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Catching Up on ObamaCare &
Abortion, DISCLOSE, and the Off-Year Elections Part One of Four By Dave Andrusko Good evening! Great to be back. Part Two is a helpful exposure of ObamaCare's link to abortion. Part Three is a heads-up on a bill that would Make restrictions on public funding of abortions permanent. Part Four is an amazing story from the Associated Press that honestly reports that adult stem cells are the way to go, not embryonic stem cells. Over at "National Right to Life News Today" (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org), there is an excellent column by Dr. David Prentice and still more fallout from the "Friday Night Lights" episode. Please send all of your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are now following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha. Before I attempt a quick catch-up on a few of the many important developments that took place while I was on vacation, a sincere "thank you" to those readers who responded to the previously run stories I published while my family was in Minnesota. It reminded me yet again that people are awfully busy, and that they don't necessarily have time to read every item that appears in TN&V or in "National Right to Life News Today" (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org) the first time it appears.
Let me run through just three of many items that could be discussed with more to come tomorrow. #1. With three months to go before the off-year elections, the simple truth is that pro-abortion President Barack Obama is, at best, a mixed blessing to many Democrats. As of last week, Obama's weekly approval rating was an anemic 45%, according to Gallup. It is even lower among groups that traditionally are more likely to vote in mid-term elections. As the New York Times pointed out Saturday, things have really changed since 2008. Obama himself told nine Democrats who are in fiercely competitive contests, "You may not even want me to come into your district." On top of that by now everyone knows that the level of enthusiasm is much, much higher among Republicans than among Democrats. "[T]he much-talked about GOP enthusiasm edge over Democrats is turning into a sizable voter turnout advantage, one even bigger than in 1994 when conservatives shocked Washington and took control of the House and Senate," according to the Pew Center's President Andrew Kohut, Democrats desperately hope the electorate will forget about the health care debacle. Not much chance of that. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that "Fifty-nine percent (59%) of all voters now favor repeal of the health care bill. Thirty-eight percent (38%) oppose repeal." In addition, "57% of Likely U.S. Voters say the recently passed health care law will be bad for the country. That's the highest level of pessimism measured since regular tracking began following Congress' passage of the law in late March. Thirty-two percent (32%) say the health care plan will be good for the United States." #2. Speaking of ObamaCare, you should be proud of the job National Right to Life has done--and continues to do--to document what NRLC has said from the beginning: "There is no language in the new health care law, and no language in Obama's politically contrived March 24 executive order, that effectively prevents federal subsidies for abortion on demand," as NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson said last week. In mid-July, NRLC warned that the Obama administration had "quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of Governor Edward Rendell (D) under which the new high-risk program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania." In the days that followed, NRLC spotlighted similar problems with the plans that New Mexico and Maryland were putting into place. As explained in Part Two, late last week the Obama Administration simultaneously issued regulations telling "states that elective abortions may not be covered in the high-risk pool program" and issued a statement on the White House blog explaining that this decision 'is not a precedent for other programs or policies given the unique, temporary nature of the program . . .'" (Emphasis added.) As Johnson said, "This means that unless Congress repeals the health care law or performs major corrective surgery on it, there will be years of battles, as each new program is implemented, over how elective abortion will be covered – and the White House is suggesting that today's policy will not necessarily be applied when implementing the other programs, some of which will cover far larger populations." Confirmation on various important points NRLC made came from reports from independent organizations such as the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the Associated Press, and www.FactCheck.org. #3. Democrats narrowly failed to secure enough votes in the Senate last week to advance a truly noxious speech-suppressing measure. The woefully mislabeled "DISCLOSE Act" would place extensive new legal restrictions on the ability of corporations -- including incorporated nonprofit citizen groups such as NRLC -- to communicate with the public about the actions of federal lawmakers. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fell just one vote short and could bring up DISCLOSE again after the August recess. NRLC vigorously opposes the measure and sent a strongly worded letter to Senators (www.nrlc.org/FreeSpeech/NRLCLetterToSenateOnDISCLOSEAct.pdf). The measure is an unabashedly partisan attempt to evade the Supreme Court's holdings in Citizens United v. FEC. The cover story is that the law is intended to curb "corruption." But as NRLC's letter explained, "Enactment of the DISCLOSE Act would not be a curb on corruption but is itself a type of corruption--a corruption of the lawmaking power, by which incumbent lawmakers employ the threat of criminal sanctions, among other deterrents, to reduce the amount of private speech regarding the actions of the lawmakers themselves." I'll catch up on other important stories of the past two weeks, plus breaking stories, beginning tomorrow. |
