[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

RELATED: Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum.

Incredibly, this is completely absurd and totally accurate. To quote the Wicked Witch: Oh, what a world!

BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY There is, perhaps, no more efficient way to remind yourself that you are no longer 22 than to walk the aisles of Urban Outfitters. For the postcollegiate slackerati it is a mecca of precisely modulated urban hipster cool, a time-warp thrift store aesthetic filtered through a retrograde prism of detached irony and kitsch–proof positive of the fashion adage that everything, no matter how uncool, comes back into style eventually. This is readily apparent to anyone old enough to remember when most of these styles were cool for the first time. Rule of thumb: It takes only 20 years to rehabilitate even the most heinous fashion travesty back into must-have chic.

As of last week, Urban Outfitters was rocking a late ’70s, early ’80s zeitgeist–somewhere between the feathered hair Camaro summer of That ’70s Show and the New Wave striped shirt Martha Quinn-ness of early MTV. There are the straight-out-of-the-time-capsule T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “Jive Turkey,” “Death Before Disco” and “Atari.” There are the old-school Pumas, Adidas and Tigers in a dozen shades of retro. There are kitschy toys like Mr. Potatohead and Bubble Monkey, Run-D.M.C. action figures and the DeLorean time machine car from Back to the Future–some assembly required.

There are de rigueur fashion accessories like mesh-back Pabst Blue Ribbon trucker caps, bucket hats, chrome-studded belts and thick leather wristbands. For the boys, there are $69 distressed low-rider denim flares and button-down summer shirts last seen on Greg Brady. For the girls, there are Dr. Scholl’s slides, MIA since the Carter administration. There are bright-colored tank tops with white trash nudge-and-wink slogans like “JUGTOWN PENNSYLVANIA” and “FRENCH LICK INDIANA.” There are floppy ’70s-style halter tops, ’80s cropped parachute pants and Muppets panties emblazoned with the visages of Kermit and Miss Piggy.

The interior of the flagship store at 17th and Walnut streets is stylized to evoke what can only be described as janitorial chic: exposed brick, scraped plaster walls and low-hanging ventilation ducts. Everything is illuminated by the soft glow of warehouse loft light fixtures. All the merchandise is displayed against pegboard backdrops faintly reminiscent of ye olde family rec room or dad’s workshop. And piped in over the sound system is the jarring electro clatter of Peanut Butter Wolf’s oh-so-appropriately titled album Badmeaningood.

YET DESPITE ITS SLACKER AURA and carefully calibrated antiestablishmentarian cachet, Urban Outfitters Inc. is in fact a very Establishment, hypercapitalist multinational retail concern with 51 stores in North America and flagship locations in London, Dublin and Glasgow. Urban Outfitters also owns and operates 40 Anthropologie stores (the 41st store opens this Friday), which peddle a variety of upscale apparel and housewares to women aged 30 to 45. The company also markets a wholesale line of housewares and apparel called Free People to approximately 1,100 retail clients.In fiscal year 2003, a year when most retailers’ bottom lines crapped out, Urban Outfitters opened 13 new stores and posted a company record of $423 million in sales — with net profits jumping up a whopping 83 percent over the previous year to $27.4 million. But the difference between stage-crafted storefront image and corporate reality doesn’t end there. It extends all the way to the top, to the man who built the company from scratch — Richard Hayne, Urban Outfitters’ president and founder.

While the typical Urban Outfitters shopper is likely to be liberal-minded — as is the province and privilege of youth — the fiftysomething Hayne is mom-and-apple-pie conservative. He and his wife Margaret have contributed $13,150 to the campaign coffers of Paleolithic right-wing Republican Sen. Rick Santorum and his Political Action Committee over the years. Hayne, who would prefer this fact not appear in this story, did not always tilt hard to the right. In fact, he and the retail concern he founded came of age in the heady, longhaired lefty crucible of the ’60s. Back then he was vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration that perpetrated it and the big business military-industrial complex that financed it.

The times, however, have a-changed. MORE