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NRL News
20th
Debate Offers Another Revealing Glimpse of Senator Obama As NRL News goes to press, the string of primary victories by pro-abortion Sen. Barack Obama (Il.) has just ended. Pro-abortion Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY) won three out of four March 5 primaries. See story page one for more details. We’ve already written about not only how carefully Sen. Obama toes the pro-abortion line but also how local Illinois abortion leaders have allowed him to avoid some controversies by merely voting “present.” But at the 20th debate held February 26 in Cleveland, Ohio, Obama again made clear his position on starving helpless patients. Obama had this to say in response to a question from NBC’s Tim Russert: RUSSERT: Before you go, each of you have talked about your careers in public service. Looking back through them, is there any words or vote that you’d like to take back? OBAMA: Well, you know, when I first arrived in the Senate that first year, we had a situation surrounding Terri Schiavo. And I remember how we adjourned with a unanimous agreement that eventually allowed Congress to interject itself into that decision making process of the families. It wasn’t something I was comfortable with, but it was not something that I stood on the floor and stopped. And I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better. And so that’s an example I think of where inaction ... RUSSERT: This is the young woman with the feeding tube ... OBAMA: That’s exactly right. RUSSERT: ... and the family disagreed as to whether it should be removed or not. OBAMA: And I think that’s an example of inaction, and sometimes that can be as costly as action. (Obama was not a “constitutional law professor” at the University of Chicago. Nor was he a full-time faculty member or tenured. He was a part-time “senior lecturer.”) The only thing Obama can think of—his only mistake—was his failure to guarantee that it would be impossible for a woman being starved to death to have one last shot in the federal courts. Without going through the entire lengthy chronology, in March 2005, unanimous consent in the Senate was needed to get a measure quickly passed that would provide Terri’s family with one last opportunity to save her. Obama is correct in this sense. Had he, or any other senator, demurred, obviously there would be no unanimous consent. But even the most stone-hearted senators grudgingly gave Terri’s family one last gasp at life for their daughter and sister. This historical truth has vanished, like something disposed down the “memory hole” Orwell describes in 1984. For years Democrats have exploited the starvation death of a helpless woman, mischaracterizing desperate efforts to save Terri as unwarranted “meddling” by Congress. Obama takes this cynical chicanery to a new heights—or depths. |