Is this man trying to ensure his recall is successful? This is purely heartless.

Q.

The only word I can use to describe this is cruel, despicably cruel:

Madison – Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.

Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some – but not all – of the rights afforded married couples.

Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.

Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen refused to defend the lawsuit, saying he agreed the new law violated the state constitution. Then-Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, hired Madison attorney Lester Pines to defend the state.

Walker, a Republican, replaced Doyle in January and fired Pines in March. On Friday, Walker filed a motion to stop defending the case.

“Governor Walker, in deference to the legal opinion of the attorney general that the domestic partner registry…is unconstitutional, does not believe the public interest requires a continued defense of this law,” says the brief, filed by Walker’s chief counsel, Brian Hagedorn.

Hagedorn told Dane County Circuit Judge Daniel Moeser that if he could not withdraw from the case, he would like to amend earlier filings to reflect Walker’s belief that the registries conflict with the state constitution.

Even if Walker is allowed to withdraw from the case, the law would still be defended in court because gay rights group Fair Wisconsin intervened in the case last year.

Fair Wisconsin attorney Christopher Clark said the governor’s move raises legal questions.

“It’s not clear to me that a defendant in a lawsuit… can simply walk away from a lawsuit or withdraw,” he said.

I won’t speak to the legal side of this issue because I’m not up to speed on it, but I really have to wonder what kind of person would seek to prevent two people who are in a relationship from making whatever arrangements they want to allow the other to visit them in the hospital, and what right the state has to tell hospitals that they cannot honor those requests.

Is the GOP hatred for gays so pervasive that they could really be this cold and heartless?

Put your money where your mouth is…

Q.

 

Mark Seliger for TIME

Warren Buffett is ready to call Republicans’ tax bluff. Last fall, Senator Mitch McConnell said that if Buffett was feeling “guilty” about paying too little in taxes, he should “send in a check.” The jab was in response to Buffett’s August 2011 New York Times op-ed, which made hay of the fact that our tax system is so unbalanced that Buffett (worth about $45 billion) pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Senator John Thune promptly introduced the “Buffett Rule Act,” an option on tax forms that would allow the rich to donate more in taxes to help pay down the national debt. It was, as Buffett told me for this week’s TIME cover story, “A tax policy only a Republican could come up with.”

Still, he’s willing to take them up on it. “It restores my faith in human nature to think that there are people who have been around Washington all this time and are not yet so cynical as to think that [the deficit] can’t be solved by voluntary contributions,” he says with a chuckle. So, Buffett has pledged to match one for one all such voluntary contributions made by Republican members of Congress. “And, I’ll even go three for one for McConnell.” That could be quite a bill if McConnell takes the challenge; after all, the Senator is worth at least $10 million. As Buffett put it to me: “I’m not worried.”

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/01/11/warren-buffett-to-mitch-mcconnell-put-up-or-shut-up/#ixzz1jBlc5z7S

First Posted: 06/15/11 12:52 PM ET Updated: 06/15/11 02:19 PM ET

Republican state representatives in North Carolina voted to override Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto of the state budget Wednesday morning, ensuring that a provision to strip all federal and state money from Planned Parenthood will take effect on July 1. North Carolina is now the third state, after Indiana and Kansas, to defund the family planning provider because it also provides abortions.

Planned Parenthood of North Carolina (PPNC), which has nine clinics across the state, provides affordable birth control, preventative health care and family planning services to over 25,000 men and women. Without the $434,000 a year it usually receives in state and federal funds, Planned Parenthood says it will now have to axe its teen pregnancy prevention and adolescent parenting programs and force its low-income patients to pay out of pocket.

“The biggest impact is gonna be on the men and women we serve,” said Melissa Reed, vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood Health Systems. “There are 12- to 14-week waits for women to get into the health department for birth control or breast cancer screenings, but we can see patients the very same week. The health department relies on Planned Parenthood to fill that gap, and now we will be prohibited from serving as that essential safety net provider.”

PPNC receives funds through the Title X Family Planning Program and state-funded birth control programs as a way to provide discounted pap tests, cancer screenings and birth control for low-income, uninsured patients. The Hyde Amendment prevents state and federal money from being used to pay for abortions.

Unlike Indiana, which blocked Planned Parenthood’s ability to contract with Medicaid, North Carolina clinics will continue to be able to serve Medicaid recipients. It’s the low-income, uninsured patients who don’t qualify for Medicaid that will now be falling through the cracks, Reed said, since PPNC will no longer be able to offer them the same low-cost services.

Conservative state lawmakers have been flogging Planned Parenthood for its association with abortions this past week during debates over the defunding bill and another bill that would restrict access to abortions. Rep. Pat McElraft (R-Emerald Isle) told her colleagues on the House Floor a tearful story about her nephew and his girlfriend’s experience with Planned Parenthood 14 years ago.

“She went to Planned Parenthood, asked them what her choices were,” she said. “They told her she would have a deformed baby because of her drug use, her only option was abortion.”

“He went with her to what she describes as a very dark house. In that very dark house, a nurse attended to her. My nephew asked the nurse if she could at least see the ultrasound. The nurse said, ‘I can’t do that, I’ll get fired.’”

McElroy later admitted that the incident happened in Georgia, not North Carolina, and that the “dark house” where the abortion occurred was actually not a Planned Parenthood clinic. The family planning provider estimates that abortions account for less than 3 percent of the services it provides.

According to a recent poll, 57 percent of North Carolina voters oppose the measure to defund Planned Parenthood and teen pregnancy prevention programs, and Reed said people have already started sending donations to keep PPNC afloat.

“Beginning at 7:30 a.m. this morning, we had donations coming in,” she told HuffPost. “North Carolinians really support Planned Parenthood and are stepping up to support our efforts.”

Planned Parenthood of Indiana received an unprecedented $116,000 in donations from across the world after it was defunded in May, allowing it to continue serving its Medicaid patients for more than a month after the bill took effect.

Reed said PPNC is now considering all options — including litigation against the state — to hang onto its low-income patients. A similar lawsuit is currently being heard in Indiana.

“They are using the budget to punish Planned Parenthood for other services we provide, such as abortion care, which does not even use any of this money,” Reed said. “They can’t legally do that.”

Like the House, the North Carolina Senate is expected to vote to override the veto. That vote is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

Posted: 05/20/11 06:05 PM ET

Lawmakers in Wisconsin and Tennessee advanced legislation this week to pull state funding from Planned Parenthood because some of its clinics offer abortions.

Wisconsin’s Joint Finance Committee voted Wednesday to block state family planning grants from any group that separately provides abortions or abortion referrals, even though those funds cannot legally be used to pay for abortions. The restriction would cut nearly a million dollars a year from nine Planned Parenthood clinics across Wisconsin, which serve a total of 12,000 rural and low-income men and women.

The committee also voted to drop men from BadgerCare Plus, Wisconsin’s state family planning program that is covered by Medicaid, and to lower the income eligibility threshold for the program.

“What they’re trying to do makes our family planning program so dramatically different from what it was that the federal government could say, “This isn’t what we agreed on,’ and the program ends,” said a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. BadgerCare currently serves 60,000 patients in Wisconsin, many of whom have very limited access to low-cost preventative care and family planning services.

Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) said he would make further cuts to Planned Parenthood if he could, because he believes the organization promotes abortion, despite statistics that say abortions account for less than 3 percent of its services.

“There’s a very ugly side to this organization, and I regret that they’re going to take such a tiny cut in this budget,” Grothman said.

The Tennessee Senate passed a bill Thursday night, meanwhile, that would pull all Title X family planning funds from “third party providers or private organizations or entities,” which effectively singles out Planned Parenthood. Title X grants support Planned Parenthood’s family planning services for low-income patients, including birth control and STD screenings. No Title X grants pay for abortions.

Planned Parenthood estimates that the defunding in Tennessee would impact three clinics and a total of 9,000 patients. The organization is busy working on a contingency plan that would keep its doors open.

“One thing that’s sure is none of our clinics will close. It’s gonna be difficult, but we’re committed to providing service to the women in need,” said Jeff Teague, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee.

Teague said the defunding will likely force Planned Parenthood’s low-income patients to start absorbing more medical costs.

“We’re gonna have to ask them to help pay for some of their care,” he told HuffPost. “It’s a particular challenge now during the bad economy, and Tennessee is a rural and poor state, so it’s gonna put an additional burden on the population least likely to afford it. In a lot of cases, that means they are going to lose access to health care.”

A 2009 report by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research and advocacy group, found that a majority of low-income women consider a family planning center like Planned Parenthood their primary health care provider. Seventy-three percent of Planned Parenthood clinics are located in rural or medically under-served areas, according to the organization’s own data.

Indiana and Kansas both voted to cut state funds from Planned Parenthood earlier this month, and similar legislation is being considered in Texas and Oklahoma. Conservative lawmakers say they are concerned about taxpayer money being used to fund abortions, although the Hyde amendment has banned taxpayer-funded abortions for 30 years.

“Lawmakers have become so obsessed with abortion that they can’t overlook that this is bad public health policy and bad policy overall,” Teague said. “Ultimately, the lack of preventative care is just going to end up driving up medical costs for the state.”

Rachel Maddow continuing her coverage of anti-abortion legislation in the US.

Q.