Wolf just reduced Marsha Blackburn to a stammering fool

[RowdieTurtle]

7. Meet Marsha Blackburn

Heres what shes done and what she believes:

She opposed the Affordable Care Act, stating that with the passage of the bill, "freedom dies a little bit today." When pressed by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on the claim that the legislation included "death panels" for the elderly, she would not reject this assertion despite the fact that it had been "... widely debunked by fact-checking journalism organizations".

Famously put Al Gore on the spot about his business interests in the energy industry. Gore vociferously refuted the implied accusation, pointing out that every penny he makes from renewable technology investment goes to a non-profit.

In April 2008, Blackburn summoned reporters to explain that she had found errors in her Federal Election Commission filings going back several years and had failed to report $286,278 in expenditures, including $18,821 to a fundraising consulting company run by her son-in-law, Paul Ketchel. She also failed to report $102,044 in contributions.

In 2008, Blackburn was named one of the "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, although the Federal Election Commission unanimously rejected CREW's complaint.

Blackburn issued a "Statement on Stem Cell Research" in 2008. In this statement, Blackburn claimed there was an "absence of evidence that could justify the continued research into embryonic stem cells." She added that "no journals have published successful embryonic studies" (many such studies had been published in the preceding years) and "research tells us adult stem cells are equivalent or superior to embryonic stem cells", a claim stem cell biologists reject.

In 2013, she was chosen to manage debate on a bill promoted by House Republicans which would criminalize all abortions after 22 weeks' gestation, with limited exceptions for rape or incest.

At October 2013 congressional hearings on the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as "Obamacare", Blackburn charged that the health.gov website violated HIPAA and health information privacy rights. The next day, when a CNN interviewer pointed out that the only health-related question that the web site asks is "do you smoke?", Blackburn repeated her criticism of the site for violating privacy rights.

She is a staunch opponent of Net neutrality in the United States and municipal broadband initiatives. As of March 2015 her campaign has accepted at least $221,900 from contributors in the telecommunications industry. These include AT&T and Comcast who have strongly lobbied against net neutrality. She supported bills that restrict municipalities from creating their own broadband networks, and wrote a bill to prevent the FCC from interfering on behalf of communities.

On February 16, 2014, Blackburn appeared on NBC's Meet The Press as a guest in a climate change segment alongside Bill Nye. She reiterated a belief that scientists do not sufficiently understand the climate to make long term predictions, and argued that a cost/benefit analysis did not support taking any action against further carbon emission increases. In 2015, Blackburn shared her belief that the world has been cooling instead of warming.