GOP Presidential Candidates Support Constitutional Amendments Outlawing Common Forms Of Birth Control

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) told Fox News host Mike Huckabee this weekend that he would support an amendment to his state’s constitution to define life as beginning at conception:

HUCKABEE: Would you have supported a constitutional amendment that would have established definition of life beginning of life at conception?

ROMNEY: Absolutely.

Constitutional amendment give legal rights to fertilized eggs go much farther than merely outlawing abortions. As ThinkProgress’ Marie Diamond noted, they could also have the effect of outlawing common forms of birth control, since contraceptives like the pill and IUDs can prevent fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s uterus. Personhood amendments consider these types of birth control a form of abortion, and could potentially even treat them the same as homicide. If these amendments make terminating pregnancy a criminal act, they would also deter doctors from saving the lives of women with abnormal pregnancies because any doctor performing an abortion could risk prosecution.

Some of the Republican presidential field’s more radical candidates like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich have already voiced support for giving legal rights to unborn children, but it’s surprising coming from Romney considering that he was staunchly pro-choice for much of his political career.

New Voting Laws Could Keep 5 Million Voters From The Polls In 2012

Strict voting laws in states across the country could affect up to five million voters from traditionally Democratic demographics in 2012, according to a new report (PDF) by the Brennan Center. That's a number larger than the margin of victory in two of the last three presidential elections.

In 2011, Texas and 17 other state legislatures across the country debated a requirement to have voters show one of a very limited selection of government issued photo identification to polling place officials to qualify to vote. The motivation for this legislative discussion is the widely distributed conservative allegation that Democratic voters commonly commit in-person voting impersonation fraud to qualify to vote.

Van Jones Calls For Progressive Push Back Against Tea Party

Van Jones, president of the progressive organization Rebuild the Dream, joins The Last Word to discuss what Washington should be doing about jobs. Jones calls the US' deficit problem "phony" and made up.

Van Jones

"Hold on to your hats, we're going to have an October offensive to take back the American dream and rescue America's middle class," Jones told MSNBC's "The Last Word."

Jones is talking about the Take Back the American Dream conference, organized by the Campaign for America's Future with support from Rebuild the Dream, will be happening on October 3 - 5 in Washington, DC. Find out more and register online.

Jones was President Obama's "green jobs czar" until he resigned in fall of 2009.

Transcript below:

CNN Poll: Tea Party Unfavorability Up 27 Points Since January 2010

The Tea Party movement has had some PR problems since the almost-default of the summertime debt fight.

TPM has reported on the increasingly negative view of the conservative movement Americans have taken, and on Tuesday there was more bad news: CNN polling, which has tracked the Tea Party’s popularity since January 2010, shows that a majority of Americans now views it unfavorably.

The poll shows that only 28 percent of Americans do view the Tea Party favorably, versus a full 53 percent who don’t. The poll shows that less than twenty percent don’t have an opinion of Tea Partiers, which is the lowest yet — an issue on polling the movement has been that many Americans simply didn’t know enough about it. That has clearly changed since the beginning of last year.

In January 2010, the Tea Party was actually viewed favorabilty by a plurality in the CNN poll, with 33 having a positive view against 26 percent. That unfavorable number continued to grow through out the midterm elections of 2010 (in which a number Tea Party endorsed candidates won) and started to really climb during the period which the Tea Party contingent in Congress has had an effect on policy. Throughout 2011 their unfavorability has been in the high forties and now the fifties.

CNN is not the only organization to find that the Tea Party brand is suffering. A recent AP poll found a similar trend, although the CNN survey showed unfavorability within the same time period to be higher.

The news comes as GOP presidential candidates are trying to vie for the conservative base of the Republican Party, which contains the Tea Party advocates, while still maintaing their viability within a general election. But the more unpopular the Tea Party becomes, the larger the gulf between the primary audience and the general election electorate becomes.

The Tea Party, Right-Wing Media and the Dog That Didn't Bark