets was the cause of both the 2008 and 2010 spikes in gas prices.
Are speculators to blame for soaring gas prices? - Many analysts agree that trading activity is pushing up oil prices over and above what supply and demand would normally dictate — and much of this has been driven by fear over a possible conflict with Iran. “Speculation has inflated oil prices by more than 30%,” says Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. That’s in line with other estimates: A recent paper (pdf) by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that “financial speculative demand shocks” were responsible for at least 15 percent of the huge run-up in oil prices between 2004 and 2008. The tricky part, though, is figuring out what this speculation actually amounts to — and whether it serves any legitimate purposes.
6) In 2010, 93 percent of income gains went to the top 1 percent - In other words, the very rich had a bad 2009, but an incredible 2010. Their share of national income bounced back to 19.77 percent. So inequality is marching upward once again. And there’s reason to believe this will keep going. We mainly talk about income inequality, but wealth inequality matters, too. For most households, their wealth is in real estate. Those assets aren’t returning to pre-crisis levels anytime soon. But for rich households, their wealth is in financial assets, and those assets are recovering much more quickly.
“These people on the Republican side are just looking for the hot button thing: ‘Can we make Obama look weak on Iran? Can we try to suggest that he doesn’t really care about Israel?’ It’s all politics. It’s not a genuine desire to get it right. And I will contrast this with Richard Nixon, who I disagreed with in terms of his obsession with Communist issues and so on, but he was a serious man, who understood foreign policy. So when he debated John Kennedy and when he was president, his foreign policy was a genuine attempt to try and solve this and his normalization of relations with China was one of the greatest accomplishments of our time. Not a single GOP candidate today has a serious understanding—or in the case of Newt Gingrich they have an intentionally false understanding—of the situation.” – Russ Feingold (via GQ)
“If you would have told me a few years ago that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ would be repealed and about a billion jobs at General Motors and Chrysler would have been saved because the president was smart enough and strong enough and bold enough to do so, I would have said, ‘Wow. That’s a good president, I think I’ll vote for him again.” — Tom Hanks: I’m voting for Obama again – POLITICO.com
“It [Ryan's budget proposal] is not a construct to develop a plan; it is the proposal of the Republican Party of the United States of America to eliminate Medicare as a guaranteed entitlement. If you don’t believe me, go get the BOOK that they wrote. Go get the BUDGET that they wrote. Go get the BILL that they wrote…” ~ Rep. Anthony Weiner
In a six-week, phased messaging campaign, Democrats will continue to hammer the Republican agenda as one that seeks a return to failed Bush-era policies, as well as pressure the GOP to provide more concrete details of specific agenda points and how they would work.
The Hillreports: Democrats will highlight a specific theme each week of the recess:
First week: “Make it in America” manufacturing initiative, followed by
Social Security,
consumer protection,
small businesses,
troops and veterans,
and jobs and the economy.
The party is trying to brand its agenda as one centered around “fighting for the middle class.”
One of the best songs in history. Released 39 years ago, on May 21, 1971 – only 7 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. And thanks to Rand Paul and the Tea Party, we’re talking about lunch counters again.
The person who put this video up says, “I wanted to try and capture the essence of the time when Marvin first presented this song.” The audio is the original.
The idea that the modern day Democratic Party is the political party that really has blood on its hands from opposing integration is being advanced more frequently these days among some conservatives, but mostly at the fringes of the Republican Party. Until now. No longer is it just fringe revisionism.
In its defense of Rand Paul’s libertarian opposition to the Civil Rights Acts, the National Republican Senatorial Committee made this “idea” an official party talking point yesterday. NRSC spokesperson Brian Walsh blasted an email to reporters, writing: “As a side note, I would point out the irony – which seems to have been lost in some of the news coverage — that the same party seeking to manufacture this issue today, is in fact the same political party which led the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act in 1964.”
So there you have it right out in the open. The modern political party with a bad track record on civil rights is … the Democratic Party.
We got in touch with Princeton historian Sean Wilentz to expound on this point. Like anyone else who knows the real history of the last half century, Wilentz isn’t buying the revisionism:
Everybody knows that in 1964, a proud southern Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, pushed hard to secure the Civil Rights Bill, with the aid of a coalition of northern Democrats and Republicans. This sent the defeated segregationist Southern Democrats (led by Strom Thurmond) fleeing into the Republican Party, where its remnants, along with a younger generation of extremist conservative white southerners, including Rand Paul, still reside.
FEDERAL INMATE NO. 11593-051, Keith Judd, receiving sizable percent of vote in West Virginia Democratic Primary – Judd, who is serving out a 17.5 year sentence for extortion, currently has received 40 percent of the vote, with 83 percent of precincts reporting, according to The Associated Press. Obama currently has received 60 percent of the vote. Obama’s lack of popularity in West Virginia has been well-documented. The state’s governor Earl Ray Tomblin and it’s junior senator Joe Manchin, both Democrats, have kept their distance from the president. – Yahoo! News
Santorum wins in Mississippi and Alabama
PA Passes The Most Anti-Democratic, Anti-Environmental Law in The Country
Romney Promises To ‘Get Rid Of’ Planned Parenthood’s Funding
Obama team hits Romney for ‘get rid of’ Planned Parenthood comment
FLASHBACK: Limbaugh To “Feminazi[s]“: Love Your Body, “Because Nobody Else Does”
Obama files trade case against China, warns Beijing on ‘skirting the rules’
AFL-CIO ‘enthusiastically’ endorses Obama for reelection
Texas Democrats Look To Secure Alternative Federal Funding For Planned Parenthood In The State
Obama considers quicker exit from Afghanistan after Kandahar massacre
Taking a time-out from trying to legislate women’s choices, 
Bill Donohue: It’s ‘a Lot Less Expensive’ To Fight Victims Of Pedophile Priests
Celebrated war criminal / profiteer and beloved chickenhawk DICK Cheney says CANADA is ‘too dangerous’ for visit
Americans hate regulations in the abstract, but love them in the particular
4) 
