Unless I passed out under an enchanted tree and have been sleeping for decades without knowing, this is the year 2012, right? AD?

So why are we still fighting over contraception?

The controversy over the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation’s decision to eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood—and subsequent reversal— continues. Catholic leaders are blasting the health reform requirement that insurance plans to cover contraceptives. Commentator Mark Shields joined other liberals in blasting the provision, saying it could have “cataclysmic” fallout for President Obama come November.

Numerous pundits have predicted that the requirement —and its narrow exemption for churches — will be a political liability for Obama. But where Shields sees “cataclysmic” fallout, the White House sees something quite different: a chance to widen the reproductive health debate beyond abortion to issues like contraceptives, winning over key demographics of independent voters in the process.

And that could explain why the White House, alongside the Obama campaign, has engaged eagerly on the issues. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was in USA Today earlier this week, praising the new provision. The Obama campaign meanwhile hasn’t been shy either, drawing up an infographic praising the new regulation. While there are some signs of a potential compromise for religious groups, the White House has made it pretty clear it plans to stand firm behind the current regulation.

But while Catholic leadership has blasted the new regulation, polls show that a majority of Catholics are actually more supportive of the provision than the rest of the country. A poll out Tuesday from the Public Religion Research Institute finds 52 percent of Catholic voters agreed with the statement, “employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost.” That’s pretty much in line with overall support for the provision, which hovers at 55 percent - likely because Catholics use contraceptives at rates similar to the rest of Americans.

It was bad enough when CPAC recently allowed the wacko paleo-conservative John Birch Society to have an exhibit, but this year things are exponentially worse.

This year, the Conservative Political Action Conference, at which presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich will appear, is having a panel discussion featuring an overt racist and white nationalist: Peter Brimelow, founder of hate site VDARE.

12:30 The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity – Wilson C

Sponsored by: ProEnglish

Speakers: Robert Vandervoort, Executive Director, ProEnglish; John Derbyshire, contributing editor at National Review and author of We Are Doomed; Peter Brimelow, author of The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities and founder of VDARE.com; Dr. Serge Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor for Chronicles magazine; & Dr. Rosalie Porter, author of American Immigrant: My Life In Three Languages, chairwoman of the board, ProEnglish

Here’s the CPAC 2012 Schedule of Events (PDF).

I admit, this one kind of shocks me, and it’s not easy to do that any more. I knew the right wing had gone bug-eyed loony, but this is way beyond the usual xenophobia and paranoid bigotry; this is open white nationalism at the Republican right’s premier high-profile conference, in an election year. Stunning. Masks are dropping all over Wingnutland.

Here are some more details on Brimelow’s vicious racial hatred, from Right Wing Watch:

VDARE is a White Nationalist website, run by Brimelow, which frequently publishes the works of anti-Semitic and racist writers and is named after Virginia Dare, who is believed to be the first child of English parents born in the Americas. Brimelow, an immigrant from Great Britain, expresses his fear of the loss of America’s white majority, blames non-white immigrants for social and economic problems and urges the Republican Party to give up on minority voters and focus on winning the white vote. He also said that a New York City subway is the same as an Immigration and Naturalization Service waiting room, “an underworld that is not just teeming but also almost entirely colored.”

VDARE has published the work of people like Robert Weissberg, who says that black and Hispanic students are responsible for problems in the American education system, Marcus Epstein, the Youth for Western Civilization leader who karate-chopped a black woman after calling her a “n****r” (he later pled guilty to assault), and J. Philippe Rushton of the eugenicist Pioneer Fund.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists VDARE as a White Nationalist hate group and notes that “VDARE.com’s archives contain articles like ‘Freedom vs. Diversity,’ ‘Abolishing America,’ ‘Anarcho-Tyranny — Where Multiculturalism Leads’ and ‘Why Immigrants Kill,’” compiled quotes from other VDARE writers that call the U.S. an exclusively white nation and denounce Jews for “weakening America’s historic White majority”:

“America was defined — almost explicitly, sometimes very explicitly — as a white nation, for white people, and what that means is that there is virtually no figure, no law, no policy, no event in the history of the old, white America that can survive the transition to the new and non-white version. Whether we will want to call the new updated version ‘America’ at all is another question entirely.”

— Sam Francis, VDARE.com, July 21, 2003

“Jewish activity collectively, throughout history, is best understood as an elaborate and highly successful group competitive strategy directed against neighboring peoples and host societies. The objective has been control of economic resources and political power. One example: overwhelming Jewish support for non-traditional immigration, which has the effect of weakening America’s historic white majority.”

— Kevin MacDonald, VDARE.com, Nov. 14, 2006

“What race realists find most infuriating about the liberalism of the last half century is not just that it has lost its instinctive appreciation for the culture and people of the West but actively, viciously attacks them. Whites are doing something no other people have ever done in human history. Our rulers and elites welcome replacement by aliens, they vilify our ancestors and their own, they sacrifice our interests to those of favored minorities, and they treat the entire history of the West as if it were a global plague of rapine and exploitation. This is a disease that is killing us, and we must fight it head on.”

— Jared Taylor, VDARE.com, July 4, 2008

Also see:
CPAC Won’t Renounce White Nationalist

Rick Santorum’s big wins last night in Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri are important signs of the power of reactionary religious thinking in today’s right wing.

Of all the candidates, Santorum is by far the most fanatical; he’s absolutely opposed to all contraception, wants to see abortion made completely illegal, is anti-gay to an insane degree, and is a hard core creationist and global warming denier. He’s the poster boy for Republican atavism, an anti-science avatar for the Tea Party set.

People like Rick Santorum are one of the major reasons why I had to make a public break with the right. They make America a laughing stock to the rest of the world with their backward, deliberately ignorant ideology. And that’s why this coming Presidential election is so important. Blind fanatics like Santorum must not be allowed to gain access to the highest office in the United States.