[Artowrk by DONKEY HOTEY]
THINK PROGRESS: Rick Santorum reiterated his belief that states should have the right to outlaw contraception during an interview with ABC News yesterday, saying, “The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have.” Santorum has long opposed the Supreme Court’s 1965 ruling “that invalidated a Connecticut law banning contraception” and has also pledged to completely defund federal funding for contraception if elected president. As he told CaffeinatedThoughts.com editor Shane Vander Hart in October, “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” the former Pennsylvania senator explained. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” MORE
RELATED: The effort to repeal President Obama’s health care legislation, he said, is about whether the government can permanently get “their hooks” into people’s lives. “It’s an issue about whether we are going to be a free people or not,” he told the crowd of about 150 people. MORE
RELATED: Behind the sweater vests, the faith and family, and the self-definition as a congressional reformer lies another Rick Santorum. This Rick Santorum favors big business, curries favor from lobbyists, and helped to bind the Washington influence industry to the Republican Party while serving in Congress. Beginning in 2001, after Republicans seized control of Congress and the White House, then-Sen. Santorum (R-Pa.) began hosting Tuesday morning meetings with a select group of lobbyists. These meetings were part of a larger plan — originally launched in the 1990s by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), conservative activist Grover Norquist and others when the GOP retook the House of Representatives after 40 years of Democratic control — to pressure lobbying firms and trade associations to dump their Democratic lobbyists and replace them with Republicans. Named after the Washington business corridor famous for housing lobbying firms, the K Street Project was aimed at installing a permanent Republican majority in Washington. MORE
MORE: [Santorum] is a Catholic, and while many of his more socially conservative positions have endeared him to the evangelical community, they actually conflict with the teachings of his own church…Santorum has been one of the most prominent congressional defenders of intelligent design and the teaching of creationism. But the Catholic Church has long been supportive of evolution. In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared that there is no conflict between the Catholic faith and the scientific study of evolution, and Pope John Paul II went further in 1996, stating that science had produced an enormous body of persuasive evidence in favor of evolution…In addition to evolution, Santorum has broken with both the Church and scientists on the issue of climate change. Santorum is a staunch climate change denier, declaring climate change a ‘scheme’ of the ‘left’ that serves as ‘an excuse for more government control of your life.’ MORE
MORE: Rick Santorum today rejected the argument that Osama bin Laden’s death was a direct result of President Obama’s leadership. Instead, Santorum argued, George W. Bush got the ball down court, evaded a double team and tossed it up for his wide open successor. “The Obama administration has been an abject failure on every front on foreign policy when it comes to problems that have come up on his watch,” he said during a campaign stop. “And of course he would say, ‘Oh, we got bin Laden’…Getting bin Laden was a continuation of policy that was set by the Bush administration. All he did, and I give him credit, after being pressured for a long time, in which he held off on all the reports, he finally conceded to go after him. And I think it was the right move…But that wasn’t a strategic decision.” MORE
Incredibly, this is completely absurd and totally accurate. To quote the Wicked Witch: Oh, what a world!