Democrats and Planned Parenthood

The Senate failed a cloture vote on a bill related to one already passed by the House that would have diverted some $550 billion of American taxpayer money from Planned Parenthood and sent it, instead, to a number of other women’s health facilities around the country, facilities that don’t do abortions. The bill would have preserved access to health care for women who need it and don’t have, for instance, the economic resources to get it. As a result of the failure, the bill is near death—Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) voted against it when it became clear it would fail; his vote means he can bring it up again this session. He and his fellow Republicans have said the question is far from dead.

The Senate Democrats who caused the cloture vote to fail, though, did so explicitly because they want that money to keep going to Planned Parenthood. The key distinction between Planned Parenthood and the other women’s health facilities? One dissects aborted babies’ bodies for parts, and the others do not abort babies in the first place.

So much for any war on women. Sending money to women’s health facilities—regardless of whether you think the Federal government should be doing that at all—hardly constitutes a war on women.

Never mind, too, the increased risk of breast cancer that women face from pregnancies that are catastrophically interrupted (from any of a variety of causes of which abortion is one).

The Democrats’ war on babies, though….

Obama Gets One Right

Edward Snowden will likely remain hiding in Russia for some time, with Washington officials and most Americans offering no leniency or forgiveness for him notoriously stealing classified information and jeopardizing U.S. national security.

President Barack Obama, through his Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco, said this about that:

Mr Snowden’s dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work…to protect it[.]

And then he tossed a petition to pardon this…scofflaw, the petition a product of a two year effort to let Snowden skate, into the round file.

Hear, hear.

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.