The Storm Before The Calm

Responding to yet another mass murder, this time in rural Oregon, right-wing author, commentator and blogger Michelle Malkin tweeted "There needs to be a mandatory waiting period imposed on anti-gun extremists commentating on breaking news crime incidents."

At first thought, it seems reasonable to allow a brief period of grieving for close friends and relatives of the victims.   However, it is clear that the motive of the pro-gun set is to suppress any and all talk of gun control legislation at any time.  National Public Radio in July reported

In the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee quietly rejected an amendment that would have allowed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the underlying causes of gun violence.

Though gun violence and gun control has again come to the forefront of the American conversation, prohibition on gun research goes back decades.

Dr. Fred Rivara, a professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology at the University of Washington at Seattle Children’s Hospital, has been involved with injury research for 30 years. He was part of a team that researched gun violence back in the 1990s and personally saw the chilling effects of the NRA’s lobbying arm. Rivara says that the NRA accused the CDC of trying to use science to promote gun control.

“As a result of that, many, many people stopped doing gun research, [and] the number of publications on firearm violence decreased dramatically,” he told The Takeaway in April. “It was really chilling in terms of our ability to conduct research on this very important problem"...

“The original concern from the National Rifle Association back in 1996, which Dr. Rivara mentioned, made that very implication,” says Zwillich. “The NRA complained to Congress that the CDC was using the results of its research to essentially advocate for gun control. They called it propaganda. And back at that time, Congress slashed the CDC’s funding by the exact amount that was used for gun-related public health research.”

With the chilling effect on research into the relationship between firearms and public health, there is little discussion on gun carnage between mass shootings, albeit a period of increasingly brief duration.  Thus in his powerful statement to the nation last night, President Obama noted

We spent over a $1 trillion and passed countless laws and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?

No legislation was passed even after the murder of eleven people in Charleston, South Carolina. And it's not as if nothing was done- the Battle Flag of Treason was taken down from the capitol in Charleston. Meanwhile, there was inaction on the state and national levels (map below via Vox)..

So here is a suggestion for compromise:  gun-control supporters refrain from their advocacy following the next, inevitable, incident of innocent people being wiped out by a fanatic with a firearm. In return, the Speaker of the House must allow to come to the floor whatever anti-gun murder bill is proposed by the Democratic minority.

Republicans might go for something like that, given that it could be easily circumvented.  A deal could be made, after which Carly Fiorina could be enlisted by her Party to deny any agreement was ever made and to swear there is a video somewhere to prove it.

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Right-To-Life Journalist

It would be humorous were it not so reprehensible.

That wouldn't be the awkward, inept performance of Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz as chairperson of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday when Planned Parenthood director Cecile Richards was interrogated on the number of abortions and cancer screenings performed by the organization, Ms. Richards' salary, and something about the Congo.

Chaffetz was roundly criticized in part because he presented a chart purporting to show that abortions are up, and preventive services down, at Planned Parenthood, only to be informed a moment later by Richards (after consultation with counsel) that the chart was prepared by the anti-abortion rights outfit "Americans United for Life."  ("Richards states "some of the services, like pap smears, dropped in frequency because of changing medical standards about who should be screened and how often.") And as illustrated below by Kevin Drum, that chart itself was highly misleading.

Chaffetz now has been forced to defend himself, maintaining "It wasn't a hearing about the videos. The hearing was about the funding of Planned Parenthood. They're doing all these things that don't go directly to women's health."

He should defend himself for his performance, though not for the reasons cited by National Review Editor Rich Lowry.

The ultra-conservative, yet Establishment Republican is embarrassed by Representative Chaffetz and his GOP cohorts who, he wrote, gave every sign of being underprepared and overmatched" and "like a team of paralegals squaring off with an accomplished mob lawyer."

If the comparison to organized crime were neither slimy nor direct enough, Lowry accused Richards of "defending the indefensible, which is her job. The slave trade, another enormity of American national life once accepted by a swath of the country, surely would have benefited from" her defense, he charges.

"Once upon a time in America," writes Lowry, "people believed that the Negro had no rights we were bound to respect. Today, Cecile Richards and her allies believe the same about human life in the womb." (Equating slavery with individual freedom for pregnant women, Republicans wonder still: why won't blacks vote for us?)

Slamming "grotesque disregard for human decency that attends" reproductive freedom, Lowry cleverly complains" Richards basically got away with murder, a core competency of her organization."  "Murder," illegal killing, is the anti-choice crowd's common characterization of legal abortion.   Just words, perhaps: in the same vein, perhaps I should blithely refer to Lowry as a "congenital liar."

That would be unfair, inasmuch as it would be incendiary. It would at least be a semantically defensible characterization of someone who would claim the organization Richards leads is "devoted to killing babies, whose organs are sometimes cut out and sold off."

Because Lowry's is a short statement, given it is inaccurate in only four ways:

1) The fetus, alive or not, is not yet a baby but a fetus.
2) Planned Parenthood is not devoted to killing babies, given that it is more intimately involved in preventive health care and contraception.
3) The organs are not "sold off" by Planned Parenthood, which receives only compensation for expenses.
4) Tissue, not organs, is conveyed.

Otherwise, right on target. However, Lowry demonstrates a knack for humor he did not realize he had.  He contends Tuesday's witness "is extremely skilled at defending the indefensible," which falls not only because Richards' position is eminently defensible but because he mistakes Richards, daughter of the late, great Ann Richards, for someone extremely skilled.

Most humorous- or at least ironic- is Lowry's attack on Chaffetz as having "wandered off on a tangent" at one point and having "damaged his credibility" at another.  Richard Lowry, let us recall, once breathlessly exulted

I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.








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Making It Up About Foreign Policy, Marijuana, Herself. Worse Is This.

This could be about foreign policy.   Carly Fiorina vows to build a missile defense system in Poland and to rebuild the Sixth Fleet, which Stars and Stripes reports already is building a land-based missile interceptor site in, as luck would have it, Poland.  She wants to "conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states," which the US military already is doing, and to "send a few thousand more troops into Germany" because there is nothing that says efficient use of tax money better than sending more soldiers into Germany, in imminent danger of conquest by Russia.

Of course, as Gary Legum points out, that wasn't the real message of the candidate who never really means any of it, except for the style, which is supposed to strike fear into the hearts of the bad guys. Salon's Gary Legum (emphasis his) points out

if you are a conservative voter in America, you’re thinking, Carly won’t be a chump like that wimp Obama, who has let Putin walk all over him. That swelling in your chest is a jingoistic pride that you haven’t felt during the long, dark years that the Kenyan Usurper has been destroying America from within.

Or this could be about drugs, given that as Fiorina was diplomatically advised she was not up to date with her facts about marijuana, she decided to lecture the interviewer with "So I will also tell you something else. We lost a daughter to addiction."   What this has to do with marijuana (especially given her daughter died from a combination of alcohol, prescription drugs, and bulimia)  the publicly-truthless (thank you, Charlie Pierce) candidate didn't mention. But when the point is"I'm right, you're wrong, shut up," it doesn't really matter.

There is, however, at least one more insidious, and potentially more damaging, distortion coming from Fiorina, as illustrated by her exchange with the host on Sunday's Meet The Press:


CHUCK TODD:

Do you believe any of the money Planned Parenthood uses is for good, from the federal government?

CARLY FIORINA:

I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. But you know what I find amazing? The hypocrisy of Democrats who stand up and oppose every time taxpayer funding for, say, pregnancy centers, that are also very much focused on women's health, but no, Democrats don't want taxpayer funding for pregnancy centers.

I just visited one in South Carolina. They are all privately funded. This is hypocrisy on Democrats' part. This is about a political slush fund. It is about the character of our nation. And yes, we should stand up and fight on this issue.

Thus is the impression left that Planned Parenthood can be eviscerated and centers also "very much focused on women's health"  left intact. But it's unlikely Fiorina is talking about outfits whose main focus is on women's health but rather about crisis pregnancy centers, unregulated and unlicensed, which help pregnant women, though primarily try to talk them out of abortions.

Law school student and NARAL Pro-Choice (chart below from NARAL Pro-Choice America) legal intern Caitlin Bancroft went undercover in Virginia and found

After checking in, I was introduced to my "counselor," a conservatively dressed middle-aged woman who led me to one of the back rooms. She sat across from me with some forms on a clipboard I was not permitted to see. Much like the décor, the set-up reinforced the sense of professionalism and expertise. The consultation began with the standard questions: name, address, age, date of last period?

Right as I began to relax, the Q&A took a turn for the personal and invasive. "What is your relationship with your parents like?" "How is your financial situation?" "Have you told the father?" "What is his religion?" "Are his parents religious?" "How many people have you slept with?" "Would your parents be excited about a grandchild?"

As I sat there having my life probed, the purpose of the questions dawned on me. In case the test was positive, my "counselor" wanted to know which tactic to use to persuade me to continue the pregnancy -- exactly where my resolve was the weakest. Was there a loving Christian boyfriend who would make a great dad? Did I have kind supportive parents who would be excited by the idea of a grandchild? I knew I wasn't pregnant -- knew exactly what she was doing -- knew she wasn't a doctor. But my body reacted instinctively to her questions with guilt and shame. It felt like a kick in the gut when she asked if I had told my brother about the baby, and I felt a creeping sense of selfishness as I imagined the door slamming on my shared apartment, my twenties, my life. Would my parents want me to have this child? Would it matter?

The woman stopped between questions to comment on my answers and lie. "Oh, you've taken birth control. Let me tell you how that causes cancer and is the same a medication abortion." I was told abortion would scar me for the rest of my life -- would damage all of my future relationships and leave me "haunted." I was told the pill could cause breast cancer, that condoms are "naturally porous" and don't protect against STIs, and that IUDs could kill me. She lectured and lied to me for over an hourbefore I even received the results of my pregnancy test.

Also interspersed in the deception were subtle judgments of my life decisions. "So you do have some scruples about you," she said at one point, referring to my low number of sexual partners. One of the most disturbing comments came when I was pressed about the sexual experience leading to my visit, the reason I supposedly needed a pregnancy test in the first place. I told her an all too common story of acquaintance rape. I had been at a party, I said, severely intoxicated and unable to consent, "I didn't remember anything... I just wished it hadn't happened." Her response made it clear that the situation was my fault, "Oh so he took advantage of you. Well just don't do it again sweetie; just don't do it again." It made me sick.

It only got worse after a positive pregnancy test. At another CPC (the deceptively named "A Woman's Choice" in Falls Church, Virginia) I could hear two employees whispering before entering my room, plotting strategies to reveal the test results and best manipulate my reaction. When they did finally clue me in, my concerns were casually brushed aside and used as ammunition for their agenda: I could care for a baby with no job, my parents would certainly help, and I could absolutely handle the stress. They even argued that I could be a law student while pregnant: "It will probably be good for the baby," the woman said, "because you will be sitting down all of the time."

At this center and elsewhere, the conversations were always the same. It didn't matter how many times I said that l didn't want to be pregnant or be a mother the CPC staffer would continue to bully me. Their tactics were so blatantly manipulative that I should have been able to fight back. I wanted to have a response, some kind of self-defense. But I couldn't find anything to say. I am pro-choice feminist activist and I often discuss these kinds of difficult and emotionally sensitive topics at work and in school. Yet these women's so-called concern left me defenseless, struggling to find a response that didn't play right into their hands.

 "There are," Bancroft writes, "over 58 CPCs, more than double the number of comprehensive reproductive healthcare centers in the state."  Across the nation- in which they outnumber abortion clinics approximately 3-to-1-  they are not all "privately funded," as the publicly-truthless candidate implies.   NPR explains the Guttmacher Institute

an abortion rights think-tank, cites seven states with line items in their budget for alternatives to abortion. Texas gives the most — more than $5 million over two fiscal years. Ohio budgeted $250,000 in 2013, and this year abortion opponents plan to boost their request to $1 million. Ohio and nearly two dozen other states also send smaller amounts to pregnancy centers through the sale of "Choose Life" license plates.

Fiorina is not alone in this deception.  In the last GOP debate, John Ellis Bush contended

There are 13,000 community-based organizations that provide health services to women, 13,000 in this country. I don’t believe that Planned Parenthood should get a penny from the federal government. Those organizations should get funding, just as I increased funding when I was governor of the state.

To be sure, Fiorina (as outlined by Legum) is the master demagogue. It must be difficult for Republicans and wayward independents to recognize as excrement anything stated so resolutely and confidently, sometimes with warped statistics. In light of the effort of congressional right-wing extremists to shut down the government over contraception and women's health care, its most dangerous expression probably is the growing myth that there is an extensive array of viable alternatives to Planned Parenthood.

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Breaking! Carly Fiorina Tells The Truth!

Carly Fiorina told the truth!  On Sunday's Meet The Press (transcript here), the GOP presidential candidate was asked (video below) whether congressional Republicans should force a shutdown of the federal government over Planned Parenthood funding and replied

Well, you know, here's the thing. We are finding common ground. People's views evolve on all kinds of things. And the American people's views have evolved on this. So let's just take one example. The majority of women, the majority of young people, the majority of Americans now believe that abortion for any reason at all after five months is wrong.

Sadly, most people do oppose abortion after 20 weeks, as the poll question usually is stated.  (Actually, five months is more likely to be 21-22 weeks, about which no one is asked. But let's not quibble.)

Unfortunately, Fiorina then stated "Just as they believe that the butchery of live fetuses for body parts is wrong."  One woman's body parts, however, is another woman's fetal tissue used by Dr. Ben Carson (in years past) and other medical personnel for research into AIDS, spinal cord injuries, diabetes, cancer, and eyesight loss.  And given that Planned Parenthood makes no profit on the fetal tissue, it's not done for the purpose of procuring body parts. And it's not butchery. Otherwise, Fiorina is spot-on.

Nonetheless, Fiorina claimed also

I believe there are a variety of ways to deal with this. But I believe this is something we must stand up and fight for. Because it is about the character of our nation. Taxpayers are funding this activity. And not only that, not only are taxpayers having to fund this butchery, but Planned Parenthood doles out millions of dollars every single election cycle to Democrat candidates. This is a political slush fund on top of being butchery that Americans, again, whether they're pro-life or pro-choice, cannot support.

She is right- there is a variety of ways to deal with this!  However, given that she is talking about abortion and not the preventive care and contraception Planned Parenthood specializes in, it is not being funded by federal income tax, pursuant to the Hyde Amendment. It is not butchery. (There she goes again!)  Slush funds are illegal- otherwise, they are not slush funds, and we haven't heard of indictments. Further, though Planned Parenthood does contribute to Democratic candidates, the total amounts fall far short of "millions of dollars."

"That scene," Fiorina added, of a "voice saying what I said they were saying, 'We're going to keep it alive to harvest its brain' exists as well." Then she vowed that she viewed the scene, which does not exist.

But if Fiorina says most individuals oppose abortions after 20 weeks and there are ways to attack the procedure, she is correct.  Unfortunately, almost everything else out of her mouth is wildly distorted or an outright lie. That makes her a viable Republican candidate for President.

Up next: another danger



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If Donald Trump Lied Better, He Would Be Carly Fiorina

Politico's Glenn Thrush writes that Politifact "has rated 50 of Trump’s recent statements flagged by staff or readers and found that around three-quarters are either partly false, false or 'pants on fire' lies. None of them were rated completely 'true.'"  He considers especially damning three falsehoods about Trump's own biography, as well as one about policy.

The Art of the Deal is among the best-selling business books of all time, but not the best-selling as Trump claims.  Further, he's not worth $10 billion but perhaps as little as $4 billion and is not of Swedish descent as he says he is, but rather of German background.  And as almost everyone realizes, immigrants are coming to the USA of their own accord rather than because the Mexican government has been sending them.

Donald Trump will never pass a lie-detector test, and his boasts about himself themselves may eventually become stuff of legend.  However, there is one major Republican candidate whose dishonesty rivals that of the front-runner. Dave Roberts of Vox recently reported on an interview by Katie Couric of Carly Fiorina (video below) which addressed the issue of climate change.





Fiorina made several statements inconsistent with objective reality. She claimed California "destroys lives and livelihoods with environmental regulations," though as Roberts notes

between 1993 and 2013, thanks to energy efficiency, the average residential electricity bill in California declined, on an inflation-adjusted basis, by 4 percent, even as bills rose elsewhere in the country. Between 1990 and 2012, the state cut per-capita carbon emissions by 25 percent even as its GDP increased by 37 percent. Its total carbon emissions are declining, even as its economy continues to grow.

Oh, and California created more jobs than any other state in the nation last year, with the fifth-highest GDP growth rate. And its budget is balanced.

Fiorina argued also "China could care less" if the USA tries to reduce carbon. It turns out that China could care less. It could care far less because

China clearly cares what the US does; it would not have made the promises it did in its climate pact with the US if Obama had not made policy gestures of good faith. It's true that China, like any country, acts primarily in its own interests, not based on what America does. But that's precisely why it's investing more in clean energy than any other country in the world ($89.5 billion to the US's $51.8 billion in 2014), even as it puts increasingly tight restrictions on coal, leading its coal consumption to decline for the first time in years. It cares very much about reducing its crippling air pollution and dominating 21st-century growth industries.

Roberts observed Fiorina contending both "coal provides half the energy in this nation still" and "to say we're basically going to outlaw coal, which is what this administration has done." However, Roberts has found, coal provides only 20% of the total primary energy consumed in the nation. Under the Clean Power Plan, it's expected to provide 27% of the country's electricity n 2030, which is a far cry from being "outlawed."

Fiorina maintains also "Solar is great, but solar takes huge amounts of water" but Roberts recognizes

No, it doesn't.

All of the distributed rooftop solar in the US and 84 percent of utility-scale solar projects use solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, which require no water at all save what's needed to keep their surfaces clean.

Roberts details five other statements about climate change, each of them grossly misleading or flat-out lies, made by the candidate.

You get the idea. But you already suspected Fiorina was a serial liar when her claim of a "fully formed fetus on the table, it’s heart beating, it’s legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain" was revealed as a hoax.  Chris Ostendorf points out

Fiorina may have been referring to was an anti-abortion documentary called Human Capital, which does include footage of a moving fetus. However, that scene was not filmed at Planned Parenthood. The documentary also includes an interview with a former procurement technician—a biomedical research company employee who obtains fetal tissue—who claims that she was once commanded to extract brain tissue from an aborted fetus.

It’s impossible to prove whether the technician was telling the truth about her experiences, but the real problem is that Human Capital does not actually contain any footage like the moment Fiorina described.

No problem there, however. The Washington Post explains

Other campaigns have climbed down from similar claims about the videos. Fiorina and her allies have done no such thing. Three days after the debate, CARLY for America – the PAC that legally has to keep its distance from Fiorina’s actual campaign – put together a video that spliced the candidate’s answer with different clips. The viewer, hearing about the controversy but unaware of the original videos, might think that Fiorina nailed it.







Somewhat chastened, most candidates would apologize, attempt a clarification, or ignore the myth their candidate tried to create.  Instead, here there is, in the words of Dahlia Lithwick, "no walk-back, no clarification, just a persistent insistence that a video that doesn’t exist and can’t even be manufactured in the underground labs of political deception is really out there...."

Then there is the series of claims about foreign policy Fiorina made in the last debate when she bragged

What I would do, immediately, is begin rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland, I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states. I’d probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany...

We could rebuild the Sixth Fleet. I will. We haven’t. We could rebuild the missile defense program. We haven’t. I will.

Chis Hayes, however, pointed out

Start with her first statement there, what I would do immediately is begin rebuilding the sixth fleet. As Stars and Stripes notes, Fiorina`s meaning wasn`t immediately clear. The sixth fleet is less a collection of ships than a command structure for operating American warships, moreover the fleet is one of the few growing military commands in Europe.

Fiorina then said she would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland. But while one missile defense program there was scuttled, Poland is actually leading Eastern European missile defense efforts and plans to install a new system in 2018. Fiorina then vowed to conduct regular aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states, which would be fine, although you might not think that`s a good idea, but that is already happening as you can see from these images from U.S.-led military exercises in where else, the Baltics, that took place in June. Finally, Fiorina said she`d probably send a few more thousand troops into Germany. There are currently more than 44,000 troops in Germany. So it`s hard to see how a few thousand would make that much of a difference.

Glenn Thrush shouldn't be bewildered or aghast that Donald Trump has misled voters about his personal background, given that the candidate whose popularity has risen most of late

plays fast and loose with highly misleading metrics, changing the goal posts by manipulating peer comparisons. Fiorina brags that she doubled revenues—but she cut value in half. She talks about doubling employment at HP when all she did was combine the employment of two huge firms—and then lay off 30,000 employees. She presents her story as rags to riches saga, from secretary to CEO, when in fact she is the daughter of a Duke University Law School dean and a federal Appeals Court judge. She just worked for a few months as a receptionist after dropping out of UCLA law school.

Carly Fiorina sets out to mislead listeners more than her rivals, although falsehoods are standard practice for this crew. She does, moreover, make false statements with an unrivaled sense of certainty. Because she probably knows better, her style style resembles less what the late nutritionist Carlton Fredericks referred to as "opinionated ignorance" than the approach of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.  His veneer of righteous outrage won him a pass from the Senate Judiciary Committee, its chairperson Joe Biden, and from the US Senate. He got a seat on the US Supreme Court and so far, her scam has gotten Carly Fiorina a pass from most of the mainstream media.






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Meet The New Boss

Pope Francis is a good guy.  We know so for at least two reasons.

His Holiness has criticized laissez-faire capitalism and in July equated the eager pursuit of money with "the dung of the devil."  In the view of author Patricia Miller, his call yesterday "for politicians to work for the common good was an implicit rebuke to the do-nothing, obstructionist GOP agenda that’s in service to their corporatist, Chamber of Commerce overlords."  Moreover, he noted "the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity.”

We know, too, that Francis is a down-to-earth guy because Stephen Colbert says so (below, another of Colbert's humor-free routines, including Catholic dogma, and loved by his audiences which don't realize the joke is on them).  "Welcome, Frank!" exclaimed the sign displayed by Colbert, as the talk-show host attempts to humanize the leader of his church with a facade of irreverence to an audience which adores him for being irreverent.

Additionally,congressional Democrats loved it when the Pope reiterated his call for "the global abolition of the death penalty," a punishment Democrats may not have noticed is nearly obsolete in the USA, anyway.  No doubt mainland China and North Korea, as we speak, were so roused by Francis' words that they have already abolished the practice.

Pope Francis preceded his remarks about capital punishment by asserting "our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development,” obviously a reference to reproductive freedom.  In due deference to claims of the Pope as one of our own, progressives are somewhat glossing over that.  Fortunately, there is Salon's Tara Culp-Ressler to observe

During his first visit to the United States, Pope Francis extended his solidarity to a group of Catholic nuns who are currently involved in a legal battle over the health care reform law, birth control coverage, and the bounds of religious liberty.

On Wednesday, the pope made an unscheduled visit to the convent of Little Sisters of the Poor, the Colorado-based nuns who filed a complaint against Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate in 2013. According to the Vatican’s spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the pope’s visit was meant to show “a sign of support for them.”

The Little Sisters of the Poor object to the provision in the health law that requires employers to offer birth control to their workers at no additional cost. The Obama administration has since issued a religious accommodation to that particular provision — allowing employers to submit a form informing the government of their religious objection to birth control, which triggers a workaround so the insurance company directly foots the bill. But the nuns say that filling out that form still violates their religious beliefs.

In July, a federal appeals court ruled against the Little Sisters, concluding that the current accommodation “does not substantially burden their religious exercise.” The Colorado nuns are now hoping to take their case to the Supreme Court.

In his first U.S. address on Wednesday morning, which was mainly focused on climate change, the pope gave a public nod to these ongoing fights over religious accommodations in the wake of health care reform. In the first several paragraphs of his prepared remarks, Francis implored the U.S. government to consider the beliefs of American Catholics and “respect their deepest concerns and their right to religious liberty.”

That evening, Bill O'Reilly gloated in what he considered a rebuke to President Obama. Further, it does appear that with this remark about religious liberty, an untrammeled right of Catholics (and Protestants) for generations in the USA, the Pope's visit to an outfit which refuses to lift a finger to comply with a requirement of the federal government was no coincidence.

Before the Little Sisters lost in the federal appeals court, it had been granted an injunction by the U.S. Supreme Court following its loss in a U.S. District Court.  There, the majority opinion explained "although plaintiffs allege the administrative tasks required to opt out of the mandate make them complicit in the overall delivery scheme, opting out instead relieved them from complicity." The Judge noted "most religious claimants allege that a generally applicable law or policy without a religious exception burdens religious exercise."

You might think most organizations would have welcomed an opportunity to uphold their principles by merely filling out a form. That was not good enough for the Little Sisters of  the Poor, which demanded its own private exemption, an interpretation for a group which claims a particular (questionable) religious perspective.  It is not only an absurd reading of the First Amendment but a brazen rebuke to the Establishment Clause.   Admittedly, "carve out an exemption for us" is not an unusual demand of an elitist organization.

In this case, it's an elitist organization with so little sense of patriotism that, with a President bending over backwards to accompany it, it says: go suck an egg.

It is now, however, an organization privileged to have have been granted an audience with the head of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church. It is a reminder that when the Pope has his lovely photo-ops, including having a meal with homeless people, we can rest assured that when it comes to a basic right of half the population, it's  really the same old Vatican.







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The Right Says LIfe Never Should Be Destroyed, Except When It Should.

We soon will find out whether Marco Rubio is a hypocrite. In the days to come, we'll observe whether the Florida senator and presidential candidate really is outraged that embryos or fetuses are not carried to term but "harvested" for profit or otherwise.

In an interview with a CBS affiliate in Iowa last weekend, Rubio claims Planned Parenthood clinics are "saying 'We're going to take the fetal tissue of aborted fetuses.'  Because now what you've done is you've created an industry. You've created an incentive for people to be pushed into abortions so that those tissues can be harvested and sold for a profit." Asked whether it is a "stretch" that they are "pushing people into abortions," the Senator responded

If you go to one of these centers, young women are provided with very few options. In many places, they’re not told anything about, for example, adoption services that might be available to them. In essence, you come in and it’s already predetermined. This is what this place does. It provides abortions, and we are going to channel you in that direction.

I just think you’ve created an industry now — a situation where very much, you’ve created an incentive for people not just to look forward to having more abortions, but being able to sell that fetal tissue — these centers — for purposes of making a profit off it, as you’ve seen in some of these Planned Parenthood affiliates. 

Rubio supports the GOP effort in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood, even going so far as to call it "a human rights issue," which sort of cuts women out of the class of human beings (on another occasion, Fox News host putting words in his mouth, below).  He is aghast that some of the organization's affiliates  are "able to sell that fetal tissue- those centers- for purposes of making a profit off it."

They're not making a profit from it, as the absence of indictments indicates. Still, the myth that an appalling "industry" has been created to transfer fetal tissue is intriguing. Associate law professor Margo Kaplan writes

My husband and I used in vitro fertilization to conceive both our children. The process involved extracting my eggs, fertilizing them in a lab and implanting a healthy embryo inside me. Many patients — like my husband and me — produce more embryos (also called “pre-embryos” before they are implanted) than they can use. So clinics cryogenically freeze them until patients choose to use them in another IVF cycle, dispose of them, donate them to scientific research (which results in their destruction) or offer them to an infertile couple. After two years and careful thought, we chose to donate ours to research. We hope our choice will help doctors find cures for debilitating and fatal illnesses such as Huntington’s disease and ALS.

Like our fertility clinic, Planned Parenthood allows women to donate to medical research tissue from an embryo or fetus they will not carry to term. Like our clinic, Planned Parenthood receives no profit for this, only reimbursement for its costs (indeed, the full, unedited version of the video that sparked recent Republican outrage provides evidence that Planned Parenthood does not profit from giving women this choice).

Yet there are striking differences between my experience and that of a woman seeking an abortion. In Pennsylvania (where my fertility clinic is located), a woman seeking an abortion must receive state-directed counseling designed to discourage her from the procedure. She must then wait at least 24 hours until she can continue. In other states, women are forced to undergo unnecessary and invasive ultrasounds, watch or listen to a description of the ultrasound, and hear a lecture on how the embryo or fetus is a human life. Clinics in some states must provide them with medically inaccurate information on the risks of abortion. After all that, women often cannot have an abortion without waiting an additional one to three days, depending on the state.

In contrast, all my husband and I had to do was sign a form. Our competence to choose the outcome of our embryo was never questioned. There were no mandatory lectures on gestation, no requirement that I be explicitly told that personhood begins at conception or that I view a picture of a day-five embryo. There was no compulsory waiting period for me to reconsider my decision. In fact, no state imposes these restrictions — so common for abortion patients — on patients with frozen embryos. With rare exceptions, the government doesn’t interfere with an IVF patient’s choices except to resolve disagreements between couples.

Kaplan notes "both IVF and abortion involve the destruction of fertilized eggs that could potentially develop into people."  "The disparity between how the law treats abortion patients and IVF patients," she recognizes, reveals "an ugly truth about abortion restrictions: that they are often less about protecting life than about controlling women's bodies." (It could additionally be the conservative notion that the more babies, the better.)

That applies to most Republican members of Congress. If Senator Marco Rubio and his colleagues go after fertility clinics with half the antagonism they have directed at Planned Parenthood, they will be seen as models of consistency and integrity. Don't hold your breath.
















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