McCorvey wasn't interviewed for Joshua Prager's profile. "I almost forgot i have a one thousand dollar fee," she texted him when he requested to speak to her. And when he declined to pay, she replied, "Then we wont speak." Why should she, when being Jane Roe has been her job? It's a job that has exasperated pro-choice activists and been exploited by the far right. Just last summer, "legitimate rape" expert Todd Akin erroneously cited her example as "false claims like those made in Roe v. Wade."

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During the year, 19 states enacted 43 provisions to restrict access to abortion services, whether mandating invasive ultrasounds, blocking health insurance coverage, shuttering women's health clinics or limiting access to the morning-after pill and contraception. The record for most restrictions was set in 2011 with 92.

The worst offenders? Arizona ranked No. 1, enacting seven antiabortion restrictions, and Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin followed close behind with at least three restrictions each.

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From The Washington Post:

The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted employees were back. The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations.

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Akin added a provision to the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act that would create a "conscience clause" for members of the military, essentially allowing them to cite their religious beliefs as cover for discriminating against gay and lesbian service members.

Akin's proposal was passed by the House in May with the rest of the NDAA, but it was dropped out of the Senate's version of the bill, which passed earlier this month. But now the bill is back in conference, and Republicans are reportedly pushing to put Akin's amendment back in.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., both of whom vehemently opposed the DADT repeal, are negotiating the conference, and are "pushing pretty hard" to get Akin's provision back in, according to a House Democratic aide, who spoke with Mother Jones.

Adam Serwer of Mother Jones reports:

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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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Right now, if you’re a woman in the military, which has startlingly high rates of sexual assault, and you get raped, you face the added insult of having to pay for an abortion out of your own pocket. That’s because the military's health insurance plan is the only one in the federal government that does not cover abortion in the case of rape or incest. It'll only cover the procedure if the woman's life is in danger

Democrats in the Senate have tried to change this, but House Republicans have so far resisted, thus producing two different bills -- one with the change and one without. Yesterday, the House named its representatives to a bicameral committee that will hammer out the differences between the two bills, including this provision. While killing the amendment could reignite the explosive abortion and rape debate of the summer, Republicans generally oppose the expansion of reproductive rights, even for raped female soldiers.

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The so-called “leadership” of cash-strapped Detroit has a message for President Obama: We voted for you, so bail us out.

It’s sad, but true. In fact, just this past week Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson was quoted as saying: “Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president and there ought to be a quid pro quo and you ought to exercise leadership on that. Of course, not just that, but why not?"

He then quotes Ronald Reagan on how dependency leads to dictatorship and then monarchy. And if you make it to the end of the email Akin has just one more thing to add:

P.S. – We still have a little ground to make up on our campaign debt retirement. I would be incredibly appreciative if you could click here to donate $5 or more today.

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Politico reports that the NRSC gave the money to the Missouri Republican Party, which spent it on a last-minute ad buy in support of Akin.

After Akin made his infamous "legitimate rape" comments, national Republicans condemned his remarks and urged him to drop out of the primary, saying they would not support him financially. In September, NRSC Chair John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the Kentucky Courier-Journal that the plan hadn't changed and the NRSC wouldn't support Akin. “We have no plans to do so,” he said, adding: “I just think that this is not a winnable race."

“We’re done,” he also told the Hill in September.

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In Texas on Wednesday, a jury convicted 20-year-old Jared Len Cruise of aggravated sexual assault for his role in the gang rapes of an 11-year-old girl from the small town of Cleveland. The case attracted national attention – including an outrageous New York Times story that quoted the child's neighbors' judgment of her: "She dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said." Investigators believe the assaults began when the girl accepted a ride from a local 19-year-old.

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But a fight is breaking out on the right over the precise significance of these defeats, and what can be done to avoid a repeat in 2014.

In the wake of this month’s election, the outgoing chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, suggested the committee might junk its hands-off approach to Republican primaries going forward.

“What is the goal here?” he asked. “I think the goal is to elect principled conservatives in November, not just nominate somebody in the primary that has very little chance of getting elected in November. That doesn’t advance the conservative agenda, because you have to get elected before you can govern.”

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Politico reports that GOP leaders are working to prevent a repeat of this scenario by exerting more control over the nomination process. Republicans believe that they would have done better had they kept politicians like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock out of the picture. The goal for the next four years is to erase the Tea Party-versus-Washington narrative that has made it difficult to get establishment Republicans through the primary process:

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The pamphlet does not contain a position statement. Quite the opposite, in fact. From the beginning, the authors explain that such an agreement is impossible: "Clearly there is no Christian position on abortion, for here real values conflict with each other, and Christian persons who seek honestly to be open to God’s call still find themselves disagreeing profoundly."

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While this trend transcends any one folly, Romney was the ideal, fossilized Republican awash in a fantasy golden age when bountiful bosses generated jobs and pampered laborers. Likewise, what bizarre political deviance tabbed Paul Ryan as more than a shrill ideologue with zero national clout? For the first time, both misfits atop a national ticket lost their home states. Remarkably, even that matchless twosome, McCain-Palin, outpolled (and outwinked) the votes to Romney-Ryan.

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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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I was wrong. What Akin actually did, with the help of extremist vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan and a late-breaking assist from doomed Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, was restore women -- their health, privacy and integrity -- to the center of the abortion debate.

Because once you started parsing "legitimate rape," the controversy became a microcosm of the moral complexity of the entire choice issue. Once you insist, as Paul Ryan did, that "the means of conception" don't matter, and all abortion should be illegal, you wake people up to your political agenda, and your cruelty.

Suddenly Americans had to try to imagine how doctors or hospital administrators or law enforcement officials would decide what was "legitimate rape," as opposed to something else. Rape panels?

Well, that's the same slippery slope you're sent down if you think hard about abortion under other circumstances.

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After all, by then President Obama had already repeated that feminist mantra rejecting a hierarchy of rape: In August, he'd announced that "Rape is rape" in response to Todd Akin's blithe invocation of "legitimate rape." Three days after the words appeared on the Capitol, Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's talk of rape and God's gifts gave the president occasion to say it again. Rape is rape. You could complain that this was still being debated in 2012, and many did, but why would profound disruption come fast or easy? No, it was an urgent dividing point, and the president himself had chosen a side.

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And while it's extremists like Richard Mourdock, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., and Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who received progressives’ derision for saying (and voting for) completely off-the-wall stuff, plenty of Democrats got in on the rape-denying, gun-loving, science-hating action, too. While these Blue Dogs might not want to repeal health care reform (well, except when they do), their records should still give you pause. Here are eight conservative Democrats who are hurting their party and their country -- but still want your vote.

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The Washington Post’s Outlook section sure tried. It asked 13 authorities for election predictions, even going so far as to reach beyond the usual Beltway pundits, strategists and gadflies. But with one exception, anyone looking for unique opinions will be disappointed.

Mostly respondents fell in line with mainstream numbers and predicted a narrow victory for President Obama. A 12th-grade government class, a meteorologist, a couple pundits and operatives, two tech guys and a poker player all have him beating Mitt Romney with 314 electoral votes or fewer. (A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win.) Only GOP strategist Leslie Sanchez and the Post’s horse-racing writer Andrew Beyer predict Romney winning a close race.

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The New York Times reports:

"Nearly a million of those dollars on television ad buys are coming from Mr. Akin’s campaign, while the rest is from outside groups, and there is speculation that organizations that previously distanced themselves from the six-term Congressman could be behind some of the new spending.

The Missouri Republican Party coordinated with the Akin campaign for a $387,000 ad buy, a spokesman for Mr. Akin said, while the campaign itself made a $300,000 purchase two days ago. The spokesman, Rick Tyler, said the Akin campaign planned to make another $600,000 ad buy on Thursday."

At the end of October, the state GOP had $375,000, indicating that it might have gotten some additional help from outside donors.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has repeatedly declined to comment about whether it's paying for the ads, though the RNC said it wasn't them.

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