The Extremist Party

from Mother Jones:




Rep. Steve King Pledges "Smackdown" on Planned Parenthood

— By Andy Kroll
| Sat Feb. 12, 2011 12:51 PM PST


This past week, House Republicans launched an all-out war on Planned Parenthood, vowing to cut $327 million in federal family planning funding.The organization, of course, does not use federal money for abortions—the Hyde Amendment forbids that—but nonetheless House GOPers have Planned Parenthood in their crosshairs.

Here at the conservative CPAC conference, I spoke with Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) about the Planned Parenthood battle. King rivals Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who has led the charge to deny federal funds to the organization, in his loathing for Planned Parenthood and his zealotry on the issue of abortion, among others. (At a hearing last Tuesday, King went into gory detail describing what he called "fetal dismemberment" when debating a tax-centric bill on federal funding for abortions.) He told me the group's practices are "ghoulish and ghastly and gruesome," and that Planned Parenthood engages in "child prostitution and illegal immigration."

We talked briefly about an undercover video from a pro-life group showing a Planned Parenthood counselor giving a fake "pimp" advice about health services for his supposed under-age prostitutes (a set-up similar to one orchestrated by James O'Keefe that targeted the now-defunct ACORN). That counselor was summarily fired, and the organization reported the incident to the authorities. But when I asked King about the funding fight and the video, he said Planned Parenthood "is deserving of something far more severe than Congress will be able to deliver to them before the videos came out." ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/rep-steve-king-pledges-smackdown-planned-parenthood