During the July 14 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show, radio host Rush Limbaugh called U.S. Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) a “wacko” and “a Marxist.”

From the July 14 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

Now, Barbara Lee, this California congresswoman from -- she's from Oakland, right? She's out in the Bay area. She's this wacko -- may as well be just a -- she's -- she's -- she's a Marxist. I mean, she -- she's a Marxist. And she called the Bush abstinence policies irresponsible and inhumane.

Representative Lee was the only member of the U.S. Congress to attend the XV International AIDS Conference, held from July 11- July 16 in Bangkok. According to a July 12 Reuters article, Lee said "[T]he U.S. AIDS initiative requires that one-third of prevention funding go to 'abstinence until marriage' programs," in reference to the part of the U.S. global AIDS plan (Public Law 108-25) that states, “for fiscal years 2006 through 2008, not less than 33 percent of the amounts appropriated ... for HIV/AIDS prevention ... for each such fiscal year shall be expended for abstinence-until-marriage programs.”

Reuters quoted the congresswoman as saying:

In an age where five million people are newly infected each year and women and girls too often do not have the choice to abstain, an abstinence until marriage program is not only irresponsible, it's really inhumane. ... Abstaining from sex is oftentimes not a choice, and therefore their only hope in preventing HIV infection is the use of condoms.