The Republicans are still trying to vote forced pregnancy into law.

Press Release

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Steve King released the following statement after introducing “The Heartbeat Bill,” that would require physicians to detect the heartbeat and prohibit the abortion of a baby with a beating heart:

“Since Roe v. Wade was unconstitutionally decided in 1973, nearly 60 million innocent babies’ lives have been ended by the abortion industry, all with a rubber stamp by the federal government,” said King. “Human life, beginning at the moment of conception, is sacred in all of its forms and today, I introduced a bill that will protect the lives of voiceless innocents.

My legislation will require all physicians, before conducting an abortion, to detect the heartbeat of the unborn child. If a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected.

America was founded on the concept that our rights come from God. All human persons have a right to life. How then could we confer that those rights allow the killing of a baby? I believe our most important responsibility that God has bestowed upon us is to protect innocent human life, and I will continue to dedicate my life to that responsibility.”

Issues:

Traditional and Family Values

Rewire comments:

His spokesperson provided Rewire with legislative text specifying that an abortion provider “who knowingly performs an abortion and thereby kills a human fetus” without determining a heartbeat, informing the patient of a heartbeat, or proceeding regardless of a heartbeat would face fines and up to five years in prison. The bill includes limited exceptions for the physical health of the pregnant [woman] but not for “psychological or emotional conditions.”

King worked on the bill with anti-choice activist Janet Porter, the Faith2Action leader deemed too extreme for Christian talk radio, the congressman’s spokesperson said. Porter was behind Ohio Republicans’ recent failed attempt to push through a total abortion ban. Anti-choice Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) vetoed the measure the same day he signed a 20-week ban into law, reasoning that the 20-week ban would be more constitutionally prudent. It’s not.

Porter persuaded King to act while both attended the funeral of Phyllis Schlafly, the notorious Equal Rights Amendment opponent, as People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch first reported in October.

Misogynists gotta network.

The Times gives a rundown of what will go away as the Republicans dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

The health law reduced the number of uninsured Americans by an estimated 20 million people from 2010 to 2016. One of the primary ways it did so was by creating online markets where people who didn’t get insurance through work or the government could shop for a health plan from a private insurer. The law offered subsidies for Americans with lower incomes to help pay their premiums and deductibles.

What would happen? The Republican bill is expected to eliminate the subsidies. This would make insurance unaffordable for millions of Americans and sharply reduce the number who buy their own health coverage.

The Republicans want to make sure that millions of people will be unable to afford health insurance. Why? Because they’re just that awesome, I guess.

With many fewer people buying coverage, the insurance markets are likely to become increasingly unstable. Many insurers will stop offering policies, and the remaining customers are likely to be sicker than current Obamacare buyers, a reality that will drive up the cost of insurance for everyone who buys it, and force more people out of the markets. The Urban Institute estimates that the change would cause a total of 22.5 million people to lose their health insurance.

But the people doing this will be fine, because they get high quality insurance through their jobs – their jobs taking health insurance away from people who make less money than they do.

2) Obamacare insured millions more by expanding Medicaid.

The health law provided federal funds for states to offer Medicaid coverage to anyone earning less than about $16,000 for a single person or $33,000 for a family of four. Not every state chose to expand, but most did.

What would happen? The Republican plan is expected to eliminate federal funding for the expansion. An estimated 12.9 million people would lose Medicaid coverage, according to the Urban Institute’s projections.

Sucks to be them.

Ethics? Ethics? The hell with ethics, we like our presidents corrupt.

The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee on Thursday issued a stern letter, including a veiled threat of an investigation, to the federal government’s top ethics monitor, who this week had questioned President-elect Donald J. Trump’s commitment to confront his potential conflicts of interest.

In an unusual action against the independent Office of Government Ethics, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah accused the office’s director, Walter M. Shaub Jr., of “blurring the line between public relations and official ethics guidance.”

And he of course said this as a purely impartial outside observer.

Mr. Chaffetz, in his letter, noted his committee’s authority to reauthorize the office, a hint that it could perhaps be shut down. “The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the principal oversight committee of the House of Representatives and may at ‘any time’ investigate ‘any matter’ as set forth in House Rule X,” he wrote.

A spokesman for the Office of Government Ethics did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Chaffetz asked Mr. Shaub to appear for an interview with the committee’s staff by the end of the month.

Richard W. Painter, who served as an ethics lawyer in the administration of George W. Bush, said that Mr. Chaffetz was apparently trying to punish Mr. Shaub for criticizing Mr. Trump.

“They are strong-arming them,” Mr. Painter said Thursday night after being sent a copy of the letter. “They are obviously very upset the Office of Government Ethics is leaning on Trump and not willing to jam through his nominees. It is political retaliation.”

Only losers care about ethics.

Let’s go back in time a few months – three months, to be exact: back to October 10 last year, when Jeff Sessions said grabbing a woman “by the pussy” isn’t sexual assault. I wonder if he thinks lynching is murder.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a top Donald Trump surrogate, said on Sunday that even if the GOP nominee actually grabbed a woman “by the pussy,” as he bragged about in a leaked tape from 2005, that behavior would not amount to sexual assault.

“I don’t characterize that as sexual assault,” Sessions told The Weekly Standard in the spin room after Sunday night’s presidential debate. “I think that’s a stretch. I don’t know what he meant.”

“So if you grab a woman by the genitals, that’s not sexual assault?” the reporter asked Sessions.

“I don’t know,” the senator replied. “It’s not clear that he — how that would occur.”

From John Lewis’s testimony in the confirmation hearings for Jeff Sessions:

A clear majority of Americans say they want this to be a fair, just, and open nation.  They are afraid this country is headed in the wrong direction.  They are concerned that some leaders reject decades of progress and want to return to the dark past, when the power of law was used to deny the freedoms protected by the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and its Amendments.  These are the voices I represent today.

We can pretend that the law is blind. We can pretend that it is even-handed.   But if we are honest with ourselves, we know that we are called upon daily by the people we represent to help them deal with unfairness in how the law is written and enforced.  Those who are committed to equal justice in our society wonder whether Sen. Sessions’ call for “law and order” will mean today what it meant in Alabama, when I was coming up back then.  The rule of law was used to violate the human and civil rights of the poor, the dispossessed, people of color.

I was born in rural Alabama — not very far from where Senator Sessions was raised.  There was no way to escape or deny the choke hold of discrimination and racial hate that surrounded us.  I saw the signs that said White Waiting, Colored Waiting.  I saw the signs that said White Men, Colored Men, White Women, Colored Women.  I tasted the bitter fruits of segregation and racial discrimination.

Segregation was the law of the land that ordered our society in the Deep South.  Any black person who did not cross the street when a white person walked down the same sidewalk, who did not move to the back of the bus, who drank from a white water fountain, who looked a white person directly in their eyes could be arrested and taken to jail.

The forces of law and order in Alabama were so strong that to take a stand against this injustice, we had to be willing to sacrifice our lives for our cause.  Often, the only way we could demonstrate that a law on the books violated a higher law, was by challenging that law, by putting our bodies on the line, and showing the world the unholy price we had to pay for dignity and respect.

It took massive, well-organized, non-violent dissent for the Voting Rights Act to become law.   It required criticism of this great nation and its laws to move toward a  greater sense of equality in America.  We had to sit in.  We had to stand in. We had to march.  And that’s why more than 50 years ago, a group of unarmed citizens, black and white, gathered on March 7, 1965, in an orderly peaceful non-violent fashion to walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to dramatize to the nation and to the world that we wanted to register to vote, wanted to become participants in the democratic process.

We were beaten, tear-gassed, left bloody, some of us unconscious.  Some of us had concussions.  Some of us almost died on that bridge.  But the Congress responded, President Lyndon Johnson responded, and the Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, and it was signed into law on August  6, 1965.

We have come a distance.  We have made progress, but we are not there yet.  There are forces that want to take us back to another place.  We don’t want to go back.  We want to go forward.  As the late A. Phillip Randolph, who was the dean of the March on Washington in 1963 often said, ” our foremothers and forefathers all came to this land in distant ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.”

It doesn’t matter whether Sen. Sessions may smile or how friendly he may be, whether he may speak to you. We need someone who will stand up and speak up and speak out for the people who need help, for people who  are being discriminated against.  And it doesn’t matter whether they are black or white, Latino, Asian or Native American, whether they are straight or gay, Muslim, Christian or Jews   We all live in the same house, the American house.  We need someone as attorney general who is going to look for all of us, not just some of us.

He ran out of time at that point, but his full testimony continues:

I want to make it crystal clear for the record — we have made a lot of progress, but we are not there yet.  Some people argue that the 48 years of a fully-operational Voting Rights Act simply erased hundreds of years of hate and violence.

This is not ancient history; the scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in our society. This is proven by the thousands of pages of evidence submitted to Congress which verify continued voting rights discrimination across our nation and in the Deep South.

Representing Alabama on this Committee, Senator Sessions had an opportunity to lead.  Instead, the Senator turned a blind eye to the persistent and consistent efforts to make it harder and more difficult for minorities, the poor, the elderly, and others to exercise the right to vote.

I spent most of my life living and working in the South. For many years, I worked hard and long to protect the Voting Rights Act.  Not once have I heard the Senator recognize the present-day, recorded, voting discrimination which is why Alabama continued to be covered by the preclearance formula.

After the Shelby v. Holder decision, minorities were in mourning as Senator Sessions was celebrating.  He declared the decision was “good news for the South”. Alabama and other States immediately adopted voter ID legislation — making it harder for minorities to execute their right to vote.  We must face the truth.  We are a multi-racial, multi-ethnic country.  We cannot escape this reality.  As we prepared for the March on Washington, the late A. Philip Randolph said, “Maybe our forefathers and foremothers came to this country  in different ships, but we are all in the same boat now.”

You see, the issue of discrimination cannot be swept into a corner or under a rug.  It is still here.  And we cannot avoid the fact that there is a systematic, deliberate attempt to destroy the advances of civil rights in this country and take us back to a period when America declared its greatness on one hand, but fostered the worst kind of racial discrimination on the other.

As a fellow Southerner, I have no doubt that Senator Sessions is polite to all he meets.  My concern is not about how nice he is.  My concern is about where he will take the Department of Justice and whether he will respect the dignity and worth of every, single person in our country – regardless of race, color, or background.

No one, but no one should be discriminated against because of their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.  So today, I ask the Members of this Committee to think long and hard about what it would mean for an outspoken opponent of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the Violence Against Women Act to serve as the chief law enforcement official in our land?

It will take more than a photo on a bridge in Selma or a medal ceremony in the Capitol.  It will take hard work and commitment from the heart and soul.   How will Mr. Sessions confront the challenges of protest in a nation?   Will he use the law as a shield?  Will he use the law to silence the voices of those who are different and disagree with the status quo?

The Attorney General is expected to be a champion of justice for all people – not just the rich and the powerful.  This person has the duty and responsibility to fight to ensure that every person – White, African American, Latino, Asian, or Native American – can participate in the democratic process.  That every person will be equally protected under the law.

It is not the law that is sacred above all, but the spark of the divine that is the essence of every human being.   Justice is the impact of law, not the law itself.  Senator Sessions will be called upon to uphold justice, not to use the law as a cover to pursue a political agenda based on suspicion and contempt of certain Americans.

In closing, I ask the members of this Committee to consider the same question that Senator Sessions posed to many witnesses who went through this very same confirmation process.  Will his background, will his sympathies, and will his prejudices impact his service to our nation?

My friends, I do not envy you.  Leadership is not easy.  You are expected to make tough decisions – to do what is right, what is just, and what is fair for all the people of this nation who rely on you to speak up and speak out on their behalf.

So Barack just surprised Joe with a Medal of Freedom, so we need some memes in case we get too maudlin.

First the surprise.

And now some memes.

John Lewis and Corey Booker testify on the nomination of Jess Sessions to be Attorney General.

Politico had an interesting conversation with Joe Biden.

Regarding Trump’s campaign against the intelligence community, Biden said, “it’s very damaging to our standing in the world for a president to take one of the crown jewels of our national defense and denigrate it,” Biden said, describing disconcerted leaders telling him, “basically, ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe.’”

…

Trump’s reaction to the intelligence reports, Biden argued, is perhaps understandable from someone who has never been in government and never been exposed to the kind of work produced. Reaching into his briefcase, he held up an iPad with the seal of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on its black case, explaining that the code word-protected device gives him a full daily read-out of intelligence from throughout the world, with a feature that allows him to ask questions that are answered within hours.

“I have been impressed with the quality of the intelligence we have gotten. Disappointed a couple times when—and it’s totally understandable—it would have been nice if the intelligence community could have seen around the corner and thought how quick ISIL had metastasized and been able to move on Mosul,” Biden said, adding, “He may point to things where the intelligence community didn’t get it right. Most of the time, it’s that they didn’t get it in advance, as opposed to getting it wrong.”

Biden said he’s been pleased that Pence has been “very receptive” to hearing his advice, though he said that as the head of the transition team, the vice president-elect appears to have been overtaken with those responsibilities in a way that has limited their conversations. The lack of senior staff appointments in the vice president’s office has been an impediment as well, he argued, noting that there hasn’t been a national security adviser for the new vice president’s office for his own national security adviser to brief.

But Biden said he’s personally written a collection of memos for Pence, detailing what to say and what not to say in hotspots like Ukraine and Iraq, who to trust and not to trust, and “my perspective on the things that could explode most easily.”

The sensitivity to even what may seem like small issues and knowing when to intervene just to quash misunderstandings is part of what the world needs from America, Biden said, and depends on a functional relationship between the president and his intelligence agencies.

“If you don’t end up on the phone and say, ‘Whoa guys, let me tell you what’s going on,’ then you may have a shooting war. You may end up having things unravel,” Biden said.

Ok, now…how is that going to work? How is it going to work having Trump on the phone to some heads of state to say ‘Whoa guys, let me tell you what’s going on’ in order to head off a shooting war?

It’s impossible to imagine such a scenario with Trump in the lead role.

In this, Biden said that he hopes Trump’s experienced advisers speak up, and have the access to shape the new president’s thinking, citing Defense Secretary-nominee James Mattis (whom he approves of) and incoming national security adviser Mike Flynn (whom he disagrees with but respects) as examples.

“It really matters that you have really smart people around you who understand context—context is all important—and can translate, particularly to a president who has no exposure whatsoever. That’s not a criticism. It’s reality,” he said. “Instincts are great—they’re even better if you have information.”

Biden, remember, is the guy who told Bush Junior that his instincts were not good enough.

Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. “I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,” he began, “and I was telling the president of my many concerns” — concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. “‘Mr. President,’ I finally said, ‘How can you be so sure when you know you don’t know the facts?”‘

Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator’s shoulder. “My instincts,” he said. “My instincts.”

Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. “I said, ‘Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough!”‘

That was Bush. Trump is orders of magnitude worse.

Some Portland Zoo inhabitants are happy with the snow.

Meanwhile, in another part of the vipers’ den…

In the weeks after Roger Ailes was ousted as the chairman of Fox News in July amid a sexual harassment scandal, company executives secretly struck an agreement with a longtime broadcast personality who had come forward with similar accusations about the network’s top host, Bill O’Reilly.

The employee, Juliet Huddy, had said that Mr. O’Reilly pursued a sexual relationship with her in 2011, at a time he exerted significant influence over her career. When she rebuffed his advances, he tried to derail her career, according to a draft of a letter from her lawyers to Fox News that was obtained by The New York Times.

BillO, that great stalwart of Conservative Values. It’s good to know that those include harassing and bullying women.

The letter includes allegations that Mr. O’Reilly had called Ms. Huddy repeatedly and that it sometimes sounded as if he was masturbating. He invited her to his house on Long Island, tried to kiss her, took her to dinner and the theater, and after asking her to return a key to his hotel room, appeared at the door in his boxer shorts, according to the letter.

In exchange for her silence and agreement not to sue, she was paid a sum in the high six figures, according to people briefed on the agreement. The agreement was between Ms. Huddy, 47, and 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News. The company and Mr. O’Reilly’s lawyer said her allegations were false.

And he’s still on Fox every night, so the company and BillO’s lawyer must be telling the truth…and they gave Huddy hundreds of thousands of dollars because they were feeling generous.

The chief ethics honcho doesn’t think much of Trump’s plan for how to avoid conflicts of interest during his “presidency.”

The head of the Office of Government Ethics is publicly slamming President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to continue profiting from his international company while he is in the White House.

Walter Shaub took the extraordinary step of saying Trump’s plan to retain a stake in the Trump Organization while his adult sons run the day-to-day operations falls short of what the OGE had advised him to do. The office counseled Trump to sell off his business assets and place the proceeds in a trust overseen by an independent manager.

Did you notice that Trump’s lawyer said, in an aggrieved way, that he shouldn’t have to destroy his business? As if he had been forcibly drafted into the presidency? It was his idea to go for it, so yes actually he should have to do what it takes to avoid using the job to add even more money to his stash. He’s not special; he doesn’t deserve some extra leeway that other presidents haven’t given themselves.