Jackson Free Press

The news exploded today that a Republican senatorial candidate in Missouri, Rep. Todd Akin, has declared that women can't get pregnant from "legitimate rapes." This idiot was defending his anti-abortion stance (including rape and incest, of course):

“It seems to me, first of all, what I understand from doctors is that’s really where—if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

and:

“Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

Clearly, every woman who has ever gotten pregnant from a rape is lying about it being rape, according to this fool's logic.

Much has been made so far this year about the "war on women"—from Rush Limbaugh's horrendous attacks on Sandra Fluke to many Republicans supporting all sorts of anti-women regulation including outlawing in vitro and birth-control pills.

This latest affront to women—1 in 6 are sexually assaulted before age 18 as I was—is where we must say "ENOUGH"! We must demand that all of our elected officials disavow Akin's remarks. More importantly, we must demand pro-women and actual pro-family legislation from our elected officials, including right here in Mississippi. Women have the power to stop these attacks on us and our rights, if we only will.

This is too much, and it's time we decide what kind of nation we're going to be in the future. Speak up, women and men. An attack on one woman's rights and self-respect is an attack on us all.

In a unanimous and completely unsurprising move, the Mississippi Republican Central Committee rejected the federal Affordable Care Act, which Congress passed three years ago.

The state GOP said it was supporting the positions of the state's Three Tops--Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and Speaker Philip Gunn--in resisting the implementation of the ACA as well as the expansion of Medicaid.

“Our party is unified and supports the prudent and careful approach advocated by the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Speaker. At a time when we learn more every day about improper government intrusion into the lives of ordinary citizens, it defies logic to embrace an expansion of that intrusion,” MSGOP Chairman Joe Nosef said through a press release.

Of course, Obamacare is being implemented anyway. Last summer's U.S. Supreme Court decision assured that the ACA, including its controversial individual mandate provision, would be the law of the land even if it lets states opt out Medicaid expansions, which the architects of the law hoped would pay for a big chunk.

Nosef is right on one point, though: Mississippi Republicans have been unified in saying they reject Obamacare.

Emphasis on saying.

Most Mississippi state Republicans have stated their opposition to the federal health law, but there is evidence that the party's armor is starting to chink, most notably Sen. Billy Hudson, R-Hattiesburg's recent coming out in favor of expanding Medicaid.

Meanwhile, Republican congressmen are quietly soliciting Obamacare funds for a Rankin County health clinic.

There'll be more about that in tomorrow's paper.

Forget about making Mississippi healthier. Forget about the cost to taxpayers. The fight over Medicaid in Mississippi is turning into an all-out partisan turf war.

The latest salvo came yesterday, when Democratic Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood issued an opinion stating that the governor cannot lawfully run the Medicaid program if the Legislature fails to reauthorize the program.

At odds over whether the state should expand Medicaid, lawmakers couldn't come to a consensus on renewing Medicaid before the legislative session ended this spring, leaving the future of the program up in the air.

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, who opposes Medicaid expansion, has said that if Democrats, who support the expansion and have asked for legislative debate on the subject, continue standing in the way of Medicaid's reauthorization that he would run the program himself.

In recent weeks, legislative Republicans and the Mississippi Republican Party have blitzed the Internet and social media with anti-Obamacare messages ahead of the July 1 Medicaid deadline. The MS GOP has started an online petition against Obamacare while Speaker Philip Gunn, a Clinton Republican, has written op-eds for several local newspapers and blogs.

Hood's opinion this week relies on a similar opinion Hood issued in 2009, which states that "a governor cannot create or re-create a state agency that has been repealed by operation of law, nor can a governor divert funds which may be appropriated to a statutorily repealed agency to some other agency."

The response from Bryant's office was terse. Bryant's spokesman, Mick Bullock, responded to Hood in an email to the Associated Press: "That's all it is, his opinion."

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2013/jun/20/12276/

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