Heavens - and still so many months to go

IF YOU'RE LIKE ME, you're having a harder time each day understanding the social and religious conservatives on matters like breast cancer and abortion. For example, there's a Republican state senator in Tennessee - Stacey Campfield, by name - who swears that abortions cause breast cancer. (He swears about a lot of other things, too, such as the unrefined evils of homosexuality and AIDS, which he claims began when a man "screwed a monkey". Campfield is further proof that our electoral system's safety net has holes in it.)

Anyway, I coughed up Stacey Campfield when I read a similar version from the GOP's current hallowed rock star, Rick Santorum, who could win the party's nomination by default. But I don't want to say more about that at this time. Rather, McRick has clearly suggested to the Fox News gang that, indeed, abortions cause breast cancer. It was his way of supporting the Komen foundation's defunding of Planned Parenthood, a decision that caused Komen a triple-Excedrin headache that wasn't relieved when the foundation reversed itself.

On matters of his committed Catholic faith, you must understand that he's the real thing who opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest . He is, of course, entitled to that view, but you could say the same about the great majority of folks who are entitled to a less Draconian view.

So are we going to have to suffer the path of the most theocratic major candidate in our lifetime all the way to the Republican convention? I'm afraid so.

PS: Considering all of the local media fuss over Santorum's scheduled visit to Akron Saturday, I continue to acknowledge my losing battle by asking: What do Santorum, McMitt Romney, McNewt Gingrich and McRon Paul have in common with Abraham Lincoln? Very little, if anything. But they do show up for the Lincoln Day dinners, misnomers that any sponsor would be hard-pressed to defend, particularly this year when the GOP field has done its damnedest to cheapen the party of Lincoln's name.

GOP issues: abortion, photo ID, unions, But jobs?

IT'S A PITY that men can't get pregnant.

Considering the proclivity of some politicians and their stablemates to get into trouble over sexual mischief, it might slow the lawmakers' pace to rule over women in such matters as abortion (among other things).

You are reminded of the biological injustice of unisex pregnancy when the Republican majority in the Ohio House of Representatives preoccupies itself with Draconian anti-abortion legislation that is said to be the most restrictive in the nation. Some supporters would even sacrifice the mother rather than permit an abortion. Nice work, guys! How did the Buckeye state survive for so many years without the benefit of your medieval wisdom?

It should be clear to all of us by now that this GOP group of intellectual stragglers, fattening up on God knows whose money, is moving in for record legislative insanity in hopes of completing their mission before the fat lady sings. Or at least until the public becomes fully aware of the highly inflammable perils of the merging of poisonous ideological lunacy with politics.

There is, for further example, the Photo ID bill passed by the Republican gang in the House (action is pending in the Senate). It would cost the state many millions to administer (at least the abhorrent poll tax of yore produced a bit of revenue.) And it supposedly addresses a fraud menace that the bill's promoters are unable to show exists. Rather, it is the Republicans' fast track solution for their longstanding commitment to blocking you-know-who Democrats from reaching for a ballot.

Sen. Tom Niehaus, the Republican who serves as Senate president, wants to hush such slandering of his party, having been quoted as insisting:

"I do not believe this is any way a voter suppression issue. This is about maintaining the integrity of the voting process."

Having followed the evolution of such blather for many years, I would be happy to lay up a dime that it has everything to do with voter suppression, senator. I would only hope that these integrity-minded folks would stop lying about their motives. Besides, what does any of this have to do with Kasich's daily avowal to create, eh... jobs?

For all of this wickedness however, there is another report out of Columbus that may have kept more than a few members of Team Kasich up a little later on this day. We Are Ohio, the group that heads the effort to repeal the anti-union meaures so eagerly enacted by those Republicans in the legislature and signed into law by the governor, declared overwhelming success Wednesday as it delivered nearly 1.3 million signatures on their petitions to cap its drive to place the repeal on the November 8 ballot.

For Team Kasich, it is cost of doing overreaching business. There isn't a politician alive in Ohio who wouldn't like to ignite a campaign with those petition numbers. It's time for Gov. Kasich and his soul brother, Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker, to get on their cell phones to figure out what went wrong in their feral assault on public unions. And if they don't know, there are more than a million folks in Ohio who can tell them.

But aren't Kasich and Walker only trying to create jobs in their states?

Barbour's Mississippi: No picnic for newborns, either

DID YOU HAPPEN to see the hero's welcome that Gov. Haley Barbour received when he declared to the CPAC crowd that his state of Mississippi, by God, is "the safest state in America for an unborn child"? Social conservatives are in a gung-ho mood in attacking abortion these days and Barbour's pro-life boast to the Tea Partyers (who, by the way, want government off their backs) obviously was well considered for his potential presidential campaign.

But to be perfectly fair and balanced, shouldn't someone have mentioned to that same audience that Mississippi is also, um...the state with the worst record of childhood fatalities. It also has the highest percentage of people below the poverty level, and is tied (with West Virginia!) for the highest level of inhabitants with physical disabilities.

Ah, but that's a story for another time.

GOP downgrades jobless for a definition of rape

LET'S SEE. We are about three weeks into the new Congress and, true to their word, the Republicans in the House are diligently upholding the public trust by...what? New programs to create jobs? Naw. If you've heard of any, let me know. Instead, they have taken it upon themselves to rewrite the meaning of rape. Well, a least that was their idea until a heavy wave of criticism from women's groups forced those pregnancy-proof white guys to back off and...what? Not sure. But the new batch of eager Tea Party-burnished GOP freshmen have two years to figure it out before the next election.

We shouldn't be expecting more from the them in their year of religious and political captivity.

Health care reform exuberance is also in play. For example, there was a report in the Plain Dealer's PolitiFact of how our new Republican congressman from the Canton area, Jim Renacci, responded at a public forum when he was questioned by a concerned citizen about his support of repealing the health care reform law.

No problem for him, Renacci said. It was a campaign pledge that he intended to uphold. He also said there was no way that Congress would keep its hands off the cost of Medicare, which he predicted would be reduced by a half-trillion dollars! What he didn't say was that blockbuster would be spread over the next 10 years. PolitiFact corrected him in the story.

As for rape and abortion , issues that a former conservative icon Ronald Reagan , as well as the Bushes, gave no more than lip service, have now taken center stage for the new conservative class. Abortion was at the heart of many who opposed ObamaCare on grounds that it was unconstitutional (without really knowing why). The debate, aided and abetted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and and other conservative Christians, is likely to consume a lot of Congress's time this year and maybe for the next 50 years. Meantime, they haven't gotten to a mess of other things that should move to the front of the bus. Wall Street corruption, gun control, insurance, pharmaceuticals, public employe unions, the environment and immigration.

Well,it's true you can't do everything. Unfortunately, the jobs this crowd has created are upgrades for their own employment.

Add Republican Bob Marshall to the GALL list

ALTHOUGH THE COMPETITION among the half-wits for the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award grows exponentially each day, there can be no more deserving honoree than Republican Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall who insisted that women who have had abortions are punished by God by giving birth to children with disabilities. Oh, let him say it in his own words, and be done with it:

"The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children. In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest."

And where did folks like Marshall who were born without a brain go wrong with God?

John Seiberling, abortion, then and now

IN WHAT SEEMS to be centuries ago, the late Rep. John Seiberling of Akron leaned over to me in his election night headquarters and in a dry matter-0f-fact wisp of a voice said: "So much for abortion." He had just glided through another successful congressional campaign with a landslide over an anti-abortion candidate. He wasn't boasting. There was no sneer in his tone. He just wanted to point out that his constituents were assessing a quality about him as their representative that was more important than his liberal views on abortion rights. A former corporate lawyer with a corporate family name, Seiberling's political career enjoyed a deep public trust. (After a Barberton Labor Day parade, a woman cheered when he approached the microphone at Lake Anna and exclaimed to me: "I don't agree with his position on gun control, but I still like him."

Today, I would have to disagree with Seiberling: the abortion issue is more alive than ever, overriding the health reform debate, sending threats to those congressmen who supported it to punish them at the polls.

And today comes word that U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, son of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, was told by his Catholic bishop that he was not eligible for communion because he was pro-choice. That sort of threat has happened to others, including then-presidential candidate John Kerry. A former Notre Dame football player sat across the table and explained to me that although he had great respect for Kerry, he couldn't vote for him because of abortion. An engaging Akron priest told me in his office that he had marched in protest against the Viewnam war, but abortion was in no way open to discussion. For some, the line of demarcation cannot be crossed. etc. etc.etc.

By the way, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Providence says he didn't really instruct priests to not give communion to the congressman, but rather he only requested that the priest deny it to Kennedy. You know how that works.