HUFFPOST HILL - Jackie Speier's Undeniable Chutzpah

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Wisconsin public servants descended on their statehouse in hopes that Governor Scott Walker would retire to the Egyptian coastal resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. Tim Pawlenty will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Tea Party Policy Summit, leaving the rest of the 2012 field scrambling to deliver the introductory remarks at the "Facts: Fact or Fiction?" seminar. And If you're a sick polar bear seeking family planning whose habitat has been decimated by global warming and is in desperate need of UN peacekeepers to maintain the political stability of the ice floe that is carrying you out to sea, this was not your day. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Friday, February 18th:

JACKIE SPEIER'S UNDENIABLE CHUTZPAH - In Washington, political "courage" generally means taking a position that is popular with banks but will hurt everyday people like, say, cutting Social Security. But California Democrat Jackie Speier displayed the real kind on the House floor late last night. Before she took the floor, New Jersey Republican Chris Smith used his time to graphically describe the process of an abortion. That's when Speier decided to scrap her planned remarks. "That procedure that you just talk about was a procedure that I endured," she told a hushed chamber. In an interview with HuffPost's Elise Foley, Speier elaborated, "As the night wore on, the vitriol and grotesque commentary got worse and worse...I sat there thinking, none of these men on the other side have even come close to experiencing this, and yet they can pontificate about what it's like. It just overwhelmed me." Speier underwent a dilation and evacuation at 17 weeks into her pregnancy in her early 40s, while she was serving in the California Assembly in the 1990s, because medical difficulties made it impossible to continue the pregnancy. The procedure used was the same type that Smith's book described. As she listened, Speier said she became more emotional and made the decision to speak out. "This was a wanted pregnancy, it was the second miscarriage I had had...What they express doesn't come close to the experience that a woman goes through when she is losing a baby or when a pregnancy is terminated. It's a painful, gut-wrenching loss."
Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards to HuffPost Hill on the GOP voting to de-fund Planned Parenthood: "I don't think they have any idea how far they overreached."

AFGHANISTAN #FAIL? - A proud day for us: Our very own Jeff Muskus has filed an in-depth, beautifully crafted piece on the state of the surge in Afghanistan. He's a local boy made good: Capitol folks may remember The Muskraker for his Hill reporting a few years back. Jeff spent two weeks in the country and his piece is the first from a HuffPost reporter with an Afghanistan byline. "In many ways, the success of the surge will be linked to how many well-paved roads, honest and functioning courts, clean health clinics, open schools and steady jobs are left behind when it finally comes to an end. There's no denying that some key roads and government structures have been spruced up. The differences between "before" and "after" photos are stunning. But it's slow going, and only one part of the U.S. efforts to build a central government in a place that's never really had one. The military and a small cadre of civilian counterparts are also trying to install a skeletal legal system here, develop a network of social-services providers like schools and clinics, and build more sophisticated intelligence-sharing and policing operations that might enable locals to take control more effectively when the Americans depart." Short version: It ain't working. [Longer Version]

IT'S GETTING REAL IN WISCONSIN - With Senate Democrats still on the lam, Wisconsin public employees, labor activists, and people generally supportive of the idea of paying the people who educate our children a livable wage, tens of thousands of people continued to protest Governor Scott Walker's plan to neuter state employees' collective bargaining framework. Writes Amanda Terkel, who is on the ground in Madison: "Individuals amassed in the Capitol are working extra hard to be respectful and be on their best behavior, with signs in the women's restroom even admonishing fellow protesters to keep the area neat and tidy. There is also a lot of sympathy for the security officers overseeing the scene, noting that some of them will be affected by Walker's proposal to take away collective bargaining rights. And it seems the feeling is mutual. One protester told The Huffington Post that officials from the local sheriff's office even brought boxes of donuts for individuals who spent the night in the Capitol." Word also is that Tea Party members are planning a counter protest this weekend. That'll be...interesting. [HuffPost's Liveblog]

Gerald McEntee, the President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, says his organization is planning a recall of Walker. The biggest hurdle is that under the Wisconsin constitution, Walker can't be recalled for a year, meaning that the earliest an effort to oust him could technically work is January 2012. "We will be leading a recall petition on this guy but we can't until he is in there a year," McEntee said in an interview with Sam Stein. "The problem is, he is trying to do enough harm in the first four months."
Wisconsin is the birthplace of the pension and unemployment insurance movement that led to the New Deal.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/18/huffpost-hill-jackie-spei_n_825368.html