Changing the Subject

Planned Parenthood and President Barack Obama are partners in this misbehavior.

Recall the hoo-raw over the videos published by Center for Medical Progress showing Planned Parenthood doctors discussing the best way to harvest valuable (monetarily) body parts from freshly aborted babies. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards spent her time decrying the videos as “edited” and insisting that Planned Parenthood behavior was both legal and ethical.

Obama’s only comment on the matter came through his Press Secretary Josh Earnest, and it was centered on the editing and a repeat of Richards’ claim of “ethical behavior.”

Neither of them addressed the question of aborting babies and cutting out the good parts for resale (or “donation”). Both of them ran screaming from the subject.

Get the Messenger

Of course. The Democratic Party of California can’t stand to have their narrative so impertinently disputed. In the present case, the Democrat State Attorney General, Kamala Harris, is going after the Center for Medical Progress for so rudely exposing Planned Parenthood as being, apparently, in the baby body parts business, with those parts carefully harvested from babies carefully aborted so as to preserve those parts. Her claimed purpose is

to see if any law was broken in the filming.

Right. Because exposing aborted baby body part trafficking—whether for profit or out of the “goodness of the woman’s heart”—might be illegal. Never mind the trafficking. Never mind the level of morality involved in destroying a baby’s life in favor of a woman’s convenience.

Harris said she would investigate

allegations that individuals impersonated corporate officials from a fake biologics company, resulting in the release of secretly filmed videos of Planned Parenthood physicians without their consent.

But she hasn’t a syllable about, or a penny for, investigating Planned Parent’s apparent trafficking.

This is the Democratic Party, California style.

Oh, yeah: Harris also is running for California’s Senate seat. She’s looking for votes out of this escapade, too.

Defeating Islamic Terrorism

Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, has a thought on the matter.

[A]ny strategy to defeat extremism must confront, head on, the extreme ideology that underpins it. We must take its component parts to pieces – the cultish worldview, the conspiracy theories, and yes, the so-called glamorous parts of it as well.

In doing so, let’s not forget our strongest weapon: our own liberal values. We should expose their extremism for what it is – a belief system that glorifies violence and subjugates its people – not least Muslim people.

We should contrast their bigotry, aggression and theocracy with our values. We have, in our country, a very clear creed and we need to promote it much more confidently.

[T]here is also the question of identity.

For all our successes as multi-racial, multi-faith democracy, we have to confront a tragic truth that there are people born and raised in this country who don’t really identify with Britain – and who feel little or no attachment to other people here. Indeed, there is a danger in some of our communities that you can go your whole life and have little to do with people from other faiths and backgrounds.

All of that applies here, too, can this administration—or more likely, its successor in 18 too-long months—find the moral courage actually to apply it.

More Dishonesty Regarding the Iran Nuclear Weapons Deal

Fred Leitz at National Review has identified a couple of secret—as in deliberately attempted to be kept secret from Congress—side deals. Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) and Congressmen Mike Pompeo (R, KS) have gotten wind of them, too, though, so….

One of these side deals concerns inspection of the Parchin military base, where Iran reportedly has conducted explosive testing related to nuclear-warhead development. The Iranian government has refused to allow the IAEA to visit this site. Over the last several years, Iran has taken steps to clean up evidence of weapons-related activity at Parchin.

The other secret side deal concerns how the IAEA and Iran will resolve outstanding issues on possible military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran’s nuclear program. In late 2013, Iran agreed to resolve IAEA questions about nuclear weapons-related work in twelve areas. Iran only answered questions in one of these areas and rejected the rest as based on forgeries and fabrications.

President Barack Obama and his motorboat skipper occupant of SecState’s chair have kept these secret (unsuccessfully, it seems) from Congress. Of course, the administration denies this. They wouldn’t be secrets, if they talked about them, though.

It’s one more reason to toss this deal and then to override Obama’s veto of the tossing.

Nuclear Weapons Deal Agreed

President Barack Obama and his lesser foreign policy wonk, John Kerry, have agreed that Iran can have nuclear weapons and the missile delivery systems to carry them.

This is from Omri Ceren, via Power Line:

The Iranian nuclear program will be placed under international sponsorship for R&D

Sort of: “a major power” will work with Iran to develop next-generation centrifuge technology, ostensibly merely for production of useful isotopes of various elements. Never mind that “isotope production” other than bombarding atoms with neutrons is exactly what is done to enriching uranium.

The sanctions regime will be shredded

Completely. The sanctions to be lifted are limited to sanctions against the Iranian nuclear weapons program. However, this better policy wonk than his policy wonks has agreed that all sanctions currently in place against Iran are to be defined as part of the “anti-nuclear weapons program” sanctions régime. Thus, sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, “conventional” weapons, and ballistic missiles will be lifted. This one is especially well done by Obama.

The US collapsed on anytime-anywhere inspections

Completely. The IAEA gets to ask, “Pretty please,” the Iranians get to say, “No,” and the whole thing goes to arbitration. With Iran as an arbitration panel member. With no deadline, no maximum time frame within which the question must be arbitrated.

Under this deal in our time, Iran gets to traffic in conventional arms, legally, in five years, and it gets to build/acquire ballistic missiles, legally, in eight years.

Iran’s legal path to nuclear weapons is wide open. Actually, that path is a multiplicity of multi-lane highways.

Obama, with a straight face, proclaims his pride in this failure. What a legacy he’s built.