Gateway Pundit reports that the last shred of Bart Stupak’s honor is essentially gone:
The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new “high-risk” insurance program under a provision of the federal health care legislation enacted in March.
It has quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of pro-abortion Governor Edward Rendell under which the new program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania.
So, a Stupakian bargain is like a Faustian bargain, only everyone knows you’re a chump at the signing, and you don’t even enjoy a jolly hedonistic year and a day before the perfidy overtakes the fool:
As part of the agreement, the White House announced that President Obama would issue an executive order on abortion after the House approves the health-care bill assuring that no federal funds would be used to subsidize the procedure. That was enough to secure the support of a group of Catholic Democrats who represent the swing votes on the legislation.
How would Obama react to this turn of events in the hypothetical case that he (a) held a press conference, and (b) was called on this question by some reporter planted amidst the clutch of sycophants? “The policy was clearly misinterpreted,” or “the executive order no longer applies once the money is transferred to the state.”
What a sick, twisted, un-representative situation we find ourselves in. The following Nine Inch Nails cut is safe for work. I wonder to what degree it correlates to the monologue unfolding in the head of the POTUS:
In order to drown out pro-life “sidewalk counselors” outside, the owner of Northern Illinois Women’s Center in Rockford was blaring WNTA-AM 1330 through loudspeakers. Kathleen Gilbert tells the rest of the story:
D.J. Doug McDuff’s scheduled talk show guest cancelled, and he opened the phone lines for comment.
Seeing his chance, Rockford pro-life veteran Kevin Rilott whipped out his cell phone and was on air within seconds, loud and clear outside the abortion centre where he was standing. Rilott took the opportunity to explain to McDuff and his listeners how the radio station, WNTA, was being used to silence pro-lifers’ attempt to help mothers in need.
McDuff, none too pleased, decided to take matters into his own hands. “God bless pro-lifers! God bless pro-lifers! God bless pro-lifers!” the D.J. shouted. . . .
The D.J. then gave Rilott airtime to explain how those who keep vigil outside the Rockford mill come “to offer love, help, and hope to mothers in need,” and to request prayer for mothers in need and an end to abortion. . . .
Read the rest. Evidently, the clinic owner really hates Christians:
“For years at this abortion mill we have seen a steady stream of vicious personal attacks, hatred for God, bigotry, racism, ridiculing people with HIV, and mocking of human life displayed in the windows of a so-called medical facility,” said Rockford pro-life advocate George Lambert.
Lambert lamented that “the local Rockford paper refuses to report about these attacks and our city council remains silent.”
First, I urge this Committee to officially investigate the discrepancies that have arisen this week between Ms. Kagan’s testimony and the written record about her actions related to lobbying the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists during her tenure in the Clinton White House. The questions surrounding this period are troubling and call into question Ms. Kagan’s ability to adopt an impartial judicial temperament. . . .
We are asking this committee to investigate Ms. Kagan’s record related to her interaction with both the AMA and ACOG during her tenure as a policy advisor to President Clinton.
I’d like to focus attention tonight on her apparent efforts to influence and distort the record on the medical science related to partial-birth abortion. In a December 14, 1996 memo, Kagan addressed the pending release of a proposed statement by ACOG that partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary. The release of such a statement, she argued, “. . .would be a disaster . . .”
In response, White House documents show that Kagan drafted an amendment to ACOG’s statement, dramatically altering their language, which stated that partial-birth abortion: “may be the best or most appropriate in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” ACOG subsequently adopted Ms. Kagan’s handwritten change into their final statement. Kagan claimed before this Committee that she was simply a scribe for changes coming from ACOG. But Kagan’s response raises more questions than it answers.
And this was not an isolated case. We have further evidence that she pursued this same strategy with the AMA.
Similar to ACOG’s original position, the AMA issued a policy stating that no situations had been identified where partial-birth abortion was the only appropriate method of abortion and that ethical concerns surrounded it.
In a White House email dated June 1, 1997, Ms. Kagan wrote that she just came from a meeting which focused on “whether the AMA policy can be reversed at its convention on June 23.”
Kagan then concluded: “We agreed to do a bit of thinking about whether we …could contribute to that effort.” Elena Kagan was so opposed to the passage of a ban on partial-birth abortion that she appears to have advocated for ACOG and the AMA to suppress or modify their view. She made a deliberate decision to advocate for partial-birth abortion, even to the point of working to deceive the American public about the medical science related to the procedure.
PREVIOUSLY: Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan resumed today at 4 p.m. ET, but unless you’ve got C-SPAN 3, you can’t watch the testimony from witnesses. PBS, which covered the first three days of hearings live, won’t be carrying today’s testimony. And if you’re relying on network news . . . well, let’s let Scott Whitlock of Newsbusters explain:
Wednesday’s evening news shows and Thursday’s morning programs continued to minimize or leave out important moments of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings. . . .
The New York Times on July 1 reported the intense questioning by Senator Orrin Hatch on an abortion memo written by then-Clinton White House Counsel Kagan.
Hatch demanded, “Did you write that memo?…But did you write it? Is it your memo?”
Kagan’s memo worried that a American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) report on abortion could be a “disaster” for the Clinton administration. None of the morning shows on Thursday mentioned the exchange between Hatch and Kagan. On Wednesday, only CBS’s Evening News raised the subject.
What was the big story in Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan? According to the New York Times, it was “Republicans Press Kagan on Social Issues,” while the Washington Post focused on how Kagan “charmed her critics.”
UPDATE 5:45 p.m. ET: Yeah. Three days, very few tough questions, and Pat Leahy closed by congratulating her that this would likely be the last time she ever had to testify. But is it really?
Funeral plans for the late Sen. Robert Byrd will affect the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings schedule Thursday and Friday, and Republican sources say it is very unlikely that the committee will vote on Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination until after the Fourth of July recess. . . .
PREVIOUSLY: Here’s today’s earlier exchange between Sen. Orrin Hatch and Elena Kagan:
Via the Weekly Standard‘s John McCormack, who is the Joe Jonas of DC political reporters. (By that analogy, Byron York would be Roger Daltrey and I suppose I’d be the scraggly bass guitarist in Molly Hatchet.)
UPDATE: American United for Life says Kagan also intervened to influence the American Medical Association’s position on partial-birth abortion:
During Elena Kagan’s service in the Clinton White House, she urged the President to oppose any meaningful restrictions on partial-birth abortion. As part of this effort, our attorneys have learned that Kagan worked to change the positions of two major medical groups – the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the American Medical Association (AMA).
Kagan’s lobbying for changes to medical associations’ positions while in the White House is further evidenced by an email found in her White House documents, where Kagan clearly tried to change the position of another medical group, the American Medical Association (AMA):
When discussing whether the AMA could reverse its policy that there is not an identified situation in which partial-birth abortion is the only appropriate method of abortion, ethical concerns surround it, and that it should not be used unless it is absolutely necessary, Kagan stated: “We agreed to do a bit of thinking about whether we (in truth, HHS) could contribute to that effort [convincing the AMA to reverse their policy]. Chuck and I are meeting with the AG on Tuesday; Donna offered to send over some doctors this week (though we don’t know who or when) to give a medical briefing.”
In other words, Kagan was so opposed to the passage of a ban on partial-birth abortion, she hoped that ACOG and the AMA would suppress or modify their views and aggressively worked to make that happen.
The pressure on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has jumped this week thanks to a memo she wrote during the Clinton administration showing her pressuring a medical group to change its position on partial-birth abortion. Now, new files indicated Kagan also pressured a second group. . . .
The email has Kagan clearly trying to change the position of another medical group, the American Medical Association.
If the law’s on your side, argue the law.
If the facts are on your side, argue the facts.
If neither is on your side — lobby friendly industry groups to change their reporting of the facts.
PREVIOUSLY: Sources on Capitol Hill tell me that today’s second round of questioning for Elena Kagan in the Senate Judiciary Committee may go as late as 9 p.m. tonight. So far — it’s just past noon — neither Jeff Sessions nor Orrin Hatch has brought up the “smoking gun” memo.
UPDATE II: Orrin Hatch raised the question bluntly: “Did you write that memo?” After some dancing around, Kagan finally admitted, “The document is certainly in my handwriting,” but then said that what she was trying to do was to make sure the document from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists accurately reflected their views.
That explanation seems kind of wacky to me. Why would ACOG be coordinating its policy statement with the White House in the first place? Didn’t ACOG already know what it wanted to say without feedback from a White House staffer? So why was ACOG “clearing” its message with the Clinton administration?
Kagan can obviously expect more questioning about this.
UPDATE IV: They’re back from lunch now, and Sen. Kyl just finished raking Kagan over the coals on the Commerce Clause. Meanwhile, we’re linked in a round-up by Bob Belvedere at the Camp of the Saints, and Cassy Fiano asks the basic question about the ACOG memo:
It seems that the most important statement in the famous position paper of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—a 1996 document that was central to the case of partial-birth-abortion defenders for the subsequent decade and played a major role in a number of court cases and political battles—was drafted not by an impartial committee of physicians, as both ACOG and the pro-abortion lobby claimed for years, but by Elena Kagan, who was then the deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.
White House memos from 1997, when Elena Kagan was a top domestic policy advisor to President Clinton, show that Kagan — nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama — recommended that the Clinton administration permit cloning of human embryos for research purposes.
Writing just months after Scottish researchers had announced the birth of a cloned sheep, Kagan and another Clinton aide recommended that the president announce a ban on cloning that would lead to the birth of human infants, but emphasized that the policy “would not ban the creation of cloned embryos for research purposes.” . . . .
The powerful pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List has just announced a $215,000 independent expenditure campaign “highlighting the strong pro-life stance of California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.” The campaign leading up to the June 8 California primary will involve “aggressive online advertising and e-mail campaign, targeted calls to 600,000 registered voters and direct fundraising from its membership,” the organization said in a press release Tuesday, which quoted SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser:
“Carly Fiorina is the perfect pro-woman, pro-life contrast to Barbara Boxer. The Susan B. Anthony List is dedicating significant resources in the final two weeks of the primary to educate California voters about Fiorina’s strong pro-life position and ability to beat Boxer in November.
“California is burdened with two female Senators who claim to represent women by pushing their radical, pro-abortion agenda, yet polling clearly shows that more and more Americans are calling themselves pro-life. Carly Fiorina is uniquely poised to be a leader for the unborn and for women in the U.S. Senate, ushering in a new brand of ‘feminism’ that harkens back to its roots in the suffragettes and recognizes that the rights of one are not built on the broken rights of another.”
SBA List calls Boxer “the most aggressive champion of abortion rights in Congress.” According to SBA List communications director Kerry Brown, the $215,000 for Fiorina will include $5,000 in direct PAC contribution, $12,000 in bundled contributions (so far), $80,000 in Google ads, $39,000 for survey calls, and $60,000 in robo-calls.
Among the $6 million SBA list expects to spend nationwide for the 2010 mid-term election cycle, $1 million will go “to target ‘pro-life’ Democrats who voted for abortion funding in the health care bill.”
