Christmas and the Statists

If we review the history of Russia, China and other countries that were taken over by leftists (or statists, communists, socialists, Stalinists, Maoists – whatever term you wish to use), one of the common denominators you find, no matter what country you examine, is their persecution and destruction of all signs of religion.

Orthodox priests, Catholic priests, Buddhist monks, Jewish Rabbis, Protestant ministers and, sometimes, devoted followers were harassed, brutalized, imprisoned and often murdered.  Churches, temples and synagogues were systematically trashed and destroyed.  This is what they do when leftists take over.

They didn’t start out murdering priests, just like Hitler didn’t start out murdering Jews; first came the rhetoric and ridicule, then came the discrimination, then the smashing of symbols.  They created an atmosphere of hatred that later made it easy to escalate to violence, destruction and murder.

Does any of this sound similar to events happening right now in America as socialists and atheists, often one and the same, trash Christmas, Christians and the Christian religion?   If you think this is an overreaction, you haven’t been following the news, and you never watch Steve Colbert on the Colbert Show or Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, who both almost daily ridicule Christianity.  You have also not noticed that the Obama Administration has been attacking the Little Sisters of the Poor because of their religious beliefs and its conflict with the imposition of a statist position on birth control.

Also Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood would be forced to provide and pay for coverage of abortion-inducing drugs such as the “morning after” and “week after” pills, regardless of their religious or moral objections to doing so. Unless these families get over their deeply held beliefs and get in line with the mandate, they risk steep fines of up to $100 per employee per day. That could mean $1.3 million in fines per day for Hobby Lobby and up to $95,000 per day for Conestoga Wood.

What is the difference between the Nazis’ ridiculing and discriminating against the Jews and what the left-wing comics and the Obama Administration is doing?  What comes next?

 

Notre Dame, Obama and Pro-Life Apologists

Unless your life is devoted entirely to following the exploits of Britney Spears, you undoubtedly feel that most aspects of American society are disintegrating – from political civility – to respect for authority – to regard for each others' rights and privacy. At the risk of being labeled a grumpy old man, I will declare that I believe that the welfare mentality created by President Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ and the federally approved and sponsored abortion plague that followed Roe v. Wade are chiefly responsible for the coarsening of our society that we all see.

Welfare destroyed the American family, for whites and especially for blacks – both of which survived the Great Depression but could not survive AFDC. Constitutionally sanctioned and federally sponsored abortion-on-demand throughout nine months of pregnancy has destroyed the notion of the sanctity of life and the worth of the individual.

The following piece by Robert George, dealing with just the abortion issue, is a long one, but well worth reading:

Obama and His Pro-Life Apologists

By Robert George May 29, 2009 American Spectator

Note: Three months into President Obama’s first term, one of his most prominent pro-life opponents, Robert P. George, engaged in a debate with one of his most prominent pro-life supporters, Douglas W. Kmiec. The article below is adopted from George's remarks, which called for candid speech on Obama's abortion record.

One does not treat an interlocutor with respect if one refuses to speak plainly. Candor, far from being the enemy of civility, is one of its preconditions. And so I will speak candidly of the points where I, as someone dedicated to the principle that every member of the human family possesses profound, inherent, and equal dignity, find myself at odds—deeply at odds—with President Obama and his administration.

In my judgment, citizens who honor and seek to protect the lives of vulnerable unborn children must oppose the Obama administration’s agenda on the taking of unborn human life. Our goal must be to frustrate at every turn the administration’s efforts, which will be ongoing and determined, to expand the abortion license and the authorization and funding of human embryo-destructive research. Because the President came into office with large majorities in both houses of Congress, ours is a daunting task. But the difficulty of the challenge in no way diminishes our moral obligation to meet it. And I here call upon pro-life Americans, including those who, like Professor Kmiec, supported President Obama and helped to bring him to power, to find common ground with us in this great struggle for human equality, human rights, and human dignity.

Professor Kmiec and I share common ground in the belief that every member of the human family—irrespective of race, class, and ethnicity, but also irrespective of age, size, location, stage of development or condition of dependency—is entitled to our care and respect and to the equal protection of our laws. This is what it means to be pro-life. In this shared conviction, Professor Kmiec and I are on one side of a crucial divide, and President Obama is on the other. Professor Kmiec and I stand together in our opposition to abortion and human embryo-destructive research, but we share very little common ground on these matters with President Obama and those whom he has appointed to high office who will determine the fate of vast numbers of our weakest and most vulnerable brothers and sisters.

I appreciated the President’s candor at Notre Dame when he said:
“Now understand, understand, class of 2009, I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it . . . the fact is that at some level the views of the two camps are irreconcilable.”

The President is right. His view regarding the status, dignity, and rights of the child in the womb, and the view shared by Professor Kmiec and myself, are irreconcilable. A chasm separates those of us who believe that every living human being possesses profound, inherent, and equal dignity, and those who, for whatever reasons, deny it. The issue really cannot be fudged, as people sometimes try to do by imagining that there is a dispute about whether it is really a human being who is dismembered in a dilation and curettage abortion, or whose skin is burned off in a saline abortion, or the base of whose skull is pierced and whose brains are sucked out in a dilation and extraction (or “partial birth”) abortion. That issue has long been settled—and it was settled not by religion or philosophy, but by the sciences of human embryology and developmental biology.

So it is clear that what divides us as a nation, and what divides Barack Obama, on one side, from Robert George and Douglas Kmiec, on the other, is not whether the being whose life is taken in abortion and in embryo-destructive research is a living individual of the human species—a human being; it is whether all human beings, or only some, possess fundamental dignity and a right to life. Professor Kmiec and I affirm, and the President denies, that every human being, even the youngest, the smallest, the weakest and most vulnerable at the very dawn of their lives, has a life which should be respected and protected by law. The President holds, and we deny, that those in the embryonic and fetal stages of human development may rightly and freely be killed because they are unwanted or potentially burdensome to others, or because materials obtained by dissecting them may be useful in biomedical research.

The President speaks of human rights, and I do not question his sincerity. But he does not understand the concept of human rights, as Professor Kmiec and I do, to refer to rights—above all the right to life—that all human beings possess simply by virtue of our humanity. For the President, being human is not enough to qualify someone as the bearer of a right to life. Professor Kmiec and I, by contrast, believe that every member of the human family, simply by virtue of his or her humanity, is truly created equal. We reject the idea that is at the foundation of President Obama’s position on abortion and human embryo-destructive research, namely, that those of us who are equal in worth and dignity are equal by virtue of some attribute other than our common humanity—some attribute that unborn children have not yet acquired, justifying others in treating them, despite their humanity, as non-persons, as objects or property, even as disposable material for use in biomedical research.

President Obama knows that an unborn baby is human. He knows that the blood shed by the abortionist’s knife is human blood, that the bones broken are human bones. He does not deny that the baby whom nurse Jill Stanek discovered gasping for breath in a soiled linen bin after a failed attempt to end her life by abortion, was a human baby. Even in opposing the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which was designed to assure that such babies were rescued if possible or at least given comfort care while they died, Barack Obama did not deny the humanity of the child.

What he denied, and continues to deny, is the fundamental equality of that child—equality with those of us who are safely born and accepted into the human community.
During his campaign for the Presidency, then-Senator Obama was asked by Rick Warren:

When does a baby acquire human rights? In reply, the future president did not say, “well it depends on when a baby (or a “fetus”) comes to life, or becomes a human being.” He knows that an unborn baby is alive and human, and he did not pretend not to know. His response to Pastor Warren did seem to express doubt of as to when rights begin, saying that the question was “above his pay grade.” But Obama’s record as an activist, legislator, and now as President makes clear his view that an unborn baby, or even a baby outside the womb like the one discovered in that soiled linen bin by Jill Stanek, possesses no rights that others are bound to respect or that the law should in any way honor. Throughout his political career, Obama has consistently and fervently rejected every form of legislation that would provide unborn babies or children who survive abortions with meaningful protection against being killed. Indeed, he has opposed even efforts short of prohibiting abortion that would discourage the practice, limit its availability, or directly favor childbirth over abortion.

Professor Kmiec and I believe in the equal fundamental rights of all, including the equality of mother and child. We recognize that women with undesired pregnancies can undergo serious hardships, and we believe that a just and caring society will concern itself with the well-being of mothers as well as their children. We agree with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who by precept and example taught us to reach out in love to care for mother and child alike, never supposing that love for one entails abandoning care and concern for the other. President Obama holds a different view.

He has made clear his own conviction that the equality of women depends on denying the equality and rights of the children they carry. He has made what is, from the pro-life point of view, the tragic error of supposing that the equality of one class of human beings can and must be purchased by denial of the equality of another.

One wishes that President Obama had listened carefully, and with an open mind and an open heart, to the pleas of Mother Teresa during her last visit to the United States. Her message was that a pregnant woman in need is not in need of the violence of abortion. What she and her child need are love and care—love and care from all of us. Our task, Mother reminded us, as individuals and as a society, is to love and care for mother and child alike.

President Obama’s supporters do him no good service by pretending that his expressions of willingness to find “common ground” with pro-lifers involve, at some level, recognition that abortion or embryo-destructive research is bad or tragic because it kills a living member of the human family. Unlike, say former President Clinton or former New York Governor Cuomo, or even Vice President Biden, President Obama does not profess to be “personally opposed” to abortion, or to believe that abortion is a wrongful act that must nevertheless be legally permitted because the consequences of outlawing it would be worse than those of tolerating it. His belief, and his policy, is that abortion, if a woman chooses it, is not wrong. That is why he is not personally opposed to it. There is no wrong there to oppose. Indeed, the President made crystal clear his view that abortion can be an entirely legitimate and even desirable option, when he said that if one of his daughters made a mistake and became pregnant, he would not want her to be “punished with a baby.” In such a case, he saw abortion as the right solution to a problem—a solution that we should be happy is available, and that we should make available if it happens not yet to be available. Without it, a young woman would be “punished.”

I have no doubt that the President regards it as deeply unfortunate, sometimes even tragic, that the problem giving rise to the woman’s need for an abortion exists; but there is equally no room to doubt that President Obama regards it as fortunate that a solution to the problem—in the form of abortion—is available. For someone holding this view, and many people in the academic world hold it, abortion is not in itself a bad or wrongful thing, any more than a knee replacement operation is in itself a bad or wrongful thing. Of course, it would be better if no one ever injured a knee and found himself in need of a knee operation. No one regards knee operations as desirable for their own sakes. No one deliberately injures himself just so that he can have a knee operation. And people don’t have knee operations performed on them for frivolous reasons. But a knee operation is not something that one would discourage or be personally opposed to. It is a solution to a problem, and should therefore be made as available and accessible as possible for people who need them. For those who share President Obama’s view of the moral status of the child in the womb, the decision to abort may be more wrenching for many women than the decision to have a knee operation typically is, but it is like a knee operation precisely inasmuch as it is a legitimate solution to a problem.

All of this was made transparently clear at a recent meeting at the White House in which people on both sides of the abortion issue were brought together to see if they could find some common ground. The meeting was led by Melody Barnes, the Director of the President’s Domestic Policy Council and a former board member of Emily’s List, one of the nation’s most aggressive organizations devoted to legal abortion and its public funding. At one point in the meeting, she recognized pro-life activist Wendy Wright, who attempted to explain ways that the President could begin to achieve his reported goal of reducing the number of abortions. Barnes interrupted her to make clear that the precise goal of the administration is to “reduce the need for abortions.”

Two days after the meeting, the President spoke at Notre Dame, and he chose his words carefully. In speaking of common ground, he did not propose that we reduce the number of abortions, but rather [and I quote] “the number of women seeking abortions.” Get it? The President and his administration will not join us on the common ground of discouraging women from having abortions or even in encouraging them to choose childbirth over abortion. The proposed common ground is the reduction of unwanted pregnancies—not discouraging those in “need” of abortion from having them. The idea that the interests of a child who might be vulnerable to the violence of abortion should be taken into account, even in discouraging women from resorting to abortion or encouraging alternatives to abortion, is simply off the table.

The President and the people he has placed in charge of this issue, such as Melody Barnes, have a deep ideological commitment to the idea that there is nothing actually wrong with abortion, because the child in the womb simply has no rights. This commitment explains the policy positions President Obama has consistently taken since he entered the Illinois legislature. It crucially shapes and profoundly limits what he and those associated with him regard as the “common ground” on which he is willing to work with pro-lifers. And it explains why he and they reject what we, as pro-lifers, propose as common ground.

Because the President does not believe in the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every member of the human family; because he does not believe that babies acquire human rights until after birth; because he does not see abortion as tragic because it takes the life of an innocent human being, he is utterly and intransigently unwilling to support even efforts short of prohibiting abortion that would plainly reduce the number of abortions. Moreover, he is adamantly in favor of funding abortions and abortion providers at home and abroad, and has already taken steps in that direction by revoking the Mexico City Policy and proposing a budget that would restore publicly funded abortions in Washington, D.C.—despite the well-documented and universally acknowledged fact that when you provide public funding for abortion, you get more abortions.

Some pro-choice people think that the killing of unborn children where there is no grave threat to the mother, though bad and unjust, should not be made illegal at least in the earliest stages. Potentially we would have significant common ground with these fellow citizens in the form of policies to discourage abortion and reduce the number of killings. For example, we could join together to oppose the funding of abortion at home and abroad; we could work together for bans on second and third trimester abortions, on abortions for sex-selection, and on particularly heinous methods of abortion, such as partial-birth abortions; we could agree on what Professor Hadley Arkes calls “the most modest first step of all,” namely requiring care—at least comfort care—for the child who survives an attempted abortion and is born alive. We could provide desperately needed financial support for pro-life clinics that assist pregnant women in need—need that is not always financial, but is often emotional and spiritual—and encourage and help these women make the choice for life. We could enact waiting periods, informed consent laws, and parental notification laws that have been shown, in research by Michael New and others, to reduce abortions. We could reject the funding of embryo-destructive research, and join together to support promising research and treatments using non-embryonic sources of stem cells.

However, far from meeting us on any of these areas of common ground, President Obama opposes our efforts. Political realities have prevented him from making good on his promise to the abortion industry to sign the pro-abortion nuclear bomb called the Freedom of Choice Act as one of his first acts in office. But he was not lying when he made that promise. His policies, and above all his appointments to key offices in the White House, the Justice Department, Health and Human Services, and elsewhere make clear that his strategy will be to enact the provisions of FOCA step by step, rather than as a package. As anyone occupying the role of David Axelrod or Karl Rove will tell you, this is obviously the politically astute way for the President to prosecute his agenda. The country does not accept President Obama’s extreme position on abortion. A recent poll showed that a majority of Americans now regard themselves as pro-life, and a majority favors significant legal restrictions on abortion.

Plainly the President’s actual views are far more favorable to abortion than those of the general public; so if he is to advance his goals, and the goals of those who share his commitment to making abortion more widely available and easily accessible, the last thing it would make sense to do is try to enact FOCA as a package.

At Notre Dame, the President offered to work with pro-lifers to draft what he called “sensible” conscience protections for pro-life physicians and other health care workers. This favorably impressed some in the pro-life community, especially since one of President Obama’s first acts was to rescind conscience protection regulations supported by the pro-life community that had been put into place by the Bush Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services. Here, alas, I must urge caution. It seems to me overwhelmingly likely that the key word in the President’s offer is “sensible.” What is “sensible” to him, I predict, is precisely what is regarded as sensible by the Committee on Ethics of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, namely, requiring physicians to refer for abortions, even if their consciences forbid it, and allowing pro-life obstetricians and gynecologists to refuse to perform abortions only when it is clear that an abortion can be provided by a willing physician in the area. For physicians and surgeons who believe that abortion is unjust killing and a grave violation of human rights, this is not sensible. It is ominous. I beg the President’s pro-life supporters urgently to request from him a statement clarifying the meaning of “sensible” conscience protection. If it means weakening current laws, so doctors will be compelled to refer for abortions and in so-called emergencies even to perform abortions, then even here pro-life citizens have no common ground with the President of the United States.

Finally, let me say a word about a matter that has been of deep concern to me—the expansion of federal funding for embryo-destructive research. I regret that the President passed up a golden opportunity to establish true common ground with pro-life citizens. He could have left the funding of research involving cell lines created by the destruction of human embryos in place, and led the charge to promote ethically unproblematic non-embryo-destructive forms of stem cell science. He could have rallied the nation around adult stem cell science and brilliant new technologies for the production of pluripotent stem cells that manifest the very qualities that make embryonic stem cells interesting and potentially useful. He could have shown that we can give both sides in the great stem cell debate what they want—the promise of stem cell science, without the moral stain of embryo killing.

But the President did not do that. He revoked the restrictions on funding research involving embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001. He even took the additional step of revoking President Bush’s 2007 executive order promoting research to advance non-embryo-destructive sources of pluripotent stem cells. Finally, he opened the door to funding research involving stem cell lines created by producing human embryos by somatic cell nuclear transfer or other means specifically for research in which they are killed. He delegated the details of any new guidelines to the National Institutes for Health. The NIH, under Acting Director Raynard Kington, a Bush-administration holdover, recently published its draft guidelines, which mercifully decline to walk through the door the President opened. For now, at least, there will be no funding of research involving embryos created just for destruction.

If the President’s pro-life supporters are partially responsible for this piece of good news, they deserve our sincere thanks, and I here heartily offer mine. The NIH guidelines also include strong consent rules for parents. Already the supporters of embryo-destructive research and so-called “therapeutic cloning” are pressing the NIH to reverse course in both these areas. For that reason, I plead with all who believe in respect for human life, and especially those whose support of the President politically has given them influence with him and his administration, to work tirelessly to ensure that there is no further expansion of funding for embryo-destructive research or weakening of current consent requirements.

The common ground I am interested in is with pro-life Americans who, like Professor Kmiec, have supported the President politically. The election is over, and the current question is not who anyone thinks will do the best job as President, or even whether one may legitimately support candidates who deny the fundamental dignity and right to life of unborn human beings and who promise to protect and extend the abortion license and expand the funding of embryo-destructive research. The question is: On which issues will we support the President’s direction, and on which will we challenge him because he is heading in the wrong direction? Those pro-life Americans who voted for him and support him should not object when we speak for the most vulnerable and defenseless of our fellow human beings, even when that means severely criticizing the President’s policies. They should stand with us on common ground, and join their voices with ours.

I Will Always Love Sarah Palin

RINO Republicans keep trying to tell fellow Republicans that we must all “get with it”. By “getting with it” they mean that we should pretend to be Democrats, but tell the folks that we will do it better. They point to the electoral losses in 2006 and in 2008 as proof that American voters no longer care about traditional issues and traditional values. I disagree.

These RINO’s would have us forget that those elections were lost due to: 1. Republican big government spending and corruption, 2. President Bush’s inability to explain the need for the Iraq War, 3. the press hype of the greatest natural disaster in our history-Katrina, and 4. the mesmerizing of almost all the press with the second coming of Obama.

All polls point to a conservative majority among Americans, and on one big issue, abortion, the country is moving back toward embracing the sanctity of life.

I refuse to believe that many Americans support Obama’s policy of killing babies who survive abortion. My experience with typical Obama voters is that they have no concept of history or current events; they are in a swoon.

What we really need is to get rid of RINO’s and offer a clear alternative to liberal Democrats.

GOP Woes and Social Conservatives

By Kyle-Anne Shiver May 04, 2009 American Thinker

As the clamor grows to purge the GOP of its socially conservative stands, especially its pro-life stance, it might be wise for the prudent party hotshots to take a closer look. Despite some rather angry voices attempting to scapegoat conservative Christians as chest-thumping purists, the data on public opinion surrounding abortion suggests that the Party's pro-life stance is simply not the problem some imagine.

Contrary to what some GOP analysts assume, public support for legal abortion has actually fallen over the last year. In April 2008, overall support for keeping abortion legal in all or most cases, was at 54%, a clear majority. This year, however, Pew polling found that support for legal abortion is down to 46%, while support for making the procedure illegal in most or all cases rose from 41% to 44%. The pro-abortion supporters are now in a statistical tie with pro-life Americans.

Remove the spin and what you have is a Nation about evenly divided on the most divisive issue since slavery.

One of the story lines most often heard these days, among Republicans attempting to explain Democrat victories of 2006 and 2008, is that the young people are ardent supporters of keeping abortion legal and are patently repelled by Republican pro-lifers.

The huge crowds, with a great many young people, following Sarah Palin last year on the campaign trail seem to have gone unnoticed by the D.C. crowd.

And wouldn't you know it? The polling data supports those huge crowds for Palin and the young people inspired by her stout pro-life position, among other factors.

Support for keeping abortion legal in most or all cases among the 18-29 year olds has fallen a full 5% since last August. In August 2008, legal abortion support among 18-29 year olds stood at 52%; this April it's down to 47%. Support for making abortion illegal in most or all cases has risen 3% and is now at 48%. So, using abortion as the straw man argument to win back the young is now moot. By 48% to 47%, another statistical tie, the youth are evenly divided just as the older generations are.

The most notable decline in the support for legal abortion has been among those highly-cherished, sought after Independent voters. As Pew notes
There has been notable decline in the proportion of independents saying abortion should be legal in most or all cases; majorities of independents favored legal abortion in August and the two October surveys, but just 44% do so today. In addition, the proportion of moderate and liberal Republicans saying abortion should be legal declined between August and late October (from 67% to 57%). In the current survey, just 43% of moderate and liberal Republicans say abortion should legal in most or all cases.

The fact that the votes in 2006 and 2008 went against the pro-life Party merely demonstrates, in my opinion, that the priorities in those elections were not focused on social issues.

This is precisely the circumstance borne out by Pew polling on issue priorities late last summer in the lead-up to the November election. The top issue among registered voters, as of August 2008, was the economy by a whopping 87%. The next five issues in importance were all in the 72-77% range, and were energy, health care, education, Iraq and terrorism. Moral values and social issues were at the absolute bottom of the heap, a vast contrast to the elections of 2000 and 2004. And, clearly, the nation felt far more safe in 2008 than in the prior two elections.

Using the warped logic of those now wanting to purge the party of social conservatives, perhaps we should purge national security instead.

When the voters feel less safe, they vote Republican.

All in all, the data certainly does not support the idea that joining with the Democrats in their Culture of Death would in any way whatsoever bring on a Republican resurgence. To be sure, this clamor will not die easily. But for my money, Republican analysts and game-plan makers would do well to consider the fact that sacrificing principle for pander does not play well over the long term.

Just as it was Republican Party principle that brought an end to slavery over the often violent protests of many of its own rank and file, the Party needs to stand firm now in the clutches or disband itself. Without principle, the GOP will simply be a lesser form of the Democrat Party.

In the 19th Century, the big fight on the side of good was the abolition of slavery. Today, that one big fight is the protection of human life.

And it just doesn't get more basic than that. Our side is changing hearts and minds. This is no time for cowardly retreat. This is the time for bold advance.

***************

Governor supports abortion initiative

CONSENT: Voters, not lawmakers, would decide if doctors had to tell a parent of a girl younger than 18.

May 5, 2009 Anchorage Daily News (Excerpt)

"Gov. Sarah Palin is backing a ballot measure to bypass the Legislature and make it illegal for teenagers to get an abortion without telling their parents.

The initiative sponsors, including former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, applied last week to start gathering signatures. The measure would generally forbid a girl under 18 from getting an abortion unless the doctor informed at least one of her parents beforehand.

Palin said she plans to be the first in line to sign up. The governor said she even considered sponsoring the initiative herself, but decided otherwise after checking with the state's lawyers." Anchorage Daily News

Democrats First Principle: Unlimited Abortion

Supreme Court Bans Partial Birth Abortion in Landmark Decision
April 18, 2007

“In what has been quickly hailed as the most significant Supreme Court Decision on abortion since Row vs. Wade, second trimester partial birth abortion was declared illegal in a 5 to 4 decision by the Supreme Court today...
The decision itself described this abortion procedure as both gruesome and unnecessary. In this procedure, labor is induced and when the child is partially born it is then killed.”
****************
In a case that demonstrates again the extent to which abortion activists will go to provide abortion on demand at any time for any reason (even to the point of killing babies who survive abortion attempts), late term abortionist George Tiller was found "Not Guilty" last Friday of the 19 Misdemeanor charges that were brought against him. Dr. Tiller, who interpreted the term, “health of the mother” to include aborting a young woman’s infant so she could attend a rock concert, was freed mainly due to the pressures and manipulations brought by Democrat Party activists led by Governor Kathleen Sebelius and the Kansas abortion industry. It must be wonderful for people to champion the Democrat Party whose number one priority is unlimited abortion. The ban on partial birth abortions makes an exception when it is to save the life of the mother.

Obama: 100 Days of Abortion

BY Tom Hoopes March 28, 2009 National Catholic Journal

As his April 29 100-day mark nears, the Register is compiling an editorial about president Obama’s abortion record, starting with his days as an Illinois state senator.

March 28, 2001: Voted “No” to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee.

March 6, 2002: Voted “No” to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee.

April 4, 2002: Voted “No” to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act on the Illinois Senate floor.

March 13-14, 2003: Voted “No” to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in the Illinois Senate after voting for an amendment that made it identical to the federal law of the same name.

2005-2008: 100% pro-abortion record in U.S. Senate.

July 17, 2007: Tells Planned Parenthood, “Well, the first thing I’d do, as president, is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act,” which would wipe out all state laws regulating abortion.

Sept. 2, 2008: Obama campaign releases an ad putting abortion in the center of its effort.

Nov. 24, 2008: Names Melody Barnes domestic policy advisor; she previously served on the boards of both Emily’s List and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Dec. 1, 2008: Nominates Sen. Hillary Clinton as secretary of State. Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards praises the pick on abortion grounds, saying: “Sen. Clinton understands that women’s quality of life directly affects the major issues confronting the globe: national security, environmental sustainability and global poverty.”

Dec. 11, 2008: Nominates Sen. Tom Daschle as Health and Human Services head. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) Pro-Choice America, says: “We appreciate his recent efforts to help defeat two abortion bans in South Dakota. We had a good working relationship with him.”

Dec. 12, 2008: Appoints Jeanne Lambrew to become the deputy director of the White House Office of Health Reform. A Planned Parenthood statement quoted by LifeNews.com says: “She is one of the leading health-policy experts in the country, and someone who is an advocate for” abortion.

Jan. 5, 2009: Appointed David Ogden deputy attorney general; he’s a pornography lawyer who opposed the Children’s Internet Protection Act and has also fought for Planned Parenthood.

Jan. 5, 2009: Appointed Dawn Johnsen assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel; she’s a former legal director for NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Jan 5, 2009: Appointed Thomas Perrelli associate attorney general. He was counsel to Michael Schiavo, who sought and received permission to starve and dehydrate his wife to death during Holy Week 2005.

Jan 23, 2009: Reversed the Mexico City Policy, allowing taxpayer dollars to go to organizations that perform and promote abortions overseas. In a Gallup Poll, just 35% approved of the action, making it his least popular move as president so far.

Jan 23, 2009: Released a statement pledging to work with Congress to restore funding to the U.N. Population Fund. In 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell requested that Congress halt the funding, tying it to China’s “program of coercive abortion.”

Feb. 17, 2009: Signs stimulus package into law. The new law will fundamentally change the standard that Medicare follows in paying for medical care and, in so doing, may place seniors at risk of not receiving necessary, life-sustaining care.

Feb. 28, 2009: Nominates Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a pro-abortion extremist who has been publicly rebuked by her bishop and who has ties to Kansas abortionist George Tiller, to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

Feb. 4, 2009: Signs into law the SCHIP reauthorization. The Senate rejected an amendment extending health benefits to the unborn. (As senator, Obama voted against that amendment.) Under SCHIP, states are granted the authority to decide which health plans and services can be offered to children. “It’s alarming that this has happened with virtually no public debate,” said Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute. “Many people do not understand the implications of SCHIP as it is written.”

March 5, 2009: Holds a health-care summit; invites Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign but no pro-life groups.

March 6, 2009: Creates a new position and appoints pro-abortion activist Melanne Verveer ambassador-at-large for Women’s Issues. Pro-lifers worry that the position was created to “promote abortion and overturn pro-life laws in nations across the world,” the Catholic News Agency reports.

March 9, 2009: Obama overturned President Bush’s restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research. Now, money from taxpayers can go to scientists who do fatal research on human beings created for the purpose. Obama stopped the Bush preference for proven, moral adult stem-cell therapies.

March 10, 2009: The Obama administration’s Health and Human Services department opens a 30-day review period with an eye to challenging freedom-of-conscience rights that help Catholic doctors opt out of practices they deem immoral.

March 17, 2009: Nominates David Hamilton U.S. circuit judge for the 7th Circuit; he’s a former ACLU leader who blocked pro-life legislation as a Clinton-appointed federal judge.

Additional Appointments:

Nov. 7, 2008: Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff; he earned a 100% pro-abortion voting record as a U.S. representative.

Nov. 22, 2008: Ellen Moran, White House communications director; she was executive director of the pro-abortion political committee Emily’s List.

Dec. 17, 2008: Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, Interior secretary; he scored only 28% with the National Right to Life Committee.

Dec. 17, 2008: Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Agriculture secretary; Iowa Right to Life Committee Executive Director Kim Lehman, citing his record, said: “We definitely consider him anti-life.”

Feb. 12, 2009: Leon Panetta, CIA director; as a U.S. representative in 1990 he co-sponsored the Freedom of Choice Act.

Thanks go to our friend Leo Lambert for providing this copy from a paid-subscribers only publication. For the record, I would like to restate my position on abortion, which I abhor personally. I believe that Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton were decided unconstitutionally and should be overturned. I believe that this is a moral and ethical matter that is exclusively the province of state governments. I believe that each state should regulate abortion after 13 weeks have passed, but I do not want to see us go back to the days of back-alley abortions and dead and maimed young girls. I therefore would support my state allowing abortions for any reason during the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.

I honestly believe that future Americans will look back on this period in our history regarding unlimited abortion with the same sense of horror as we now look back on slavery. I do not understand how anyone could support the Democrat Party on this one issue alone.

The Dispiriting Easter Egg Hunt

To those who understand that private money has always been free to investigate the potential of embryonic stem cells, that so far that area of research has been a dry hole, and that technology has already found ways to bypass any advantages gained by experimentation on embryonic cells – this piece may not hold any surprises. We ought to understand, though, the ‘slippery slope’ possibilities of this situation. Of course, some of my liberal friends often ‘tut, tut’ any ‘slippery slope’ arguments. They “forget” that the 1973 federal approval of abortions in the first trimester has brought us to a situation where babies who survive abortions in the 9th month are legally killed. I don’t think, in 1973, that anyone contemplated that. This purely political decision by Obama will inevitably lead to pregnancies and abortions by desperate women trying to earn some money.

Obama has too many eggs in his basket

By Kathleen Parker Mar. 11, 2009 FresnoBee

WASHINGTON -- As he lifted the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research Monday, President Barack Obama proclaimed that scientific decisions now will be made "on facts, not ideology."

This sounds good, but what if there were other nonideological facts that Obama seems to be ignoring? One fact is that since Obama began running for president, researchers have made amazing strides in alternative stem cell research.

Science and ethics finally fell in love, in other words, and Obama seems to have fallen asleep during the kiss. Either that, or he decided that keeping an old political promise was more important than acknowledging new developments. In the process, he missed an opportunity to prove that he is pro-science but also sensitive to the concerns of taxpayers who don't want to pay for research that requires embryo destruction.

Unfortunately, the stem cell debate has been characterized as a conflict between science and religious "kooks." In choosing sides, it is, indeed, easier to imagine lunch with a researcher who wants to resurrect Christopher Reeve (whom Obama couldn't resist mentioning) and make him walk again, than with the corner protester holding a fetus in a jar.

Moreover, as Obama said, the majority of Americans have reached a consensus that we should pursue this research. Polling confirms as much, but most Americans, including most journalists and politicians, aren't fluent in stem cell research. It's complicated.

If people "know" anything, it is that embryonic stem cells can cure diseases and that all stem cells come from fertility clinic embryos that will be discarded anyway. Neither belief is entirely true.

In fact, every single one of the successes in treating patients with stem cells thus far -- for spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis, for example -- have involved adult or umbilical cord blood stem cells, not embryonic. And though federal dollars still won't directly fund embryo destruction, federally funded researchers can obtain embryos privately created only for experimentation. Thus, taxpayers now are incentivizing a market for embryo creation and destruction.

The insistence on using embryonic stem cells always rested on the argument that they were pluripotent, capable of becoming any kind of cell. That superior claim no longer can be made with the spectacular discovery in 2007 of "induced pluripotent stem cells," the laboratory equivalent of the airplane.

Very simply, iPS cells can be produced from a skin cell by injecting genes that force it to revert to its primitive "blank slate" form with all the same pluripotent capabilities of embryonic stem cells.

"Induced pluripotent stem cells" doesn't trip easily off the tongue. But Time magazine named iPS innovation No. 1 on its "Top 10 Scientific Discoveries" of 2007, and the journal Science rated it the No. 1 breakthrough of 2008.

The iPS discovery even prompted Dr. Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, to abandon his license to attempt human cloning, saying that the researchers "may have achieved what no politician could: an end to the embryonic stem cell debate." And, just several days ago, Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health under the first President Bush, wrote in U.S. News & World Report that these recent developments "reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells ... are obsolete."

Many scientists, of course, want to conduct embryonic stem cell research, as they have and always could with private funding. One may agree or disagree with their purposes, but one may also question why taxpayers should have to fund something so ethically charged when alternative methods are available.

Next comes a move to lift the unfortunately named Dickey-Wicker amendment in Congress, which prohibits using tax dollars to create human embryos for research purposes. If the amendment is rescinded, then human embryos can be created and destroyed with federal tax dollars.

Good people can disagree on these things, but those who insist that this is "only about abortion" miss the point. The objectification of human life is never a trivial matter. And determining what role government plays in that objectification may be the ethical dilemma of the century.

In this case, science handed Obama a gift -- and he sent it back.

Already the Worst President; Can We Get Bush Back?

Today the African-American lady who is the mother of one of the victims of the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole refused to meet with Obama in the wake of the throwing out of the case against the Jihadist bomb-master due to a recent Executive Order by Obama regarding Guantanamo.

What else have we seen in just two weeks? What else can go wrong?

1. Ricardson withdraws as SecCommerce due to corruption.
2. Daschle withdraws as SecHuman Services due to corruption and unpaid taxes.
3. The Europeans and the Canadians scream Smoot-Hawley due to Obama’s buy- American provision.
4. India screams objections to Obama’s intercession in Kashmir.
5. Iran throws Obama’s plaintive plea in his face.
6. Tax-cheat Geithner appointed SecTreasury (and head of IRS) with huge Democrat vote.
7. Catholic hospitals in revolt as Obama forces them into abortions.
8. One trillion dollar Democrat pork bill mislabeled stimulus bill receives 34% national approval even with on-going recession.
9. Baby murdered after botched abortion, following policy laid down by Obama.
10. New CIA neophyte, Panetta, admits rough questioning may be necessary, contradicting Obama’s orders.
11. Russia snatches Kyrgyztan from Obama endangering our effort in Afghanistan.
12. Obama insults Petraeus, Zinni mistreated and lied to, Solis in trouble, Kelliher withdraws, Volcker shut out
13. Obama pushes for overturning private voting in secret for unions.
14. Obama breaks his promise on lobbyists; appoints dozens - gives many ethics waivers.
15. There is much more, but this will do for now.

It certainly appears that the slime of Chicago politics was not limited to Blagojevich, that the slime has moved into the White House in the form of Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama.

The only thing that has gone right in the last two weeks was the free election that took place in our new ally in the Middle East, free Iraq.

So Much For Hope Over Fear

By Charles Krauthammer February 06, 2009 RealClearPolitics.com (Excerpt)

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.

WASHINGTON – “Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.

He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.

At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages.

Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.”

The abomination of the U.S.S. Cole:

Judge drops charges in USS Cole bombing case

Friday 6 February 2009 Breaking News - Source: Reuters (Excerpt)
By Jane Sutton and Andrew Gray

MIAMI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – “The judge overseeing U.S. war crimes court at Guantanamo on Thursday dismissed the charges against a Saudi prisoner accused of plotting the bombing of the Navy warship USS Cole, the Pentagon said.

The move avoided a showdown between the U.S. military and President Barack Obama. It cancelled a hearing that had been set for Monday in the Guantanamo war crimes court, despite the fact Obama had ordered a freeze in proceedings there.

Susan Crawford, the retired judge who oversees the commissions, issued a ruling dismissing without prejudice all charges against Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, said Pentagon spokesman Navy Commander J.D. Gordon.

Nashiri is accused of plotting the attack on the Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000.

The dismissal of the charges eliminates the need for Monday's hearing but al-Nashiri would remain in U.S. custody and could be recharged under the commissions system or a replacement drawn up by the Obama administration.

"It was (Crawford's) decision, and it reflects the fact that the president has issued an executive order which mandates that the military commissions be halted, pending the outcome of several comprehensive reviews of our detention operations at Guantanamo," Gordon said.”

Why Be Pro-Life? By Jonah Goldberg

I thought this was an excellent article, and I agree with most of what Goldberg says, but I find it impossible to be so judgmental as he about those who have changed their minds. The reason is, although I’ve always been against abortion in my own life, I’ve changed my mind a couple of times about the role the federal and state governments should play on this issue. I would guess that politicians, who must spend huge amounts of time (compared to me, a private citizen who works at a regular job) contemplating where they stand on this and on other important issues, must be looked at somewhat cynically, as the author does. I still think, though, that everyone should be given the benefit of the doubt as to the honesty of their present position.

I’ve written at length about abortion so I won’t go into details here, but I believe that Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton should be overthrown on constitutional grounds, but that states should make all abortions in the first trimester legal, and place limitations on later term abortions. Partial birth abortions should always be illegal.


Why Be Pro-Life?
By Jonah Goldberg, RealClearPolitics, October 16, 2007

Being pro-life is so unfashionable, so uncool, I tend to trust politicians who are willing to hold the line.

This, in turn, points to why I have special contempt for antiabortion politicians who switch sides. Jesse Jackson used to call abortion "genocide." Dick Gephardt, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Dennis Kucinich and other pro-choicers all once championed the unborn. Did each of them revisit the moral, philosophical, scientific and theological issues involved and, after careful study, suddenly decide that abortion doesn't kill "babies" after all but, rather, merely evacuates "uterine contents"? I doubt it.

I could be wrong, obviously. But the fact that their conversions echoed the march of the Democratic Party and, for the most part, dovetailed with their own presidential ambitions suggests to me that they were willing to sanction the taking of what they had once believed to be innocent lives merely for political gain. That is disgusting.

Flip-flopping the other way (as George H.W. Bush, Mitt Romney and others did) may be no less cynical. To pro-choice voters, it's surely deeply offensive to watch someone sacrifice the individual liberty of women for political expediency. But, morally, it just doesn't seem as bad to me.

Every day, the government restricts what you can do with your body, from the drugs you can take to the surgeries you can subject yourself to. In other words, the line of personal autonomy is often blurry and narrow. The line between life and death is supposed to be bright and wide. Once a politician takes a stand that a certain population -- be they fetuses, Jews, blacks or anybody else -- has the right to life, their motive for changing their minds should be a lot better than fear of losing support from NARAL and the New York Times.

And that gets me to my more philosophical or principled reason for being pro-life: I just don't know. I confess that I lack passion about debates over RU-486, Plan B and other measures that terminate a pregnancy in the first few hours or days after conception, because that's when I'm least sure that a life is at stake. But when it comes to, say, partial-birth abortion, I am adamantly pro-life. I don't know if a fertilized egg has rights. But I am convinced that a baby minutes, days or weeks before full term is, simply, a baby. And despite what you constantly hear, Roe vs. Wade doesn't recognize that fact.

In death penalty cases, "reasonable doubt" goes to the accused because unless we're certain, we must not risk an innocent's life. This logic goes out the window when it comes to abortion, unless you are 100% sure that babies only become human beings after the umbilical cord is cut. I don't see how you can be that sure, which is why I'm pro-life -- not because I'm certain, but because I'm not.

Supreme Court OKs Abortion Procedure Ban

A little sanity enters a crazy world, and the first step in restoring constitutional government has now been taken.

Apr 18, 3:48 PM (ET)

By MARK SHERMAN, MyWay.com (Excerpt)

WASHINGTON (AP) - "The Supreme Court's conservative majority handed anti-abortion forces a major victory Wednesday in a decision that bans a controversial abortion procedure and set the stage for further restrictions.
For the first time since the court established a woman's right to an abortion in 1973, the justices upheld a nationwide ban on a specific abortion method, labeled partial-birth abortion by its opponents.

The 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion."

Can SCOTUS Sustain Abortion on Demand?

Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton may be enshrined as the law of the land (in my opinion these decisions were a destructive distortion of our Constitution by activist justices intent on imposing their own personal beliefs), but the American public does not buy abortion-on-demand according to all the polls I have seen – including these most recent ones:

EWTN.com

Washington DC, Jan 26, 2007 (CNA).- “A new CBS News poll has found that a majority of Americans want to prohibit abortions in all or most cases or want greater restrictions. The poll results are consistent with the results of a 2006 poll, reported LifeNews.com.

According to the poll, 47 percent of Americans want to prohibit all or most abortions and 16 percent want them to be greatly restricted.

About 30 percent of those polled want to limit abortions to the very rare cases of rape, incest or danger to the life of the mother. Twelve percent want abortions allowed only when the pregnancy threatens the mother's life. Five percent said abortions should always be illegal. Only 31 percent of those polls want to permit abortion in all cases.

The poll was conducted from Jan. 18 to 21 and it surveyed 1,168 adults nationwide.

The CBS poll is backed-up by other recent polls, such as one by Zogby, which found that 69 percent of voters think that federal funds should not be used for abortions.

69 percent also support parental notification for girls 16 or younger and 55 percent say the notification law should apply to girls 18 and younger.

Zogby also found 56 percent of Americans back a 24-hour waiting period on abortion, 64 percent would charge criminals with a second crime for killing or injuring an unborn child in the course of an attack on a pregnant woman, and 69 percent don't want their tax money to pay for abortions or promoting abortion in other nations, according to LifeNews.

A third poll, conducted by Newsweek in November 2006 found the number of pro-life Americans rose 5 percent while the number of Americans who support abortion fell four percent compared to a previous poll it conducted in 2005.” EWTN News

If President Bush gets an opportunity to appoint another conservative to the Supreme Court, and that person gets a fair hearing for a change, we may see this issue finally go back to the states where questions of morality should be decided. While I am personally opposed to abortion-on-demand and to the Roe v. Wade decision, I would work at the state level to ensure first trimester abortions were without limitation in my state, because I don’t want us to go back to the horrors of back alley abortions for desperate young women. On the other hand, if a majority of my state’s voters disagreed with me, I would accept that judgment because that’s the way a republic form of democracy is supposed to work.

The Elephant and the Embryo

Scenes and videos from the movie discussed below can be seen here.


December 01, 2006
The Elephant and the Embryo (Excerpts)
By Kathleen Parker, The Orlando Sentinel

When does an elephant become an elephant? That is the question.

At least it's the one that popped into my mind as I viewed images from an upcoming National Geographic documentary: "In the Womb: Animals.''

The film, scheduled to air Dec. 10, may be the best weapon yet for the pro-life movement. That wasn't the purpose of the documentary -- the first ever to record animals in the womb -- but these images of gestating life pack a powerful wallop.

The mind makes a natural leap to questions of how we consider and treat the pre-born.

Let's just say that the thought of aborting a baby elephant, even in the earliest gestational stages, is repugnant in a way that transcends intellectual arguments about constitutional rights to privacy.

The images were captured with 4-D ultrasound scans and enhanced with computer graphics. In the elephant's case, suffice it to say they took a backdoor approach. Niiiiice elephant.

Other stars of the film are a puppy and a dolphin. We watch the golden retriever fetus perform full-grown dog behaviors in the womb, a dolphin learn to swim inside its mother, and the elephant grow from a single cell to a 260-pound, well, elephant.

Seeing similar images of a human fetus -- blinking, sucking his thumb and responding to sounds -- is equally amazing, of course. But something about these animals in utero breathes fresh air into the life debate.

Why? Because they're so adorable, helpless and vulnerable. It's the puppy reflex. With the exception of the occasional mass murderer, people see a puppy and go Awwww. They want to cuddle it.

Most people have the same reflex with human babies, too, but as a society, we've managed to emotionally distance ourselves from the human fetus. To think of it as cute or human would make abortion a much tougher choice.

Within the context of abortion, ultrasounds of human fetuses are, in fact, controversial. Pro-life pregnancy counselors are considered manipulative and intimidating when they show a pregnant woman considering abortion an ultrasound of her fetus….

I've long argued that education is the best tool in reducing abortion. Show girls and women their child in utero and abortion will eliminate itself.

Now we have another tool. That is, if we're really serious about reducing abortion. Take "In the Womb'' to every classroom in America and let students do their own free-associating. When the tears are dry -- audiences reportedly weep at this film -- abortion will seem inconceivable. Who could destroy an unborn puppy?

We Americans are suckers for animals, often displaying greater empathy for them than for people. Be honest. In movie battle scenes, whose deaths bother you more -- men's or the horses'? Thought so….

We may not be able to define when a human being becomes a human being, but even children know this much: An elephant doesn't become an elephant without first being a single cell. Kathleen Parker