Congressman Ike Skelton (D – MO)

Apparently, for Congressman Ike Skelton (D), it is.

I just called his Washington office and the nice person on the other end of the phone, in response to my question, “Now that Congressman Stupak is supporting the health care reform bill, will Congressman Skelton vote for it?,” responded, “No…”

Remember this, from 1993?:

…The turning point for Margolies-Mezvinsky came when she made a last-minute switch to support the 1993 Clinton budget after months of publicly voicing her opposition to the bill because it did not contain enough spending cuts. During her campaign, she had promised not to raise taxes, and the budget proposed a hike in federal taxes, including a gasoline tax. On the day of the vote, she appeared on television and told her constituents that she was against the budget. Minutes before the vote, however, on August 5, 1993, President Clinton called to ask Margolies-Mezvinsky to support the measure. She told him that only if it was the deciding vote-in this case, the 218th yea-would she support the measure. “I wasn’t going to do it at 217. I wasn’t going to do it at 219. Only at 218, or I was voting against it,” she recalled. She also extracted a promise from Clinton that if she did have to vote for the budget package, that he would attend a conference in her district dedicated to reducing the budget deficit. He agreed (and later fulfilled the pledge). Nevertheless, Margolies-Mezvinsky told Clinton “I think I’m falling on a political sword on this one.” When she finally walked onto the House Floor to cast the decisive vote, passing the measure 218 to 216, Democrats cheered while Republicans jeered, “Goodbye, Marjorie!” She later recalled that “I knew at the time that changing my vote at the 11th hour may have been tantamount to political suicide…. [but] the vote would resolve itself into one simple question: Was my political future more important than the agenda the President had laid out for America?”…

[emphasis added]

A freshman legislator had to be the deciding vote while long time (and safer) incumbents couldn’t exhibit any political courage.

You know, we elect people to office to make the right decisions, not to be frightened by half truths, opposition distortions, the propaganda arm of the rnc, or crazy people. It’s not supposed to be too much to ask to do the right thing. But, apparently, it is in Missouri.

I expressed my extreme disappointment to that nice person on the other end of the phone.

A recent LTE in the Washington Missourian called for “tough” abortion language in the federal health care/insurance reform bill and read like a memo from Bart Stupak.  How did we allow anti-abortion zealots to become so powerful?  They can terrorize the entire Congress of the United States just by stamping their feet.

In my reply to the Missourian, I pointed out that these are often the same people who attend “freedom” rallies and spout nonsense about Obama being a socialist/fascist.  (Which is like being a vegetarian and a carnivore simultaneously)

But when it comes to things they don’t want the rest of us to do, “freedom” isn’t even part of the equation.  Their definition of freedom – good.  Anyone else’s definition of freedom – bad.

They want to tell women who buy health insurance with their own money that they can’t be covered for reproductive health services.  Can you imagine the howls of protest if someone told these jokers that they couldn’t buy something with their own money?

And now they want to change the definition of “person” by amending the Missouri Constiution.

A group called Personhood Missouri is circulating petitions that will ask us in November if we approve that

the term “person” shall apply to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?  If it weren’t so serious, this would make a great Far Side cartoon.  Remember the one where the “boneless chickens” are hanging all over the fences and barn doors at the “boneless chicken ranch?”  I can see globs of menstrual discharge sitting around a courtroom demanding their rights.

If fertilized eggs have rights, the women in whose bodies they hang out are mere incubators.  If I didn’t know better, and I don’t, I’d say the religious extremists who preach male dominance have a hand in this effort to return to the dark ages when wives were property and pregnant spinsters were witches.

I, for one, won’t sign this petition if asked.