Posts with the tag Mitt Romney

The Next Battle for Choice

Kay Steiger — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:47:31 EDT

Via Feministing. While the main focus of the choice discussion is centered on abortions and abortion accesses (which, by the way, is abysmal), Cristina Page, author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex, has a great piece this week in the Balitmore Sun about the National Right To Life conference. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney tried to convince pro-lifers that he was their candidate, but meanwhile she noticed some subtle language that indicated that he was willing to continue Bush's work against access to contraception.

No matter that emergency contraception has the same mode of action as the birth control pill and every other hormonal method of birth control. To the anti-abortion movement, contraception is the ultimate corruptor. And so this year, the unspoken rule for candidates seeking the support of anti-abortion groups is that they must offer proof they're anti-contraception too.

Annika blogged earlier today about how even though Plan B is "available" over the counter now, it is in practicality unavailable to many women and girls under the age of 18. This is just one of the many subtle battles that choice faces under rule of conservatives.

Mitt Romney: Swimming With Your Kids

Jesse Singal — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:16:20 EDT

Via Matt Yglesias: Mitt Romney wants to clean up the metaphorically polluted allegorical ocean that is the cultural cesspool in which our real kids are symbolically swimming. To indicate this, he’s made a campaign ad, the second half of which contains shaky footage apparently shot by a creepy guy watching your kids from the edge of the beach you took them to:

Also, the sand represents premarital sex.

Mitt Romney in Bed with Torture-for-Hire

foxfire burns — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 16:41:57 EDT

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, is being sued by over 100 victims. Lichfield, it turns out, made his money by running camps where they lock up and torture people. Not convicted criminals. Not even accused terrorists. The people he tortures are children and teenagers.

Some fretful parents are mislead into hiring Lichfield, thinking his “treatment centers” will help their children avoid making mistakes. Other customers are repugnant parents who want to abuse their children and aren’t even man enough to do it themselves. Lichfield’s thugs lock up these youth and, as described in the law suit, subject them to battery, sleep deprivation, starvation, sexual abuse, and forms of cruelty that don’t even have names, all with the promise to parents that this will make their children more obedient.

Similar “behavior modification camps” have been run by Mel Sembler, Romney’s <I>national</I> finance co-chair. Sembler’s Straight Inc. paid out millions in lawsuits before it finally closed. (Actually, it still exists, but under a new name to escape responsibility for what it did under its old name.) Sembler survived with enough cash that, in addition to helping Romney, his other philanthropic work includes heading the Scooter Libby Defense Fund.

Bloomberg: The Answer To Our Prayers, Or The Next Ralph Nader?

Eli Corp — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 20:35:09 EDT

With only six months before the first Caucus in Iowa, the race for the Democratic and Republican nomination is in full swing, but there could be one more name added to the list of potential candidates, a third party candidate. Could a third party Independent candidate really sweep in and bring an end to the two-party domination of politics as we know it?