Even inadvertently Bush is against birth control. When Bush signed the Federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, few knew it would scale back access to contraception for the group of people who need it most: college-age women.

But that's just what it did by eliminating incentives for pharmaceutical companies to offer contraception at a discount to college health centers. The bill went into effect in January of 2007 and the next month, once it was realized the impact this "unintentional" consequence would have, pro-choice legislators rushed to remedy it by adding to an Iraqi Spending Bill a provision that would have exempted college health centers from the Federal Deficit Reduction Act. Of course, anti-contraception pro-life legislators and groups, pleased by the scale back in access, removed the remedial provision from the bill.

For the remainder of the semester, a lot of college-health centers were able to offer birth control to students at the discount because they had enough in stock so few college students felt the sticker shock. But in September, many college students will return to campus to discover for the first time the price of their contraceptive method of choice has more than doubled (in some cases more than septupled--from $6 to $45).

Some will choose to get their contraception covered by their parent's insurance (that is, the large demographic of college students eager to have their sexual activity known by their parents). Many others will opt to scale back on contraceptive use or use less reliable methods. College-age women already have the highest rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion--there's no deficit there. Here's proof once again that when it comes to abortion Bush and pro-life operatives are not interested in reduction.

In Wednesday's New York Times a front-page story on abstinence-only "education," its failures, fans, and motives, the movement's leaders have perfect names: Mr. Rector, Mr. Love and Jamie Waite, the group's poster child. Mr. Love travels around East Texas in a Virginity Van (if this vans a rockin, someone is definitely trapped inside so please call for help). He also comes up with relationship advice that would turn anyone off sex (people who have sex before marrying are doomed to divorce, says Love, "Because they gave the stickiness away.") Blech.

Mr. Rector, on the other hand, reveals that protecting teens from pregnancy or disease is not the point; it's delivering them to early marriage (then Mr. Love will gross them out). "Once you understand [marriage] is the principal issue," Rector proclaims, "You understand that handing out condoms to a 17-year-old is utterly irrelevant."

Much ink has been spent documenting how over a billion dollars spent on abstinence-until-marriage programs has failed to affect sexual initiation for teens. In fact, just the opposite is true. Teens aren't waiting to have sex, they're waiting to marry. What we have is a no-marriage-until-sex protocol in practice. 95% of people have sex before marriage (it's just those few trapped inside the Virginity Van who don't.) And not only is it reality, it's good news too. Delaying sex until marriage results in early marriage (and that's for the lucky ones) and early marriage results in divorce; at least that's what the figures show. Christian values have nothing to do with a successful marriage either--when last checked the highest rate of divorce in the US was in the The Bible Belt. So, to those who have used our public schools and our public money, to mislead teens about protection, to scare them away from the condom, and to wax on about the Creator, all in the service of promoting a "healthy" marriages---a wiser investment would have been to find ways to delay the age of betrothal and steer people clear of Christian fundamentalism. That's what you'd do if you're eager to see marriages last.

But at least they have one convert in Jamie Waite. She's heading off to college now to become a nurse, and if the right wing that has invested over a billion dollars of our money to convince, what appears to be, her alone gets lucky, she'll soon be denying a rape victim emergency contraception.

Apparently, Bush wanted a Virgin General not a Surgeon General. So it seems. First, he'd considered putting Dr. David Hager in the post who, by Bush's criteria, had all the requisite qualifications. Pro-abstinence-until-marriage, anti-science (tough to find in a doctor). But Bush had other important work for Hager, halting Plan B, it turned out. And also Hager did on the face of it look extreme. So instead Bush went with Dr. Richard H. Carmona who seemed by his credentials to be a legitimate science based doctor. Problem for Bush is that Carmona was just that. So, inconveniently, the ideology had to be imposed on him -- the Hager ideology. Yesterday Carmona came clean, telling more details about the war on sex and birth control, and the imposition of theology and ideology on science. Naively, Carmona, the Times reports, "wanted to address the controversial topic of sex education. Scientific studies suggest the most effective approach includes a discussion of contraceptives. However, there was already a policy in place that did not want to hear the science but wanted to preach abstinence-only, but I felt that was scientifically incorrect," explained Carmona. (Once you get hooked on empirical evidence it's a hard habit to break). But as a General in the war on sex, the first thing Carmona should have factored is that questioning the abstinence-only dogma and encouraging contraceptive use would be treason.

Rumored-to-be Presidential Candidate Fred Thompson had a long career as a lobbyist. So long, his lobbying resume has a distinct theme. A Darth Maul style would best describe it and he likes it that way. So much so, he doesn't want any good-nicks coming out of the woodwork to screw it up. That's why he's now attempting to cover-up his work for the nice guys over at the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA) . Thompson was hired as a lobbyist by NFPRHA in 1991 to ease the "gag" rule that prevented federal funds for family planning from going to groups like Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest contraception provider, but since the organization is pro-choice it was stripped of that federal funding (even though it used separate funding for its pro-choice activities). NFPHRA hired Thompson to convince Bush senior the restriction was extreme (Thompson failed but Clinton later reversed it).The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend that "Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo adamantly denied that Thompson worked for the family planning group. 'Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period,' he said in an e-mail."

You see, Thompson prefers to be known for his other lobbying work. He lobbied Congress for deregulation of the Savings and Loan industry leading to the financial crisis of the late 1980s. (Remember? Over 1,000 savings and loan institutions went under in what has been described as "the largest and costliest venture in public misfeasance, malfeasance and larceny of all time.") Thompson doesn't seem too concerned about his role in that national nightmare. Nor the hand he played in a failed nuclear energy project that cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars. Thompson, more recently, worked part-time for London-based Equitas. He worked to remove a provision in a 2005 bill that would have made Equitas pay a very large portion of a proposed asbestos settlement. Last month, Thompson spokesman Mark Corrallo said that Thompson was proud to have been a lobbyist and believedin Equitas's cause. In case you missed that, Thompson was proud to work for them.

If that's the kind of work he's proud of then it should come as no surprise he wants to cover up his work helping poor Americans access family planning. Because that work was not only intended to help people it also would have saved the government gazillions, both things Thompson's lobbying career proves he is deeply opposed to.

But the problem with lying about where you previously worked is those dastardly former colleagues. Former Rep. Michael D. Barnes (D-Md.), who worked at the same firm with Thompson at the time and was the one to recommend him to NFPRHA told the Times that it was "absolutely bizarre" for Thompson to deny that he lobbied against the gag rule. "I talked to him while he was doing it, and I talked to [the president of NFPRHA] about the fact that she was very pleased with the work that he was doing for her organization," said Barnes. "I have strong, total recollection of that. This is not something I dreamed up or she dreamed up. This is fact."

Documentation is another enemy of deception--minutes of a 1991 NFPRHA board meeting show that the group hired Thompson that year. Of course, NFPHRA board members could have, in 1991, suspected that Thompson, (who, if Thompson's story is the one we're going with, they had absolutely no connection to) would some day put feelers out about running for president. They could have then factored that he would also run as a real loony rightwinger and would need to court the religious fringe in the US. It then follows that NFPRHA board members would make up the lobbying for family planning connection in order to derail his unannounced bid for president.

Thompson did work for NFPRHA in the nineties and he should have stayed in touch. That way he might have learned from NFPRHA's recent poll that found eight in ten self-identified "pro-lifers" say that women should have access to contraception. Thompson could have taken a real pro-life approach and aligned himself with organizations, like his former employer NFPRHA, and their policies that have been proven to reduce the need for abortion. That would have led to truly pro-life results. Once Thompson formally enters the race Americans should look out for the rest of his pro-lie positions.

Maybe these are the kind of results one should expect of a politician who strives to be number two. Tim Pawlenty, who's been campaigning for the vice presidency since 2004, has managed to reverse the dramatic decline in Minnesota's abortion rates that began in the 1990's when pro-choice Governors (Republican) Arne Carlson (1991-1999) and (Independent) Jesse Ventura were in power.

Rather than continuing the policies that led to those declines, Pawlenty insisted that by trying the exact opposite approach he could achieve the same results. Since taking office, Pawlenty has stripped funding for comprehensive and moderate sex-education; redirected millions in public funding from effective contraception services to "crisis pregnancy center," essentially fronts for anti-choice groups. Presto chango, a 16% surge in abortions for teenagers and 5% increase in the abortion rate overall. The "pro-lifers in power = spike in abortions" trend is true throughout the world. Sadly, Minnesotans are just the latest to find out.