Monday, May 13, 2013

Plan B Deadline is Today

Today is the deadline for the government to appeal its politically-motivated age restriction on Plan B, the "day after" pill.

Plan B is a dose of levonorgestrel, an artificial female hormone, that can be taken after intercourse to ensure that the ovum is not fertilized. It is sold as emergency contraception and is needed by women who have been inseminated and need to prevent pregnancy.

Girls hit puberty, the age when they can become pregnant, at the age of ten or eleven, on average. Yet against scientific advice, the Obama administration wants to limit access to Plan B for young women under fifteen.

FDA scientists found that Plan B is safe and recommended making it available to all women over the counter. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in a political move, officially made it available for women over the age of fifteen only.

Some reproductive rights groups filed suit, and on April 5th, a court ruled that Plan B must be made available over-the-counter without restrictions to all women. Judge Edward Korman stated that Sibelius had used “bad faith and improper political influence,” and “it is hardly clear that the Secretary had the power to issue the order, and if she did have that authority, her decision was arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.”

The administration said they would appeal the ruling.

The Washington Post takes the story as of this morning:
The government is running out of time to try to halt implementation of a federal judge’s ruling that would lift age restrictions for women and girls wanting to buy the morning-after pill.

U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in Brooklyn last week refused to delay enforcement of his month-old decision while the government challenges his ruling, but said it would have until Monday to appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.

Korman said politics is behind efforts by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to block the unrestricted sale of the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill and its generic competitors.

Justice Department lawyers want the ruling stayed while they appeal.

If the government fails, it would clear the way for over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill to younger girls. The FDA announced earlier this month that the contraception could be sold without a prescription to those 15 and older, a decision Korman said merely sugarcoated the appeal of his order lifting the age restriction. Monday is deadline for govt. to file appeal of morning-after pill unrestricted sales ruling
This was an opportunity for the Obama administration to take a stand on the side of women. It was a good opportunity for the Democrats to fine-tune the crisp line between the "war on women" and policies that support women and their right to determine their own outcomes. Somehow "failing to file the paperwork on time" does not seem like quite the bold statement we would wish from them.

Parents may live in a dream-world where their children consult them about every milestone they reach along the path to adulthood. Ask them this: did you tell your parents when you lost your virginity? Okay, so take it from there, and follow the logic through reality.

Children should be taught the options in a good, comprehensive sex-ed program that starts well before puberty. They should understand how reproduction works, where babies come from, and how to prevent pregnancy until you are ready to have a family. Methods include abstinence, condoms, birth control pills and other methods -- including Plan B, in an emergency. They should know about it and they should be able to use it when they need to, without asking some grown-up for permission.

President Obama has stated that "as the father of two daughters," he supports the age restriction, and said he thinks "most parents" would agree with his policy, which could increase the likelihood of their daughters becoming pregnant if they were to have sex without a condom as adolescents. [ Note: that sentence was updated to clarify what part the President did and did not say himself. ]

A fourteen-year-old girl is almost certainly not ready to be a mother, and it is crazy to intentionally engineer policies so that younger girls are denied access to this important medication. Will the administration let this deadline pass? We'll know by tonight. The administration could take a stand on the side of women, or it could fail to meet a paperwork deadline, with the same effect.

63 Comments:

Blogger Priya Lynn said...

"President Obama has stated that "as the father of two daughters," he supports the age restriction, and said he thinks "most parents" would agree with him that they would want their daughters to become pregnant if they were to have sex without a condom as adolescents.".

No way, did he really say that?! Does anyone honestly think that? There's something seriously wrong with the ethics of a person that thinks like that.

May 13, 2013 11:39 AM  
Blogger JimK said...

NYT: The appeal also reinforces Ms. Sebelius’s original 2011 decision, which proved to be very good politics for Mr. Obama at the time. Facing a difficult re-election battle, the Democratic president enthusiastically supported Ms. Sebelius, saying that as a father of two young daughters, he thought it was the right call to have made.

“And I think most parents would probably feel the same way,” he added.


So, Priya, he did not complete the predicate of the sentence.

JimK

May 13, 2013 12:03 PM  
Blogger JimK said...

Note -- I edited the post to make the wording clearer.

JimK

May 13, 2013 2:12 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Got it now Jim, thanks.

May 13, 2013 2:33 PM  
Anonymous have a wise day!! said...

you sure you two have this straightened out?

I think we need to start all over at the beginning again

very slowly now, what did Obama say and what did he try to say and what did he want to say and what did he not say and what did Preeya want him to say and what did Gem theorize he meant to say although likely didn't say unless he truly meant to say something that he did say rather than that which he didn't say when he said nothing at all?

these TTF mini-thoughts are just fascinating!!

May 13, 2013 2:42 PM  
Anonymous GUILTY!! said...

A Philadelphia jury has found Dr. Kermit Gosnell guilty on three of four counts of first-degree murder.

Gosnell, a longtime abortion provider, was accused of killing four babies.

May 13, 2013 3:46 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anon, did you think the verdict would be anything different?

May 13, 2013 4:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

no, I didn't

the gig's up

late-term abortionists across America need to be investigated by law enforcement

the whole thing is sick!!!

May 13, 2013 4:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Butchers such as Gosnell who break the law will be investigated and prosecuted. Physicians who simply provide a service to women should be protected from would-be assassins of physicians and those who harass medical patients.

May 13, 2013 4:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Minnesota State Senate just approved marriage equality 38 to 30/

May 13, 2013 5:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

all abortion providers are monsters

no one in their right mind thinks there is any moral difference between slitting a baby's throat when it's fully delivered vs. halfway delivered

Gosnell is a milestone and anti-life forces will never recover

Minnesota didn't approve 'marriage equality"

they approved a legal equivalence between deviance and normality

May 13, 2013 8:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anon, it is not a good sign when you have to redefine everything in your own terms in order to criticize it.

Abortion is legal and marriage between same-sex couples is legal in Minnesota now, too. That's just the way it is.

You really seem to be struggling with these things. Why don't you find a way to do good things for people for a change, try to make the world a better place rather than just insulting people you don't understand.

May 13, 2013 8:58 PM  
Anonymous drip-drip said...

how long will you continue to stick with this bad apple?

"Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups."

"Anon, it is not a good sign when you have to redefine everything in your own terms in order to criticize it."

I didn't redefine anything. That's a gay agenda strategy.

"Abortion is legal and marriage between same-sex couples is legal in Minnesota now, too. That's just the way it is."

Murder of children was declared a constitutional by a wacko Supreme Court half a century ago. Even Ruth Ginsburg recently agreed it was a faulty decision.

Minnesota now defines marriage in a way that differs from two-thirds of state constitutions in America. It's obvious what the correct definition is.

"You really seem to be struggling with these things."

hmmmm...is "struggle" the latest word to be redefined by those that act up and chime in?

"Why don't you find a way to do good things for people for a change,"

you mean like for babies being murdered before they're born and for adolescents being misled about the dangers of homosexual activity, with fatal consequences?

you're right

I should stop squawking and get involved in the effort to protect these young people

"try to make the world a better place rather than just insulting people you don't understand."

oh, I understand

babies are killed when deemed too inconvenient

guys who have developed deviant sexual attraction to their own gender want the government to endorse their relationships

May 13, 2013 9:18 PM  
Anonymous drip drip said...

just another day in the reign of Emperor Barack Milhaus Obama

the violation of citizens' rights is becoming routine with BO:

"WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP's newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know," Pruitt said."

May 13, 2013 9:39 PM  
Anonymous drip-drip said...

why did Obama stay silent on this for three days after the IRS accidently made it public?

"WASHINGTON IS now sinking its teeth into a real scandal: the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) using ideological criteria to choose the targets of its attention. What we already know is bad enough. Given the seriousness of the charges and the unreliability of IRS disclosures so far, purposeful, sober investigation is exactly what is needed.

At first, the IRS’s admission that it flagged applications for tax-exempt status from tea party-type groups brought reaction that broke along partisan lines. But on Monday, President Obama called the news “outrageous,” adding: “I’ve got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it. And we will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this.” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) joined other Democratic lawmakers to support an investigation in his chamber, something Republican leaders in the House had pledged on Friday.

Editorials represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the editorial board.

Any unequal application of the law based on ideological viewpoint is unpardonable — toxic to the legitimacy of the government’s vast law-enforcement authority.

A forthcoming Treasury Department inspector general’s report finds that IRS staffers looked for applications for tax-exempt status from groups that used in their names words such as “Tea Party,” “Patriots” and “9/12,” as well as ones that contained expressions of concern about government spending or criticism of how the country is run. One manager worried — with reason — that this targeting might result in “over-inclusion” of applications that needed no such scrutiny. By 2011, IRS staff had set aside more than 100 applications for added review. It wasn’t just a couple of wayward staffers involved but rather a number of IRS agents and managers.

The inspector general also reports that Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS’s tax-exempt organization office, knew about the targeting in 2011; she seemed to say Friday that she learned about it from news reports last year. That inconsistency raises suspicions about the agency’s statements that higher-ups didn’t know about the targeting and that there was no political motivation.

In fact, the portions of the inspector general’s analysis that circulated Monday raised many questions.

When Ms. Lerner heard about the targeting of tea party groups, she rightly demanded the practice end. But did she reinstitute checks against inappropriate targeting that had been in place years before? If not, why not? What are the safeguards now?

Who else knew about the targeting? In subsequent testimony, IRS leaders assured lawmakers that no one did. Were they ignorant or deliberately untruthful? Did they even ask before reporting to Congress?

Anecdotes about unreasonable demands for information are already circulating, but what were the practical effects of this policy on those 100-plus conservative applicants?

Considering that Ms. Lerner seems to have known about the targeting by 2011, did the IRS ever plan on revealing that it had singled out conservative groups? Or was it only the impending release of the inspector general’s report that compelled agency officials to ’fess up?

The administration should provide complete answers, and soon."

May 14, 2013 6:44 AM  
Anonymous drip-drip said...

“He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to . . . cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

— Article II, Section 1, Articles of Impeachment against Richard M. Nixon, adopted by the House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974

May 14, 2013 6:47 AM  
Anonymous drip-drip said...

The burglary occurred in 1972, the climax came in 1974, but40 years ago this week — May 17, 1973 — the Senate Watergate hearings began exploring the nature of Richard Nixon’s administration. Now the nature of Barack Obama’s administration is being clarified as revelations about IRS targeting of conservative groups merge with myriad Benghazi mendacities.

This administration aggressively hawked the fiction that the Benghazi attack was just an excessively boisterous movie review. Now we are told that a few wayward souls in Cincinnati, with nary a trace of political purpose, targeted for harassment political groups with “tea party” and “patriot” in their titles. The Post reported Monday that the IRS also targeted groups that “criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution.” Credit the IRS’s operatives with understanding who and what threatens the current regime.

Jay Carney, whose unenviable job is not to explain but to explain away what his employers say, calls the IRS’s behavior “inappropriate.” No, using the salad fork for the entree is inappropriate. Using the Internal Revenue Service for political purposes is a criminal offense.

It remains to be discovered whether the chief executive is guilty of more than an amazingly convenient failure to superintend the excesses of some executive-branch employees beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Meanwhile, file this under “What a tangled web we weave”:

The IRS official in charge of the division that makes politically sensitive allocations of tax-exempt status said Friday that she learned from news reports of the targeting of conservatives. But a draft report by the IRS inspector general says this official was briefed on the matter two years ago.

An emerging liberal narrative is that this tempest is all the Supreme Court’s fault: The Citizens United decision — that corporations, particularly nonprofit advocacy groups, have First Amendment rights — so burdened the IRS with making determinations about who deserves tax-exempt status that some political innocents in Cincinnati inexplicably decided to begin by rummaging through the affairs of conservatives. Ere long, presumably, they would have gotten around to groups with “progressive” in their titles.

Remember, all campaign “reform” proposals regulate political speech. And all involve the IRS in allocating speech rights.

Liberals, whose unvarying agenda is enlargement of government, suggest, with no sense of cognitive dissonance, that this IRS scandal is nothing more sinister than typical government incompetence. Five days before the IRS story broke, Obama, sermonizing 109 miles northeast of Cincinnati, warned Ohio State graduates about “creeping cynicism” and “voices” that “warn that tyranny is . . . around the corner.” Well.

He stigmatizes as the vice of cynicism what actually is the virtue of skepticism about the myth that the tentacles of the regulatory state are administered by disinterested operatives. And the voices that annoy him are those of the Founders.

May 14, 2013 6:51 AM  
Anonymous drip-drip said...

Your government, as currently administered by President Obama, doesn’t like the word “patriot.” If you associate yourself with an organization using that word, you may be investigated and prosecuted. Under Obama, government employees think they are doing what their superiors want them to do when they harass and menace political organizations that might oppose the president.

Obama doesn’t need a traditional Nixonian enemies list. In the digital age, with the Obama machine’s much-celebrated technological capabilities, the president can sort his enemies by keywords. Incredible.

I wonder if “patriotic” was also on the list of enemy words. Well, we’ll find out soon. Investigations, leaks, whistleblowers, etc., will disclose the name of every group that the Obama IRS targeted for special harassment. We will eventually know who knew what and when they knew it. This is likely to be very corrosive for the president’s political standing both here and abroad.

Vladimir Putin is probably jealous of Obama. He and others like him will hardly be able to hide their smiles when they hear the United States preach about the need to let political organizations function freely. What lessons should the Muslim Brotherhood learn from what the Obama IRS has done?

To say the least, this story has legs. The scandal is already getting worse, and it hasn’t even officially started yet. The IRS inspector general’s report is only the beginning, and it was just leaked on Friday afternoon (the typical, amateurish time for leaking damaging news). The formal release date hasn’t even been announced. Yet the jaw-droppers keep coming. This morning The Post reported that the Obama IRS targeted groups that want to “make America a better place to live.” From the travesty of Obamacare’s implementation to the tragedy in Benghazi, it’s easy to see how an bureaucrat-enforcer sympathetic to Obama would consider that to be subversive.

There is already a huge appetite within the media to move this story. Many reporters feel they have been lied to by the White House on Benghazi, and they want to get this story right. And if Benghazi is any guide, the Obama White House will have a problem with telling the truth, sticking to its story and containing the fallout.

As I like to say, in politics, good gets better and bad gets worse. For Obama — whose administration is devoid of any policy momentum, is struggling to get Benghazi out of the headlines and is dealing with a widespread belief that his second term is evaporating — the IRS scandal couldn’t come at a worse time. And given that conservatives and a lot of moderates think of the president as cool, arrogant and generally someone who looks down on people, this latest controversy plays to the president’s negative stereotype.

The Benghazi tragedy agitated superstitions within a core of the Republican Party. The Obama IRS scandal will frighten any American who has to pay taxes, might want to contribute to a conservative political organization, or, heaven forbid, supports a group that opposes Obamacare, the president’s crusade against global warming or another of his left-wing assaults. And unlike Benghazi, the Obama IRS scandal has the ability to drive votes in November 2014. There’s too much about this scandal that confirms what people already think about Obama, his government and his political machine.

May 14, 2013 6:56 AM  
Anonymous drip-drip said...

In March 2012, the then-commissioner of the IRS, Doug Shulman, assured a congressional committee: “There’s absolutely no targeting.” But senior officials at the agency, according to a leaked IRS inspector general report, were briefed about the targeting as early as the summer of 2011. Now the agency has backtracked to this position: “IRS senior leadership was not aware of this level of specific details at the time of the March 2012 hearing.” It will probably take many further congressional hearings to explore the considerable gap between “absolutely no targeting” and “not aware of this level of specific details.”

The IRS has found few defenders, mainly because it is the IRS. Can you imagine the reception that similar arguments would receive if made to the IRS during an audit? “I was not aware of this level of specific details when I claimed that I absolutely deserved a massive tax deduction.” The IRS is granted the level of sympathy that it would display toward others.

What is most maddening about the agency’s response is its complacency. Lois Lerner, in charge of nonprofit vetting at the IRS, has termed the heightened scrutiny of conservative groups “insensitive.” When asked why her apology was made during an obscure conference, she responded, “I don’t believe anyone ever asked me that question before.”

This after years of complaints by conservative groups of harassing and improper requests for information, including details of their postings on social networking sites and material on the political ambitions of board members and their families.

The practices already admitted by the IRS were not political insensitivity; they were political corruption. They amounted to an intrusive, ideologically targeted federal investigation of a political movement. And complacency, in this circumstance, is self-indictment. As Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) put it: “If it had been just a small group of employees, then you would think that the high-level IRS supervisors would have rushed to make this public, fired the employees involved and apologized to the American people and informed Congress. None of that happened in a timely way.” And perhaps not coincidentally, even the IRS’s onset of mild remorse came well after the 2012 election.

I am conspicuously not a libertarian. I believe that government has valid purposes that are more than minimal, and that public service is essentially noble. But most Americans, myself included, become libertarians when a policeman is rude and swaggering during a traffic stop. Give me that badge number. It is precisely because police powers are essential to the public good that abusing them is so offensive. The same holds for overzealous or corrupt airport-security agents. And it is doubly true with IRS personnel who misuse their broad and intimidating powers. It is enough to bring out the Samuel Adams in anyone.

May 14, 2013 7:00 AM  
Anonymous Cedric Crawley said...

this is gettin' funny....

but there ain't nobody laughin', honey!

-Waylon Jennings

May 14, 2013 7:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Last week Benghazi was bigger than Watergate. This week IRS investigations into rightwing political groups claiming to be social welfare organizations -- and which the President knew nothing about -- are bigger than Watergate.

It just gets worse and worse, doesn't it, anon?

May 14, 2013 7:18 AM  
Anonymous drip-drip said...

yeah, Nixon knew nothing about Watergate either

(wink-wink)

the Congressional investigations are starting precisely forty years after the Watergate hearings

and, somewhere, the John Dean of the Obama administration prepares for his moment in history

President Obama tried Monday to dismiss as “political games” persistent questions about how the White House handled last year’s attacks in Benghazi, Libya, while at the same time a new uproar about IRS scrutiny of conservative advocacy organizations ignited on Capitol Hill. Obama said if IRS agents willfully exercised political bias, responsible personnel must be “held accountable.”

As he was speaking during a brief news conference Tuesday with British Prime Minister David Cameron, the reactions of House and Senate lawmakers suggested Obama did little to tamp down the Benghazi controversies, which have persisted since extremists killed four Americans there in September. Nor did he temper the bipartisan outrage following Friday’s news of an IRS inspector general draft report citing the agency’s mishandling of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, dating back to March 2010.

By the afternoon, the Justice Department was also in the hot seat after the Associated Press reported that, during April and May, the government secretly obtained phone and fax records connected to AP reporters and editors -- part of an apparent hunt for government leaks. The phone data involved at least 20 personal, work and fax lines, including a phone in the Capitol that is used by multiple AP reporters, the news organization reported.

The AP protested the data-gathering in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, who was already scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee.

“Americans should take notice that top Obama administration officials increasingly see themselves as above the law and emboldened by the belief that they don’t have to answer to anyone,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said in a statement.

May 14, 2013 7:28 AM  
Anonymous sonny corleone said...

hey, thatsa what Nixon said too

May 14, 2013 7:31 AM  
Anonymous drip drip said...

President Obama famously joked in a college commencement address in 2009 that he could use the IRS to target political enemies but of course he never would. It appears that people at the Internal Revenue Service didn't think he was joking.

That's become clear since IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner admitted on Friday that the agency targeted conservatives for special tax-exempt scrutiny during the 2012 election season. The story has already blossomed into the latest abuse of government power, as documents show the IRS targeted tea party types and groups that specifically opposed the Obama Administration.

According to an appendix to a forthcoming Treasury Inspector General report obtained by the Journal, in June 2011 the IRS expanded its special attention to groups that met the following criteria:

"•'Tea Party,' 'Patriots,' or '9/12 Project' is referenced in the case file.

• Issues include Government spending, Government debt, or taxes.

• Education of the public via advocacy/lobbying to 'make America a better place to live.'

• Statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run."

Good to know our T-men are chasing down those nefarious folks who want to "make America a better place to live."

May 14, 2013 8:03 AM  
Anonymous drip drop said...

We've also learned that IRS officials knew about this earlier than they have let on. News reports suggest that Ms. Lerner knew about the targeting of conservatives in June 2011, and perhaps as early as 2010. That's a long time before IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman flatly denied any political targeting when he testified at a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing in March 2012.

IRS officials are still claiming that the questions weren't meant to intimidate these groups. But the evidence that the inquiries were political is already voluminous.

The IRS sent questionnaires to conservative groups that included requests for everything from the resumes of directors past and present to whether an employee or employee family member had plans to run for public office. Cincinnati Tea Party founder Justin Binik-Thomas wrote in the Washington Examiner recently that one nonprofit received a questionnaire that demanded that it "Provide details regarding your relationship with Justin Binik-Thomas."

Some Democrats took to the airwaves on the weekend to suggest that while the IRS shouldn't have been targeting conservatives, no one was harmed. Former senior White House official and chief Obama politico David Plouffe tweeted that what the IRS did was "dumb and wrong," but that it was "Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $." In Mr. Plouffe's moral universe, all that matters is partisan advantage rather than the apolitical tax enforcement Americans expect of their government.

The harm is in fact real, if hard to measure precisely, because any missive from the IRS is enough to chill political spending and speech. Answering the IRS questionnaires can take hundreds of hours. The Jefferson Area Tea Party dropped its plan to register as a 501(c)(4) to avoid the atmosphere of intimidation.

"Why raise your hand to draw attention to yourself or give them ammunition against you when you don't have to?" spokesman Carol Thorpe told the Charlottesville Daily Progress. Who knows how many others decided to sit out the 2012 campaign?

Asked about the IRS news on Monday, Mr. Obama said that "if in fact IRS personnel" targeted conservatives, that would be "outrageous" and those responsible would be held "accountable." That's nice to hear, but he was making conditional what the IRS has already admitted, which is not as bad as what we are learning it really did.

Our Kimberley Strassel reported last year that Idaho businessman and Mitt Romney donor Frank VanderSloot was first maligned publicly by an Obama campaign website as disreputable, and then was mysteriously targeted by the IRS and the Labor Department for audits. The press corps ignored that ugly coincidence and no one to our knowledge was punished.

Meanwhile, the National Organization for Marriage charged Monday that someone at the IRS leaked its confidential tax data to a gay rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign. In March 2012 the Huffington Post published the names of donors to the pro-marriage group contained in IRS Form 990 Schedule B from 2008. The Human Rights Campaign says it obtained the return from a "whistleblower," but leaking confidential tax information is a crime.

In other words, there is a pattern here. Oppose the Obama Administration or liberal priorities, and you too can become an IRS target. We're glad to see Congress mobilizing in response, including hearing plans by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus and the House Ways and Means Committee that asked the IRS about this in 2012 and received denials. The subpoenas need to fly as thick as those IRS questionnaires

May 14, 2013 8:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How soon they forget inconvenient facts:

Church Group Calls I.R.S. Unfair on Political Violations of Tax Code
04/07/06


Sermon moves IRS to act:
Antiwar remarks at All Saints in Pasadena were made two days before the 2004 election. The church is ordered to hand over records.
October 16, 2006


The witch hunt of liberal churches happened under the leadership of IRS commissioner Mark Whitty Everson, a Republican appointed by George W. Bush in 2003. Another Bush appointee, Douglas Schulman, headed the IRS during the scrutiny of Tea Party groups seeking non-profit status in 2012. Schulman's term ended on November 11, after the 2012 election.

And don't forget, in 2004, The Internal Revenue Service is auditing the NAACP, scrutinizing the nation's oldest civil rights group after its chairman gave a stinging criticism of the Bush administration in a speech this summer.

IRS Audited Greenpeace At Request of ExxonMobil-Funded Group as disclosed by the Wall Street Journal.

May 14, 2013 8:35 AM  
Anonymous comrade yuri said...

during 2009 and 2010, the Tea Party took the country by storm and gave Barry O a "shellacking"

we now know that immediately subsequent to that, employees of Barry O began to harass these groups

and those groups then began to decline

very effective Bolshevism by our socialist Presdient

May 14, 2013 8:48 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

It seems to me that there are a bunch of "mini-scandals (Boston, Benghazi, IRS). It makes it look if right-wing media are searching too hard.

As for the IRS, I agree that this has legs. But here's something on which I need some clarification, in that the stories I've read in the Charlottesville Progress and Washington Post didn't cover it in depth: aren't these "Tea-Party," "Patriot" and "9-12 Project" groups applying for tax-exempt status under a law designed for social groups, which denies status to groups that are mostly political? How can they complain, if, as I understand it, those are essentially political names.

There was, as I understand, a huge growth in right-wing groups after Obama's election, and not progressive groups. It seems logical to me that there would be more scrutiny of such groups numerically, if there were more of them.

No news coverage I've read or heard has addressed the relative scrutiny of conservative vs. liberal groups. Are news media seem to be telling us just part of the story without looking further.

Is this a real scandal, or just a product of the right-wing echo-chamber? I would like to know.

Also, isn't this just about tax-exempt status? There's no indication of FBI investigation, is there?

May 14, 2013 10:05 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Oh, BTW, Eugepae for Delaware, Rhode Island and Minnesota. We had a discussion over the coffee machine this morning about which southern state would legalize marriage first. My vote was for North Carolina.

May 14, 2013 10:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What I want to know is why the ATF and FBI weren't investigating these "Tea Party" groups given that they had bad habit of showing up in public spaces carrying guns.

May 14, 2013 10:26 AM  
Anonymous drip drip spash said...

"It seems to me that there are a bunch of "mini-scandals (Boston, Benghazi, IRS)."

are you having any other hallucinations?

"It makes it look if right-wing media are searching too hard."

so you agree, then, that prior to this they were searching about right?

"As for the IRS, I agree that this has legs."

Robert takes a brave in support of the Constitution. Impreeeesive!

"But here's something on which I need some clarification,"

Buddy, that's your life's motto

but, at least, you know how unplugged from reality you are

realizing your problem is half the battle won right there

"in that the stories I've read in the Charlottesville Progress and Washington Post"

what other papers do they let you read, Robert?

"didn't cover it in depth: aren't these "Tea-Party," "Patriot" and "9-12 Project" groups applying for tax-exempt status under a law designed for social groups, which denies status to groups that are mostly political? How can they complain, if, as I understand it, those are essentially political names."

whoa, slow down, pardner

you need to start with something easy

try the Bill of Rights

"There was, as I understand, a huge growth in right-wing groups after Obama's election, and not progressive groups. It seems logical to me that there would be more scrutiny of such groups numerically, if there were more of them."

dude, there didn't just happen to be more chosen

they were searched for certain key words and phrases

"No news coverage I've read or heard has addressed the relative scrutiny of conservative vs. liberal groups. Are news media seem to be telling us just part of the story without looking further."

or, maybe Obama is not targeting liberal groups

"Is this a real scandal, or just a product of the right-wing echo-chamber? I would like to know."

in other words, is the Obama administration criminal or is Robert just having more hallucinations?

We had a discussion over the coffee machine this morning about which northeastern state would ban abortion first. My vote was for Peensylvania.

"What I want to know is why the ATF and FBI weren't investigating these "Tea Party" groups given that they had bad habit of showing up in public spaces carrying guns."

it's because the right to bear arms is a Constitutional
guarantee

May 14, 2013 11:23 AM  
Anonymous dripdrop kerplunksplash said...

The Obama administration woke up on Tuesday to another morning of scorching criticism about the Justice Department's decision to secretly obtain months of Associated Press phone records.

The DOJ tracked the incoming and outgoing calls on more than 20 AP phone lines, as well as the home, office and cell phone lines for six individual journalists involved in writing a national security-related story about Yemen that the Obama administration did not want them to write.

The operation has been roundly condemned by journalists and press freedom groups. That condemnation continued on Monday night and Tuesday morning.

Reporters Without Borders called the probe an "extremely grave violation of freedom of information.”

NBC News' Michael Isikoff quoted a whistleblower advocate who made the dreaded comparison to Richard Nixon:

"The Justice Department’s seizure of the Associated Press’ phone records is Nixonian," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a group that advocates on behalf of whistleblowers. "The American public deserves a full accounting of why and how this could happen."

Speaking to Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night, Isikoff explained further why people were so alarmed.

"It is not unprecedented for the Justice Department to secretly get the numbers of reporters," he said. "What's remarkable is the sweeping nature of this, the dragnet approach ... and that's why you have some press watchdog groups tonight, and freedom of the press groups saying this is positively Nixonian. They have not seen a precedent for this in decades."

Ben Smith wrote that the nuclear nature of the probe could, in part, be traced back to Obama, who has made it a policy to aggressively go after leaks in a fashion not seen in any of his predecessors. Though the White House said it had nothing to do with the probe and referred reporters to the Justice Department, Smith wrote that it was not hard to see Obama's hand in some way:

Elements of this approach, Obama’s friends and foes agree, come from the top. Obama is personally obsessed with leaks, to the extent that his second chief of staff, Bill Daley, took as one of his central mandates a major and ill-fated plumbing expedition. Attorney General Eric Holder, who pressed the leak policy, is a trusted Obama insider.

Writing for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Trevor Timm also said that the scandal was one of the White House's own making.

"The White House created this war-on-leaks monster," he wrote. "Congress has only encouraged its expansion, instead of investigating the wrongdoing that many of the leaks exposed. And now, it’s out of control."

On Tuesday, AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll underscored just how stunning the Justice Department's actions were.

"I've been in this business for more than 30 years," she said on "Morning Joe." "Our First Amendment lawyers, and our lawyers inside the AP, and our CEO, who's also a well-known First Amendment lawyer, none of us have ever seen anything like this."

Speaking on the same program, famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein was even more scathing, calling the operation "inexcusable."

"This administration has been terrible on this issue from the beginning," he said. "The object of it is to intimidate people who talk to reporters ... there's no excuse for it whatsoever." He added that it was "nonsense" to say that the White House would have been unaware of such a probe.

"This is a policy matter, and this does go to the president," he said. "There is no reason that a presidency should permit this to happen."

May 14, 2013 12:08 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Darling, you didn't answer any of my questions. Maybe someone else will.

May 14, 2013 12:23 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Bad anonymous is really coming unhinged - even for him. He's like the homeless schizophrenic standing on a busy street corner hour after hour furiously shouting nonsense at everyone desperate to escape his own demons.

That's what happens when your faulty worldview comes up against the hard reality that you're losing one culture war battle after another and it gets very difficult for you to avoid realizing you've really lost the war. You scream at people on and on and on hoping that with sheer quantity of frantic pleas (making 2/3rds of all comments) you can force your delusions into their minds. You desperately hope you can keep your fabricated reality from falling apart in spite of the relentless onslaught of your side losing again and again and again. The truth that your culture war rationales are fatally flawed starts to squeeze into your mind and it literally makes you crazy.

Its delicious having witnessed reality cause an evil person to fall apart.

May 14, 2013 12:42 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

For you bad anonymous:

Mahaha hiya
Give it to me one time now
Yeah, whoa, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho
Well, now

Relax don't do it
When you want to go to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
When you want to come

Relax don't do it
When you want to to go to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
Relax don't do it
When you want to suck to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
Come-oh oh oh

May 14, 2013 1:06 PM  
Anonymous drip dripp said...

nice to see that lazy Priya has demonstrated who's gone crazy

the idleness is literally driving lazy Priya crazy

"Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that President Barack Obama is part of a "cover-up" over the nature of the terrorist attack on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

Obama administration officials "lied," Cheney said. "They claimed it was because of a demonstration video, so that they wouldn’t have to admit it was really all about their incompetence,” he said. "They ignored repeated warnings from the CIA about the threat. They ignored messages from their own people on the ground that they needed more security."

He added, "The cover-up included several officials up to and including President Obama, and the cover-up is still ongoing."

May 14, 2013 3:09 PM  
Anonymous drip dripp said...

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called for Attorney General Eric Holder's resignation Tuesday, saying Holder had "trampled on the First Amendment."

Holder was caught in controversy Monday when it was revealed the Justice Department had secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press. AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt called the move a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" in a letter of protest sent to Holder.

May 14, 2013 3:11 PM  
Anonymous drip dripp said...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) leaked confidential materials submitted by some conservative groups to investigative journalists at ProPublica, the group reported on Tuesday.

Last year, ProPublica, an investigative journalism outlet, was researching “how dozens of social-welfare nonprofits had misled the IRS about their political activity on their applications and tax returns.”

As part of the investigation, “ProPublica requested applications from the IRS’s Cincinnati office, which is responsible for reviewing applications from nonprofits.” According to the report, the same IRS office in Cincinnati that has admitted to targeting conservative groups provided confidential documents submitted by some of those nonprofit organizations to ProPublica.

“In response to a request for the applications, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica nine applications that had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)”

Among the applications sent to ProPublica was one for Crossroads GPS, the Karl Rove-backed group and one of the biggest spending conservative groups in the 2012 election cycle. Applications are supposed to remain confidential until a group’s status has been determined.

ProPublica says it followed up with the IRS at the time to find out why it had been provided the confidential materials. The IRS responded by saying it would be illegal for ProPublica to publish the documents.

ProPublica published the materials but redacted some information.

The ProPublica report expands the scope of what has become a political firestorm in Washington.

May 14, 2013 3:18 PM  
Anonymous drip dripp said...

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) says someone inside the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) leaked its confidential tax return to one of its chief political opponents, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a gay rights' organization. HRC’s president, Joe Solomonese, served as the co-chairman of the Obama reelection campaign.

“There is little question that one or more employees at the IRS stole our confidential tax return and leaked it to our political enemies, in violation of federal law,” said NOM’s president Brian Brown to the Daily Caller. “The only questions are who did it, and whether there was any knowledge or coordination between people in the White House, the Obama reelection campaign and the Human Rights Campaign. We and the American people deserve answers.”

May 14, 2013 3:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Some answers for Robert.

IRS Scandal’s Central Figure, Lois Lerner, Described as ‘Apolitical’

"One woman sits at the center of the developing—and utterly confusing—Internal Revenue Service scandal. It was Lois Lerner, director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division, who let slip at an American Bar Association meeting on Friday that, between 2010 and 2012, conservative nonprofit groups were improperly scrutinized by the IRS. And it is Lerner who has since become the target of a number of accusations and conspiracy theories, lobbed from both ends of the political spectrum. As the media waits impatiently for the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to release an investigative report detailing who knew about the IRS’s inappropriate practices and when, it seems crucial to get to know the main character in this unfolding drama and the core issues swirling around her.

Lerner was appointed as head of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division during the Bush administration, in 2006. She served as director the IRS Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements Division for four years before that...Lerner began her legal career as a staff attorney in the Department of Justice’s criminal division before joining the Federal Election Commission as an assistant general counsel in 1981. She spent 20 years at the FEC, where she was appointed head of the Enforcement Division in 1986 and then acting general counsel for six months in 2001.

Larry Noble, who served as general counsel at the FEC from 1987 to 2000, was involved in hiring and promoting Lerner. “I worked with Lois for a number of years and she is really one of the more apolitical people I’ve met,” Noble told The Daily Beast. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have political views, but she really focuses on the job and what the rules are. She doesn’t have an agenda. “Reporters grew frustrated with Lerner during a conference call last Friday, when she appeared reluctant to answer most of their questions...Noble attributes Lerner’s discretion not to a coverup but to her rule-abiding nature.

“It does not surprise me that she would play it very close to the line in terms of what she would say publicly or what her organization would allow her to say,” he said. “The IRS is not a public-disclosure organization, and she has always been very conscientious of what she can and cannot say.”

...The problem is, the IRS’s guidelines for what constitutes a tax-exempt “social welfare” group are extremely vague. Under some interpretations, as long as 49 percent of a group’s activities does not relate to campaign intervention, it can be eligible for 501(c)(4) status, but even then there is no explanation of how the focus of a group’s activities should be measured. Proponents for stricter definitions of what qualifies as a 501(c)(4) argue that such inconclusiveness is to blame for the $308.5 million worth of undisclosed political spending that came from these supposedly nonpolitical groups in 2012 alone.

During last week’s conference call, Lerner insisted that employees at the IRS office in Cincinnati took it upon themselves to focus on certain groups based on keywords, such as “tea party” or “patriot,” in their names. But she acknowledged that the influx in tax-exempt applications starting in 2010 is what sparked the heightened scrutiny.....


There's a lot more info, I suggest you read the whole article. Click the link at the top.

May 14, 2013 3:23 PM  
Anonymous drip dripp said...

gee, the GOP "outreach director" for the state of Florida goes Democrat and this is supposed to be the end of the world for Repubs?

I guess they should just give up now

truth is, the Hispanic contribution to Romney's defeat has been hyped and over-believed by both sides

while it's true that Repubs should continue to try to appeal to all voters, including Hispanics, more recent analysis of election results show that the minority vote was irrelevant

the truth is, all other factors remaining the same, Romney would have had to accrue 79% of Hispanic voters to have won

alternatively, white turnout, which was down in 2012, would have given him victory if it had been a few points higher

so it's more accurate to say Repubs need to increase white turnout than it is to say they must appeal to Hispanic voter

just another lesson for the ignorant here at Teach Them Facts

nice try at changing the subject though

it is now apparent that Obama has regularly resorted to extra-constitutional tactics to play politics since his "shellacking" in 2010 scared the beejeebees outta him

now, he will pay the piper

May 14, 2013 4:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"nice to see that lazy Priya has demonstrated who's gone crazy

the idleness is literally driving lazy Priya crazy"


We all see which "idle" person has been going "crazy" while on the clock for days.

Anon rips off the boss with crazy idleness.

May 14, 2013 5:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

From How to prevent another Gosnell

"...Abortion should be regulated, of course, but in the same way that all other medical practice is regulated, with an eye towards making it safe, not making it hard to get. One of the main reasons Gosnell was able to operate in the first place was that he preyed on women who felt that they couldn't get better abortion services elsewhere. At least one patient told reporters that she feared going to Planned Parenthood because of the protesters. Gosnell mostly exploited women's poverty, undercutting reputable clinics on their prices. For many women in poverty, getting the money together for a clean, safe abortion takes a long time, often so long that they are past the time when they can legally get one. Gosnell was waiting to scoop those women up and subject them and their families to his violent parody of medical care.

If we want to prevent future Gosnells, the solution is simple: Support good abortion providers. Help women who want abortions get them quickly and inexpensively. Repeal federal and state legislation that prevents Medicaid and insurance companies from covering abortion, so women don't have to scramble to pay for it. These simple measures will help make sure women who don't want to continue their pregnancies can get into clinics early and be treated with dignity and care. It will keep sadists and psychopaths like Gosnell from lurking in the underground, waiting to pounce on women who turn to them because they believe they have nowhere else to go."

May 14, 2013 5:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

what you don't understand is that all abortion providers are Gosnells

abortion is murder and this guy merely took its legalization to its logical conclusion

there is simply no rational reason why it was murder when he killed these children and it wasn't a few seconds before

future generations will be horrified at what we condoned

our society will be viewed in the same way as Mayans sacrificing humans to their "gods"

just like our gods of pleasure and convenience

May 14, 2013 8:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Absolutely wrong, anon. What you don't understand that is Gosnell is only Gosnell. Physicians who provide women's health care, including abortion, are highly trained professionals who obey the law and meet the standards of care of medical practice.

Gosnell is a criminal. He did not obey the law, and he did not meet the standard of care. He was prosecuted for his criminal behavior and convicted. The rule of law wins again!

You don't like it, everybody understands that. But abortion is legal, highly educated physicians perform the procedure under sterile and sanitary conditions, for appreciative women whose lives depend on taking control of their own reproductive systems.

Approximately one third of American women will have an abortion during their lifetime. By your silly judgment and preaching, I am guessing you are a man, is that right?

Pretty easy for you to decide what choice somebody else should make.

May 14, 2013 8:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Absolutely wrong, anon. What you don't understand that is Gosnell is only Gosnell. Physicians who provide women's health care, including abortion, are highly trained professionals who obey the law and meet the standards of care of medical practice."

actually, Gosnell is not that unusual

physicians who provide abortions violate the Hippocratic oath and female babies are among their victims

Abortion rights advocates have asserted that Gosnell was an "extreme outlier". But how could they possibly know that this is an aberration?

Last week, Ohio officials shut down an abortion clinic after inspectors found that a medical assistant administered narcotics to five patients, that narcotics and powerful sedatives weren't properly accounted for, that pharmacy licenses had expired and that four staff members hadn't been screened for a communicable disease.

This month, a Delaware TV station reported that two Planned Parenthood nurses resigned in protest over conditions at a clinic there. One nurse, Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich, said, "It was just unsafe. I couldn't tell you how ridiculously unsafe it was."

Last month, Maryland officials shut down three abortion clinics, two for failings in their equipment and training to deal with life-threatening complications.

Last year, an Associated Press investigation found that Illinois hadn't inspected some abortion clinics for 10 to 15 years. After state health officials reinvigorated their clinic inspections in the wake of Gosnell, inspectors closed two clinics.

Such problems wouldn't be a shock to Pennsylvania state Rep. Margo Davidson, the only member of the Democratic black caucus to vote for the abortion-regulation bill passed there. She told me, "We don't know how many (Gosnells) there are. I'm not trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, but if a woman makes this difficult choice, she should at least be afforded the highest level of care." She said the choice community knew what was going on and did nothing.

Indeed, the grand jury found that the National Abortion Federation inspected Gosnell's clinic, refused to certify him, but didn't tell anyone. Pennsylvania Planned Parenthood representative Dayle Steinberg has admitted that its officials knew the clinic was unsafe after women complained. What did they do? "We would always encourage them to report it to the Department of Health."

Davidson concluded that for the choice community, "the institution was more important than the individual lives." Davidson knows firsthand what can happen when people choose to look the other way: Her 22-year-old cousin died after an abortion at Gosnell's clinic.

And when a sensible state like Virginia tries to regulate them, the lunatics howl

May 14, 2013 9:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Gosnell is a criminal. He did not obey the law, and he did not meet the standard of care. He was prosecuted for his criminal behavior and convicted. The rule of law wins again!"

wasn't he just giving the women the choice to kill their children, just like all abortionists do?

"You don't like it, everybody understands that."

this is not just a personal preference like tea vs coffee

it's evil vs good

"But abortion is legal,"

so was slavery at one time

"highly educated physicians perform the procedure under sterile and sanitary conditions, for appreciative women whose lives depend on taking control of their own reproductive systems."

which is more important than someone's life?

"Approximately one third of American women will have an abortion during their lifetime. By your silly judgment and preaching, I am guessing you are a man, is that right?

Pretty easy for you to decide what choice somebody else should make."

you don't seem to have any problem deciding that a child can't live

why don't you think they deserve a choice?

but you're right about me

I'm biased

my mother didn't kill me


May 14, 2013 9:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Larry Conners, a veteran local news anchor at KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis, says that the Internal Revenue Service has been targeting him since an April 2012 interview he conducted with President Obama -- a fact that he dismissed as coincidence until the recent reports about the IRS targeting conservative groups.

"Shortly after I did my April 2012 interview with President Obama, my wife, friends and some viewers suggested that I might need to watch out for the IRS. I don't accept 'conspiracy theories', but I do know that almost immediately after the interview, the IRS started hammering me," Conners wrote on his Facebook page late Monday night.

May 14, 2013 9:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It is straightforward, anon, those who violate the law are prosecuted. If you know of a violation, report it. You can have as many anecdotes as you want. Because you start with the proposition that it's your business to decide how women you don't know should manage their pregnancies, you are obviously selecting anecdotes that fit your conclusion -- and that is not persuasive at all. If you showed any sign of intelligence or objectivity you might at least provoke a real debate, but you are only interested in asserting your moral superiority (intertwined with evidence of intellectual inferiority).

I was right, wasn't I? You are not a woman. What do you care whether they are provided medical services or not? How does that come to be your business?

May 14, 2013 9:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Kermit Gosnell is a serial killer. He was found guilty today of the first-degree murder of three infants and the third-degree murder of a patient at his abortion clinic. The grand jury believes that hundreds of infants met the same end as the ones whose murders were proved in court. Let no one call this justice.

Among supporters of late-term abortion -- a small but vocal contingent -- a common reaction to the trial has been to say that restrictions on the practice drove women to Gosnell. The grand jury reached a different conclusion: There weren’t any restrictions, thanks to Pennsylvania state governments of both parties that supported legal abortion. Clinics stopped being monitored under the administration of Republican Governor Tom Ridge, who got himself a nice reputation as a moderate because of his stance on abortion.

The question that should haunt us now is not how many victims Gosnell killed, which we will never know, but how many more Gosnells there are in our country. National Review reporter Jillian Kay Melchior uncovered evidence that a few are in Florida. In a 2006 case, prosecutors were apparently unwilling to seek justice for a murdered infant left in a trash bag to die because she had been delivered at 22 weeks gestation.

The theory that infants delivered that early have no rights -- that protecting them would conflict with Roe v. Wade -- is mistaken: The Supreme Court has never held any such thing. It may nonetheless be a widespread view. The court has made clear, however, that as soon as a fetus makes it even partway out of the womb it becomes a baby that the law can protect.

This distinction makes no sense to many people, who wonder why the location of this young human being should make such a large difference in whether he will live or die. Two Supreme Court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens, expressed this bafflement in a 2003 case. We would have a law closer to our moral intuitions if we had serious restrictions on late-term abortion. But the court itself has prevented such restrictions by insisting that they include an unlimited exception for “health,” including emotional health.

May 14, 2013 9:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Because you start with the proposition that it's your business to decide how women you don't know should manage their pregnancies,"

we don't allow people to manage any other aspect of their lives by murdering someone whose existence is inconvenient, do we?

"you are obviously selecting anecdotes that fit your conclusion -- and that is not persuasive at all."

they show that your idea that abortions are safe is a fairy tale

"If you showed any sign of intelligence or objectivity you might at least provoke a real debate, but you are only interested in asserting your moral superiority (intertwined with evidence of intellectual inferiority)."

the only debate strategy the liberal agenda has is to attack the other side personally

arguing ideas doesn't work because the facts aren't on your side

"What do you care whether they are provided medical services or not?"

whose said women shouldn't be provided medical services?

I think the providers should be those who adhere to the Hippocratic oath and refuse to destroy life

May 15, 2013 6:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I think the providers should be those who adhere to the Hippocratic oath and refuse to destroy life"

It's great that you get to make that medical choice for yourself. Count your blessing I don't feel any need to try to change your mind so I will not stand outside your doctor's office screaming at you to change your mind about your choice.

May 15, 2013 10:26 AM  
Anonymous svelte_brunette said...

As a transwoman who absolutely adores children, and babies in particular, I can not truly understand why roughly 1 million heterosexual couples a year decide to abort their fetuses. However, I do know that it has been common since ancient times, and that even if it is outlawed in this country, it will still be performed. Looking back in our own history, we can find that when it was outlawed, hospitals had to set aside entire floors or wards devoted to the care of women who had suffered the consequences of bad doctors or “do-it-yourself” abortion techniques. I don’t really look forward to a return to those days.

You would think that given the consequences of their behavior, heterosexual would be more careful about keeping their own genitals in their own pants. But history has shown that is simply not the case.

As an engineer, trained in problem solving, I only see one realistic solution to this perennial problem. I do not doubt it will “rub some people the wrong way.” However, from a practical standpoint, you have to admit it will quickly reduce the number of people wanting abortions.

It is simply not practical to put roughly 2 million heterosexuals (both the man and woman are at fault) in jail for executing their offspring. We already spend too much of our taxes on keeping people in jail and these people should be out earning a living.

If someone wants an abortion in the first few weeks of pregnancy we should give them the option to have a safe one. However, the cost will be that they (both the mother and the father – verified by DNA test) will have their tubes tied so they can not have the opportunity to kill another fetus. This will force both of them to think long and hard about the consequences of their actions. It will also quickly reduce the number of heterosexuals that could possibly have a fetus they want to abort in the first place.

Problem solved.

Have a nice day.

Cynthia

May 15, 2013 10:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Isn't this ironic?

"Everyone agrees that the IRS shouldn’t have targeted groups with “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names for special scrutiny in awarding tax-exempt status. NBC News reports two agents have been disciplined for doing so, and the Justice Department announced a criminal probe. But so far no one has identified a single conservative group that was denied status in the controversial review, though some faced bureaucratic hurdles and had their tax-exempt status delayed.

In fact, the only known 501 (c) (4) applicant to have its status denied happens to be a progressive group: the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. Although the group did no electoral work, and didn’t participate in independent expenditure campaign activity either, its partisan status apparently disqualified it from being categorized as working for the “common good.”

Ironically, the national organization and its earlier chapters had gotten tax-exempt status by the IRS during the Bush administration in 2006. But it appears as though the Maine group’s rejection triggered a review of the entire organization, and Emerge America and all of its chapters had their tax-exempt status revoked. Emerge reincorporated with 527 status, which requires it to report its donors. "

You can read the IRS letters explaining its decisions at the bottom of this post.

Here’s what director Karen Middleton has to say:

Emerge America and its initial state programs were granted 501(c)(4) status by the IRS several years ago. Later, when a new state program applied for the same status, it was denied because Emerge works only with women who are in the Democratic Party, so the IRS determined this did not meet the definition of “social welfare” for the common good. We believed this denial triggered a review of the Emerge programs that had already been granted c4 status, and consequently those statuses were revoked. Becoming 527 organizations has not hurt our fundraising or organizational expansion – we report our donors and continue our work fully transparently.

Again, the focus on Tea Party groups is wrong, but two thirds of the groups reviewed had no Tea Party ties — and only a Democratic group had its status denied. This story is more politically complicated than the right lets on.

May 15, 2013 5:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

CBO letter to Paul Ryan today includes:

"With the House planning to take up H.R. 45, a bill to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, very shortly, you requested that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provide a cost estimate for that legislation...

...On balance, CBO and JCT estimated, repealing the ACA would affect direct spending and revenues in ways resulting in a net increase in budget deficits of $109 billion over the 2013–2022 period.

May 15, 2013 5:49 PM  
Anonymous Doro Day said...

Obamacare won't cost the government that much

it's basically a law that makes it illegal for someone not to buy insurance, and it has to be the exact insurance the government wants you to have

and paying for it is your problem

hey, look, Obama has selected a scapegoat

"WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday that Steven Miller, the acting director of the Internal Revenue Service, had resigned amid criticism over the tax agency's handling of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Speaking from the White House's East Room, the president said that he had instructed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to hold the IRS accountable for its missteps, revealed in a Treasury Department inspector general's report released on Tuesday. Among the steps Lew took was to request and accept "the resignation of the acting commissioner of the IRS.""

have a great day, y'all!!!!

May 15, 2013 8:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Barack Obama

The gift that keeps on giving

GOP Senate in 2014

May 16, 2013 6:56 AM  
Anonymous have a nice day!! said...

Obama said "attack our enemies"

the IRS did his bidding

"I don't want to know who's resigning. I want to know who's going to jail."

-John Boehner

There is a widening circle of prominent Republican donors and activists stepping forward this week to declare that they were audited by the IRS, and many now are questioning if they were targeted for their political views.

"It makes you wonder," said Charlie Moncrief, a Texas oil executive who is raised more than $1 million for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential bid. "You just don't know. But given what's out there now, you have to ask the question."

The wave of mistrust on the part of prominent conservatives comes in response to a report by the IRS Inspector General's office published Tuesday that suggested the IRS singled out conservative advocacy groups -- specifically those with references to the Tea Party in their names -- for special scrutiny after they had applied for nonprofit status. The report has triggered a federal investigation into whether officials inside the taxing agency let political motives guide their actions.

Now Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho businessman who donated more than $1 million to groups supporting Romney, told ABC News he believes he may have been targeted for an audit after his opposition to the Obama administration. So did Hal Scherz, a physician who started the group Docs4PatientCare to lobby against President Obama's health care initiative, and became a vocal critic of the president on cable news programs. Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, said he believes his father was a target of unusual IRS scrutiny as well, according to published reports Wednesday.

Graham told Politico that groups founded by his famous father, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family's international humanitarian organization Samaritan's Purse, were both subjected to aggressive action by the IRS. In a letter to President Obama, which he shared with the news outlet, he wrote: "I do not believe that the IRS audit of our two organizations last year is a coincidence -- or justifiable."

"I happen to believe there are people inside the IRS who feel emboldened," said Cleta Mitchell, a Washington attorney who represents several of the conservative groups that were audited. "I've heard of several instances of donors to conservative causes who were audited. We need to find out if this is just random or if it's more than that."

Mitchell said she is hearing from a range of high-profile Republicans who want to know if their politics motivated the government's decision to audit them.

"I suspect that they looked at individuals as well," Scherz told ABC News. "It is odd that nothing changed on my tax return and I was never audited until I publicly criticized Obamacare."

May 16, 2013 7:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"It makes you wonder,' "you just don't know," "you have to ask the question," "I do not believe ... it is a coincidence," "I happen to believe," "I've heard," "said she is hearing," "want to know," "I suspect," "it's odd..."

Now that is a good news story!

May 16, 2013 7:12 AM  
Anonymous drip drip driiiiip said...

the shameful Obama administration

even TTF can't defend them:

WASHINGTON -- In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked.

That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn't be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.

In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved quickly. With names including words like "Progress" or "Progressive," the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups. They included:

• Bus for Progress, a New Jersey non-profit that uses a red, white and blue bus to "drive the progressive change." According to its website, its mission includes "support (for) progressive politicians with the courage to serve the people's interests and make tough choices." It got an IRS approval as a social welfare group in April 2011.

• Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment says it fights against corporate welfare and for increasing the minimum wage. "It would be fair to say we're on the progressive end of the spectrum," said executive director Jeff Ordower. He said the group got tax-exempt status in September 2011 in just nine months after "a pretty simple, straightforward process."

• Progress Florida, granted tax-exempt status in January 2011, is lobbying the Florida Legislature to expand Medicaid under a provision of the Affordable Care Act, one of President Obama's signature accomplishments. The group did not return phone calls. "We're busy fighting to build a more progressive Florida and cannot take your call right now," the group's voice mail said.

Like the Tea Party groups, the liberal groups sought recognition as social welfare groups under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, based on activities like "citizen participation" or "voter education and registration."

May 16, 2013 7:12 AM  
Anonymous impeach Obama said...

"Now that is a good news story!"

yes, it was

you just didn't understand it

now, every American has to wonder if they have free speech or whether what they say will cause the IRS to persecute them

since last Friday, when Lois Lerner accidentally mentioned the IRS has attacked certain groups for their political views, we now live in a land where everyone must consider that

the cure is to put those who have attacked our Constitution behind bars

As a metaphor for big government, it is hard to top the Justice Department’s seizing of journalists’ phone records from The Associated Press.

Unless, of course, you think the best example is the Internal Revenue Service turning the screws on groups it viewed as conservative and, therefore, unworthy of fair treatment.

Or maybe the winner is the sneaky spreading of ObamaCare’s tentacles, with insurance companies now predicting the law will drive up the cost of individual premiums by as much as 400 percent.

There are no losers in this race to the bottom — except the American people. It is tempting to ask whether they’ve had enough Hope & Change, but the question is premature. With 44 months to go in the reign of the Great Mistake, the gods are not done punishing us.

Meanwhile, back at the White House, the growing cloud of trouble must have the bunker boys longing for the good old days. You know, those idyllic days of yesteryear, a k a early last week, when Benghazi was the only scandal on the horizon.

Everything was much simpler then. All the president had to do was cry “Politics!” and the Pavlovian media mutts declared Benghazi a “partisan witch hunt” and started digging into really important things, such as whether Republicans are evil or just stupid.

Then the dam broke. First, it was the sensational Benghazi hearing, where previously muzzled whistleblowers detailed the administration’s bungles before, during and after the terror attack. Throw in reports showing the infamous Susan Rice talking points were rewritten 11 times, going from fact to fiction, and Benghazi suddenly became the important story it should have been all along.

If that were all, it would have been enough. But the near-simultaneous revelations in recent days about the IRS playing political favorites, the massive phone grab at the AP news operation, and ObamaCare’s cost impact combined to demonstrate something I believed for a long time.

The Obama administration is both corrupt and incompetent. It is a double whammy that spells trouble for the nation, at home and abroad.

The corruption in Obama-Land is the selective use of government power to reward friends and punish opponents. Or, as the president calls them, enemies.

Political allies — think Solyndra and unions — get special goodies, while those who oppose the regime’s agenda are demonized and singled out for scrutiny. The IRS targeting of groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names and those that advocate less spending smacks of the tactics of banana republic strongmen. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro would be proud.

May 16, 2013 7:25 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The corruption in Obama-Land is the selective use of government power to reward friends and punish opponents. Or, as the president calls them, enemies."

ROFL

And that folks is evidence that our friend Anon remains willingly entrapped in his bubble.

May 1, 2013 George W. Bush cancels Europe trip amid calls for his arrest

"Will George W. Bush set foot in Europe again in his lifetime?

A planned trip by Bush to speak at the Switzerland-based United Israel Appeal later this week has been canceled after several human rights groups called for Swiss authorities to arrest Bush and investigate him for authorizing torture. Bush has traveled widely since leaving office, but not to Europe, where there is a strong tradition of international prosecutions.

The Swiss group and Bush’s spokesman claim that it was threats of protest, not of legal action, that prompted the cancellation. But facing protests is nothing new for Bush. What was different about this trip was that groups including Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights argued that Switzerland, as a party to the UN Convention against Torture, is obligated to investigate Bush for potential prosecution.

Amnesty’s memo to Swiss authorities cites, among other things, Bush’s admission in his own memoir that he approved the use of waterboarding. From Amnesty’s press release:

“To date, we’ve seen a handful of military investigations into detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo. But none of these has had the independence and reach necessary to investigate high-level officials such as President Bush,” said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

“Meanwhile, there has been virtually zero accountability for crimes committed in the CIA’s secret detention program, which was authorized by then-President Bush.”

Anywhere in the world that he travels, President Bush could face investigation and potential prosecution for his responsibility for torture and other crimes in international law, particularly in any of the 147 countries that are party to the UN Convention against Torture..."

May 16, 2013 8:44 AM  
Anonymous How soon they forget said...

"Jan 11, 2009 9:16am

During my exclusive interview with President-elect Barack Obama airing Sunday morning on "This Week" I asked the president-elect to respond to a one of the most popular questions on his own website, www.Change.gov.

"Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor — ideally Patrick Fitzgerald — to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?" asked Bob Fertik of New York who runs the Democrats.com website.

Fertik submitted the question to Obama’s "Open for Questions" portion of the site, and later to us when he didn’t receive a response.

During his presidential campaign, Obama left the door open to a special prosecutor, so I asked him to respond to Fertik’s question.

Here was Obama’s answer:

PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: "We’re still evaluating how we’re going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions, and so forth. And obviously we’re going to look at past practices. And I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. And part of my job is to make sure that for example at the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering up.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: "So no 9/11 Commission with independent seeking of power?"

OBAMA: "Well we have not made any final decisions but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward, we are doing the right thing. That doesn’t mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation’s going to be to move forward," Obama said.

STEPHANOPOULOS: "So let me just press that one more time. You’re not ruling out prosecution, but will you tell your Justice Department to investigate these cases and follow the evidence where it leads?"

OBAMA: What I — I think my general view when it comes to my attorney general is that he’s the people’s lawyer. Eric Holder’s been nominated. His job is to uphold the Constitution and look after the interests of the American people. Not be swayed by my day-to-day politics. So ultimately, he’s going to be making some calls. But my general belief is that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past."

–George Stephanopoulos"

May 16, 2013 8:50 AM  

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