After all, that is what the American people voted for last November, rape audits.

ThinkProgress notes the hypocrisy of the GOP Congress' claim that every bigoted piece of legislation deserves a lawyer when they don't believe that actual human beings, especially poor people and women beaten by their husbands, deserves lawyers.

During debate over the bill, Democrats portrayed Planned Parenthood clinics as a major provider of many types of health services to low income women, while Republicans claimed that Planned Parenthood steers pregnant women into getting abortions."For every 33 pregnant women that w …

It appears a lot lately that the far right politicians in Congress are working hard to try to cause harm to America.

My question is this, do you think the Far Right is purposely trying to hurt America, or are they doing it because they don't know any better?

What are your thoughts on this?

I've been fasting for 17 days in solidarity with the hunger fast for a moral budget because something incredible is happening in our country, and we haven't seen anything like it in 30 years. When introduced on February 11, H.R. 1, the FY2011 spending bill approved by the House, proposed $100 billion in cuts to this year's budget. Two-thirds of H.R.1's cuts will directly affect working and poor people.

Then, on April 5, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) introduced a 2012 budget that is much, much, much worse than H.R.1. Ryan's budget would put all the burden for balancing the budget on poor people, while at the same time cutting the tax rate for people in the top income bracket from 35 percent to 25 percent.

As one can see. The Tea-Party is NOT about reducing the budget but about shoving their ideology down our throats.

It's been rough, I get it. I don't blame you for staying home during the midterms, but I warned you that it might result in all those Tea Party folks snagging some seats in Congress and the House going to the Republicans. Well, unfortunately, I was right and here we are, right back where we were 16 years ago (that's the last time we had a Democratic president facing off against a Republican House leader over the federal budget). It's no fun, let me tell you.

Only this time the stand off almost crippled our already hobbled economy which would have sent us back into the danger zone.

Despite a recent poll in which 63 percent of respondents said the economy was the most important thing the president has to deal with (followed by unemployment at 54 percent and health care at 52 percent), the issue that almost broke the budget was … wait for it … abortion.

The deadline was Friday midnight—or a government shutdown, right?

Well, it turns out it was 12:28 a.m. when a temporary measure to keep government running for another week actually received final passage by the House. And after that, President Obama waited until Saturday afternoon to sign it.

In fact, that bill to give lawmakers more time to work on final legislative language on their handshake agreement regarding a longer-term spending bill for the remainder of this fiscal year didn't even arrive on the House floor for passage until 12:05 a.m.—five minutes after the stroke of midnight.

On the other side was a strong-willed Obama, who mostly succeeded in forcing Republicans to cave in on dozens of controversial conservative policy prescriptions — including rolling back environmental protections and cutting off Planned Parenthood from taxpayer assistance while protecting favored programs like education, clean energy and medical research.

It was, in short, the type of split-the-differences deal that a political scientist might have predicted from the start, given the realities of divided government.

Like a child screaming for attention, U.S. senate Tea Party members, look to shut down the U.S. government. The party that professes to be against government intervention into anything , is using government and it's "shutting down" to remain relevant and to get back to center stage. After getting a closer look at the Tea Party, mainstream America has been decidedly turned off by their extreme views on every issue that comes along. That, and the fact that the further to the right the democrats and moderate republicans move, still further to the right our fanatical Tea Party moves.

The aide said negotiators from the House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the White House met for a final time Friday evening, finally agreeing to a figure of roughly $38 billion. Each side made some final concessions: Democrats agreed to add half a billion dollars in additional cuts to mandatory spending, while Republicans agreed that no language related to Planned Parenthood and Title X funding would be in the short-term funding bill.

They finished negotiations only an hour and a half before government funding expired. If one chamber had not moved by about 11 p.m., the government would have begun to shut down, the aide said.

Negotiators from the House, Senate, and White House have hammered out a tentative deal to fund the government for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year. That deal gives Republicans most of what they wanted and saves Democrats only from a few policy riders that they'd feared. It cuts, reportedly, $39 billion of spending, and that's $8 billion more than Republicans had started asking for in February, when this process started. 

Democrats and Republicans agreed on a budget deal and a short-term funding extension a little more than an hour before a partial government shutdown would have occurred. The short-term deal will fund the government through the middle of next week.

Without the agreement, the government's massive gears would have come to a halt early Saturday, limiting federal services and payrolls.

If the negotiations had failed, approximately 800,000 government workers would have been furloughed.

Military families had worried about the future of their income.

BREAKING: House Speaker John Boehner outlined the parameters of a long-term funding deal, telling his members in a closed-door meeting, "This is the best deal we could get out of them," according to a lawmaker in the room who asked not to be identified. 

The deal is still not official, Boehner cautioned, but in a sign things are coming to a close, the House is preparing for a 5-6-day short-term continuing resolution with $3 billion in cuts, he told members, according to the lawmaker. The meeting is still underway.

The House of Representatives voted Friday to overturn net neutrality rules created by the FCC in December.

The vote, which fell mostly along partisan lines with 234 Republicans and 6 Democrats voting yes, and 177 Democrats and 2 Republicans voting no. The short bill relies on Congress's authority to override regulatory agencies, rather than revoking funding for the FCC.

In the past year, California has experienced the worst whopping cough outbreak in more than 50 years, an epidemic that has killed 10 infants and resulted in 6,400 reported cases. But even as the state's public health officials have struggled to curb the disease, Republicans in Congress have proposed slashing millions in federal funding for immunization programs. Public health advocates warn that these cuts threaten efforts across the country to prevent and contain infectious and sometimes fatal diseases. And they add that lower vaccination rates could eventually result in more outbreaks that endanger public health at a major cost to taxpayers.

After an all-night session, House Republicans early Saturday morning passed legislation that would slash $60 billion in government spending between now and the end of September, setting up a showdown with President Barack Obama, who has vowed to veto the measure.

The cuts, which were passed without a single Democratic vote, are aimed primarily at domestic social spending but also have policy goals -- going after the Environmental Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the House GOP leadership has come out strong with an anti-abortion agenda only weeks into the 112th Congress. A November meeting foreshadowed the fate of reproductive rights under the House's new leadership: Randall Terry, an anti-abortion extremist whose work incites violence and has been called "domestic terrorism," met with soon-to-be Speaker John Boehner's chief of staff. In the anti-abortion world, it doesn't get more extreme than Randall Terry.

What's striking, and drawing less attention, is that the invigorated attack on women's health on Capitol Hill is just the beginning. The November elections also swept in a wave of anti-choice state governments, where the fight against reproductive rights has become increasingly defined by race baiting meant to divide the pro-choice community.

It was reported today that the White House was compelled to delay a post - election meeting between President Obama and heads of the G.O.P., due to a no-show by the heads of the Republican party.

If you ask Republicans around the country, they'll probably tell you that Tuesday's election results were all about pushing back against excessive government spending. Problem is, they may have forgotten to elect anyone who's actually planning on real budget cuts.