Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | South Dakota ‘bans’ abortion by Robert Booth, et. al.

Republican senator Bill Napoli said on the US TV channel PBS that most abortions were being carried out for “convenience”. He insisted, however, that exceptions could be made for rape or incest under a provision that protects the mother’s life.

“A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged,” he said. “The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalised and raped, sodomised as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

Of course, we’ll need a Council of the Righteous to certify those virgins. And we’ll need a way to tell the virgins apart from the “spoiled” (whom it is OK to rape brutally). How about veils for the virgins and scarlet letters for the whores? mjh

Meanwhile, laws restricting abortions have been passed in El Salvador, Hungary, Poland and the Russian Federation, as well as the US.

In Poland the conservative Law and Justice party took power last October, and women’s rights groups now fear the country’s already restrictive abortion laws could be tightened further to deny abortions to rape victims and women with deformed foetuses (although Law and Justice has proposed no such measures).

At the European parliament, in Strasbourg, in November the League of Polish Families, an ultra-Catholic party, ran a controversial exhibition comparing abortion to Nazi death camps.

And in Mexico, where abortion law has been relaxed since 1995, Felipe Calderon, the presidential candidate for the incumbent National Action party, has cited scripture in stump speeches and trumpeted an anti-abortion party line – positions that proved critical in winning a three-way race for the party nomination.

DeLay Wins Tex. GOP Primary By Sylvia Moreno, Washington Post Staff Writer

Rep. Tom DeLay, facing an unusual four-way Republican primary, won the party’s nomination Tuesday, calling his victory a rejection by voters of “the politics of personal destruction.”

“I have always placed my faith in the voters, and today’s vote shows they have placed their full faith in me,” DeLay, 58, said in a statement issued by his reelection campaign.

“Democrat attacks and the politics of personal destruction were heavily used by my opponents in this Republican primary, and they were rejected just like they will be in November,” he said.

None of the reports I’ve read indicate when DeLay last got as little as 6x% of the vote or had 3 Republican challengers. Democrats should delight that Republicans have renominated him — he is THE poster child for the “culture of corruption.” Bring Him On! mjh

DeLay — under criminal indictment on a money-laundering charge; rebuked three times by the House ethics committee; and linked to former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to political corruption charges — faced his toughest primary race in his 22-year congressional career. Although he spent about $2 million, DeLay ran a low-profile primary campaign, focusing on reaching the most dedicated voters through direct-mail pitches and phone calls. He did not run any radio or television ads, reflecting the campaign’s belief that they would heighten the profile of the GOP primary and bring out anti-DeLay voters. …

“I’m honored . . . to defend this district from the funding and activism of America’s most radical Democrats,” he said. “Liberal activists like Barbra Streisand, George Soros and Nancy Pelosi all have a dog in this fight, and his name is Nick Lampson.”

GOP and tech lobbyists: Appearances be damned!

[O]ne leading Republican in the room was brazen about his cozy relationship with the industry.

Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) cited a newspaper headline saying he was in the “hip pocket” of the high-tech lobby and said he “proudly pleads guilty” to helping an industry that has been responsible for so much growth in the gross domestic product in recent years.

A technology-industry insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Dreier has indeed been one of the sector’s best friends over the past few years. He said Dreier’s one of the few who “get it.” But, he cautioned, Dreier likely isn’t in it for the cash because the tech sector is notoriously inept at political giving.

OK, everything’s cool as long as the bribe-givers are inept.

If you think the media will follow up on things like this, recall that Randy “Il Duce” Cunningham lived on a yacht in DC and drove a Rolls Royce to the Capital and the Washington Press Corp didn’t seem to notice. mjh

The Democrats’ Real Problem By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Bush critics will almost always point first to the administration’s arrogance, a word used recently not by some left-wing Bush hater but by the loyal conservative writer Byron York. In the New Republic, York chose the A-word to explain why Republicans are turning on the White House’s “we-know-best approach.”

The cure for an arrogant government that doesn’t take critics seriously is accountability. Divided government never looked so good. That’s especially true at a moment when polls suggest that a majority is yearning for more competence and greater moderation.

For example, moderates and liberals alike are mystified by budget policies saddling our kids with debt tomorrow to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy today. Moderating this radical fiscal approach is something the voters clearly could accomplish with their ballots this fall. …

Presidents deserve to be punished for insulting our intelligence.

[F]ighting bad policies is actually constructive… [B]etween presidential elections, keeping matters from getting worse is sometimes the most positive alternative on offer.

Retirement Fund Tapped to Avoid National Debt Limit By Stephen Barr

The Treasury Department has started drawing from the civil service pension fund to avoid hitting the $8.2 trillion national debt limit. The move to tap the pension fund follows last month’s decision to suspend investments in a retirement savings plan held by government employees.

Federal report predicted cataclysm By Bill Walsh

Bush’s front-line disaster agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was predicting the worst. In a Power Point slide show dated Aug. 27 and obtained by The Times-Picayune, the agency spelled out the death and destruction anticipated by Hurricane Pam and warned that Katrina was likely to be worse. …

“Overall the impacts described herein are conservative,” the report said.

The report focuses on the disastrous results of levee failure.

“The potential for severe storm surge to overwhelm Lake Pontchartrain levees is the greatest concern for New Orleans,” it said. “Any storm rated Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson (hurricane) scale will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching. This could leave the New Orleans metro area submerged for weeks or months.”

Four days later, President Bush said on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.”

It’s not a lie if he can’t remember the truth. mjh

Post-9/11 Drive by Republicans To Attract Jewish Voters Stalls By Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post Staff Writer

DeLay’s problems, likewise, have set back GOP efforts in cultivating Jewish supporters. He has been one of Congress’s most aggressive and outspoken backers of Israel’s Likud government, and sponsored resolutions of support that were often so strongly worded that some Democrats — including those who had supported Israel’s Labor Party — abstained or voted no. Republicans cited these votes in arguing that the Democratic Party could not be counted as a reliable ally of the Jewish state.

Notice DeLay used partisanship within another country to advance his cause of founding the 1000 Year Reich for the Christian Right. What an evil genius. mjh