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The abortion rights fight has been raging for decades. It’s a touchy subject, and one many folks take personally. It has a strong emotional component for both sides. I get it.

But the contraception thing? This hasn’t been a problem since the 50′s. It’s not like there’s hordes of masked thugs forcing women to take birth control pills. And the result of access to birth control is less unwanted children, less mothers and families that can’t afford to feed the kids they already have, less teen moms dropping out of school to become parents before their 18th birthday. We can all agree those are good things, right? The best way to prevent abortions is to prevent the unwanted pregnancy in the first place, right?

The folks on the right like to talk about slippery slopes – the idea that if you give a little here, you start a “downhill slide” into heathenism and debauchery. That’s a big part of the argument against abortion rights. According to them, the next step is legalizing genocide (they already consider them virtually synonymous).

But there’s a whole other slippery slope they’re creating: The erosion of women’s reproductive rights. The first step on that slope is abortion rights. The right has been chipping away at that by trying to redefine when life begins, and in some states, they now consider conception as the starting point. Never mind that they can’t tell you exactly when conception happens. It’s not like a little light flashes over a woman’s uterus that says “Bun In The Oven!”. No, they simply want dominion over a woman’s reproduction from the first possible opportunity. They want those babies born, dammit! Of course, when they are born to unwed mothers who can’t hold a job and go to school at the same time, they don’t want to pay the “welfare queens” to raise the child. Bring ‘em in  - and then you figure it out.

But now, when the President announces the availability of birth control to all women through healthcare, they’re up in arms. Of course, less birth control means more pregnancies – and more chances for abortions. But they don’t want the abortions. So the logical conclusion is – they simply want women to have more babies. Period. The only other possibility is that they want women to have less sex. That’s along the lines of Rick Santorum’s big campaign contributor’s thinking. Foster Freiss – who is putting big money into Santorum’s campaign – quipped last week that in his day, women used an aspirin between the knees as birth control. In other words, the real problem with birth control isn’t access. It’s that women spread their legs too easily.

So, first they don’t want you to decide if you should have a baby. then then want to decide if you should keep yourself from getting pregnant. What could possibly be next?

Not letting you have free pre-natal care.

No, you read that correctly. This week, Santorum (again) made the statement that the provisions in the Affordable Healthcare Act that provide for free pre-natal care for all women were actually an attack on the disabled. Why? Because it includes amniocentesis, and the result of that test often leads to a recommendation of an abortion. So, you’re a woman, you’re denied access to birth control so you get pregnant. Now, Santorum doesn’t want you to get free pre-natal care because at some point, you might be given a test that might tell you there is something wrong and that you might have an abortion because of it. He doesn’t want you to know anything is wrong before the child is born. Period. He even says that one reason not to have the test is that it might result in a miscarriage. Of course, he’s in favor of the legislation that requires women to have an invasive transvaginal ultrasound if they are seeking an abortion.

So let’s recap:

• They don’t want you to have abortion as an option
• They don’t want you to use birth control to minimize the chance of an unwanted pregnancy
• They don’t want you to have free pre-natal care because it might lead to you having an abortion

That, my friends, is a slippery slope. Every one of these things is another step down the path of dictating what a woman can do with her body, and forcing her back into the position of just being around the house, cooking and birthing babies. They never talk about how to stop men from being part of the issue. They never talk about what to do to the boys who get girls pregnant then never fulfill their roles as parent and take on the new responsibility. They never want to talk about how they will pay for the inevitable increase in care costs and how their actions will increase the number of unwed mothers who can’t afford a child. No, it’s all about their control.

Almost farcicly, Darrell Issa held a congressional hearing about the contraception issue on Capitol Hill last week. No women were allowed as witnesses. One was offered, and Issa rejected her. Not one woman. They don’t care what women think. To them, women are incubators and are meant to shut up and have babies. Not one of the men on the panel had a dissenting viewpoint. Yet, the majority of Americans are in favor of employer provided birth control. 98% of Catholic women have or are currently using birth control. But this wasn’t a hearing – this was grandstanding and making a joke of the argument.

What will be next on the slippery slope? Will it be that women who are pregnant will not get maternity leave, and be forced to quit the job because it is better to have the mom at home? Or maybe that all teens will be required to wear chastity belts only to to be removed by their fathers or husbands. If they are the child of a single mom, then maybe an uncle will do.

Absurd? Maybe. But if we allow the rights of women to decide what’s best for their own bodies to continue to be eroded, are they that much of a stretch?

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Tonight, one of my friends posted a link to this column by Charles Krauthammer, with the comment that Krauthammer “nailed it”. The title? The Gospel According to Obama.

I’ll be up front – I’m no fan of Krauthammer. I find that for the most part, he’s dead wrong and just does what he can to promote the conservative ideology. So I was already skeptical before I clicked the link. And sure enough he didn’t disappoint.

What Krauthammer tries to take to task is the President’s speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he spoke about the precepts in the Bible about “to those who much is given, much shall be required”. Of course, cons have immediately tried to use this against the President to say he was politicizing religion. One even walked out during the President’s speech. They want to say that the President was using that statement to talk about politics. And to be sure, there was talk of policy in that speech.

But what is either willfully ignorant, or intentionally deceitful, is ignoring the context of what the President said. He quoted that piece of scripture to indicate what his thought process is when deciding on policy, whether in dealing with Wall St. or dealing with the homeless. He was explaining that his process is to think that the poor and the disadvantaged need help from those that have been more fortunate.

It means maybe that research lab on the cusp of a lifesaving discovery, or the company looking for skilled workers is going to do a little bit better, and we’ll all do better as a consequence. It makes economic sense. But part of that belief comes from my faith in the idea that I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper; that as a country, we rise and fall together. I’m not an island. I’m not alone in my success. I succeed because others succeed with me. And when I decide to stand up for foreign aid, or prevent atrocities in places like Uganda, or take on issues like human trafficking, it’s not just about strengthening alliances, or promoting democratic values, or projecting American leadership around the world, although it does all those things and it will make us safer and more secure. It’s also about the biblical call to care for the least of these — for the poor; for those at the margins of our society.

Those are the parts the Krauthammer and his like ignore, because they’re inconvenient to his narrative.

To answer the responsibility we’re given in Proverbs to “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.” And for others, it may reflect the Jewish belief that the highest form of charity is to do our part to help others stand on their own.

Treating others as you want to be treated. Requiring much from those who have been given so much. Living by the principle that we are our brother’s keeper. Caring for the poor and those in need. These values are old. They can be found in many denominations and many faiths, among many believers and among many non-believers. And they are values that have always made this country great — when we live up to them; when we don’t just give lip service to them; when we don’t just talk about them one day a year. And they’re the ones that have defined my own faith journey.

Gosh. So political. Somehow, Krauthammer and his ilk expect the President of the United States should not inject religion into his policy, or policy into religion. Yet they believe there is no separation between church and state. It’s a strange little world they live in, where the church is allowed to dictate the policy of the state, but the door doesn’t swing the other way.

But the fact here is that the President was talking about how he thinks, what his relationship to his faith means in his daily decision-making. The “brother’s keeper” responsibility concept is alien to conservatives.  They don’t get it, or don’t want to. Krauthammer certainly doesn’t want to. He morphs this discussion of ideology and decision -making into an argument against the IRS and taxation. Hmmm… why make that jump? Because it’s convenient to ignore what was really said – that we all should be willing to help those less fortunate, and that those more fortunate should be willing to help.

Then, Krauthammer makes a turn into left field to suddenly morph into a discussion on the contraception issue that is currently the hot topic. Of course he did. It’s the flavor of the week. But again, either through ignorance or deceit, he completely misstates the issue. He lumps everything together to try to make a case for his argument, ignoring facts. Like this little passage:

Accordingly, it would be a mockery of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment if, for example, the Catholic Church were required by law to freely provide such “health care services” (in secularist parlance) as contraception, sterilization and pharmacological abortion — to which Catholicism is doctrinally opposed as a grave contravention of its teachings about the sanctity of life.

But that isn’t what is at issue here. The church is not being required to provide any services. None. What is required is that businesses operated by the church for profit, such as a hospital, provide health insurance to the employees that includes coverage for contraception and birth control. Unless the church is insuring itself, it is obtaining such insurance through a third party. And in most cases, the hospital would employ many people not of the same faith. Simple basis – if they cannot discriminate in hiring based on faith, they certainly should not be exempt from rules that every other business must comply with, based on faith.

It does not apply to non-profits. Krauthammer tries to bring in the idea of a soup kitchen. But those employees are working for a non-profit, which is exempt. And employees of the church itself are exempted from this requirement. Krauthammer conveniently ignores these to make his deceitful point.

He points out this criterion:

Criterion 2: Any exempt institution must be one that “primarily employs” and “primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.” Catholic soup kitchens do not demand religious IDs from either the hungry they feed or the custodians they employ. Catholic charities and hospitals — even Catholic schools — do not turn away Hindu or Jew.

Again, willful ignorance or intentional deceit. Non-profits are one of the specific carve-outs from the rules. Specifically for the reason that they “serve”.

But here is the real deceit: This isn’t new. In fact, the regulations requiring employers to provide contraception coverage have been in place since December 2000.  The Bush administration did nothing to change it. The reason that they are required is that it violates the Civil Rights Act to provide prescription medications, but to deny some medications based on gender. Since the contraception in question is specifically used by women, providing other medications in an insurance plan but not providing contraceptive medications is based on gender, and a violation.

The 2000 ruling by the EEOC, which was never challenged the entire term of the Bush presidency, had no exemptions for religion. None. The new rule actually relaxes the requirements to respond to religious beliefs. The only other difference is that teh new regulation states that the preventive care contraception must come at no cost – as do all other forms of preventive care medication. That’s it.

Another thing Krauthammer conveniently ignores is that this is law at the state level in 28 states, with 8 being even more restrictive. This isn’t new. This is old news, but suddenly is fodder for Krauthammer and his cronies.

Make no mistake – he knows the facts. But they’re far more convenient to ignore, and he has an all too willing readership that will listen to what he says without doing their homework. The faux outrage is simply another political ploy. But so it is with those who are willing to lie and ignore facts to make a political point.

I’m not a religious person. And yet, maybe that’s why I could see the President’s speech wasn’t about taxes, but about lifting up our fellow man when he is down. Krauthammer either is ignorant or a liar if he claims it was something else.

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The GOP keeps backing into corner after corner of late, trying to make political hay out of non-controversies. And each time they do, it reveals their motives for what they really are – keeping money in the hands of the rich, making life more difficult for the poor, and doing everything they can to get in the way of any progress.

To be fair, they were able to do it for years. In poker jargon, they were running over the table. They had figured out how to get the other guys at the table to tip their hands or fold early. It didn’t matter how good a hand the Democrats had, the Republicans would simply shove all their chips into the middle of the table, and force the Democrats to call the bluff or fold. Most often, they folded.

What happened in 2008 was that Republicans ran into a better player.

One thing you teach a beginning player is to try to read their opponent. You try to figure out what’s in their hand, and see if they have a weakness, like making the same play over and over again. And this is exactly where the GOP has gotten themselves caught in the wringer.

Their standard play has been to go all in, to make a huge play as a bluff. They never got called before. They would shove their chips in and take the pot. But now, they’ve run into President Obama, who plays the long game very well. Let’s look at some of that game.

From the get-go, Republicans made it plain that their number one political priority was to make sure the President only served one-term. Not jobs, not fixing the things that were broken in the system. Just getting rid of this new guy. Here is the first problem. It’s like sitting at the poker table, pointing at the guy across the table and saying “I don’t care if me or anyone else loses as long as I take your money”. Sound contradictory? It is. And yet, I’ve seen plenty of real poker players do it. Guess what? It never works against the good players. Why? They now know your motivation, and can use it against you time and again.

So what was the President’s first big hand to play? Healthcare. But you have to think about why this was such a great hand to start with. First, the President knew he had a fairly good hand, a good chance of winning this battle. He also knew that Republicans would throw a lot of chips onto the table, but didn’t have as good a chance at winning. But what made this a really great hand to start was the long game. It wasn’t just that Republicans stood to lose on this issue. It was that their stated mission was to block this kind of legislation and get rid of the President. For them, losing this issue meant they would have to go deeper into obstruction. They lost, and they shut down. Nothing would pass if they had anything to do with it.

In poker, patience isn’t just a virtue. It’s critical. The best starting hand in Texas Hold ‘Em is a pair of Aces. The next two are pairs of Kings and pairs of Queens. The combined probability of receiving one of these three hands is about 1 in 40. That’s it. A pair of Aces alone is 1 in 121. That means that you need to pick your hands carefully to have the best chance of winning. Sometimes, you’ll play a lesser hand because you might actually win with it. But most of the time, you’re throwing away your hand before it costs you anything.

But, you’re not wasting time either. You watch what the other players do, examine their play to see if there are any patterns, so that when you do have a hand, you can maximize your play.

Fast forward to last year’s debt ceiling battle. Republicans, as usual, overplayed their hand. They demanded heavy cuts, reduction in spending and deficit before they would even vote on a proposal. No proposal put forward by the Democrats was enough. Republicans kept pushing chips into the middle of the table. But another player was in the hand. The President called their bluff, offering a deal that had more spending cuts than the Republicans demanded. The Republicans folded. They tried to offer up smaller deals, but got no traction. Finally, they agreed to a deal that put a time constraint on more cuts. The first hand set up a second hand.

You see, the Republicans can’t seem to change up their game. They play every hand the same way – all or nothing. So when the debt ceiling deal was announced, folks on the left were up in arms that the Republicans got their way. Instead, they were sucked into a trap play. In poker, you trap another player by misrepresenting your hand, usually soft playing a very strong hand against someone you know will bluff. In this case, it was obvious that the “supercommittee” created would get nowhere, and that additional cuts would become automatic. These included cuts to the defense budget, something the Republicans are generally loathe to do. But they didn’t have the political will to make the cuts necessary to meet the December deadline for the supercommittee. So, the automatic cuts kicked in. Another hand won, with the Republicans looking bad again.

Next hand? XL Pipeline. The left hates it, the right reveres it. Despite pushes by Republicans, the President makes his play, softly, saying that more time is needed to study. Republicans push all in, again, and force an arbitrary 60-day deadline that can’t possibly be met. They think the President will fold and close the deal. Instead, the President calls their bluff, again, and rejects the deal. Republicans lose their stake again.

Now, it’s birth control. The President announces enforcement of a policy that has been in existence since the Bush administration. It boils down to this – if a church, Catholic or otherwise, has a business entity that serves the general public (not the church itself or a non-profit), they are required to offer health insurance that provides birth control. Approximately 98% of Catholics use or have used some form of birth control.

Mind you, this isn’t about making the church force birth control on anyone. If they choose not to use it, no one is going to force them to take it. No, this is about a business entity offering health insurance that includes coverage of birth control. Just like any other business. Again, it doesn’t affect the church itself or any affiliated non-profits. Generally, it affects businesses like hospitals that are operated as for-profit, serve the general public, pay taxes, etc.

And yup, Republicans have overplayed this hand as well. They are jumping in with the Catholic church, claiming that the President’s administration is attacking freedom of religion by enforcing this statute.

Sounds like the President miscalculated, right? Nope.

See, this law is already enforced in 28 states at the state level, not the federal level. It was already on the books at the federal level. There is no real controversy here. So why the announcement, if it’s already a law? Because the Republicans can’t wait to pick a fight. Even a really bad one. The majority of voters believe birth control should  be part of health care coverage, regardless of the employer. Of course, women have an even higher percentage than the populace in general. But even a majority of Catholics feel this way. The Republicans are on the wrong side of the table on this, and are playing a vastly weaker hand. And they don’t have the chips to back it up. But they can’t stay away from trying to take on the President, no matter what.

So, now they’re pushing their chips in on a stone cold, blatantly obvious bluff.

The old Kenny Rogers Gambler cliche is “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, now when to fold ‘em”. Republicans just can’t seem to learn that lesson. Another poker axiom is that it is virtually a moral imperative to separate an idiot from his money. Republicans are on the wrong side of that lesson as well.

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Newly disclosed details of the millions of dollars flowing into political groups are highlighting not just the scale of donations from corporation and unions but also the secrecy surrounding “super PACs” seeking to influence the presidential race.

The secrecy part is what should scare the Dickens out of us. It has already been uncovered that a big “bundler” for Romney is also a registered agent for foreign countries. A bundler is someone who collects checks from campaign donations for a campaign. In this case, the bundler is also a lobbyist for the United Arab Emirates and a former president of the Dominican Republic, and he also lobbies for Starwood Hotels and Diageo (they make Guiness and Jose Cuervo).

But this is the part we can find out about. The simple fact is that Citizens United put up a wall that keeps us from finding out about who donors are to these SuperPACs. The money can come from anywhere. Oh, sure, it’s illegal to receive funds from foreign entities. And yet, the US Chamber of Commerce does so by taking membership fees in a foreign country, but throws that money in with all the money they use  for lobbying and campaign contributions.

The issue has even become a point of contention between the very candidates that have been the beneficiaries of the huge sums of cash being poured into their campaigns. As we have pointed out here previously, there has been a 1600% rise in campaign ad spending since the 2008 election season, and yet, the candidates have spent only 40% of what they spent then. Why? The SuperPACs are spending it for them. Meanwhile, corporations can spend whatever they want, without any fear that their customers will know.

So, ask yourself this: If a corporation is spending money on a candidate you don’t like or disagree with, shouldn’t you have the right to know so you can judge whether you want to continue giving that company your business? And should a corporation, or worse, a foreign entity like the UAE, have more say in how the country is run than you?

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(Reuters) – An Indiana jury convicted embattled Republican Secretary of State Charlie White in the early hours of Saturday on six out of seven felony charges including perjury, theft and voter fraud.

So, despite all the folks on the right wanting to make sure they stamp out voter fraud, the guys getting convicted are…

Republicans.

This guy was in charge of certifying votes, and he was found guilty of committing voter fraud himself. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d be worried less about people with phony IDs and more about guy a like this that lied about his address so he could retain a $1,000 stipend.

If you are thinking of voting Republican, just do a quick Google search for “Republican voter fraud”, and then “Democrat voter fraud”. Then note one thing. How many stories about convictions – or even investigations – do you find in each? Then ask yourself – who do I trust with my votes?

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