IRS, Benghazi, and AP scandals are poison to the democratic process

Just as the IRS, Benghazi, and Associated Press scandals seem to be spinning beyond the control of the White House, there is yet another revelation: Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen was named as a criminal co-conspirator by the FBI in 2009. Rosen, who is Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent, had published a story about North Korea that year.

One can only wonder if the timing of this latest revelation is a warning shot to news media outlets that finally seem interested in providing some substantive coverage of these scandals. But no one should wonder whether the IRS targeting of conservative groups was merely a “rogue” operation.

As the Daily Caller reports, “[M]any prominent Democrats — including Montana Sen. Max Baucus, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the New York Times editorial board — had been publicly calling for tighter restrictions on 501(c)(4) groups affiliated with the [T]ea [P]arty and conservatives.

“Last year, Schumer, along with Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Jeanne Shaheen and Al Franken, penned a letter calling on the agency to cap the amount of the political spending by groups masquerading as ‘social welfare organizations.’”
Even if this concern was justified, it does nothing to explain why only conservative groups were put on the IRS “Be on the Lookout” list, an alert put out by law enforcement when a crime has been committed.

This is far more serious than harassment. These delays were not just intimidation; government literally choked the opposition’s ability to raise funds to get its message out.

The Rosen revelation follows the disclosure that the Obama administration also tapped the phones of as many as 100 AP reporters in another “national security” investigation, including the general phone lines for AP bureaus in New York City; Hartford, Connecticut; and Washington, DC; along with a line for AP reporters in Congress.

This adds to growing worries that the administration is willing to abuse the power of many of its agencies and departments in order to stifle whistleblowers, political dissent, and now even the press.

Obama’s war on Fox News is no longer news: Team Obama consistently tries to marginalize the dominant conservative cable news outlet by referring to it as “opinion journalism masquerading as news,” “unpatriotic”, and not a “legitimate” news source. Fox gets frozen out of interviews and allowed to ask few questions, compared to ABC and other media outlets.

A recent Pew Research Study found MSNBC “by far the most opinionated” news outlet, with barely 15 percent of its programming described as “factual reporting” ― one-third the amount Pew reported for Fox News. Yet, neither Obama nor his proxies have cast any similar dispersions on that outlet.

The anxiety is not just about the White House possibly attempting to suppress the big boys like Fox News or AP.

The Blaze reports, “Before the 2012 presidential election, a St. Louis anchor of KMOV-TV was granted an interview with President Obama. Many were surprised when Larry Conners got straight to the issues, confronting the president about his lavish vacations while others are cutting back.”

Conners initially brushed off the sudden interest that the IRS showed. Now, after the IRS scandal, he recently posted on his Facebook page, “I don’t accept ‘conspiracy theories,’ but I do know that almost immediately after the interview, the IRS started hammering me.”

In addition to the hundreds of politically conservative groups the IRS admits targeting, similar stories are emerging from pro-life and pro-family groups. One pro-life group received an IRS letter demanding that it submit a letter to the agency signed by its entire board, stating that “… under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood.”

Sarah Hall Ingram, former commissioner of the IRS Tax-Exempt and Government Entities Division that targeted Tea Party and other organizations, now heads up the IRS division that enforces Obamacare, which, in its annual report, Planned Parenthood proclaims it helped “shape.” Obama is a militantly pro-abortion president closely tied to Planned Parenthood.

Today, the LA Times reported that Lois Lerner, current head of that IRS unit, will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions from Congress this Wednesday.

Is all of this mere coincidence?

National Organization for Marriage reports that confidential information from its federal tax returns ended up with gay lobby Human Rights Campaign, which then was released by the Obama campaign to bash Romney’s support of marriage. NOM found the released returns carried markings used internally by the IRS.

According to Brian Brown, president of NOM, “HRC’s president at the time was serving as a Co-Chair of President Obama’s re-election campaign. This is a chilling set of circumstances that should ring alarm bells across the nation.”

When freedom of speech and press rights are abridged in the name of “national security,” that should always be a caution flag to liberals and conservatives alike.

Chief Justice John Marshall warned almost 200 years ago, “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Individual citizens and organizations who represent the opposition have been selectively targeted by the IRS, the most powerful and feared agency of the government. It is time for danger klaxons, sirens, and fiercely flashing lights.

“Although elections are part of the democratic process, they are never a substitute for it,” said Natan Sharansky, a distinguished fellow at the Shalem Center in Israel.

Fast and Furious, AP, Rosen, Benghazi, IRS: These scandals are a symptom of the poison now running through the veins of our elected government. When a society is poisoned or radicalized, democratic processes and tyranny can become indistinguishable.

The only antidote is truth and transparency ― something that seems increasingly in short supply.

BRCA1 Gene: Is the morning after pill also a cancer shadow for women?

Angelina Jolie, in a New York Times op-ed, revealed that she has the mutated BRCA1 (pronounced brak-uh) gene, a condition that gave her an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer. Jolie, whose mother died from the disease, decided to undergo a preventative double mastectomy in February: “I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”

She closed her piece with this statement: “I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer.”

Although Jolie was referring to the estimated five percent of women who also carry the defective BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, 12 million women in America live under the shadow of cancer for a reason that neither media nor the medical community wants to talk about — the proven link between breast cancer and contraceptive pills.

Florence Williams at Slate reported in 2010, “Last summer, in a study of more than 50,000 African American women, Boston University epidemiologist Lynn Rosenberg found a 65 percent increase in a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer among those who had ever taken the birth control pill. The risk doubles for those who had used the contraceptive within the past five years and had taken it for longer than 10 years.”

LifeSiteNews reports that Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, a breast surgical oncologist and cofounder of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, calls the pill a “Molotov cocktail” for breast cancer. She points to several statistics, which she writes include “a 2006 Mayo Clinic meta-analysis that concluded that breast cancer risk rises 50 percent for women taking oral contraceptives four or more years before a full-term pregnancy. In 2009, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that women starting the pill before 18 nearly quadruple their risk of triple negative breast cancer. Even more shocking, Swedish oncologist Hakan Olsson concluded that pill use before the age of 20 increases a young woman’s breast cancer risk by more than 1000 percent.”

Lanfranchi also cites the International Agency of Research on Cancer: “In June 2005, 21 scientists of the World Health Organization’s International Agency of Research on Cancer met in France. After careful review of the world’s literature, they declared that estrogen-progestin combination drugs used in the birth control pill and hormone replacement were carcinogenic not only for breast, but also for cervical and liver cancers as well.”

According to the CDC, “The leading method of contraception in the United States in 2002 was the oral contraceptive pill. It was being used by 11.6 million women 15–44 years of age; it had ever been used by 44.5 million women 15–44 years of age.”

Irwin Goldstein, director of Sexual Medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego, says, “From a doc’s point of view, the pill is so easy.” The outspoken critic adds, “You give it to a freshman in college, and you don’t have to worry about her getting pregnant. It’s good for society, and if there are side effects, too bad.”

Our government’s last big brother brainstorm was to insist that our sex-hungry children needed the Gardasil vaccine to protect them from human papillomavirus. Dr. Peter Lind, writing for the Washington Times , reports that the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) “has awarded $5,877,710 dollars to 49 victims in claims made against the highly controversial … vaccines.” Twenty-six young, previously healthy, girls are dead after Gardasil vaccination in just one year.

Now the FDA is pushing freer access to Plan B, the so-called morning after pill, to girls as young as 15. A federal judge says even that does not go far enough, noting that “in 2011 the FDA already recommended that Plan B One-Step be available over the counter to women and girls of all ages.” Plan B and other so-called emergency contraceptives (actually abortifacients) contain a massive dose of the same carcinogenic artificial hormones in the pill.

Because their breasts are still developing, teenage girls are the most susceptible to the pill’s carcinogenic effects, says Lanfranchie.

Not every study links the pill to increased breast cancer rates, but as Williams said, “That doesn’t excuse the media and many doctors from underplaying them. Maybe they’re just throwing up their hands in the face of competing statistics, but more likely there’s some good old-fashioned paternalism at work.”

Paternalism that keeps our wives, sisters, and daughters in the dark — and puts them in harm’s way.

What liberal media (really) fear about Gosnell trial

Over the past months, the horror perpetrated on women and babies at Women’s Medical Society in Philadelphia, and the sensational serial murder trial of its operator Kermit Gosnell, continue to be totally ignored by mainstream media. Are they afraid to cover the story?

This blackout is necessary because the liberal media knows that Gosnell is far from the exception and the abortion industry cannot survive scrutiny.

For the most part, only Fox News, local Philadelphia media and pro-life outlets like LifeNews, LifeSiteNews and JillStanek.com doggedly reported the gruesome testimony. This includes filth, unlicensed staff as young as 15 years old administering drugs or sonograms, Gosnell’s bizarre collection of severed baby parts, and drains clogged with baby remains and blood.

Even after complaints from his own staff and others, Gosnell was only busted in what authorities thought was a pill mill raid. Instead, they found a scene belonging in Saw or Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The Gosnell House of Horrors was replete with dripping bloody bags and filthy worn-out medical equipment. It even had a deranged doctor
talking about his latest baby victimbeing “big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.” More than 250 criminal counts. You could not write more sensational stuff for a horror movie, let alone the news.

Yet, day after day, even with the macabre testimony about midnight abortions, pretend doctors and the “beheading” of babies born alive, the reserved-for-media section of the courtroom remained almost vacant.

Columnist and political commentator Kirsten Powers, a Fox News contributor, was so appalled at the lack of coverage that she wrote a USA Today piece saying so. The firestorm that ensued, with liberals and feminists now claiming they had covered the story, had Powers writing another column:

So, the continued misleading claims that the trial has been widely covered are empirically false—as is Carmon’s claim on CNN Friday that the only reason anyone is talking about this is because of Fox News, always the left’s go-to scapegoat. Unless Fox News owns USA Today, I’m not sure what she is talking about. It’s remarkable how quickly a story of a trial about decapitated babies and maimed women was overshadowed by liberal rage at Fox News and the “conservative media” who allegedly were hypocrites because they hadn’t been covering it, either. (In fact, Fox News has run 11 stories over the course of the three-week trial, while The New York Times so far has run just one piece, on A-17, the day the trial began. 

One reason floated for the abysmal coverage is that pro-life activists might distort the story and damage “women’s access.” How far journalism has fallen from “the people have a right to know.” Would one insane pulmonary surgeon who implants toy balloons for lung transplants endanger the entire surgical profession? Of course not.

I suggest that the real reason for a pro-choice media is that shoddy practitioners, abortion clinics, and regulators seem commonplace across the nation. Gosnell alone had 46 lawsuits, but continued to practice in broad daylight.

Covering Gosnell prompts the inevitable question, “Are there others?” Just this month, Planned Parenthood of Delaware suspended surgical abortions when filthy conditions became public. A  former employee said it was like a “medical twilight zone,” with an abortion practitioner who ogled and slapped patients, improperly cleaned instruments and more Gosnell-like deficiencies.

In December 2012, police in Muskegon, Michigan, accidentally discovered “filthy” and unsanitary conditions throughout Robert Alexander’s clinic, including “blood on the floor and walls in multiple locations.” Once again, not health inspectors but police investigating a reported break-in, stumbled upon the mess.

Alexander’s “care” for his facility was only exceeded by his care for women. He “perforated the woman’s uterus so badly that it was hanging on by two blood vessels,” wrote the OB/GYN who had to save her. “The decapitated head of a fetus was in the woman’s abdomen and the large intestine had been grasped and pulled away from its blood supply and into the vagina. The woman required a hysterectomy, colonoscopy, and several units of blood to save her life.”

Other “women’s reproductive healthcare professionals,” as Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry like to say, served 24-year-old Tonya Reaves, who bled to death at a Planned Parenthood in Chicago. A kindergarten teacher, 29-year-old Jennifer Morbelli from New Rochelle, New York, died at the hands of late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart, caught on video describing a dying preborn baby as like “meat in a slow cooker.”

In fact, medical emergencies at abortion clinics are common enough that Operation Rescue has documented 23 nationwide just since the first of the year. But, as Planned Parenthood alone runs 173 surgical abortion clinics, it is logical that hundreds, even thousands, go unreported.

Babies born alive after botched abortions appear to be routinely murdered, left to die or helped along as in the case against Gosnell. ACLJ reports the CDC WONDER database reveals “that 362 infant deaths (i.e., first born alive) as a result of an attempted abortion have been reported in the most recently available 10-year period, 2001-2010.” Testimony alleges that Gosnell alone committed hundreds of post-birth abortion murders before he was accidentally discovered.

Although required by law, abortions performed on young girls who may be sexually abused or exploited often go unreported, leaving the girl at continued risk and her parents without the knowledge of what happened.  Suspected pimps, sex traffickers, and underage girls are coached by abortion clinic workers on how to fill out forms in such a way as to avoid reporting laws.

“Law enforcement and child protection services (CPS) in Kalamazoo, Michigan have declined to investigate at least ten cases of possible child-rape unreported by a local abortion clinic,” reports Catholic Exchange. Anne Norton, a pro-life sidewalk counselor, claims that she “witnessed an 11-year-old girl taken into  the [Planned Parenthood of South Central Michigan] abortion clinic for a pregnancy test, where she tested positive. Norton interviewed the girl’s mother, collected witness statements, sworn affidavits, and other evidence but authorities were reluctant to investigate the sexual assault and bring to justice the perpetrator of this heinous crime.”

Planned Parenthood Golden Gate (now defunct but soon to re-open) proudly posted a letter on its website from a 17-year-old girl thankful for its services throughout her short life. She recounted how, when she was 11, her 17-year-old boyfriend raped her. She stated that she decided to start having consensual sex at age 14 and got her birth control pills at PPGG. The letter was taken down when people began to ask if PPGG had ever reported the obvious crime.

Today, abortion clinics are more legally savvy about such public boasts, but Live Action says, “We have investigated Planned Parenthood’s failure to report child sexual abuse to law enforcement and have caught them on camera failing to properly report over 14 times.”

A Kansas affiliate of Planned Parenthood and abortionist failed to report 166 potential cases of child rape. However, after the felony case was derailed by then-governor, now HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the attorney general prosecuting the case, Phill Kline, instead found himself in court defending his actions against charges of  impropriety brought upon by  Planned Parenthood’s attorneys. According to Kline, the charges were to “disgorge me of evidence against Planned Parenthood by their attorneys.”

With the Gosnell revelations and others, finally some (GOP) lawmakers are demanding answers. A letter sent by House Energy and Commerce Committee to states reads, in part, “Now we’re discovering that other big abortion businesses refuse to give medical treatment to babies who survive botched abortions and we’re finding out the truth from former pro-choice nurses who called their own Gosnell-like clinics ‘ridiculously unsafe’ where ‘meat-market style of assembly-line abortions’ happen.”

Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn explained, “Oversight and enforcement are desperately needed so we can help stop these Gosnell scenarios from continuing.”

Unfortunately, while that sentiment may be well intentioned, it is also misguided. Regulations have not stopped and will not stop more Gosnell horrors.

Laws against late-term abortions, and even post-birth abortion murder, are ignored by both abortionists (and politically correct enforcement agencies). Laws meant to protect children by requiring reporting of suspected child abuse and rape are ignored. Laws requiring licensed medical professionals to administer drugs and do procedures are ignored. Heartbeat, fetal pain, and late-term abortion laws intended to protect at least some preborn children are ignored.

Fraud, personal injury, and coerced abortion lawsuits filed against Planned Parenthood and other abortionists play counterpoint to lawsuits filed by abortion lawyers to overturn parental consent and informed consent regulations.

In that USAToday column, Powers wrote, “You don’t have to oppose abortion rights to find late-term abortion abhorrent or to find the Gosnell trial eminently newsworthy. This is not about being “pro-choice” or “pro-life.” It’s about basic human rights.”

Regulating abortion does no more to solve the horror than trying to regulate terrorism. It just brings more attention to it. In the end, grievous violence against the preborn innocent and their mothers must simply be eliminated.

Basic human rights demand it.

Gosnell abortion horrors are only tip of the iceberg

America awaits the verdict in the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. What is still not making the news is that the Gosnell house of horrors is merely an unintended glimpse into the daily reality of the abortion industry.
 
What Gosnell was doing is no different than what happens in Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro–Choice and other abortion clinics over 1.2 million times every year. It stems from the same mindset found in any abortuary in any building in any small town community or big city.

He named his house of horrors Women’s Medical Society. It sounded so nice and clean, almost alike a Victorian society of gentile women. That is all the Pennsylvania authorities and “pro-choicers” wanted to see.

In reality, Gosnell happily worked in foul conditions and was cavalier about death to the point of pathology. But, the abortions for which he is on trial, the murders that he committed, in the end are like any abortion—inflicting death on the most innocent for personal profit.
Gosnell just did not bother with fancy window dressing. In that sense, his operations were more honest than most: Abortion is a filthy business, a white-tiled shiny abortion chamber does not change that.

Death, deception and exploitation of women and young girls are standard operating procedure in a field that is in the business of killing preborn human beings for money. Why would abortionists not tell a girl to just flush an untimely birth down the toilet?

To do that job and live with yourself, you must either adopt the belief that a preborn baby is only potential excrement or assume that certain human beings lack the right not to be murdered. And, you must convince your customers of the same.

This sociopathology is now showing up in our children. And why would it not after 40 years of teaching our children to disregard and devalue life in order to promote legalized abortions?

We see it when we read that a 19-year-old high school girl found it acceptable to simply flush her own baby down the toilet at school and go about her day as if nothing unusual just happened.

We see it when we read about a 14-year-old junior high girl who did exactly the same. Sex means nothing to these children, so why should a child?

Ron Taffel, in “The Wall of Silence: Reinventing Therapy to Reach the New Teens (Psychotherapy Networker, May/June 2001), relates this story:

“Margaret was …  proud of being the kind of with-it mother a girl could really talk to about what it was like to be young and exploring life… .  Margaret’s dreamy vision of mutual trust and openness exploded the day she came home unexpectedly to find her [14-year-old] daughter in the bathtub having sex with two boys. Shrieking, she got the boys dressed and out of the house. Then, she confronted her daughter.

Adding insult to injury, Lauren protested that the whole incident had been entirely innocent and her mother’s mean-spirited suspicions unwarranted. “You must have been imagining we were having sex because your parents were so strict and you were wild as a kid,” she said. “Besides, there were bubbles in the tub—how could you know what was really going on?”

For a brief moment, Margaret nearly fell for it—was it possible she had gotten it wrong? Then, furious anew, she asked, “What do you think I am—a damn fool?”

“Yes,” Lauren said flatly.

“We are indeed seeing a new kind of teenager embedded in a far more raw, intense, and pervasive youth culture than ever before, complete with new rules of adolescence. True, teens have always been sexual, but 12- and 13-year-old suburban kids didn’t used to get together for group oral and anal sex parties. Indeed, studies show that the age of the onset of sexuality has decreased since the ‘70s.”

That was over a decade ago and the trend has only accelerated. Why?

“Sexuality education is a lifelong process of acquiring information and forming attitudes, beliefs, and values,” states the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. SIECUS is used as an accrediting organization for sex educators in K-12 schools.

What sort of attitudes, beliefs, and values does SIECUS and the sex education industry instill?               
Concerned Women for America quotes SIECUS: “The primary goal of SIECUS, according to [co-founder Dr. Mary S. Calderone], is to teach human sexuality ‘very broadly and deeply with awareness of the vital importance of infant and childhood sexuality.’” SIECUS believes a child’s sexuality should ‘be developed in the same way as the child’s inborn human capacity to talk or to walk, and that [the parents’] role should relate only [emphasis added] to teaching the child the appropriateness of privacy, place, and person—in a word, socialization.’”

Does “develop” sexuality and limiting the parents’ rights sound like anything to do with protecting children from sexualization and exploitation?

Calderone is the former medical director for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The major funder for SIECUS is our government—a division of the National Institutes of Health. Some things never change.

We have allowed our government to use billions of our tax dollars over the decades to fund the very people who teach our children to believe that sex is essential and recreational at any age. A baby who results is not human, but a disease to be eradicated. Discard him in the toilet, trash can or medical bag. It makes no difference.

And then we are shocked when youngsters display the very attitude that allows the Gosnells and the Planned Parenthoods of the world to exist? Gosnell is only the tip of this cultural iceberg the USS Titanic is heading toward at full speed.

We contract with abortion providers like Planned Parenthood to go into our schools and promote grotesque beliefs to our children under the mantel of diversity and healthy sex choices. Obamacare earmarks $350 million tax dollars to fund “comprehensive” sex education, which instills an amoral view of sex in schoolchildren.

Perhaps we are all damn fools.