As has been widely discussed, Florida Rep. Allen West (R), perturbed by an incident on the House floor yesterday, attacked Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) via e-mail, calling her the “most vile, unprofessional, and despicable” member of the House of Representatives and saying she has “proven repeatedly” that she is “not a Lady.” Wasserman Schultz dismissed the attacks on MSNBC Wednesday, saying she was “unfazed” and “unsurprised” by West’s comments, given the pressure he is under to defend his votes “to end Medicare as we know it.”

But this isn’t the first time West has stirred up controversy with comments about women. Given his short time in office and his own accusations of sexism by political opponents, West has compiled a rather unimpressive record of associating with misogynists, stereotyping the role of women in society, and engaging in outright misogyny of his own:

West contributed to a Florida magazine that called women “oral relief stations”: Before he was elected to Congress, West was a monthly contributor to “Miami Mike’s Wheels On The Road,” a biker magazine that billed itself as the “South Florida Biker’s Bible.” The magazine has featured multiple overtly misogynistic articles, including one asking readers to imagine having sex with Wasserman Schultz. At other times, the magazine’s writers referred to women as “oral relief stations,” complained about women who said “their knees hurt,” depicted women as servants of men, and suggested that they should wear “slave chokers” as accessories.

West claimed liberal women were “neutering” American men and causing a crisis of leadership in America: In a speech to a Women Impacting Nation (WIN) meeting, West blamed liberal women — “these Planned Parenthood women, the Code Pink women” — for “neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness.” Such women were fighting “to have our men become subservient,” West said, before bizarrely adding that this new-found subservience would continue to make the nation’s debt and deficits grow.

West compared conservative women to Spartans, asking them to “raise strong men”: In the same speech, West compared conservative women to the women of Sparta, who he claimed were the real strength behind the men of the ancient Greek city-state. The role of conservative women, West said, was to “raise strong men,” just as it was in Sparta. As Mediaite’s Frances Martel noted at the time, Spartan women had no political rights and were trained to be strong solely for the betterment of males. West’s comparison to Sparta implies that he believes “strong women are to raise strong men,” Martel wrote. “Strong women are not just to be, the way strong men are.”

This list, of course, does not include the numerous policy positions West has taken that would have adverse effects on women, including his joining the fight to defund Planned Parenthood.

Already, West has begun fundraising off of the instance with Wasserman Schultz. Meanwhile, he remains defiant about his assertion that she is unladylike and continues to defend his comments by claiming that he can’t possibly be anti-woman, since he has “been married 22 years and [has] two daughters.”

While leaders of both parties have called on Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) to resign following his Twitter sex scandal, leading Republicans have claimed Democrats are being too soft on the embattled congressman. This is a cynical attack, considering that, instead of calling on Sens. David Vitter (R-LA) and John Ensign (R-NV) to resign following their sex scandals, Republicans offered them support.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has been particularly vocal attacking Democrats for not being hard enough of Weiner, specifically targeting Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Today, the two party chairs faced off on NBC’s Meet the Press, where Wasserman Schultz called for Weiner to resign and called out Priebus’ hypocrisy on congressional sex scandals. Priebus again refused to discuss the GOP scandals, claiming they are old news and thus irrelevant — even though Vitter serves in the Senate to this day. He quickly pivoted to saying we should be talking about the economy instead of personal issues, but that hasn’t stopped him from harping on Weiner:

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: What Reince is saying doesn’t pass the straight face test from the chair of a party, none of whose leaders called for Senator Vitter, who actually broke the law, to resign. Who is still serving in office. … Hired prostitutes, and evaded the truth.

Chairman Priebus was chairman when Senator Ensign was also embroiled in unethical, unacceptable, and probably illegal conduct, and he did not call on Senator Ensign to resign. … So it’s a double standard. You only cal for Democrats’ resignations, not Republicans.

Watch it:

According to former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Vitter and Ensign’s indiscretions were “a degree or two more egregious” than Weiner’s conduct. Vitter broke the law by hiring prostitutes while Ensign violated Senate ethics rules (and possibly U.S. law) when he bribed the husband of his mistress.

House Republicans wasted no time in declaring their legislative priorities for the 112th Congress. The first: repeal health care for millions of Americans. The second: redefine rape. A day after repealing health care, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, a bill that would not only permanently prohibit some federally funded health-care programs from covering abortions, but would change the language exempting rape and incest from rape to “forcible rape.”

By narrowing the Hyde Amendment language, Republicans would exclude the following situations from coverage: women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults. As the National Women’s Law Center’s Steph Sterling puts it, this new standard of force “takes us back to a time where just saying no was not enough.”

And yet, 172 Republicans — including sixteen women — and lone Democrat Rep. Daniel Lipinski (IL), chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus — readily support the new standard. Appalled at such a cavalier attack on women’s rights, one House member is not taking the change lightly. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) “fiercely denounced” her conservative colleagues for this “absolutely outrageous” dilution of victims’ rights. Enraged at the suggestion that “there is some kind of rape that would be okay,” Wasserman Schultz told The Raw Story that she considers the bill itself to be “a violent act against women”:

“It is absolutely outrageous,” Wasserman Schultz said in an exclusive interview late Monday afternoon. “I consider the proposal of this bill a violent act against women.”[...]

“It really is — to suggest that there is some kind of rape that would be okay to force a woman to carry the resulting pregnancy to term, and abandon the principle that has been long held, an exception that has been settled for 30 years, is to me a violent act against women in and of itself,” Wasserman Schultz said.

“Rape is when a woman is forced to have sex against her will, and that is whether she is conscious, unconscious, mentally stable, not mentally stable,” the four-term congresswoman added.[...]

Wasserman Schultz dismissed the effort as a nonstarter in the Democratic-led Senate and a guaranteed veto by President Barack Obama, but conceded that it may pass the GOP-controlled House. She called it “yet another example” of how the “extreme right-wing fringe of Republican Party has complete control over their agenda.”

Because the bill makes the Hyde Amendment (which currently requires renewal every year) permanent, supporters are ignoring the rape language change and say it “largely codifies what has already been in practice” since 1976. As TPM notes, the pro-life community, “which is usually more than willing to sound off on abortion and what needs to be done to stop it,” has been “radio silent.” Smith, the bill sponsor, who lauds the bill’s “comprehensive approach” in restricting victim’s rights, refused to address the issue of forcible rape.

While this is not the first time anti-abortion lawmakers have attempted to pass the forcible rape language, there is probably a good reason the pro-life network has stayed mum. An overwhelming number of Americans believe abortion should be a choice when a woman is the victim of rape or incest. In a poll taken 30 years after the Roe v. Wade decision, 81 percent of Americans believed abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest. The visceral and comprehensive violence such attacks inflict on victims should be as well understood among lawmakers as it is among the public. But the GOP insists that, despite what common sense, compassion, and gender equity demand, just saying no is no longer enough.

This afternoon on MSNBC’s Hardball, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) endorsed House Judiciary Committee Chariman John Conyers’ pledge to hold hearings into the torture techniques authorized by the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel. Asked by host Chris Matthews if she believed Judge Jay Bybee “should go” because of his role in authoring the OLC torture memos, Wasserman Shultz said that she believed the government needed to take a “first things first approach,” but said “it doesn’t look very good”:

MATTHEWS: Should we ask Jay Bybee to retire form the court out at the 9th circuit? He’s one of the ones who approved it and sits on the federal bench. Should he go?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, I think we need to take a first things first approach, taking a look at who exactly was responsible for these memos. Where was it initiated. We need to go through the process. And you’re still innocent until proven guilty in America, but it doesn’t look very good.

Wasserman Schultz also said she would not rule out prosecuting former President Bush or Vice President Cheney. Watch it:

Please join our campaign calling on Congress to begin impeachment hearings against Jay Bybee.

On Friday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) announced that he would reject roughly $100 million in unemployment assistance from the federal recovery package, claiming the aid would lead to a tax hike on businesses. Jindal’s decision ensured that at least 25,000 unemployed Lousiana residents would not be eligible for unemployment insurance.

As the congressman representing parts of Lousiana devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Jindal actively sought assistance from the federal government. Yesterday on MSNBC’s Countdown, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) called the Republican Party a “heartless and insensitive organization” and criticized Jindal for rejecting the unemployment funds. Jindal, she noted, was singing a different tune about unemployment aid when Katrina hit his district:

WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: This is a guy, who while I served with him in Congress, voted for that [unemployment] assistance twice, and is certainly willing to take funding from the federal when people are out of a job and out of their home as a result of a hurricane, but not willing to take that assistance when his constituents are out of a job and out of a home as a result of this economic crisis. I’m not sure what the difference is. A crisis is a crisis.

Watch it:

ThinkProgress spoke to Wasserman-Schultz’s office, which said the congresswoman was referring to the Flexibility for Displaced Workers Act (109-72) and the Hurricane Katrina Unemployment Relief Act (109-91).

Furthermore, in December 2005, then-Rep. Jindal cosponsored H.R. 4438, which extended federal unemployment benefits to workers who lost jobs due to Katrina. “The President shall make such assistance available for 52 weeks after the date of the disaster declaration,” the bill read. Today, Jindal is opposing a provision that would extend 20 weeks of federal benefits to individuals unable to find work “who had already collected all regular state benefits.”

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) released a statement on the matter today: “Jindal cosponsored and supported legislation to expand unemployment benefits and inject federal dollars into Louisiana’s unemployment trust fund. Yet today in the face of a financial disaster and record unemployment, he opposes similar action under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. What changed?”

(HT: Heather)