Blue America is teaming up with Working Assets, the folks behind CREDO Mobile and CREDO Action in a project we think you'll like. We're urging you to sign a petition to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid regarding the 20 formerly pro-choice men who voted for the virulently anti-choice Stupak Amendment last Saturday. Working Assets will send one of them a coat hanger for each signature. Here's the text:

We know what happens when women are denied access to reproductive health care including abortion. And we can't go back to an era of coat hangers and back alley abortions. Reconsider your vote on the Stupak Amendment. Tell House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that the final health care bill that emerges from the conference committee can't turn the clock back on women's rights.

Working Assets will also donate $1 to Blue America for each signature we gather (up to $5000) towards a fellowship to support a blogger. We got to choose who to support and we can’t think of anything more deserving than the incredible work of Mike Stark. So, please, sign the petition here.

Cross-posted at Down With Tyranny.

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Rachel talks to native South Carolinian Eugene Robinson about the sorry state of South Caronlina's education and health care systems in contrast to the attitudes of their politicians who are all opposed to health care reform.

MADDOW: We‘ve had that lot of reaction to our report last night about the appalling new data out of South Carolina that read like a statewide cry for health care reform.

Last night, we reported that South Carolina has among the country‘s worst women‘s reproductive health care. Rates of teen pregnancy, low birth weight infants, and infant mortality that are among the highest in the country. The rate at which young women in South Carolina received the important and effective HPV vaccine is also among the lowest in the country.

But wait, there‘s more—and it‘s all bad. The state has the fifth highest rate of obesity. It has the highest stroke death rate of all states in the country, and has maintained that distinction for five decades. It has the second highest death rate for oral cancer. The life expectancy in South Carolina is the third worst in the union.

If Governor Mark Sanford, for example, decided to move to Argentina permanently, he would be among people expected to live at least a year and a half longer than South Carolinians are—in Argentina.

Yes, South Carolina needs better health care. And to get it, it may need some civil servants who are slightly more interested in getting that for the state.

Governor Sanford, considered just a year ago a possible presidential contender in 2012, led the fight to turn down stimulus funding from the federal government, shunning federal unemployment benefits when South Carolina had the second highest rate of joblessness in the country. We should‘ve seen that as a symbol.

And that was all before he offered this fine moment in leadership.

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You know why bloggers don't get invited onto more news shows? Because we would absolutely clean the politicians' clocks over hypocrisy like this. Billions of dollars to spend on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have killed more than a million innocent civilians, but they go all brave and weepy-eyed over theoretical babies. Funny, how little attention they give to them once they're out of the womb:

In the wake of Dr. George Tiller's murder, the U.S. Senate is debating a resolution that condemns violence against abortion providers. The words "reproductive health care" are in the bill, causing Republicans and anti-abortion senators to oppose it, according to a Minnesota Independent article.

Senators Amy Klobuchar, who is the lead sponsor, Jeanne Shaheen and Barbara Boxer worded the bill to say "acts of violence should never be used to prevent women from receiving reproductive health care." The bill's opponents say it glorifies abortion. The article also said that an anonymous Republican senator moved to use the "secret hold," which prevents a vote on the bill.

Klobuchar told the Minnesota Independent, "As a former prosecutor I have seen how acts of violence can tear apart communities...No matter how heated the debate or how great our differences, violence is never the answer."

A similar bill passed the House June 9, but it was a watered-down version of the one currently in the Senate. It did not mention Dr. Tiller or his profession, and did not use the words "reproductive rights" or "abortion."