A few days after the 1993 assassination of Dr. David Gunn, a Florida abortion provider, Todd Akin's longtime anti-abortion and militia pal, Tim Dreste, stood in front of the health care clinic of abortion provider Dr. Yogrenda Shah with a sign that read: “Dr. Shah, are you feeling under the Gunn?” (See the video above.) Shortly afterwards, Akin contributed $200 to Dreste's dark horse race for state representative.

A new report has revealed that Missouri Republican Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin was arrested at least eight times in the 1980s at anti-abortion protests, according to newly obtained records.

That is four arrests in addition to four the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last month based on a review of its archives. The arrests were missed in previous searches because the news stories had listed Akin by his given first name, William.The four additional arrests each occurred at a reproductive health clinic in Ballwin, Missouri in St. Louis County between 1985 and 1987.

The arrests reported by the Post-Dispatch came in the same period, between March 1985 and May 1987, but occurred at other clinics. Three were in St. Louis and one in Granite City, Illinois.

On one of those occasions, police had to physically carry Akin into an elevator when he refused to leave the premises, according to an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

"Right Wing Watch," a project of People For the American Way, a nonprofit group critical of Akin's ties to radical elements of the pro-life movement, obtained incident reports on the arrests Friday from the St. Louis Country Police Department under Missouri's sunshine law, and provided them to news media.

Akin's views opposing abortion are well-known. In August of this year, he infamously said that women who are victims of "legitimate rape" are physically able to stop themselves from becoming pregnant, a remark that was ridiculed and rejected by medical professionals, women's advocates, and politicians on both sides of the aisle. Akin teamed up with Paul Ryan in 2011 to try to narrow the definition of rape, voted in 1991 for an anti-marital-rape law, called for an end to the school-lunch program and a total ban on the morning-after pill. In 1992, Akin even fought for a narrower definition of child abuse.

Most polls are showing Missouri's incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill with a strong lead over Akin, even though she missed a week worth of campaigning due to the recent passing of her mother, Betty Anne Ward McCaskill, 84.

If you missed Josh Glasstetter's recent post detailing Akin's extremist and militia ties, be sure to read it here.

A Republican congressional candidate says abortion should not be legal, even when it involves "the rape thing," according to audio obtained by activist working on behalf of the liberal group FUSE Washington.

John Koster was questioned about his views on abortion during a fundraiser Sunday, and said he does not oppose abortion when the life of the mother is in danger, but then explains he would oppose it when it involves rape or incest:

“Incest is so rare, I mean it’s so rare. But the rape thing, you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept the child, gave it up for adoption and doesn’t regret it. In fact, she’s a big pro-life proponent. But, on the rape thing it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s a consequence of this crime, how does that make it better?”

Let me get this out of the way first, no incest is not rare. Does it actually have to be "reported" on Fox News for Republicans to know it's happening?

I suppose "the rape thing" is just a trifling matter when you already don't have enough respect for women to allow them to make their own decisions about their health and bodies. But Republican politicians used to be much more subtle with their attitude towards women. First there was mandatory counseling, and waiting periods, then in 2011 Republican lawmakers went full tilt with a record number of abortion-related legislation including forced transvaginal ultrasounds. Now they seem pathological, and intent on essentially legalizing rape.

We've had to endure Todd Akin and his "legitimate rape," and come to discover his frightening militant anti-abortion background, and Richard Mourdock saying that pregnancy resulting from rape is God's will.

Rape is violence, and rape is a crime. Anyone who uses a woman's body against her will for any reason is a criminal, and that should include forcing a woman to jump through hoops to obtain an abortion, efforts to prevent a woman's access to birth control, or using an elected office to criminalize abortion.

GOP Congressman-wannbe-senatorTodd Akin was asked why he voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act at a town hall on Thursday. Akin's response suggests that a) he doesn't understand what federal law was prior to the Ledbetter Act, b)he doesn't understand what's in the Ledbetter Act, c) he's a misogynistic cretin who thinks it should be legal for employers to discriminate against women and d)that he will say he believes anything the GOP backer Koch brothers tell him to.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Why do you think it is okay for a woman to be paid less for doing the same work as a man?

AKIN: Well, first of all, the premise of your question is that I'm making that particular distinction. I believe in free enterprise. I don't think the government should be telling people what you pay and what you don't pay. I think it's about freedom. If somebody wants to hire somebody and they agree on a salary, that's fine, however it wants to work. So, the government sticking its nose into all kinds of things has gotten us into huge trouble.

It's been illegal to discriminate against women by paying them less since 1960s. The Ledbetter Act just made it easier for women to sue if they find out they're being discriminated against. Because, see, where Akin says that "If somebody wants to hire somebody and they agree on a salary, that's fine, however it wants to work," the reality is that employers don't generally say to women, "Hey, I'm going to pay you less than I'm paying men doing the same job as you." They just pay less, and keep quiet about it, because they're breaking the law. Which means it would be bad for them if the women they were discriminating against found out about it because there are consequences for breaking the law.

The only "freedom" Akin is talking about here is the freedom of businesses to break the law. Which he thinks is fine, because he doesn't think that equal pay should be the law, even in largely unenforceable theory. Just like he doesn't think there should be a minimum wage for anyone.

Note also how in this case "the government sticking its nose into all kinds of things" is not a good thing, according to Akin, but when it comes to women's vaginas more intrusive government is just fine.

During an interview on "Moyers & Company" recently, Bill talked with Mike Lofgren, a long-time Republican who describes the modern dysfunction of both the Republican and Democratic parties. In Lofgren’s view, Republicans have become overly obsessed with obstructing President Obama, and the Democrats suffer from political complacency. Lofgren’s new book is "The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted."

Here's a snippet from the transcript:

BILL MOYERS: The Republican Party now has the super rich and its corporate wing funding it and the religious right provides the ground troops. Why are so many everyday folks out there in the pews defending the prerogatives of the rich?

MIKE LOFGREN: That's something of a mystery. The Federal Reserve, in one of their recent reports, found that net household income fell about 40 percent since 2007. That's a tremendous drop. Yet, here we have as the nominee for one of the two major parties, we only have a binary choice in this country, is by all accounts the richest man ever to run for president and was a leverage buyout artist.

The party is really oriented towards the concerns of the rich. It's about cutting their taxes, reducing regulation on business, making things wide open for Wall Street. Now you're not going to get anybody to the polls and consciously pull the lever for the Republicans if they say, "Our agenda is to further entrench the rich and, oh by the way, your pension may take a hit."

So they use the culture wars quite cynically, as essentially rube bait to get people to the polls. And that explains why, for instance, the Koch brothers were early funders of Michele Bachmann, who is a darling of the religious right. They don't care particularly, I would assume, about her religious foibles. What they care about is the bottom line. And these religious right candidates, many of them believing in the health and wealth, name it and claim it prosperity gospel, believe that the rich are sanctified and the poor punished

BILL MOYERS: Many of those people on the right would tell you that the fall in the income of middleclass people and others has been because of Obama's economic policies.

MIKE LOFGREN: I think they're suffering from selective amnesia. They also don't understand that George Bush doubled the national debt, that the original meltdown on Wall Street occurred during George Bush's watch, and by the time Obama became president in 2009, we were already well into the recession. Now I don't defend him in every way. I don't say that everything he's done is right by any means. I have all kinds of issues with him on the health care legislation. For instance, his willingness to play ball with pharma made the bill cost a lot more than it need.

BILL MOYERS: The pharmaceutical industry?

MIKE LOFGREN: Yes. That said, he was legitimately elected. We were in a very, very serious situation in this country. If the economy had fallen any further, it would be comparable to the Great Depression. So what is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate, what is his first priority for the country? Is it getting jobs for people? Is it restoring the solvency of the financial system? Is it foreign policy? Is it any of those things? No, it's making sure Obama is a one-term president.

BILL MOYERS: It seems that some of these people are willing to see the government go down in order to win.

MIKE LOFGREN: That would be the case. I grew up in a party that believed in the traditions of Eisenhower, and for that matter, even Reagan. He raised taxes several times when the deficit threatened to get out of control. He pleaded with Congress to send him a clean debt limit extension bill without any extraneous riders on it. He knew what the stakes were.

But now it's basically obstruct. They're no longer a parliamentary loyal opposition. They want to seize up the wheels of government. And to most people that means you don't have federal inspectors of airliners. You don't have federal inspection of food safety. Your national parks will be closed. Federal law enforcement will go home. That's what that means.

BILL MOYERS: Why did you leave the party? You'd been a Republican, what, all your life?

MIKE LOFGREN: I left the party because it was becoming an apocalyptic cult. Because you cannot govern a country of 310 million people that is the greatest economic power on earth and the greatest military power on earth as if it's a banana republic. You can't govern it with people who think that Obama was born overseas or who believe in all manner of nonsense about climate change. They don't even know, apparently, where babies come from, if we're to believe Todd Akin.

Really a great interview, the full transcript is available here.

The Renegade Raging Grannies let Todd Akin know what they think of his Neanderthal concepts about how women's bodies work.

Author: Vicki Ryder
Tune: "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah"

“Legitimate rape” is great birth control.
So says Todd Akin, and he oughta know.
If we are raped we can rest unafraid,
‘Cause we can’t get pregnant if forcibly laid.

Our female bodies are clever that way,
We only get pregnant when we say “okay.”
Doctors have told him, so it must be so,
The stork only comes if we don’t say “No!”

Rape won’t make babies and that is a fact;
There’s no global warming; the Earth’s really flat.
We heard it on FOX News so it must be true.
Well, Mr. Akin, we say “F*CK YOU!”

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What a difference one TV interview can make! Embattled Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill has now jumped to a 10-point lead over her Republican challenger, Congressman Todd Akin, in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race. Most Missouri Republicans want Akin to quit the race while most Missouri Democrats want him to stay.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Show Me State finds McCaskill earning 48% support to Akin’s 38%. Nine percent (9%) like some other candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

[Via]

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This is your moment of clarity #165: Todd Akin told us the other day that not all rape is legitimate. Luckily VP candidate Paul Ryan seems to agree with him - at least enough to cosponsor a bill in which they carefully change the wording from "rape" to "forcible rape." Why is rape such a confusing issue for the GOP?

Keep Fighting,

~Lee

Akin Controversy Stirs GOP: Where Do Republicans Stand on Abortion Exemption?

by Suevon Lee, ProPublica, Aug. 22, 2012

A Missouri congressman's startling remarks about "legitimate rape" and pregnancy have set off a torrent of criticism from his fellow Republicans as well as from Democrats. And the episode has made the abortion issue an unwelcome focus for GOP candidates nationwide.

Key leaders in the Republican Party, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, are urging Rep. Todd Akin to surrender the Republican nomination for the Missouri Senate seat now held by Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who until now has been looking very vulnerable. As of Tuesday afternoon, Akin was holding fast to the nomination, despite backlash from party members and the irritating distraction for the top of the ticket.

Some political and religious spokespeople were expressing support for Akin. The Washington Post also pointed out that others in the past have embraced Akin's assertion that the trauma of rape can block pregnancy.

By now, Akin's words — since disavowed — are etched in the public consciousness: "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," Akin, who opposes abortion in all cases, said Sunday while interviewed on a St. Louis television station. The congressman later apologized, saying he "misspoke" and that "rape is never legitimate."

The GOP party platform, which is staunchly pro-life, has not come out in favor of an abortion exemption in cases of rape or incest. Neither the 2004 nor 2008 platforms included such exceptions. News reports state that language of the 2012 platform, heading to a vote next week at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, will similarly stay silent on these circumstances.

What these platforms do include is support for a "human life amendment" to the Constitution that would bestow variously defined legal rights on human embryos.

(In contrast, the Democratic Party has expressed a firmer pro-choice stance in recent years, stating in 2008 that it "strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion" while in 2004, it stated that abortion "should be safe, legal, and rare.")

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It seems Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) is continuing his candidacy for senate as planned, amid growing calls for him to step down from the race due to comments he made that pregnancy is rare in cases of "legitimate rape" because "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." By the first deadline for him to drop out, on Tuesday night, Akin was still in the race, despite a call from GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney to resign.

Akin did, however, decide it was a good time to do some fundraising off of his pro-life stance in an attempt to turn controversial statements he made about pregnancies in the case of rape into an asset, but he had a little difficulty getting started. The site allows supporters to sign a petition and contribute to Akin's campaign to "Tell McCaskill That You're Standing With Todd Akin!"

Tuesday evening, Akin tweeted: “I am #stillstanding. Will you stand with me?” He included a link to the donation site.

The site includes multiple "apologies" from Akin that oddly continue to contain the phrase "ill-conceived" to refer to his views about children conceived from rape.

"I made a mistake. I used the wrong words in the wrong way. What I said was ill-conceived and it was wrong and for that I apologize."

Speaking of words, the launch of Akin's fundraising site had a bit of trouble...on the first launch attempt, "you're" was misspelled as "your." Twitter users quickly pointed out the error.

Still a little difficulty on the second launch attempt, not quite right, spelling it "your're."

Finally got it right on the third launch.

Akin's website also originally featured an image of a fetus, that also was removed after being spotted on Twitter, coincidence?

Akin is going to need every penny he can gather from his donation site. Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, on Tuesday reaffirmed plans to abandon a $5 million campaign for Akin. “If he continues with this misguided campaign, it will be without the support and resources of the NRSC,” said Brian Walsh, an NRSC spokesman.

Missouri Republican Todd Akin released a new ad Tuesday where he asked voters to forgive him. "The fact is, rape can lead to pregnancy ... I am asking for your forgiveness," Akin says in the ad, where he speaks directly to the camera. Akin insisted Monday night that he will stay in the Senate race despite being abandoned by much of his party after claiming that women can’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” “I am not a quitter,” Akin told Mike Huckabee. But Akin was a no-show on Piers Morgan Tonight, prompting Morgan to address an empty chair instead of Akin and call him a “gutless little twerp.”

“Rape is an evil act,” Akin says in the ad. “I used the wrong words in the wrong way and for that I apologize. As the father of two daughters, I want tough justice for predators. I have a compassionate heart for the victims of sexual assault. I pray for them.”

There's no word yet on whether the apology was legitimate or forcible.