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The founder of an organization which advocates for the rights AIDS patients says that a proposed Kansas law which allows HIV people to be quarantined would essentially give cover to religious officials who might want to discriminate against LGBT people.

"That rural county health department -- and I hate to say it -- potentially could use this bill to justify their religious belief that could override their professional belief," Positive Directions Inc.'s Cody Patton told KWCH on Tuesday.

Right now, it's against the law in Kansas to quarantine HIV positive people but House Bill 2183 changes that. The measure is intended to allow firefighters or paramedics who are exposed to bodily fluids during the course of duty to get the victim's blood tested without a court order. But lawmakers also added language that allows people with HIV and AIDS to be quarantined.

Patton said that he understood the need to protect emergency officials, but lawmakers had not thought through their decision to quarantine people with HIV.

"They didn't get that whole concept of being discriminated against," he pointed out. "And they didn't get that stuff still happens today."

Last week, the state Committee on Health and Human Services rejected an amendment by Sen. Marci Francisco (D) that would have restored the exclusion for people with HIV.

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Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has a simple solution for women who work for religious institutions that refuse to cover birth control: Find a new job.

During a call-in show on C-SPAN Monday morning, a woman named Doris from Osawatomie, Kansas told Brownback that she was worried that he wanted to turn back the clock on women's rights.

"No, goodness," Brownback replied. "That's not true."

"I am concerned that -- along with lots of other red states -- Gov. Brownback feels that we should be the reddest state in the country," Doris explained. "Women's rights are being trampled. He was talking about what President Obama is requiring insurance companies to do, to cover birth control. You know you are taking away the individual woman's right to decide if they need birth control."

"Ninety-eight percent of women have used birth control in their lives," she added. "Now, we can pay for vasectomies, we can pay for Viagra, but we cannot pay for birth control for women? I think it's a shame."

Brownback immediately disagreed.

"What the president basically said is if you are church that does not believe in this -- and the Catholic Church has problems with, the official Catholic Church, amongst other institutions, have problems with paying for contraceptives," the Kansas governor explained. "You have a number of religious groups who saying, 'We don't want to pay for so-called abortifacients, these have morning after pill-type effects. And this is against our religious beliefs.' And the president was saying, 'You got to pay for it.' And they were saying, 'This is against our view life is sacred.'"

"That's not denying women's rights," he insisted. "If a woman then wants birth control, go work somewhere else."

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As Karoli noted, it seems tweeting about Kansas Governor Sam Brownback gets you a trip to the principal's office if the governor's staff happen to be reading your remarks and don't like them. As NBC action news reported earlier last week, eighteen-year-old Emma Sullivan had not yet decided if she was going to issue the requested apology to the governor's office. The good news is, it appears she has now made her decision and the answer is no.

h/t The Political Carnival

Teen tweeter won't apologize to Kan. governor:

A Kansas teenager who wrote a disparaging tweet about Gov. Sam Brownback said Sunday that she is rejecting her high school principal's demand for a written apology.

Emma Sullivan, 18, of the Kansas City suburb of Fairway, said she isn't sorry and doesn't think such a letter would be sincere.

The Shawnee Mission East senior was taking part in a Youth in Government program last week in Topeka, Kan., when she sent out a tweet from the back of a crowd of students listening to Brownback's greeting. From her cellphone, she thumbed: "Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person (hash)heblowsalot."

She actually made no such comment and said she was "just joking with friends." But Brownback's office, which monitors social media for postings containing the governor's name, saw Sullivan's post and contacted the Youth in Government program.

Sullivan received a scolding at school and was ordered to send Brownback an apology letter. She said Prinicipal Karl R. Krawitz even suggested talking points for the letter she was supposed to turn in Monday.

The situation exploded after Sullivan's older sister contacted the media. Since then, Sullivan's following on Twitter has grown to about 3,000 people, up from about 65 before the tweet. She said she thinks the tweet has helped "open up dialogue" about free speech in social media..

"I would do it again," she said. Read on...

UPDATED: Wow. Not only did Sullivan not have to apologize, but she got a rather stand up apology from none other than Sam Brownback himself.

Brownback issued a statement attempting to put an end to the media circus.

"My staff over-reacted to this tweet and for that I apologize," Brownback said. "Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms."

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As Rachel Maddow noted, these so-called anti-regulation Republican hypocrites sure seem to love regulations if it means shutting something down they don't like.

New state regulations could shutdown last three abortion clinics in Kansas:

Due to new regulations drafted by Kansas officials, the state’s last three operating abortion clinics could be closed down — making Kansas the first state to have absolutely no abortion access.

According to the Associated Press, “the top executive for Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid Missouri said he’s concerned imposing the new regulations so quickly will force all three clinics to shut down.”

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has until July to decide whether or not they will give the clinics, which include a Planned Parenthood clinic, the licenses they need to operate.

The AP reports:

[The state agency] is imposing the rules under Republican-backed legislation that was signed into law last month by GOP Gov. Sam Brownback, a strong abortion opponent. The department sent Planned Parenthood a letter earlier this month saying its clinic would be inspected and notified by July 1 whether it would have a license. The other clinics received similar letters. [...]

The new law requires annual inspections of abortion clinics and gives the department the power to issue fines or go to court to shut clinics down for violating the new standards. The plan was approved by the Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature earlier this year.

However, Planned Parenthood is considering entering a legal battle with the state over the new regulations and the “process used to impose them.” Read on...

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Mitch McConnell is asked why seven of the Republicans who co-sponsored the Conrad-Gregg fiscal commission turned around and voted against it. McConnell says he now wants a spending reduction commission because heaven forbid we can't have them considering any tax hikes for the rich. Leave it to Republicans to take a bad idea and make it worse.

KING: Well, let's talk about your side of the equation. Robert Gibbs just complained about it and the president mentioned it in his Saturday radio address. He says there was a proposal. It was sponsored by one Democrat and one Republican. It would create a commission that would spend a few months studying how can we cut federal spending, maybe even propose tax increases; find some way to reduce the federal budget deficit. Now, it then failed last week on a vote in the Senate. And here's the president's complaint.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: This past week, 53 Democrats and Republicans voted for this commission in the Senate, but it failed when seven Republicans who had cosponsored this idea in the first place suddenly decided to vote against it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now, we want to show on our screen the seven Republicans who were cosponsors but then withdrew their cosponsorship and voted against it: the Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas, Mike Crapo of Idaho, John Ensign of Nevada, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, John McCain of Arizona, Robert Bennett of Utah.

If this was such a good idea that they would cosponsor it -- this is what comes up, Senator McConnell, in my travels all the time. People say, why do they always just play politics in Washington? Is this just politics, as the president says, or if it was the same proposal six months ago when they cosponsored it, what was wrong with it last week when a Democratic president wanted it?

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Cenk Uygur highlights this excellent article from Truthdig--Michele Bachmann: Welfare Queen:

Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.

Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”

But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.

However, Bachmann doesn’t think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be “rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules.” That’s right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.

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Here's Grassley getting asked about his welfare checks.

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Let the abortion fear mongering from the GOP begin on the Nelson compromise. From The Hill -- Coburn: Nelson agreement with leaders 'threw unborn babies under the bus':

A number of Republican senators attacked an agreement reached between Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Senate Democratic leaders Saturday, saying it would lead to the eventual reversal of more than 30 years of federal law banning abortion funding.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oka.) said it is “absolutely fictitious” that there is an anti-abortion provision in the Senate Democrats’ reworked healthcare reform bill.

“The negotiations, whoever did them, threw unborn babies under the bus,” Coburn said.

[...]

“The abortion language in this bill funds abortion for the first time since 1977,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). “We are told this is a pro-life bill. It is not.”

The agreement reached between Nelson and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will give states the choice to ban abortion coverage or not in the insurance exchanges the legislation creates. The deal will also separate premiums from insurance plans that pay for abortion from federal money.

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Rachel Maddow reports on the 'PrayerCast' attended by Senators Jim DeMint and Sam Brownback and Rep. Michele Bachmann where they prayed for the defeat of the health care bill. This has to be one of the creepiest things I've watched in a long time.

Transcript via MSNBC.

MADDOW: A lot of attention being paid today to the fight within the left over whether or not to support health reform now that it‘s been so watered down. I‘m here to tell you that this is the other side of that fight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOU ENGLE, PASTOR: Let‘s take hands together and let‘s pray right now for our leaders, the senators who are in this debate now. Would you just lift your voices just for a few moments? And let‘s just altogether pray together.

Lord, right now, we‘re calling on you. Oh, Lord, come and come to our senators. Would you break into their hearts and minds? Would you rule over them?

Lord, we‘re praying, give them wisdom. The wisdom that comes down from up above. For such a time as this we cry out to you!

And we thank you, Living God, that you hear in Jesus name, amen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Those two vaguely looking familiar men you see there at the end of that clip, those are two sitting Republican U.S. senators, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. They were the headlining politicians at last night‘s effort to stop health reform with prayer.

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Rachel follows up on her interview with Jeff Sharlet where they discussed C-Street Family member David Bahati's role in introducing anti-gay legislation in Uganda. Jeff Sharlet reports that the Ugandan MP did not as many thought first get the idea for the legislation at the conference held in Kampala Uganda in March of 2009, but instead was discussing it at a private meeting at the 2008 Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast hosted by The Family.

Rachel asks Sharlet if there were any American’s at the 2008 Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast where the idea for executing gays in Uganda was floated. Sharlet says there were a number of Americans at the breakfast and possibly present, but they haven’t been able to confirm it yet, Sen. James Inhofe. Sharlet talked about a rift within The Family over supporting this legislation although as Rachel noted, none of them have been willing to come out publicly and say anything against it.

The last really disgusting item they talked about is the possibility of the Ugandan politicians who are promoting the kill-the-gays bill coming to America to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast next February and President Obama being scheduled to speak there as well. As Rachel notes:

Maddow: And if not there’s the prospect of an American president speaking at an event before an invited audience that includes the guy who promoted—who introduced legislation to execute people for being gay in his country with the support and encouragement of American quacks like ex-gay therapists. Wow.

Wow indeed.

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Rachel follows up on her reporting on the 'kill the gays' bill being considered in Uganda. Her show attempted to get some responses from the American legislators who have decided to inject themselves so deeply into African politics - with predictable results. Most of them either tried to wash their hands of their part in this absolutely horrid piece of proposed legislation or didn’t bother to respond at all. The scandal ridden John Ensign’s office said he was too busy screwing up the health care bill to give a response.

James Inhofe and Sam Brownback didn’t bother to respond, either. Don’t hold your breath waiting on those two knuckle-draggers, Rachel. I’m sure it will be a cold day in hell before either of them bother to tell the evil “librul” lesbian woman why they could care less if you were killed if you were unfortunate enough to live in Uganda, assuming this law gets passed.

Props to Rachel for keeping after this story. It has to be one of the most disgusting news items I’ve watched in a very long time and these C-Street wingers need to be held to account for their actions. It’s a shame the rest of the media is not giving this story the attention it deserves. They’re too busy chasing around the White House party crashers or Tiger Woods’ mistresses.

Transcript via Nexis Lexis below the fold.

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