Tomorrow Wendy

Today's column over at the Daily Banter takes a look at Wendy Davis's somewhat stunning but truly ballsy admission: Texas's women are going to lose the battle over a draconian abortion bill tomorrow.

Here's the opening shot:

"It may not have seemed possible, but in some strange way I respect Wendy Davis even more right now that I did the night she stood up and stood down a draconian anti-abortion bill two weeks ago on the floor of the Texas senate. Davis’s 13-hour filibuster was instantly the stuff of political and cultural legend, but in some ways it takes even more guts to admit to ugly reality than it does to rally the hopeful to action. Or maybe it’s like this: It takes guts to both rally the hopeful and admit that despite that you’re still going to lose the battle at hand."

Read the Rest Here

Duckworth and Cover

Here's the best thing you'll see all day.

Wendy Davis of course stood for 13 hours to personally stop a draconian abortion bill being put forth by the paleoconservative white men of Texas, and for that she's rightfully being called a hero. But before her, there was Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who can barely stand because she lost both of her legs flying a chopper in Iraq.

Obviously, Duckworth knows something about serving her country and about sacrificing in the name of that service -- which is why there's no way in hell she's going to suffer some perfectly able-bodied asshole pretending to be a handicapped vet in the name of gaming the system. And that's why, yesterday, she figuratively got up onto the top turnbuckle, jumped off, and brought the 600-pound people's elbow down upon a guy named Braulio Castillo. He's the CEO of Strong Castle Inc. and he's currently at the center of an investigation to determine whether he ripped off the government and, by extension, America's veterans. When he started his company, he applied for and got a specific rating from Veterans Affairs that allowed him to call the business service-disabled and veteran-owned, which helped him to better secure fat government ocntracts. And how did he get that rating? Because, in his own words, he broke his foot while playing sports at a military prep school back in '84.

Truly, an American hero.

There's even more to the story than that, including the fact that old X-rays showed no break in his foot and it turns out he had a connection at the IRS who helped him push this nonsense through the proper channels, but really that's all incidental to Tammy Duckworth verbally shaming this guy damn-near into committing public suicide on the floor of the House Oversight Committee.

The whole above clip is great but the truly awesome stuff starts at around 4:35.