Barack Obama, in Africa, demonstrating his "Yes we can" solution to the problem of high gasoline prices.
In regard to my blog headline above: unforunately I'm not making it up. The following column which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer) is by Rick Santorum, who served two terms as a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. As many of you know, I disagree with Rick Santorum on a number of issues, but on this matter of "live-birth-abortions," he's right on target. Thanks for visiting. As always, your comments are welcome. I'll write more today on this subject. If you're looking for the photos that tell us a lot about Obama, please scroll down.
The Elephant in the Room:
Obama: A harsh ideologue hidden by a feel-good image
By Rick Santorum
By Rick Santorum
American voters will choose between two candidates this election year.One inspires hope for a brighter, better tomorrow. His rhetoric makes us feel we are, indeed, one nation indivisible - indivisible by ideology or religion, indivisible by race or creed. It is rhetoric of hope and change and possibility. It's inspiring. This candidate can make you just plain feel good to be American.
The other candidate, by contrast, is one of the Senate's fiercest partisans. This senator reflexively sides with the party's extreme wing. There's no record of working with the other side of the aisle. None. It's basically been my way or the highway, combined with a sanctimoniousness that breeds contempt among those on the other side of any issue.
Which of these two candidates should be our next president? The choice is clear, right?
Wrong, because they're both the same man - Barack Obama.
Granted, the first-term Illinois senator's lofty rhetoric of bipartisanship, unity, hope and change makes everyone feel good. But it's becoming increasingly clear that his grand campaign rhetoric does not match his partisan, ideological record.
The nonpartisan National Journal, for example, recently rated Obama the Senate's most liberal member. That's besting some tough competition from orthodox liberals such as Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer.
John McCain's campaign and conservative pundits have listed the numerous times in Obama's short Senate career where he sided with the extremes in his party against broadly supported compromises on issues such as immigration, ethics reform, terrorist surveillance and war funding.
Fighting on the fringe with a handful of liberals is one thing, but consider his position on an issue that passed both houses of Congress unanimously in 2002. That bill was the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.
During the partial-birth abortion debate, Congress heard testimony about babies that had survived attempted late-term abortions. Nurses testified that these preterm living, breathing babies were being thrown into medical waste bins to die or being "terminated" outside the womb.
With the baby now completely separated from the mother, it was impossible to argue that the health or life of the mother was in jeopardy by giving her baby appropriate medical treatment. The act simply prohibited the killing of a baby born alive.
To address the concerns of pro-choice lawmakers, the bill included language that said nothing "shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand or contract any legal status or legal right" of the baby. In other words, the bill wasn't intruding on Roe v. Wade.
Who would oppose a bill that said you couldn't kill a baby who was born? Not Kennedy, Boxer or Hillary Rodham Clinton. Not even the hard-core National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).
Obama, however, is another story. The year after the Born Alive Infants Protection Act became federal law in 2002, identical language was considered in a committee of the Illinois Senate. It was defeated with the committee's chairman, Obama, leading the opposition.
Let's be clear about what Obama did, once in 2003 and twice before that. He effectively voted for infanticide. He voted to allow doctors to deny medically appropriate treatment or, worse yet, actively kill a completely delivered living baby.
Infanticide - I wonder if he'll add this to the list of changes in his next victory speech and if the crowd will roar: "Yes, we can."
How could someone possibly justify such a vote? In March 2001, Obama was the sole speaker in opposition to the bill on the floor of the Illinois Senate. He said: "We're saying they are persons entitled to the kinds of protections provided to a child, a 9-month child delivered to term. I mean, it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal-protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child."
So according to Obama, "they," babies who survive abortions or any other preterm newborns, should be permitted to be killed because giving legal protection to preterm newborns would have the effect of banning all abortions.
Justifying the killing of newborn babies is deeply troubling, but just as striking is his rigid adherence to doctrinaire liberalism. Apparently, the "audacity of hope" is limited only to those babies born at full term and beyond.
Worse, given his support for late-term partial-birth abortions that supporters argued were necessary to end the life of genetically imperfect children, it may be more accurate to say the audacity of hope applies only to those babies born healthy at full term.
Obama's supporters say his rhetoric makes them believe again. Is this the kind of change and leader you believe in?
Here's the link to the Santorum Op Ed: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080228_The_Elephant_in_the_Room__Obama__A_harsh_ideologue_hidden_by_a_feel-good_image.html
Steve says: Hillary Clinton has been making the case that Obama is getting a "free ride" from the media -- that they fail to examine his record carefully and refuse to ask him tough questions. I'm not a big fan of Mrs. Clinton, but on this issue -- as on many others -- the media should be ashamed of themselves. As The Economist magazine recently indicated, Obama is a man associated with soaring rhetoric combined with inaction at times -- and highly questionable activities in other cases.
One question the media need to ask Obama is: why doesn't his support for "universal health care" apply to injured babies gasping for life?
Obama and the Politics of Personal Deceit
Thursday (tomorrow) and Friday I'll be writing about the strange candidacy of Barack Obama, who is running as something of a Democrat moderate always ready "to reach across the aisle." The main problem is that Barack -- the most left-wing of all Senators -- rarely if ever reaches across the aisle, a point made by Rick Santorum in the piece above. As Santorum suggests, Obama is running as two separate personalities.
Obama, along with his wife, who "not proud" of the country that's given them both so much, is a person of great ambition and little accomplishment. John McCain recently asked the following about Obama: whether America will "risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested invading our ally, Pakistan." It is an extremely good question.
2 comments:
Mr. Santorum has taken an emotionally complicated issue and spun it so it represents his own personal agenda. The Illinois bill that he refers to, and that Barack Obama cast votes of “present” the first time and “no” the second time around, included no protections for the health of the mother. Why are protections for the health of the woman always discounted? And as far as providing medical help for a live born fetus, laws addressing that were already on the books in Illinois. Why add more laws when all we have to do is enforce the ones we have.
Here is the interview of Barack Obama when he was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004 by Jeff Berkowitz a Chicago discussion show host. Berkowitz covered the interview about abortion on his blog Public Affairs:
Jeff Berkowitz: Switching over to abortion, you have said that you would vote in support of, if you were a [U. S.] Senator the federal law that came up that passed [the U. S. Senate] 98 to 0 and that was known as the Live Birth Infant Protection Act.
Barack Obama: That is exactly right. Because there was a different bill than the one that was introduced by [then] Senator Patrick O’Malley here in Illinois and we actually offered amendments that would have provided assurance that Row. v. Wade [U. S. Supreme Court, 1973] was still respected even as we dealt with what I think actually were some very anecdotal evidence that there might have been some problems although there has never been any hard evidence that there were. Unfortunately, Mr. O’Malley wanted to make a broader point because he does not believe that a woman should exercise a right to choose in any circumstances.
Berkowitz: But, if that happened in Illinois, if there were some abortions- so called abortions that went wrong- a live fetus was born. Would you seek to have legislation that protected those fetuses?
Obama: I would if there wasn’t already legislation. Unfortunately [sic?], there is existing legislation-
Berkowitz: On the state level?
Obama: On the state level that says if there is a fetus that is determined viable and there has to be a second doctor who assists in determining that that fetus is viable- they are required by current Illinois Law to provide that fetus with assistance to make sure that they can live outside the womb. The law already exists. That’s not what Senator O’Malley’s law was about. What Senator O’Malley’s law was about was identifying all fetuses as human beings as a way of going after the right of women to choose to have an abortion pre- viability and that’s the reason that I, like a number of other senators, including Republican senators, voted either present or against it.
In 2002, while Obama was in the Illinois Senate, the US Congress passed a law:
That bill was the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.
The act simply prohibited the killing of a baby born alive. To address the concerns of pro-choice lawmakers, the bill included language that said nothing "shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand or contract any legal status or legal right" of the baby. In other words, the bill wasn't intruding on Roe v. Wade.
The year after the Born Alive Infants Protection Act became federal law in 2002, identical language was considered in a committee of the Illinois Senate. It was defeated with the committee's chairman, Obama, leading the opposition.
The law was already a federal law, passed in 2002. States have a right to make stricter laws. Illinois Senator Richard J. Winkel, Jr, introduced a similar bill to the Illinois Senate 2/19/2003 with almost identical language to the federal law, but it changed the reference to Roe v. Wade in section c:
Illinois' paragraph (c): A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law.
Federal paragraph (c): Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being "born alive" as defined in this section.
This basically says that any aborted fetus, viable or not, is considered a human person. This would have outlawed abortion. Obama objected to that change in phrasing.
In March 2001, Obama was the sole speaker in opposition to the bill on the floor of the Illinois Senate. He said: "We're saying they are persons entitled to the kinds of protections provided to a child, a 9-month child delivered to term. I mean, it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal-protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child." So according to Obama, "they," babies who survive abortions or any other preterm newborns, should be permitted to be killed because giving legal protection to preterm newborns would have the effect of banning all abortions.
That isn't the full quote, Obama was saying that pre-viable fetuses do not have the same rights. Here is the full quote:
Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a - child, a nine-month-old - child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.
The story goes a bit further. The Illinois Senate sponsor for the bill rewrote article c to be identical to the federal bill. Obama, chairman of the Human and Health Services Committee that was considering the bill, squashed it. What's the point of voting on a bill that is already the law?
This is an example of how the Republicans in the Illinois Senate would bring bills to the floor to try to put the Democrats into a difficult position and build fodder for future campaigns. It works, as is seen in the Santorum's article. Obama was the only person who spoke out about this; this is a good example of why people didn't speak out.
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