Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) released a new ad on Friday geared toward moderate Massachusetts voters who are suspicious of Brown’s social conservatism. Brown has been trying hard to paint himself as a moderate pro-choice Republican in spite of his party’s extreme anti-choice positions — and his own voting record.

The ad features a woman claiming that Brown is pro-choice and supports equal pay:

Scott Brown is pro-choice, and he supports a woman’s right to choose. I like that Scott Brown is independent, he really thinks for himself. His record shows that he supports women, he supports families. When my daughters grow up, I want to make sure that they have good jobs with equal pay, and I know Scott Brown will fight for that. I support Scott Brown because I know he wants to get our economy moving forward again. I’m a mom, I have a family, and I know that Scott Brown will fight hard for families.

Though the ad claims “his record shows that he supports women,” Brown’s voting history actually reveals the opposite. The senator has co-sponsored several anti-choice bills, including the Woman’s Right To Know Act, which would force a woman to wait 24 hours before getting an abortion and review pictures and information about her fetus. He supported the notorious Blunt Amendment –which would allow employers or insurers to deny women any health coverage they morally oppose — and sought to prevent insurers from using any federal funds to cover abortions in the Affordable Care Act. Brown has also voted to defund Planned Parenthood and voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act, in spite of his ad’s promise to “fight for” equal pay.

Brown has tried to distance himself from the Republican Party’s anti-woman platform and asked Reince Priebus to include a rape exception in the GOP’s anti-abortion plank. So far, he has not convinced Massachusetts of his secret pro-choice sympathies; the Massachusetts Right to Life recently announced their support for him as “a senator who votes pro-life.” Beloved Massachusetts boxer Mickey Ward also pulled his support from Brown after discovering his anti-LGBT and anti-union stances. Emily’s List denounced this new ad, accusing Brown of “straight-up lying” and demanding that he “take it down and apologize.”

WASHINGTON, DC — Literature being handed out at the Values Voter Summit on Friday attacks women for being “immodest” and extolled them to “go home and put some clothes on!”

In flyers and brochures on display at Values Voters, the social conservative conference where Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan spoke, an organization called Modesty Matters criticized women for dressing “immodestly” at church, and blamed women for causing men to stare lustfully at them.

Women must “embrace MODESTY in dress and behavior,” one of the handouts read. Women dressed immodestly in church are “an insult to a holy God,” another said.

Other excerpts:

- From the “Modesty: It’s nothing to be ashamed of” pamphlet:“Since men are particularly visual, immodesty in church can trigger lustful thoughts.”

“My men’s bible study group talks frequently about controlling our lust, thoughts, and eyes. Yes the problem and responsibility are ours, but is it really reasonable for the women of the church to make it THIS difficult for us?”

- From the “True Woman Manifesto”: “All women, whether married of single, are to model femininity in their various relationships, by exhibiting a distinctive modesty, responsiveness, and gentleness of spirit.”

The Family Research Council provided Modesty Matters with a table at the conference to distribute these pamphlets.

Republicans have repeatedly voted to cut funding for contraception, outlaw abortions, and defund Planned Parenthood. Now another far-right groups are eyeing a new battleground: the wardrobe.

Biotechnology firm Monsanto Company, which currently owns most of the patents for America’s staple crops, is already cozy with American lawmakers. A new Nation report, however, indicates that “a very old friend in a very high place” may usher in the corporation’s most prosperous years yet.

The Nation’s investigative report has uncovered how Mitt Romney personally helped Monsanto shed its string of toxic chemical-related scandals and reinvent itself to dominate American agriculture. Monsanto, an early Bain & Company client, was so impressed with Romney that they started bypassing his superiors to deal with him directly. Romney’s close relationship with then CEO John Hanley prompted his boss to create Bain Capital to keep Romney from leaving and taking their largest consulting client with him.

From 1977 to 1985, Romney helped navigate Monsanto through very rocky waters. The agribusiness was flooded with lawsuits after Congress banned the toxic coolant PCBs, a Monsanto product that has been linked to cancer and neurological disorders. At the same time, Monsanto’s Agent Orange toxin, used to defoliate jungles in the Vietnam War, was linked to the contamination of millions of Vietnamese and American soldiers and had been dubbed “the largest chemical warfare operation” in human history.

Tom Philpott at Mother Jones dug up a 2002 article describing Monsanto’s attempts to hide its toxic waste disposal even after managers discovered fish “spurting blood and shedding skin” within 10 seconds of the PCB dump:

Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston [Alabama] creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents—many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy”—show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

Faced with costly litigation, Monsanto relied on Romney to create their new public image — one that did not involve poisoning soldiers or dumping chemicals in rivers:

Dr. Earl Beaver, who was Monsanto’s waste director during the Bain period, says that Bain was certainly “aware” of the “PCB and dioxin scandals” because they created “a negative public perception that was costing the company money.” So Bain recommended focusing “on the businesses that didn’t have those perceptions,” Beaver recalls, starting with “life science products that were biologically based,” including genetically engineered crops, as well as Roundup, the hugely profitable weed-killer. “These were the products that Bain gave their go-ahead to,” Beaver contends, noting that Romney was a key player, “reviewing the data collected by other people and developing alternatives,” talking mostly to “the higher muckety-mucks.”

These “life science products” are now Monsanto’s calling card and have allowed the company to completely dominate the agriculture world in spite of its dark past. Still, Monsanto continues to attract controversy, as several Occupy Monsanto protests plague their facilities this week. Their new line of genetically modified seeds and chemicals are unleashing even more problems, including a new crop of “super weeds” and “super pests” that have risen up in the pesticide arms race.

Romney was simply doing his job by helping Monsanto reinvent itself. Financially speaking, he succeeded immensely. However, he’s signaled that he would lift up the agricultural giant even higher should he become president; for one thing, his Agricultural Advisory Committee is packed full of Monsanto lobbyists and partners. As the 2012 Farm Bill seems destined to languish until after the election, Romney would undoubtedly approve the “Monsanto rider” tucked into the House bill that would render the USDA impotent in blocking unsafe or untested products, forbid outside studies of Monsanto products’ safety, and exempt itself from environmental law. It would also allow Monsanto to rush clearance of its not-yet-approved “Agent Orange corn,” designed to resist that same defoliant that led the company to pay out a $180 million settlement to 52,000 contaminated troops during its Bain years.

WASHINGTON, DC — Mitt Romney’s campaign told a leading anti-pornography group that the Republican nominee will pursue and prosecute pornography if elected president.

Three months ago, well after Romney became the presumptive Republican nominee, his campaign held multiple meetings with Morality in Media, a group which describes itself as the “leading national organization opposing pornography and indecency,” according to executive director Dawn Hawkins. She told ThinkProgress that they had met with Alex Wong, Romney’s political director and legal policy adviser, to discuss the issue of pornography and what he would do about it if elected president.

During that meeting, Wong allegedly told Morality in Media that the campaign “would pursue prosecutions” of pornography and that the issue is “important to them.” The Romney campaign met with the organization “a number of times” in the past three months, Hawkins said.

The isn’t the first time that pornography became an issue in the campaign. Romney signed Morality in Media’s pledge during the Republican primaries, promising “strict enforcement for our nation’s obscenity laws,” calling the matter “imperative.” In addition, the national GOP platform calls for “vigorously” enforcing anti-pornography laws. The effort is a throwback to the Bush administration, when Attorney General John Ashcroft spent “millions to file charges across the country” in an attempt to target “just about everything on the Internet and almost everything in the video stores and everything in the adult bookstores.”

Though the Republican nominee may not discuss the issue on the stump, anti-pornography activists are excited about the prospect of a Romney presidency.

As Congress briefly reconvenes before the election, Republicans have made a lot of noise about impending military spending cuts, seemingly forgetting that many GOPers voted for them when they passed the Budget Control Act of 2011. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) was reminded of this fact on Friday morning’s Fox & Friends, but refused to account for his vote.

During an early morning segment, Fox host Brian Kilmeade demanded to know why Kelly and his Republican colleagues supported the military spending sequester. Kelly essentially shrugged the question off, claiming we shouldn’t “quibble” about the past and instead place the blame on President Obama:

KILMEADE: As we know this is a deal cut, so we didn’t have another debt ceiling debate this year like last year. You made huge mistake putting the defense up there on the chopping block even as — they had nothing to do with the fight that the congress was having with the president. Why was it even put into play?

KELLY: First of all, when that took place, this was an idea that came from the administration, put on the table by the administration.

KILMEADE: You should say no.

KELLY: What should have happened and what could have happened are two different things. We can’t do anything about what happened before. But we can certainly do something about what happened today… If we cannot rely on the president to lead, and we’ve seen a lack of leadership in this country for the last three years, this is a vacuum of leadership both of our domestic policy and foreign policy. My goodness, let’s not quibble about what shouldn’t have happened at a bargaining table. Let’s talk about what the president has the power to do today and to reassure our military and our allies around the world, the American military will remain the strongest. We are the leaders of the free world. Let’s start act like it.

Watch it:

Kelly isn’t the first Republican to be tripped up by his voting record. When vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) faced the same question on Sunday, he simultaneously denied that he voted for the defense cuts and agreed that he voted for the bill that enacted the cuts.

The narrative that Obama is weak on defense is a favorite among Republican politicians this week, who are taking up the false accusation that the president caused the attacks on American diplomats in Libya and Egypt by apologizing for America.