Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said the cutoff results from the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities. According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it’s the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions.

…

For all its mainstream popularity, however, Komen has been a target of anti-abortion groups since it began its partnerships with Planned Parenthood in 2005.

Life Decisions International includes Komen on its “boycott list” of companies and organizations that support or collaborate with Planned Parenthood. In December, Lifeway Christian Resources, the publishing division of the Southern Baptist Convention, announced a recall of pink Bibles it had sold because some of the money generated for Komen was being routed to Planned Parenthood.

Aun, the Komen spokeswoman, said such pressure tactics were not the reason for the funding cutoff and cited Stearns’ House investigation as a key factor.

That investigation, which has no set timetable, was launched in September when Stearns asked Planned Parenthood for more than a decade’s worth of documents.

Stearns, in a statement emailed to the AP on Monday, said he is still working with Planned Parenthood on getting the requested documents. He said he is looking into possible violations of state and local reporting requirements, as well as allegations of financial abuse, and would consider holding a hearing depending on what he learns.

Many of the allegations were outlined in a report presented to Stearns last year by Americans United for Life, a national anti-abortion group, which urged him to investigate.

That wuold be funny if it weren’t so serious. This is even funnier:

We are dismayed and extremely disappointed that actions we have taken to strengthen our granting process have been widely mischaracterized. It is necessary to set the record straight.

Starting in 2010, Komen began an initiative to help us do a better job of measuring the impact of community grants. This is important because we invest significant dollars in our local community programs–$93 million in 2011, which provided for 700,000 breast health screenings and diagnostic procedures.

Following this review, we made the decision to implement stronger performance criteria for our grantees to minimize duplication and free up dollars for direct services to help vulnerable women. To support this new granting strategy, Komen has also implemented more stringent eligibility standards to safeguard donor dollars. Consequently, some organizations are no longer eligible to receive Komen grants.

Some might argue that our standards are too exacting, but over the past three decades people have given us more than just their money. They have given us their trust and we take that responsibility very seriously.

We regret that these new policies have impacted some longstanding grantees, such as Planned Parenthood, but want to be absolutely clear that our grant-making decisions are not about politics. Throughout our 30 year history, our priority has always been and will continue to be the women we serve. As we move forward, we are working to ensure that there is no interruption or gaps in services for the women who need our support most in the fight against breast cancer.

Ha ha, not political? That’s funny. Oh and:

According to Planned Parenthood, its centers performed more than 4 million breast exams over the past five years, including nearly 170,000 as a result of Komen grants.

So, Planned Parenthood does more breast exams than the Kamen foundation. I guess I’ll go donate to them.

There are a few interesting slides.

The first one shows that the US deficit will become reasonable in the next few years if current law doesn’t change (this means the Bush tax cuts expire, there won’t be a fix for the AMT, medicare payments will not be adjusted, the mandatory cuts from the recent budget plan will go through). This probably won’t happen, but is instructive as a response to ‘deficit hawks’ (those politicians who are so worried about the deficit, but wouldn’t dream of raising taxes)–if they’re so worried about the deficit they should be pushing to keep these planned changes.

Slides 9 and 10 show just how much this recession has cost: the projected total difference between the actual and potential GDP because of the recession is $5.7 trillion.

A series of slides show why there is such a large current deficit:

• slide 19 shows that federal outlays are up;
• slide 20 shows this is because of both mandatory and discretionary spending, with mandatory spending up more sharply and having a longer term effect;
• slide 21 shows that up to $250 billion of the increase was for income security measures (unemployment and the like);
• slide 25 shows there was a large drop in federal revenue (it also shows that individual income taxes will increase by quite a bit under current law);
• slide 26 shows that the drop in revenue mainly came from a drop in individual and corporate income taxes.

Thus a large part of the deficit is due to the recession and will go away if the economy really starts growing, but taxes will probably have to go up and mandatory spending increases will have to be controlled. The mandatory spending needs to be addressed in the entire economy: spending on healthcare, for example, is not just a problem for the federal government–if federal spending on healthcare decreases then spending outside of the federal government will increase unless a way is found to control healthcare spending in general.

But the Republican candidates have said that moral and religious values weigh heavily in birth control issues. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, said in an e-mail that he regarded the administration’s rule requiring religious employers to furnish birth control as wrong. “This is a direct attack on religious liberty and will not stand in a Romney presidency,” she said. Mr. Romney has also pledged to end a federal program, Title X, that provides family planning services to millions of women.

Mr. Santorum has taken the position that health insurance plans should not be required to cover birth control. He also favors allowing states to decide whether to ban birth control. He and Mr. Gingrich both support “personhood” initiatives that would legally declare fertilized eggs to be persons, effectively banning not just all abortions but also certain contraceptives, including IUDs and some types of birth control pills.

That’s pretty direct, but let’s be even more direct:

Here is an actual Rick Santorum quote: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.” And also, “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

and:

One issue was Santorum’s opposition to the Supreme Court’s 1965 ruling that invalidated a Connecticut law banning contraception. Santorum said he still feels that a state should be able to make such laws.

“The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have. That is the thing I have said about the activism of the Supreme Court, they are creating rights, and they should be left up to the people to decide,” he said.

The other Republican candidates aren’t that bad, but most support the ‘Personhood Pledge’ which maintains that human life begins at conception (and so, would outlaw abortion and some types of contraception).

The NY Times  article also gives another example of Catholic compassion:

One recent Georgetown law graduate, who asked not to be identified for reasons of medical privacy, said she had polycystic ovary syndrome, a condition for which her doctor prescribed birth control pills. She is gay and had no other reason to take the pills. Georgetown does not cover birth control for students, so she made sure her doctor noted the diagnosis on her prescription. Even so, coverage was denied several times. She finally gave up and paid out of pocket, more than $100 a month. After a few months she could no longer afford the pills. Within months she developed a large ovarian cyst that had to be removed surgically — along with her ovary.

“If I want children, I’ll need a fertility specialist because I have only one working ovary,” she said.

http://seg.sharethis.com/getSegment.php?purl=http%3A%2F%2Ffredtopeka.wordpress.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D3963%26action%3Dedit&jsref=&rnd=1327962529564

his proposed statute reads, “No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients.”

There are two ways to go with this and I can’t decide between them, so I’ll do both:

• Damn, there goes my business plan.
• So, it’s ok to sell food made out of people?

A bit more seriously, here’s what this is about:

These accusations began with an action alert issued by Largo, Florida-based Children of God for Life, a nonprofit, pro-life organization focused on the “bioethical issues of human cloning, embryonic, and fetal tissue research.” In the alert, Debi Vinnedge, executive director of Children of God, calls for the public to “boycott products of major food companies that are partnering with Senomyx, a biotech company that produces artificial flavor enhancers, unless the company stops using aborted fetal cell lines to test their products.”

…

Though Rosenberg states there is nothing on the company website linking Senomyx with HEK293, a little Googling turned up a patent issued in 2008 for “Recombinant Methods for Expressing a Functional Sweet Taste Receptor,” in which a line item mentions HEK293.

So what exactly is HEK293? It’s a cell line that started in the 1970s from human embryonic kidney cells.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry:

HEK 293 cells were generated in the early 70s by transformation of cultures of normal human embryonic kidney cells with sheared adenovirus 5 DNA in Alex Van der Eb’s laboratory in Leiden, The Netherlands. The human embryonic kidney cells were obtained from a healthy aborted fetus and originally cultured by Van der Eb himself, and the transformation by adenovirus was performed by Frank Graham who published his findings in the late 1970s after he left Leiden for McMaster University in Canada.

The patent actually doesn’t say that this cell line was used in the process, just that the patent applies if they are used. Thus, the reason for the freakout is that a company might be using cell lines in research that are descended from a fetus that was aborted 40 years ago.

Update: The patent actually does say it’s preferable to use HEK 239 cells, so the outrage is completely justified.

The Justice Department on Monday charged a former Central Intelligence Agency officer with disclosing classified information to journalists about the capture and brutal interrogation of a suspected member of Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah — adding another chapter to the Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks.

In some sense, it’s hard to feel bad for this guy since he was one of the advocates of torture. The reason I care is the same prosecution would have occured if the guy had leaked the information to show the government was doing something illegal. What makes this irritating is the fact that the Obama administration has not gone after any of the people who actually tortured or allowed torture. Glenn Greenwald notes the problem here. John Cole comments here.

Almost half of voters said the most important trait they sought in a candidate was the ability to beat Obama in November. And even though Romney argues that he is the most electable Republican, those voters also favored Gingrich.

That’s a stunning thought. This is the man who made partisan rhetoric so divisive, coming up with words to use about opponents such as anti-family, corrupt, destructive, greed, intolerant, and traitors. This is the man who helped shut down the government partially because he felt snubbed by President Clinton. This is the man who helped lead the impeachment against Clinton for his actions with Monica Lewinsky … while he was having an affair that ended his second marriage. And he left the Speakership in disgrace with these lovely words:

I’m willing to lead but I’m not willing to preside over people who are cannibals. My only fear would be that if I tried to stay, it would just overshadow whoever my successor is. Frankly, Marianne and I could use a break.

He said this at the end of 1998, he divorced Marianne in 2000.

Oh yeah, Newt also thinks we should get rid of child labor laws because children of the poor don’t have a work ethic. And that the war against drugs should be made harsher:

Here are Newt Gingrich’s nuanced, compassionate drug policy ideas: Constant drug testing for everyone (especially poor people) and stiff “economic penalties” for use. (Yes, obviously, what poor people need are more ways to incur economic penalties and more barriers to either aid or employment. Newt Gingrich has so many IDEAS.) Also, the U.S. should be more like Singapore, where people carrying enough drugs to qualify for “trafficking” charges are put to death.

Yeah, Democrats would be very worried if he was the candidate.

US Senator Scott Brown kicked off his reelection bid tonight with a call to send him back to Washington so that he can fight both “the machine” in Massachusetts and the partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill.

“At times, I’ve been the 41st vote to stop a bad idea, other times I’ve been proud to be the 60th vote to pass a good idea and move our country forward,” Brown told a full crowd of supporters at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, the site of a rousing rally two years ago, just days before he surprised the nation by winning the special election.

One of the reasons for the partisan gridlock is the routine use of the filibuster and here’s Scott Brown talking as if it’s just the way things are. Given that his main issue in his first run for the Senate was to filibuster against national healthcare, I guess that’s to be expected.

• It is in this area (politics) of American life that labor and the Negro have identical interests. Labor has grave problems today of employment, shorter hours, old age security, housing and retraining against the impact of automation. The Congress and the Administration are almost as indifferent to labor’s program as they are toward that of the Negro. Toward both they offer vastly less than adequate remedies for the problems which are a torment to us day after day.
• Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
• Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
• A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
• Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
• It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
• I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even the enemy.
• And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.
• There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
• In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as ‘right-to-work.’ It provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘works.’ Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining… We demand this fraud be stopped.

The government of Myanmar signed a cease-fire agreement on Thursday with ethnic Karen rebels, whose fight for greater autonomy is one of the largest of the brutal civil wars that has bedeviled the country since it gained independence from Britain more than six decades ago.

…

Since its installation in March, ending nearly 50 years of military rule, the government has held talks with the political opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, approved the registration of her political party and her candidacy in a by-election in April, and suspended plans for a huge Chinese-backed dam that drew strong opposition both from within and outside Myanmar, formerly Burma.

…

Now the government says it is negotiating peace pacts with the other major ethnic rebel groups — the Chin, the Mon, the Kachin and the Kayah — and is determined to achieve a permanent peace with them in three to four years.

…

In another move, Myanmar state radio and television said 651 prisoners would be released under a new presidential pardon starting Friday, according to The Associated Press, raising hopes that those freed would be political prisoners. In the past two weeks, The A.P. said, the government gave amnesty to 6,656 prisoners and reduced the sentences of 38,964.

These actions have led the US to start restoring full diplomatic relations. Even a year ago these actions would have been impossible and now they’re happening. Hopefully it will continue.

If you look at the second slide, you see how things have changed–economic gains were distributed fairly evenly from 1947-1979, while most of the gains have gone to the rich since then.

Mitt Romney, I’m sure,  is upset at this talk:

QUESTIONER: Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?

ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99 percent versus one percent, and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent, you have opened up a wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.

QUESTIONER: Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though?

ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.

You see the usual Republican idea: talking about helping the rich is the proper order of things, talking about helping the rest of us is ‘class warfare’. It’s unfair if we try to blame the rich for the recession, even though (really, especially because) it was their fault (Republicans like to call the rich ‘job creator’s', but they are also job destroyers–pretty much all recessions are caused by the rich).