Yeah I think you know it is time for reform of the legislative process when a bill spending bill has a provision in it that deals with ABORTION. Come on you say, it happens all the time! Well then enough is enough!

New York Times | Rolling Back Women's Rights

Here is a fine article on the matter.

"Tucked into the $388 billion budget measure just approved by the House and Senate is a sweeping provision that has nothing to do with the task Congress had at hand - providing money for the government. In essence, it tells health care companies, hospitals and insurance companies they are free to ignore Roe v. Wade and state and local laws and regulations currently on the books to make certain that women's access to reproductive health services includes access to abortion."

Cute, and this is the SAME bill where a page about letting congressmen look at anyone's tax return was added! Oh my my. Things are not well in Capital Hill. And to think that I was considering a run for Congress some day!

"It remains to be seen exactly how the measure will work in practice. But the intention, plainly, is to curtail further already dwindling access to abortion and even to counseling that mentions abortion as a legal option. It denies federal financing to government agencies that 'discriminate' against health care providers who choose for any reason to disregard state mandates to offer abortion-related services."

All I have to say to women who voted for the shrub in this country, well this is what you get. A further assault on your PERSONAL rights. It's the small things folks, little ones here, little ones there. Next thing you know Roe v. Wade is overturned, it not impossible.

More on the whole tax return flap:
Flap shows peril can lurk in 3,000-page spending bill

"But Democrats — and some Republicans — said the incident highlighted the recent trend in Congress not to pass spending bills by the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year and then have to combine unpassed bills into giant omnibus packages before Congress adjourns for the year. The bill approved Saturday, which included nine of the 13 spending bills Congress has to act on every year, ran more than 3,000 pages.

'There is no earthly way' for lawmakers and their staffs to learn what's in these bills in the few hours they have to inspect them before the vote, said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.

'What else is in this stack of paper that people don't know about?' he asked."

And this, folks, is exactly my point. When the process is such that we have giant omnibus bills that are 3,000 pages long and given to lawmakers with only hours or maybe a day or two to read, then something is wrong.

"'It's simply representative of the way Congress is now operating,' said Allen Schick, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland. 'It shows ... how easy it is to put something in [an omnibus bill] without anybody else knowing about it.' The giant bill contains hundreds of other provisions that could not be enacted into law if they were offered as single bills requiring full debate and scrutiny, he said."

Yep, exactly.

"When the measure was rushed to the floors of the two chambers Saturday, few members had read it. Lawmakers absent from the Capitol for weeks while campaigning for re-election returned for a brief lame-duck session to complete the work of the 108th Congress.

The secretive process, Schick noted, gives GOP leaders enormous power to add provisions that they or special interests might want, and to delete provisions that GOP factions or the White House find objectionable."

Time to go to work folks! We need to stop being passive and uninterested in our government, and making sure it works correctly. It is OUR government, OUR country, and it is OUR job to fix it.