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Rachel Maddow tore into Mississippi Republicans and their Gov. Phil Bryant, who claim to be "small government" conservatives, for using government regulations to shut down the state's last abortion clinic, regardless of the fact that it's supposed to still be legal in the United States. They all claim to hate those pesky regulations, unless it means using them to target women's reproductive health for ideological reasons.

As she noted, unless something changes, come January, they will have succeeded in essentially making abortion illegal in their state: Mississippi’s Only Abortion Clinic Could Be Forced To Close In January:

Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the only abortion clinic in the entire state of Mississippi — has been fighting to remain open after Republican legislators, aiming to force the clinic to close, passed a restrictive regulation requiring its doctors to secure hospital admitting privileges. A Bush-appointed federal judge temporarily blocked the measure in July to give the clinic’s doctors more time to apply for privileges at area hospitals, but that order expires in early January. And so far, all seven hospitals in the area have denied privileges to the doctors.

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a motion Wednesday asking a judge to stop the law from being implemented — and forcing the clinic to stop providing abortion care — before January 6, 2013. If it closes, women in Mississippi will no longer have access to abortion in the state: [...]

Hospitals reportedly denied privileges to clinic doctors because the fact that they provide abortion services “is inconsistent with this Hospital’s policies and practices as concerns abortion and, in particular, elective abortions.” Mississippi has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation, as well as the lowest abortion rate.

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As Rachel Maddow rightfully pointed out, Republicans love to rail against "big government" unless of course it means restricting women's access to health care and safe access to abortions. Then they just love really, really, really big government.

Rand Paul and his attempt to add an irrelevant "fetal personhood" amendment to the flood insurance bill went down in flames this Friday night thankfully. And in Mississippi, unless there's some intervention at the federal level, the state may find their only abortion clinic legislated out of existence this coming Sunday.

Mississippi's Sole Abortion Clinic Sues Over Restrictive Law:

Mississippi's only abortion clinic sued Wednesday to stop a law that it says will effectively ban abortion in the state and endanger women's health by limiting access to the procedure.

Jackson Women's Health Organization said in the federal lawsuit that the measure would close the clinic, is unconstitutional and would ban abortion in Mississippi "by imposing medically unjustified requirements on physicians who perform abortions."

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has said his goal is to eliminate abortions in the state, and on Wednesday he said "Mississippi stands ready to vigorously defend House Bill 1390," the new law.

When he signed the bill, Bryant responded to what effect the law could have on the state's only abortion clinic by saying, "If it closes that clinic, then so be it."

The law takes effect Sunday, but the clinic is asking a federal judge in Jackson to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the state from enforcing it.

The clinic said the unjustified requirement in the law is that it requires anyone who performs an abortion at a clinic to be an OB-GYN with privileges to admit patients to a local hospital. Lawmakers said that is for patients' safety. The lawsuit says it's impossible for the clinic's physicians to get local hospital admitting privileges by Sunday. [...]

The lawsuit is filed against the head of the state Health Department, Dr. Mary Currier. The department's spokeswoman, Liz Sharlot, said Currier had been notified but it would be "inappropriate" for the department to comment on it.

"However, we will assure that this law is enforced in the same manner as we enforce all of our other state and federal health regulations and statutes for any health care facility in this state," Sharlot said.

Sharlot said any health facility in Mississippi is given time to comply with state laws or regulations, including 30 days to appeal if a license is revoked. The department plans to inspect the abortion clinic July 2, Sharlot said.

When Bryant signed the new restrictions on April 16, he also said: "Today you see the first step in a movement, I believe, to do what we campaigned on – to say we're going to try to end abortion in Mississippi."

The clinic says unless a judge blocks enforcement, it will "be forced to stop providing abortion care to the women in Mississippi as of July 1, 2012, leaving those women with nowhere else to turn." Read on...

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Sadly, Jonah Goldberg has another book to promote, which means he'll surely be popping up for more interviews like the ones that Blue Texan already wrote about here and here. For anyone who would like a reminder of the dishonesty in the last book he wrote, check out Dave Neiwert's post from back when Glenn Beck was still on the air and promoting Goldberg's fraudulent Liberal Fascism: Historians stand up to 'Liberal Fascism' and its abuse of history, while Beck blithely promotes it.

This Friday, Goldberg appeared at Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition conference and although he claimed that he was not there to plug his new book, that's clearly what he was doing during the end of his speech there. I'm assuming a lot of what he said is straight out of his new book, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, but someone else who has actually read it will have to let me know, since I'm not in the mood to beat myself upside the head with a hammer attempting to read it or to send him any money. Hearing him talk about it in the interviews or speeches I've seen is bad enough.

I'm no expert on so-called "liberal philosophers" like the ones Goldberg was quoting here, but to this non-expert, his arguments seem completely ridiculous. Feel free to correct me in the comments section because what he said here is so convoluted, I'm having trouble making sense of it, but his basic premise seems to be, here are some things some liberal philosophers said. I'm going to interpret what they said to mean they want man to take the place of God. Man shouldn't have anything to do with government getting involved with policies that protect the least among us, because that's God's place. The lowest person in a society is an unborn fetus, so you can't care about those who are actually born unless you put that unborn fetus first. And President Obama has repeated some things these liberal philosophers have said, therefore he must be a Socialist. And his Life of Julia campaign is very creepy.

For a more honest assessment of President Obama's Life of Julia, here's Steve Benen's take from last month: 'The Life of Julia':

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On this Monday's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough spent a better part of the morning ranting and raving about how Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital isn't going to hurt him in the general election should he win the Republican primary race. He really was at his most obnoxious during the latter part of this segment when guests Suze Orman and Jeffrey Sachs dared to suggest that Elizabeth Warren's arguments about how the financial sector has led to the destruction of our economy and the amount of debt most households are carrying now.

As Sachs pointed out, what has most people upset is the level of fraud we've seen from the big banks and the subsequent bailouts after making incredible amounts of money and it's the fraud that has most Americans very angry right now. That led Scarborough to go into this rant, which Mediate took note of this morning as well -- Joe Scarborough To Suze Orman: Debt Growth ‘Not Just About Big Business; It’s About Big Government’:

You know, I keep hearing about all of the problems being big businesses and big banks. And yes, there has been fraud. But we’re sitting here ignoring what is going on all around us. We have historical trends that are exploding in our faces. You look this past weekend, look what happened on Friday. France downgraded because of massive debt. Eight other countries in Europe, downgraded because of debt. Our federal government keeps getting bigger by the year, and we keep sitting here scratching our heads going, “well, what are we doing? Why are more and more people going into poverty? It must be big business’s fault.”

The federal government keeps growing by the year. The debt keeps growing. When Democrats are in power, the federal government gets bigger, and debt gets bigger. When Republicans are in, when Democrats are in, it gets bigger. And I hear Dr. Sachs saying all morning about Mitt Romney’s “right-wing radical plan.” That’s a bunch of bunk! It is bunk. Mitt Romney doesn’t have a conservative plan. If he did, I would already be on board with him. But he’s going to be a big-government Republican who is going to follow a big-government Democrat who followed a big-government Republican in George W. Bush. I mean, come on, we have to break this trend. And it’s been going on for 30, 40 years. The government just keeps getting bigger. And our debt keeps getting bigger. Crowding out takes place, and we just sit here trying to blame big business. That’s not going to sell with middle Americans moving forward.

What they failed to note over there was Sach's response, or the fact that Scarborough's rant is completely hypocritical given just which party is responsible for the debt we're seeing right now.

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