Dear Commons Community,

Various news media reported this morning that Indiana Republican U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock declared Tuesday night he opposes aborting pregnancies conceived in rape because “it is something that God intended to happen.”

Debating Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) in their final Senate race showdown, a questioner asked them and Libertarian candidate Andrew Horning to explain their views on abortion.

All three said they were anti-abortion. But Mourdock went the further, putting himself in territory near Missouri GOP Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin, the anti-abortion congressman who infamously asserted that women don’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape.”

“The only exception I have to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother,” said Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed state treasurer. “I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Will the true God(s) please save us from this insanity.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd has an interesting post-presidential debate column today in the New York Times.  She takes shots at both President Obama and Mitt Romney.

On Obama:

“Obama’s endless odyssey of self-discovery, where he rattles around in his own head, trying to figure out who he is…”

On Romney:

“If Romney gets to the Situation Room, will we see Cipher Mitt, the vessel of the neocons? Or will we see Moderate Mitt, chastising the hawks…It’s impossible to know. Mitt may have made so many compromises to get the prize that he doesn’t have a true self anymore. And that’s the scariest thought of all.”

Dowd also suggests that a fitting conclusion to this election would be if it ended in an electoral college tie with Mitt Romney then being elected president by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Joe Biden elected vice president by the Democratic-controlled Senate.  “And we can count on good ol’ Joe devoting himself to tormenting President Mittens” for the next four years.

Tony