Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has vetoed an emergency-contraception bill as a way of positioning himself for a run at the presidency. Knowing his veto was sure to be overridden, he came back from a vacation trip to veto it anyway, offering a symbolic sop to the right wing and also giving himself the opportunity for some high-profile grandstanding of his anti-choice credentials. I have argued previously that Romney painted himself into a right-wing corner by taking a low profile on abortion during his last campaign; he now appears to be trying to recover by taking aggressive positions against embryonic stem cell research (as governor of a state with one of the highest concentrations of major research universities!) and now emergency contraception. Naturally, women’s autonomy is the first thing to get jettisoned from Romney’s leaky electoral lifeboat.

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In the last few days I have received over 200 comment spams - a typical number. During a hasty mass-delete I noticed - a second too late - that at least one of the comments caught by my spam filter seemed to be a real, substantive contribution, but then it was gone.

If you have submitted a comment recently that has not appeared, my apologies. Feel free to send it again. Try to avoid using the words “texas holdem” and “casino gambling”.