Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has crowned himself this week's King of WTF by attempting to pull a fast one on the American people— he inserted a "Personhood" clause into a totally unrelated bill about flood insurance that would have declared that life begins at conception and that your uterus is officially his Libertarian face's business. Freedom!
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was having none of Paul's bullshit, declaring with an "exasperated" tone that he was sick of Paul's repeated attempted insertion of unrelated crap into bills being considered on the Senate floor was annoying and democracy-hindering. And the normally sort of boring Reid unleashed on the Senate floor a speech that we can only assume will precede him turning blue, swelling to enormous size, ripping his clothing off and overturning several Republicans' desks before taking several enormous, thundering strides out of the chamber and into a terrified, unsuspecting Washington DC. He said,
I'm told last night that one of our Republican senators wants to offer an amendment — listen to this one — wants to offer an amendment on when life begins. Um... I think this- some of this stuff— is just... I have been very patient working with my Republican colleagues and allowing relevant amendments on issues, and sometimes we even do non-relevant amendments. But really, on flood insurance, are we going to have to start dealing, as we did on the highway bill for weeks and weeks with contraception? Now, we have another person, ah, wants to deal with when life begins. I don't understand what this is all about. But I want everyone to know that this flood insurance bill is extremely important, the big pushers of this bill are Republican Senators, veteran republican Senators. And they'd better work on their side of the aisle because I am not going to put up with that on flood insurance. Now, I can be condemned by outside sources, my friends can say 'let 'em have a vote on it.' There will not be a vote on that on flood insurance. We'll either do flood insurance with amendments that deal with flood insurance, or we won't do it. We'll have it in extension. After all the work that's been put into this bill, this is ridiculous that somebody said, 'I'm not going to let this bill go forward unless I have a vote on when life begins.' I'm not going to do that. And I think I speak for the majority of Senators. Now, if the Republicans won't stand up to them, the person that's going to do that, I'm not going to. I have tried my best to, uh, deal with these issues that have nothing to do with the piece of legislation. WIth the end of the months staring us in the face, we have so many important things we have to — Student loans will be doubled if we don't get it done. Flood insurance will disappear if we don't get it done. Highway program will disappear if we don't get it done. FDA bill will create all kinds of programs if we don't get it done. I think this is outlandish.
Harry Reid mad. Harry Reid smash.
Reid went on to suggest that if Rand Paul has such a boner for personhood, he should come and give a speech in support of his "life begins at conception" amendment rather than just burying it in a bill like that dastardly android from Prometheus and waiting for it to emerge all wriggling and terrifying on the other side of the legislative sausage/alien pregnancy machine.
Paul's amendment, which he calls the Life at Conception Act, declares that zygotes have the same rights as, say, air traffic controllers or rodeo clowns from the moment the magical man sperm magicks all over the egg. The law would ostensibly outlaw abortion and many forms of contraception, in addition to making IVF more difficult. It would also shove the entire US Senate into every American woman's uterus, which would be tough considering that most women's uteruses are barely large enough to safely contain a single 8 pound human.