Rush to Obama: Hands Off My Private Parts

Rush Limbaugh says President Obama is out to get his foreskin. Seriously. Or at least semi-seriously. It all started when the the Centers for Disease Control reported that it's thinking of issuing an advisory touting the health beneifits of male circumcision in infancy, writes Gabriel Winant for Salon. Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey leaped from there to the idea that the government would “create pressure on doctors to perform" circumcisions. And Limbaugh took it the next step: "It's President Obama who wants to mandate circumcision."

It's the same leap the right is making from end-of-life discussions between docs and dying patients to "death panels" that will mandate speeding a patient to the end, Winant writes,
pointing out that the advisory suggests no such incentive to act. It’s “an inability to distinguish between advice and force.” Or unwillingness. As Rush said of the supposed mandate for circumcision: "That means, if we need to save our penises from anybody, it's Obama." (More circumcision stories.)