Hey, speaking of putting up a fight, how about that Superior Court Judge Derek G. Johnson? What a card! Back in 2008, the Orange County judge was handing down a sentence on Metin Gurel, who'd been convicted of "rape, forcible oral copulation, domestic battery, stalking and making threats against his former live-in girlfriend." Prosecutors, who'd asked for a 16-year term for the man, noted that on the day of the assault, he'd also threatened to mutilate the victim's genitals with a heated screwdriver. And what did Derek G. Johnson think of what Gurel had done? Not a whole heck of a lot.

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"And," Hughes continues, "if another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue. The college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion of 'legitimate rape.'"

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First, there's Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin. You remember Akin, the guy who really got the right-wingers-saying-insane-things-about-rape ball rolling back in August. That's when he explained his stance on rape exceptions for abortion by authoratively declaring, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Akin, who is now trailing his opponent Claire McCaskill – though not by as much as one might expect for a hulking ignoramus – has now unleashed a new ad featuring voters like Kelly, a single mother who says she's both had an abortion and "been raped in my past." Kelly goes on to say she's voting for Akin because he "defends the unborn."

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Right Wing Watch flags that in 1992, Akin opposed the bill, which would have established a "'statewide child abuse review board' and tighten[ed] the standard for proving child abuse from 'reason to suspect' to 'credible evidence.'"

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported at the time:

"Akin said he was concerned that ‘the department could come into your home and if your kid had just fallen off his bike and skinned his knee…take your kid away.’ Akin also said that with a loose definition of abuse, neighbors might use child-abuse reports ‘as a tool to harass, a way to get even with’ someone they dislike."

The editorial board of the Post-Dispatch slammed Akin's opposition to the bill, saying that he "resorts to extreme and unlikely examples to bolster his case."

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I know what you’re thinking: Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock (pictured with Mitt Romney above) and their unfortunate habit of making comments about rape that drive voters away. No doubt, that’s a part of what’s happened to the Republicans in this cycle.

But as much as Republicans have a real nominations problem, one which probably will cost them more than just those two seats in this cycle, I see no sign at all that the party is going to learn any useful lessons from it. The problem is that the scope of the likely defeat is so broad that everyone is going to be able to find convenient targets for blame.

Remember, this was going to be an election cycle that set up very nicely for Republicans. Because we’re six years out from the 2006 Democratic landslide, the Democrats had to defend 23 seats while only 10 Republicans were up for re-election. Impending Democratic retirements in Nebraska and North Dakota made it seem that getting the three seats needed to reach 50 would be automatic, with the only question being whether Republicans could get close enough that 60 seats after 2014 would be well within reach.

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Todd Akin claims that women can't really get pregnant from a legitimate rape because the body secretes hormones. Now I can't even finish this sentence without getting dumber; it's making me dumber when I say it—but it's something about the body not being able to get pregnant when it's under physical stress. Mr. Akin, I think you are confusing the phrase 'legitimate rape' with the phrase 'competitive gymnastics.'"

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The latest entrant into the Republican rape insensitivity bake-off is Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who said tonight that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." He, of course, joins fellow Senate candidate Todd Akin, with his now-canonical "legitimate rape" comment, and Rep. Joe Walsh, running for election in Illinois, who claimed there was no reason a woman would ever need an abortion to save her life or preserve her health. The trailblazer was Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle, who failed to unseat Harry Reid in Nevada two years ago, and famously said that if a hypothetical teenager was raped and impregnated by her father, it was an opportunity to turn "a lemon situation into lemonade."

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“She goes to Washington, D.C., it’s a little bit like one of those dogs, ‘fetch,’” he said. “She goes to Washington, D.C., and get all of these taxes and red tape and bureaucracy and executive orders and agencies and she brings all of this stuff and dumps it on us in Missouri.”

Rick Tyler, a spokesman for Akin, downplayed the remarks, telling the New York Times that Akin “made an analogy — probably could have made a better one. Everybody’s going to find a reason to get their feelings hurt and get bent out of shape.”

He also joked that Akin “could have said liberals — people actually like dogs.”

Here's the audio of Akin's remarks, via PoliticMo:

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Back in December, the Wisconsin state representative had a few thoughts about a controversial high school sexual assault case and the questions about whether the 14-year-old girl at the center of it had in fact consented to sex. At the time, he dryly observed to the Chetek Alert that "If it's rape, it's rape. If it's not, it's not," adding that his father long ago warned him: "Some girls rape easy." Because apparently the Rivard men are as enlightened about sexual assault as they are about grammar.

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Barbour said he can't pick Akin “out of a line-up with the Spice Girls,” but “I just don’t want us having Harry Reid’s favorite Republican running against Claire McCaskill.”

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The campaign launched a "Women for Akin" vertical on its website on Tuesday, with the tagline “We think for ourselves.” It then promptly pulled it after it was revealed that one of the women pictured as a "woman for Akin" was actually a Democratic operative.

The picture had the headline “I'm a women[sic], and I support Todd,” but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the woman to Akin's left was Corinne Matti, a tracker for the Missouri Democratic Party.

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A National Journal profile quotes Lulli Akin making the comparison between Republicans trying to get Akin out of the Senate race, and the "tyranny, a top-down approach" of pre-Revolutionary America.

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Let us know what you think in the comments.

(Warning: This video contains personal violence and may not be suitable for all viewers).

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You know the one. She's a spurned seductress out for revenge against the man who didn't succumb to her wiles. She's a loose woman trying to deflect blame from herself upon an innocent man. She's just plain crazy. She exists in our fiction and, unfortunately, she sometimes exists in the real world, too. She ruins lives; she sends innocent men to jail. And every single time she appears like a recurring nightmare, she is promptly leveraged as an excuse to impugn the credibility of women in general and rape victims in particular.

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If anything, the anti-choice movement was instrumental in shaping the conservative approach to science. Anti-choicers were among the first to realize that if the experts and the evidence counter your beliefs, you can simply make up your own claims and put them in the mouths of well-credentialed people. It’s just as good as the truth! Better, even, because it can be endlessly manipulated to meet new ideological goals.

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The former teen star, "Origin of the Species" revisionist and the George Clooney of Christian doomsday blockbusters has been on a real roll the past few months. In May, he minced no words in telling Piers Morgan what he thought of homosexuality – that "It’s unnatural, it’s detrimental and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization." In July, he teamed up with the National Organization for Marriage to create a defense of that God-pleasing, man-and-lady institution. God, he declared, "speaks with authority on every subject including marriage, and his advice trumps Oprah’s every time." He added that "the same God who designed the universe designed marriage … and I’ve gotten to know him." So what happened this week was inevitable.

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That candidate, an antiabortion activist told CNN, "kind of has to reestablish contact with the conservative majority of his party." He added, "So, I think he's starting down that process now, and assuming that it continues that way for the rest of the convention, we're going to -- I think conservatives are going to be happy."

It was 1992, and the candidate in question was President George H.W. Bush, who officially backed such exceptions. Back then, pro-choice Republicans, or moderate ones, weren't a wholly endangered species and were putting up a real fight from within. But over the years, the social conservative takeover has made that fight either futile or near-invisible, bringing us to today's GOP call for a Human Life Amendment in its forthcoming party platform. Once again, we have a presidential candidate whose fealty to the Christian right is still being questioned. Once again, the platform language has no exceptions for rape and incest, which is the current position professed by the Romney-Ryan campaign, notwithstanding how temporarily uncomfortable this widespread position has been made by Todd Akin.

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When King was first asked about Akin’s comments at a town hall in Le Mars, Iowa, yesterday, he was more circumspect. Though he refused to condemn Akin, he didn’t support him either, saying he needed to review the Senate candidate's original statement before offering a public opinion. Apparently King has now made up his mind.

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