During last week's discussion about a bill that would prohibit governments from deducting union dues from a worker's paycheck, state Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, used his time during floor debate to argue that Republicans are against regulations -- except when it comes to the little guys, or serves their specific interests. 
 
 At one point Randolph suggested that his wife "incorporate her uterus" to stop Republicans from pushing measures that would restrict abortions. Republicans, after all, wouldn't want to further regulate a Florida business. 
 
 Apparently the GOP leadership of the House didn't like the one-liner. 
 
 They told Democrats that Randolph is not to discuss body parts on the House floor. 
 
 "The point was that Republicans are always talking about deregulation and big government," Randolph said Thursday. "And I always say their philosophy is small government for the big guy and big government for the little guy. And so, if my wife's uterus was incorporated or my friend's bedroom was incorporated, maybe they (Republicans) would be talking about deregulating. 
 
 "It's not like I used slang," said Randolph, who actually got the line from his wife. He said Republicans voiced concern about young pages hearing the word uterus. 
 
 "I think it's a sad commentary about what we think about sex education in the state," he said. 
 
 House GOP spokeswoman Katie Betta: "The Speaker has been clear about his expectations for conduct on the House for during debate. At one point during the debate, he mentioned to the entire House that members of both parties needed to be mindful of decorum during debate. 
 
 "Additionally, the Speaker believes it is important for all Members to be mindful of and respectful to visitors and guests, particularly the young pages and messengers who are seated in the chamber during debates. In the past, if the debate is going to contain language that would be considered inappropriate for children and other guests, the Speaker will make an announcement in advance, asking children and others who may be uncomfortable with the subject matter to leave the floor and gallery." ||||| Let us stop for a minute to consider Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana. 
 
 Bet you didn’t see that one coming. 
 
 Many of you may be unacquainted with Daniels. After all, a lot of Americans go for years on end without ever setting foot in Indiana even though it is a fine state, full of lovely people and some first-class universities, not to mention the RV Hall of Fame, the world’s largest ball of paint and the Dan Quayle museum. 
 
 But about Mitch Daniels. The political world has been abuzz with speculation that he will run for president. Centrist Republicans loved it when he began urging the party to keep its eye on the deficit-reduction prize and stop obsessing about social issues. “Try to concentrate on making ends meet, which Washington obviously has failed to do for a long time, and have other policy debates in other places if you can,” he advised. 
 
 He then went home and announced that he would sign a bill to strip Planned Parenthood of Medicaid financing. 
 
 “He called a truce on social issues, and he was the first to fold,” said Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America. 
 
 “The suggestion I made about trying to set aside other issues was made in the national context,” Daniels said over a lunch with journalists this week in New York. “I was thinking more broadly than some people heard it.” 
 
 Actually, Daniels’s moderate fans thought abortion was precisely the issue he was calling on Republicans to set aside. Right now, the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives can barely talk about anything else. State legislatures are flooded with bills to create “Choose Life” license plates, require women seeking abortions to look at sonograms of the fetus or make it harder for insurance companies to offer policies that cover abortions. 
 
 At one point during an interminable debate on an anti-abortion bill in Florida, the Democrats had an embarrassing squabble between two members that ended when Representative Scott Randolph of Orlando threw his opponent’s commemorative House pen in the trash. He is the same legislator who was privately admonished by the Republican House leadership for saying the word “uterus.” 
 
 Florida is a wreck. This is not something I would normally recommend, but maybe they should all get together and work on naming an official state gun. 
 
 The bill Daniels says he is going to sign in Indiana is a compilation of the anti-abortion movement’s greatest hits. It will make it impossible for Medicaid recipients to make use of the 28 Planned Parenthood clinics in the state and bans abortions for pregnancies that have reached 20 weeks. 
 
 Also, doctors would be required to tell women seeking abortions that “medical evidence shows that a fetus can feel pain at or before 20 weeks,” that human life begins when the egg is fertilized and that having an abortion could cause infertility. 
 
 “Pregnant women in the past might not have been provided with all the information,” Daniels said. 
 
 Possibly because all that information is questionable, theological or totally wrong. 
 
 While Daniels is not a good example of a fiscal conservative who wants to move beyond the social wars, he is a real prototype of the peculiar strain in the political right that trusts people to make their own informed decisions without government intervention except when it comes to the most exquisitely personal choice a woman could ever face. 
 
 In Washington, the new Republican majority’s very first bill of the year, H.R. 1, eliminated both financing for Planned Parenthood and financing for the groundbreaking database of public safety complaints that the Consumer Product Safety Commission was about to put online. The database, Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas warned, “will drive jobs overseas.” 
 
 Legislatures in states that tend to be less than obsessive about consumers’ right to know are competing to find more things to require that doctors tell or show their patients before they can get abortions. In South Dakota, women have to be told that abortion ends “the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” A court tossed out another section that required doctors to say that the procedure leads to an increased risk of suicide. 
 
 In his capacity as deficit hawk, Daniels waxes eloquent on his conviction that if Americans have to pay more of their medical bills, they’ll make smart choices about whether that nagging headache really requires the expense of a CAT scan. Doubting that the individual patient can judge whether more tests or medical procedures are required, Daniels said, “demeans the dignity of people.” 
 
 However, women who are seeking an abortion have to be given not only the information they ask for, or the information the doctor thinks they need, but also faux facts that their local lawmakers want to force on them. And dignity be damned.
– Lessons in political decorum, Florida-style: During floor debate in the state House, Democrat Scott Randolph joked that his wife should "incorporate her uterus" if she wanted to avoid abortion restrictions, reports the St. Petersburg Times. His point was that Republicans are so reluctant to regulate businesses, they would steer clear. GOP leaders weren't amused and told Democrats that Randolph should not mention body parts on the floor. "It's not like I used slang," says Randolph. A GOP spokeswoman: "The Speaker believes it is important for all Members to be mindful of and respectful to visitors and guests, particularly the young pages and messengers who are seated in the chamber during debates." He'd like advance notice of "inappropriate language" in the future so "children and others who may be uncomfortable with the subject matter" can be asked to leave. Click for more.