Year: 2015

New at Live Action: Cecile Richards Lectures Pro-Lifers on Civility. Yes, Really

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In a glowing interview/profile for the Guardian, Emma Brockes paints Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards as the noble victim of a pack of crazies at last week’s congressional hearing, without a hint of interest about her heroine perjuring herself regarding Planned Parenthood’s post-viability abortions, increasing abortion numbers corresponding to decreasing cancer services, and past mammogram claims, or the multiple federal laws her organization has broken.

In other words, it’s a day ending in Y. “Journalists” giving the abortion lobby a pass to lie with impunity is just one of the constants of the universe. But this piece does have one nugget of twisted originality: Richards claims she was “stunned by the total lack of civility” of Republican representatives.

A woman who defends her blood-stained cause through lies, personal attacks, and fear-mongering is crying civility? Really? Let’s review just how much Ms. Richards really values a respectful exchange of ideas.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Pro-Abortion TPM Writer Lies About Prenatal/Abortion Images

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Pro-aborts just can’t let go of Carly Fiorina’s challenge to watch the monstrous Planned Parenthood videos. Now, Talking Points Memo’s Sarah Erdreich tries to spin Fiorina’s flagrant act of honesty into “part of a long tradition of anti-abortion advocates who have no problem with lying about what abortion is and what it looks like to advance their agenda”:

Fiorina has refused to back down from her statement, even in the face of evidence that solidly refutes her assertion.

The “evidence” she cites is a report from PolitiFact, which is known to deceive when it comes to pro-life politicians, rating Fiorina’s claim “mostly false” because the baby onscreen was not the same one ex-StemExpress tech Holly O’Donnell witnessed, and because “We don’t know the circumstances behind this video: where it came from, under what conditions it was obtained, or even if this fetus was actually aborted (as opposed to a premature birth or miscarriage).”

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Elizabeth Warren lies for Planned Parenthood, and Jake Tapper Lets Her

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In a media dominated by thinly veiled propagandists for Democrats and left-wing causes posing as impartial journalists, some conservatives used to say that Jake Tapper, former ABC News correspondent now with CNN, was one of the rare objective reporters not pushing an ideological agenda. If that was ever true, it sure isn’t anymore, judging by his interview this weekend with radical pro-abortion Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

He started with a respectable question about the Center for Medical Progress undercover videos into Planned Parenthood’s —“Is there nothing on the videotapes that you saw that bothers you at all?” Warren answered (if you can call it that):

Look, let’s remember what we were debating on the floor of the United States Senate, and that was defunding Planned Parenthood. 2.7 million people get their healthcare from Planned Parenthood every year. One in every 5 women in America, sometime in her life, will get her healthcare from Planned Parenthood.

False—according to Planned Parenthood’s own material, the actual statistic merely claims that one in five women has entered a Planned Parenthood.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

New at Live Action: Don’t Let Iowa Gov. Branstad Chicken Out on Defunding Planned Parenthood

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In July, Iowa Republican Governor Terry Branstad responded to the news of Planned Parenthood’s organ harvesting side business by ordering a comprehensive review of state women’s health and family planning funding to ensure none of it was helping Planned Parenthood perform abortions. Alas, now he says he can’t defund Planned Parenthood after all:

“It appears to me, and the advice that we have received from the attorney general’s office, is that we cannot defund Planned Parenthood,” Branstad said last week, according to The Des Moines Register. “The attorney general’s office has notified us that we don’t have reasons; [Planned Parenthood hasn’t] violated their responsibilities under the grants that they have received from the state.”

The Iowa social conservative group The Family Leader is not impressed, and has been doing a lot of work to refute Branstad’s claims and pressure him into doing the right thing.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

Abysmal Kasich-Rubio ’16 Case Illustrates Why GOP Keeps Losing Elections

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The following article was originally written in August. Given the lack of responses at the time and that the subject of conservative publications giving platforms to disastrously unconservative political advice remains newsworthy, I am publishing it here.

In most fields, past failures to produce results tend to diminish one’s standing as an authority on future successes. So while it’s natural that alumni of John McCain’s presidential campaign would favor a 2016 nominee as centrist as John Kasich and a running mate as amnesty-minded as Marco Rubio, it’s also alarming to see their prescriptions disseminated in a leading conservative publication.

None of Myra Adams’s five points for Kasich-Rubio ’16 are persuasive. In fact, her August 14 National Review column making the case reads more like a catalogue of the Beltway myths, shallow assumptions, and unconservative priorities that have created countless Republican defeats. Continue reading →

When Will We Get Serious about Judicial Tyranny?

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A Republican presidential field with over a dozen candidates splitting conservative voters may be a recipe for political disaster, but one of the silver linings is that with so many dueling personalities, some are bound to voice overlooked ideas to a wider audience than they’re used to.

So far, that’s been one of the only good things to come out of Mike Huckabee joining the fray. He’s made directly attacking the judiciary’s assumed constitutional monopoly a recurring theme over the past several months, from his January suggestion that we defy the Supreme Court if they impose same-sex marriage nationwide to his May campaign announcement blasting politicians for “surrender[ing] to the false god of judicial supremacy.”

His comments got a little debate among the commentariat and more than a little hysteria from the press, but nowhere near the conversation they should have sparked. Maybe it was the messenger—while Huck’s nanny-state, pro-amnesty, soft-on-crime, snake-oil record should absolutely keep him far, far away from the White House, conservatives can’t afford to let our rightful distaste for the Huckster distract us when he stumbles upon something important. Continue reading →

SCOTUS “Pregnancy Discrimination” Case Tempts Pro-Lifers to Flip-Flop on State Coercion

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The abortion debate ultimately concerns two concepts: the sanctity of human life and the proper application of civil law. Pro-lifers generally champion the latter, while abortion champions pervert it with convoluted judicial rulings that unjustly insulate their desired policies from the democratic process and regulatory mandates that illegally and unconstitutionally compel private citizens and organizations to do their bidding. They lost one such battle in 2014 when the Supreme Court ruled that forcing religious businesses to provide abortifacient drugs violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

But last December, 24 pro-life organizations took a more favorable view of federal workplace intervention. Led by Americans United for Life, a coalition of groups including the Susan B. Anthony List, American Life League, and Students for Life of America filed an amicus curiae brief in Young v. UPS, a Supreme Court battle over alleged pregnancy discrimination. AUL summarizes:

The case involves the 36-year-old Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and whether it offers any real protection to women who choose life for their unborn children. “Pro-life and pro-abortion advocates agree: This case is about protecting pregnant mothers from employment discrimination,” noted [AUL President & CEO Dr. Charmaine] Yoest. “Women should not suffer physical hardship at work or lose their jobs because they are having a baby. Most especially, pregnant mothers should not be refused the same accommodation offered others with similar work challenges” […]

Peggy Young was a driver for UPS when she became pregnant. Though other workers with similar work challenges received a “lighter duty” accommodation, Ms. Young was denied an accommodation during her pregnancy, in violation of the federal PDA. Peggy lost in the two lower courts.

The court ruled 6-3 in Young’s favor in June, and a few days ago she and UPS reached a settlement. But while the temptation to declare victory and move on is understandable, a few words are in order to remind fellow pro-lifers that limited-government, natural-rights principles are just as binding in sympathetic cases as unsympathetic ones. Continue reading →