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If anyone didn't think the Obama administration's position on Plan B wasn't quite bad enough, where they've played politics with the issue, saying they'd lower the age on the emergency contraception to 15, in violation of a court order that the drug be made available with no age restriction -- behold what the viewers at Faux "News" were being treated to this Thursday.

Media Matters flagged this segment from Fox's The Five and their title pretty well sums up the arguments being made, not only by Bolling, but the other hosts as well: Fox's Bolling: Lowering Age For Plan B Access "May Be Covering Up Rapes That Girls Are Embarrassed To Talk About".

Yes, because it would be so much better to up the odds of them becoming pregnant as well. And someone needs to let them know that rape victims are already administered this drug if they go to the hospital.

For a group that claims to care about abortion, they sure as hell don't mind advocating for policies that will assure there are more of them.

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And we await the "social conservatives" heads exploding over this in 10... 9... Judge Rules Emergency Contraception Should Be Available To All Women Over The Counter:

In a victory for birth control access, a U.S. federal judge has ordered the Food and Drug Administration to remove the current restrictions on the morning after pill, commonly known as “Plan B.” Even though the FDA initially recommended that Plan B should be available without a prescription for women of all ages, the Obama Administration overruled that decision in 2011 to restrict access to emergency contraception for those under the age of 17. On Friday, citing the administration’s unnecessary “political interference” in the matter, Judge Edward R. Korman ordered the federal agency to reverse that decision.

Korman — a Reagan-appointed judge — determined that there’s no reason to prevent teens from purchasing Plan B over the counter, pointing out that the morning after pill is “among the safest drugs sold over the counter.” The judge also criticized HHS’s decision to overrule the FDA, explaining that “many public health experts saw as a politically-motivated effort to avoid riling religious groups and others opposed to making birth control available to girls.” Read on...

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Here we go with Mike Huckabee and former HHS Secretary and now candidate for Senate, Tommy Thompson pushing the latest right wing freakout over something the Obama administration is doing to help Americans who are struggling and looking for work in this lousy economy.

Think Progress explains why they're both wrong here: Why Granting Waivers To States Is Not An Attempt To ‘Gut’ Welfare Reform:

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced this week that HHS will grant waivers to states under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) law. The waivers will allow states to experiment in order to improve “welfare to work” programs that help low-income Americans find jobs.

Republicans and the conservative blogosphere have denounced the move, saying it would “gut” the 1996 welfare reform law. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney called it a “misdirected” move that decoupled “the linkage of work and welfare” that “is essential to prevent welfare from becoming a way of life.”

Despite the GOP’s concerns, however, the waiver process will have benefits for a welfare reform law that has struggled to live up to the program that preceded it. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, the waivers and the new requirements would force states to set specific measures that they will have to reach; if they fail, the waiver will be canceled. The waivers will also give the states more flexibility in linking employment and education and tailor ways to better use their limited resources.

Most importantly, CBPP notes, it will increase, not decrease, the focus on employment: [...]

Republican support for flexibility, Levin said, appears to extend only to reducing benefits to low-income Americans. “Curiously, some of the same voices that pay lip service to the virtues of state flexibility now appear to oppose providing waivers under the TANF program,” he said. “It turns out that Republican support for state flexibility is a one-way street – they support flexibility when it comes to reducing assistance for needy Americans looking for work, but they oppose giving states greater discretion in helping people find work.” While Republicans oppose the waivers, states are coming out in favor of them.

Don't tell that to Huckabee or Thompson though. They're too busy fearmongering and race baiting and pretending the Democrats just want to make all those lazy black people out there dependent on government and "enslave them." Never mind the fact that most of the people using these programs are white.

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Last month, we had The Catholic League's Bill Donohue going after Hilary Rosen in an extremely ugly attack because she dared to commit the sin, in Donohue's mind, of being a lesbian with adopted children after the big dust up over her statement about Ann Romney. Because god knows you're only supposed to be allowed to raise children if you're straight. Now he's on the attack again over HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius being invited to speak at a Georgetown University commencement ceremony.

Donohue went over a similar set of grievances that he expressed to Megyn Kelly in the clip above in a post on their web site here: Kathleen Sebelius to Speak at Georgetown Commencement Ceremony:

In what can only be interpreted as a direct challenge to America’s Catholic bishops, Georgetown University has announced that “pro-choice” Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and lead architect of the Obama administration’s assault on religious freedom through the HHS contraception mandate, has been invited to speak at one of Georgetown’s several commencement ceremonies.

The Cardinal Newman Society has posted a petition to protest this outrage here: GeorgetownScandal.com. It has also alerted Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl and sent a letter to Georgetown President John DeGioia urging him to immediately withdraw the invitation. [...]

The nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university has chosen to honor Sebelius by granting her a prestigious platform at its Public Policy Institute commencement ceremony, despite her role as the lead architect of a healthcare mandate that will force Catholic institutions to pay for contraception, abortifacients and sterilization against their religious beliefs. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has termed the mandate “an unwarranted government definition of religion” that is “alien both to our Catholic tradition and to federal law,” “a violation of personal civil rights” and “a mandate to act against our teachings.”

But Secretary Sebelius’ record on abortion is at least as troubling as the mandate. When Governor of Kansas, Sebelius supported abortion rights and vetoed pro-life legislation. In 2008, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City reportedly told Sebelius, a Roman Catholic, to stop receiving the Eucharist until she publicly recants her position on abortion and makes a “worthy sacramental confession.”

During the interview above, Donohue also claimed that Sebelius may have been excommunicated and "her best friend was George the killer Tiller," referencing of course the now assassinated abortion doctor who is no longer with us today, thanks in part to the flame throwing by the likes of Bill O'Reilly and his ilk.

And as Think Progress noted of this same interview: Catholic League President Compares Pro-Choice Groups To Neo-Nazis:

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From our friends at Newshounds, Mike Huckabee treated his viewers to this lie-packed bit of anti-abortion propaganda on this weekend's edition of Huckabee on Fox News. The forced birth crowd over there is determined to keep the culture wars going with their war on women's reproductive rights.

It's downright infuriating that the Obama administration and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius gave them some food for fodder with this one.

Mike Huckabee Lies About "Plan" B While Pimping Anti-Abortion Movie:

As the mouthpiece for the rabid political right, it's not surprising that Fox News is America's pro-life newsroom. You won't see Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood on Fox; but you will see Fox hosts and guests who hate women's reproductive freedom. Fox can be proud of how its top rated Bill O'Reilly contributed to a climate of fear and hatred in which abortion doctor, George Tiller, was assassinated. Bill also did his pro-life duty in presenting a parade of guests who support congressional attempts to defund Planned Parenthood. But while Bill and the other Fox pundits don't seem to, outside Fox, take an anti-abortion activist role, there is one Fox pundit who does and that's Mike Huckabee. He's up to his eyeballs with the "pro-family" anti-women's reproductive rights crowd that wants to provide "personhood" rights from the moment of conception. Mike, who "proudly stands" with homophobic and anti-Islamic hate group leader Bryon Fischer of the American Family Association, lauded the failed Mississippi personhood initiative. And now, he's promoting an anti-abortion rights movie for whih he provides an introduction. In a shameless act of self-promotion and anti-choice activism, Huckabee used his latest show to pimp the movie while telling a shamelss lie about the emergency contraception "Plan B." If Fox viewers are misinformed, this is why.

After telling a folksy story about how he "told" his little grandchild about how he would vote for people who would "protect little guys like him before and after he was born," Huckabee segued into his upcoming forum in Iowa which will include the premier of a new anti-abortion film, "The Gift of Life." After he described the film as "refreshing and uplifting," he asserted that this film will remind candidates and voters that "treating every human with worth and dignity is still essential in selecting a leader." This reverence for life, Hucakbee asserted, is even more important since the FDA recommend that over the counter sale "of a drug that kills a developing baby." He noted that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius is continuing the policy of requiring girls to be 17 if they are "purchasing this what has been termed abortion in a bottle." (He didn't say that a doctor could still prescribe the drug to these girls.) He then went into the standard "pro-life" canard that girls need parental consent to take an aspirin at a school. (A girl of any age can purchase aspirin at a drug store). He continued with the anti-abortion misinformation with a comment about how the government "was on the brink of letting her purchase a pill that will kill her unborn child with neither your consent nor your approval."

Go read the rest, but as they noted, that movie Huck was pimping was brought to us by none other than Citizens United, the same group that led to the disastrous Supreme Court ruling that's made the money pouring into our political coffers from corporations that want to buy off our politicians even worse. Lovely.

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Our own managing editor here at Crooks and Liars, Tina Dupuy was a guest on Cenk Uygur's The Young Turks on Current TV this Friday night as part of his Power Panel segment, along with The Huffington Post's Amanda Terkel and Lucia Graves, and participated in a discussion on Newt Gingrich's recent rise in the polls and on whether overall President Obama has been good on women's issues despite the recent decision by HHS's Kathleen Sebelius to restrict access to the morning after pill for teens.

And here is C&L's Richard Eskow from Thursday night's show discussing Mitt Romney's new ad which may just remind Christian Republican voters of his Mormonism and the power play between the Republican elite which wants to see Romney elected and the base which can't stand Romney. And later as part of Uygur's Power Panel discussing the unfortunate bipartisan agreement over the horrible Internet piracy bills being pushed through the Congress and the Defense Authorization Bill.

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Fox's Neil Cavuto and his weekend show panel were terribly upset that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that seniors may die sooner under Rep. Paul Ryan and the GOP's budget plan during testimony before the House Education and the Workforce Committee this week.

Apparently their vote for Ryan's budget has got a lot of Republicans on edge and as Steve Benen noted, some of them are using the same talking points as the Fox pundits did here.

When Rep. Chris Lee (R) resigned in disgrace in February, few expected his seat to change party hands. His Buffalo-area district has been represented by Republicans for a long while, and national Democrats didn’t expect the special election to replace Lee to be competitive at all.

In March, the New York GOP rallied behind Jane Corwin, a well-liked state assemblywoman, and the race in the 26th congressional district appeared to be largely over.

And then a Siena College poll was published, showing Corwin’s lead at just five points over Democrat Kathy Hochul. What happened?

Part of the competitiveness is the result of Jack Davis, an odd millionaire, running as an independent and splitting the right. And the other part is Paul Ryan’s House Republican budget plan. [...]

At this point, the best the Republican campaign can come up with is the charge that Democrats “are trying to scare seniors.” But that’s awfully weak — it’s not demagoguery if it’s true, and if accurate descriptions of the GOP plan end up scaring people, that’s certainly not Democrats’ fault.

During this segment on Cavuto's show they were a bit long on fearmongering themselves and short on just what the details of Ryan's plan are, even though all of them continually maintained that the people attacking it don't know what's in it and need to go read it. And Steve is exactly right on the "scare tactic" talking point; that's a terribly weak argument. Seniors are afraid and upset because once they get a look at the GOP's budget plan and the details, they don't like it, not because they don't realize fully what it means for Medicare - privatizing it.

Of course the panel here just repeated the tired talking point that Medicare needs to be and handed over to the private insurance industry in order to "save it."

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Ed Schultz takes Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich to task for some of their recent comments at the wingnut so called Values Voters Summit last week. Here's what Huckabee had to say about people with pre-existing conditions.

It sounds so good, and it’s such a warm message to say we’re not gonna deny anyone from a preexisting condition. Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you something from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle [to] our property insurance. And you can call your insurance agent and say, “I’d like to buy some insurance for my house.” He’d say, “Tell me about your house.” “Well sir, it burned down yesterday, but I’d like to insure it today.” And he’ll say “I’m sorry, but we can’t insure it after it’s already burned.” Well, no preexisting conditions.”

And here's Gingrich:

GINGRICH: When Secretary Sebelius said the other day she would punish insurance companies that told the truth about the cost of Obamacare, she was behaving exactly in the spirit of the Soviet tyranny. And if she’s going to represent left-wing thought police about Obamacare, she should be forced to resign by the new Congress.

This idea that we the people have to tolerate some bureaucrat being paid with our taxes to dictate free speech to us should end in January by the Republican Congress zeroing out her office and explaining that they would be glad to pay for it when someone is there who recognizes the rights of the American people.

Ed followed with some rah-rahing for the health care bill and insisting that Democrats shouldn't be running away from the issue this election cycle. I can understand why any of them that wanted single payer are going to have a hard time defending this weak tea that got passed instead. But as I've said all along, Republicans aren't going to do anything to improve it if they get back in charge. They'll either repeal or de-fund it and make it worse. They have absolutely no interest in doing anything to help anyone but the rich in the United States. And like Mike Huckabee who claims to be a religious man, they don't who care who dies while they play politics.

And the fact that crazy Newt Gingrich still has as much influence over Republican policy making and is considered credible by the party tells you about all you need to know about. The wingnuts have completely taken over the party.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told ABC's Matthew Dowd that health care reform has been slowed by attempts to get support from Republicans. "I think part of the pace of this debate was a real attempt to have a bipartisan approach," said Sebelius.

(Nicole:) What a polite way to say "If the Republicans weren't such lying, fear-mongering obstructionists, we'd be in a much better place right now." And even with all the assistance the Republicans are receiving from the media, who NEVER challenge their oft-repeated meme that Americans don't want reform, a recent Gallup poll shows that Americans actually are seeing past the gamesmanship and trust Obama more than the Republicans.

This Gallup poll released yesterday notes:

Americans remain more confident in the healthcare reform recommendations of President Obama (49%) than in the recommendations of the Democratic (37%) or Republican (32%) leaders in Congress. But these confidence levels are lower than those measured in June, suggesting that the ongoing healthcare reform debate has taken a toll on the credibility of the politicians involved.

I'd imagine those numbers would be significantly higher if we didn't have such an enabling media, only too happy to mis-inform the public. As Plumline points out, the majority of those polled in key states support the public option over the watered down Senate bill.

SEBELIUS: Well, actually, I think part of the pace of this debate was a real attempt to have a bipartisan approach. The House bill had Republican support. In the Senate bill, there were months spent with six senators, three Republicans and three Democrats, in a room, negotiating, adding ideas to the bill, trying to figure out a strategy to move forward in a bipartisan fashion.

As you know, the Senate bill didn't pass 50 plus one, it passed with 60 votes, a supermajority, and I think the president would love to have Republican votes. What he has is lots of Republican ideas -- selling insurance across state lines, making sure that we crack down very aggressively on fraud and abuse, you know, moving forward.

But there is a fundamental difference. The Republicans feel strongly that insurance companies should have less regulation than they do now, less consumer protection, less oversight. The president feels strongly that we need to change the rules of the road, that we can no longer have a private health system where insurance companies get to pick and choose, where they can lock people out and price people out. And that's really one of the fundamental divides. And even though there are lots of Republican ideas in the bill, I'm not sure -- you know, we are hopeful that there will be Republican votes, but I'm not sure there will be.

So yes, in the strictest sense, the Republicans are correct: Americans are not happy about the Senate bill. But not because they don't want health care reform, but because they want a STRONGER bill. That's not going to happen if the Republicans have anything to do with it, so while the attempt to reach out for a bipartisan solution was admirable, it's long past the time to just get it done.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told CNN's John King that insurance co-ops could work in place of a government insurance option. Sebelius said that there should be "choice and competition" but a public option was not "essential."

"I think what's important is choice and competition and I'm convinced at the end of the day, the plan will have both of those. But [a public option] is not the essential element," said Sebelius.