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Big rig crashes kill nearly 4,000 Americans each year and injure more than 85,000. Since 2009, fatalities involving large trucks have increased 17 percent. Injuries have gone up 28 percent.

Given these numbers, you might expect Congress to be agitating for tighter controls on big rigs. In fact, many members are pushing for the opposite – looser restrictions on the trucking industry and its drivers.

The proposals represent a wish list of the trucking industry, including allowing significantly longer and heavier trucks, and younger drivers. The industry spends heavily on lobbying and campaign contributions, giving largely to Republicans, who control both the House and Senate.

REPORT: President Obama Considering Bypassing Congress With Executive Action On Gun Control - Joe.My.God.

President Obama reportedly may circumvent Congress and issue an executive order requiring expanded background checks for gun purchases from high-volume dealers.

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The proposed executive action aims to impose background checks on individuals who buy from dealers who sell a significant number of guns each year. The current federal statute dictates that those who are “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms need to obtain a federal license — and, therefore, conduct background checks — but exempts anyone “who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.” White House officials drafted the proposal in late 2013 to apply to those dealers who sell at least 50 guns annually, after Congress had rejected legislation that would have expanded background checks more broadly to private sellers.

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Huckabee is a notorious spewer of sexist garbage, but his latest –defending the Paraguay government forcing a 10-year-old rape victim to have her rapist’s baby—is low even for him. “When an abortion happens, there are two victims,” he argued. “One is the child, the other is that birth mother, who often will go through extraordinary guilt years later when she begins to think through what happened, with the baby, with her.”

During the Fox News GOP debate, Walker affirmed his support for forcing pregnant women to give birth, even if their doctors tell them it will kill them. He doubled down later in an interview with Sean Hannity, saying, “I’ve said for years, medically there’s always a better choice than choosing between the life of an unborn baby and the life of the mother.”

“It brings up a very important issue and that is do those black lives matter,” he told Fox News host Eric Bolling recently when discussing Planned Parenthood. “The number one cause of death for black people is abortion.”

“It is not any more than the Dred Scott decision was settled law to Abraham Lincoln,” Santorum said, during the Republican debate, about a recent court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. “This a rogue Supreme Court decision.”

“Today’s video of a Planned Parenthood official discussing the systematic harvesting and trafficking of human body parts is shocking and gruesome,” Jindal said in announcing an investigation of Planned Parenthood inspired by videos that have been repeatedly shown to be anti-choice hoaxes.

Rubio’s argument on CNN for why women should not be allowed to remove unwanted embryos from their uteruses: “It cannot turn into an animal. It can’t turn into a donkey.”

“Well, if they can’t say it will be human life, what does it become, then?” he added. Could it become a cat?”

All surgery, as well as tooth removal and hair brushing, removes living human cells, aka human life. It’s not donkey. It’s not cat. Human. We look forward to Rubio’s upcoming ban on dentistry on the grounds that human life is not cat life.

Fiorina considered denying her daughter the HPV vaccine, even though nearly all sexually active people will get it at some point in their life. “And she got bullied. She got bullied by a school nurse saying: ‘Do you know what your daughter is doing?‘” Fiorina complained at a campaign event.

Bush got a lot of negative attention for a campaign event where he said, “I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.” His attempt to “clarify” this, however, showed that he really does mean it. He proposes taking the money away from family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood and redirecting it to general service community health centers. Which is to say, to take away money bookmarked for women’s health, forcing women to give up their gynecologists and go to general clinics instead, where they can expect longer wait times, less direct access to contraception and less access to specialized services.

When the hoax Planned Parenthood videos came out, Cruz floated a conspiracy theory accusing the media of censorship. “The mainstream media wants to do everything they can to hide these videos from the American people,” he argued. “And the reason is virtually every reporter, virtually every editor, virtually every person who makes decisions in the mainstream media is passionately pro-abortion.”

Trump says a lot of foul things about women generally and reproductive health care generally, including calling Planned Parenthood an “abortion factory”. But he’s probably the candidate in the race who hates reproductive health care access the least, which is a sad statement about the state of the modern GOP.

Paul has been pushing the idea of banning Medicaid patients from Planned Parenthood and redirecting them to already overcrowded general service clinics instead. “We’ve doubled the amount of money we put into women’s health care through government, and so it’s just an absurd argument to say we need Planned Parenthood,” he argued on Fox News last week. “It’s only about abortion.”

Christie’s attempts to ingratiate himself with the religious right brought him to start defunding Planned Parenthood in New Jersey years ago. But his enthusiasm for preventing women from using contraception stops at his bedroom door. “I’m a Catholic, but I’ve used birth control, and not just the rhythm method,” Christie recently told a New Hampshire crowd.