As a woman who grew up in the midst of the feminist revolution and fought to win women’s rights on issues like abortion and birth control, I have been appalled by the latest efforts by the right wing zealots to control women’s rights on these issues.

Nothing however has appalled me more I believe than Rush Limbaugh’s misogynistic comments about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student “who was denied the right to speak on the controversial all-male conception panel at a hearing last month.”

The conservative radio host’s remarks sparked an angry backlash from House Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. But instead of heeding their requests for an apology, Limbaugh doubled down against what he called the “conniption fit” of the House Democrats.

Echoing Foster Friess, the single largest donor to the pro- Rick Santorum’s super PAC, Limbaugh said that he would “happily buy [Fluke] all the aspirin she wants.”

Limbaugh was referencing the comment Friess made in February when he said the “gals” in “his day” put aspirin between their legs in lieu of contraception. Limbaugh then expanded his offer to include the university’s entire female student body.

“I will buy all of the women at Georgetown University as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want,” he said.

Rush Limbaugh is a vile, misogynistic pig, who doesn’t know when to back down. I’ve had enough!!!

The DSCC has this petition up to sign - I signed it, please join me in signing this petition to Republican members of Congress to Denounce Rush:

Republicans refused to allow Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke to testify on why contraception should be covered by insurance. Democrats later gave Fluke a chance to testify, and top GOP megaphone Rush Limbaugh weighed in what it means when a woman seeks affordable contraception:

“It makes her a slut, right … a prostitute … Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives … we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

Demand that Rush Limbaugh apologize for these incredibly appalling and ignorant remarks. Misogyny must be called out, especially when it comes from a mouthpiece of the Republican Party.

I want to take a moment also to note that young women need to get involved with this fight against the war on women, if they are not. We fought to get you your rights for abortion and birth control – please get involved to keep them!

Senator John Kerry tonight released a statement following President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address:

“If Members of Congress are going to be honest about it, there was a lot of common sense and even more common ground in tonight’s address. We shouldn’t have to wait for another year or another election to act like it. Tax reform, energy security, infrastructure, and jobs matter to all of us and we’re so much closer on these issues than the shrillness of our politics pretends we are. We ought to prove peoples’ suspicions wrong and prove that Congress can actually get something done even in an election year. Dysfunction isn’t defensible.”

The full text of President Obama’s State of the Union is available here.

Senator Kerry was seen earlier today at an event at the White House, for the Boston Bruins,  sporting a couple of black eyes from a hockey game accident. Get well soon JK…

While much of the Internet was “blacked out” Wednesday to voice opposition to a pair of bills which opponents say would amount to online censorship, activists promise the day of protest is “just the beginning” in the fight to defeat the controversial legislation.

Websites from Wikipedia to Google and others have joined in the protest, in which they have functionally or symbolically “gone dark” to raise awareness of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and its Senate companion, the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

“The blacklist bills are dangerous: if made into law, they would hamper innovation, kill jobs, wreak havoc on Internet security, and undermine the free speech principles upon which our country was founded,” says the blog at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization opposed to the bills. “But deep-pocketed lobbyists are trying to ram this legislation through as quickly as possible, hoping elected officials will turn a blind eye to the widespread opposition to these bills. We can’t let that happen.”

The chief bipartisan opponents of the bill, including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), say they are committed to fighting online piracy. However, they and others contend the current legislation is overly broad and could allow the federal government to shut down entire websites without recourse.

Issa used the Twitter website Wednesday to announce that conservative Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has dropped his support of PIPA. “Much more education for Members of Congress about the workings of the Internet is essential,” Issa reportedly says in a statement.

The widespread pressure against the bill appears to be working, as its chief sponsors in Congress say they will rewrite the legislation to remove the controversial Domain Name System (DNS) blocking provisions.

EFF says opponents also plan to urge lawmakers to defeat the legislation next week, once the Senate returns.

“We’re also gearing up for a day of action on January 23rd when the Senate will be back in session and getting ready to vote on the Protect-IP Act, SOPA’s sister bill,” the EFF blog says. “We’re calling on digital activists and Internet users everywhere to call Senators on the 24th and voice their opposition to this censorship legislation. Despite the chorus of opposition from human rights advocates and the tech community, Senators are still trying to push through this dangerous censorship bill. We need all hands on deck to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

Rep. Raul Grijalva chaired a hearing Wednesday on job creation. All members of the supercommittee were invited but none decided to attend.

By focusing on deficit reduction, not job creation, the so-called congressional supercommittee is focused entirely on the wrong problems and therefore, the nation would be better off it were to fail to come up with a deal, progressive members of Congress were told Wednesday.

Indeed, the sorts of budget-cutting likely to be recommended by the supercommittee, known formally as the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, likely would only worsen the already-bleak U.S. unemployment situation, according to Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a progressive policy organization.

“For this nation to succeed, the supercommittee must fail,” Borosage says.

Borosage was one of those invited to testify Wednesday at a hearing called by the Congressional Progressive Caucus focusing on job-creation, to which Democrats and Republicans on the supercommittee specifically had been invited. The members of the supercommittee, however, were a no show at the hearing.

The supercommittee is just days away from a deadline to release recommendations for reducing the federal budget deficit by more than $1 trillion over 10 years. It’s still unclear if the panel, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, will arrive at agreement on a set of recommendations.

“If a drunken bus driver were careening down the wrong road that leads directly off a steep cliff, we would want him to fail. That is exactly the case with the supercommittee,” Borosage says. “They are headed down the wrong road and it will be ruinous if they succeed.

“This is a nation with 26 million people in need of full-time work. Wages are not keeping up with prices,” he adds. “Poverty, now at record levels, is spreading. One in five homes with a mortgage is underwater. Companies are sitting on trillions in profits waiting for customers…We should be having a fierce argument about how to put people to work and get this economy going. … Instead the supercommittee is peddling austerity, pushing Republicans to accept tax hikes — or at least pretend to accept them — and Democrats to embrace cuts in Social Security and Medicare. This is grand folly.

The best deficit-reduction plan would be to put people back to work, Borosage says.

“In fact, America does not have a short-term debt problem,” he says. “If we have a recovery, then our deficits will come down to manageable levels by the end of the decade. If we don’t have a recovery, then austerity will simply make things worse …”

Instead of its current course, the supercommittee should report out –- with its expedited voting powers -– “a bold and sustained jobs proposal,” combining increases in spending on infrastructure, on direct public jobs programs, on aid to states and localities, on mortgage relief for homeowners, with some tax cuts to enlist the support of Republicans, Borosage suggests.

“It would then make the trigger for any turn to austerity not an arbitrary date, but when Americans are going back to work, and unemployment is down to 4 or 5 percent,” he adds.

After the hearing, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus lamented the absence of supercommittee members at the jobs hearing.

“Rather than asking the 1% to pay their fair share, the Super Committee is going after the vital programs that make America strong — these cuts would have a drastic impact on the health and financial security of far too many Americans,” Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) says in an email. “… Over the past several months, I have offered constructive recommendations for deficit reduction while stressing the need to put Americans back to work — there are real solutions to our debt crisis that don’t hurt the 99%.”

At this point, Grijalva says he is urging supporters to pressure supercommittee members to take cuts to Medicare and Medicaid off the table.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.