What is wrong with America? The Left wants to dramatically change it!

October 25, 2022

Those among us who grew up when people learned about their country’s real history, agreed with its sensible principles, and appreciated its fundamental freedoms are very uncomfortable today. 

We watch as our traditions are being ignored or actively discarded, resulting in deconstructing what is generally regarded as the most free and successful form of government yet designed.

Mark Levin is a lawyer, former president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, and a conservative author, broadcaster and commentator. He discussed many things that are wrong with America today in a speech recently. 

“We don’t want to change the Constitution. We want to uphold the Constitution. They’re changing the Constitution. These people don’t even believe in the Constitution. 

“They don’t even believe in American history. They’ve destroyed Madison’s home. They’ve destroyed Jefferson’s home.

“They’re destroying our colleges and universities. They’re destroying our public schools. They’ve destroyed the southern border. They’re destroying our currency and our economy. They’re destroying our military; they’ve destroyed police forces across the country.

“We don’t need lectures from them about us destroying anything. We are the ones that want to uplift this country and believe in this country.”

“They” are the political Left. The Left is responsible for most of our current problems.

Our federal government as it was designed is virtually unrecognizable today. Under federalism, the system upon which the United States of America was formed, there is a balance between the federal government and the states. The federal government has certain authority given to it by the U.S. Constitution, and states have authority in areas not given to the federal government. The result was a limited federal government.

But the federal government has grown well beyond its intended size and scope. And the result is a gargantuan bureaucracy that costs a fortune to operate, and has produced bountiful regulations that so often interfere with the freedom our system was designed to insure.

Why should the federal government be telling people in the states what they can or cannot do with their property? Why should the federal government have any authority over how states and localities educate their children? Why should the federal government, control what businesses across the country pay their employees?

Why do elected officials continue to grow the size and influence of the federal government, increasing the need for higher taxes, and encroaching on the personal freedom of their constituents? Why is the Department of Justice paying any attention to parents in local school districts who attended board of education meetings to object to what is going on in their schools, and labeling them “domestic terrorists” for wanting to protect their children, which is their primary duty?

And why is one group of non-violent people facing large teams of armed federal agents confronting them to arrest them for non-violent crimes, while other groups are peacefully arrested for the same sort of crimes?

The political Left has a very different outlook on life in America. Since excellence in so many things is so critically important, why do they think it is better that good jobs or rewards be delivered to all ethnicities and genders equally, rather than all people having an equal chance to earn these things through performance and merit?

Since the best way to make good decisions is to be aware of the different possibilities that exist, why are ideas that liberals do not agree with being censored from being read or heard to the benefit of everyone? Why promote the ending of an unwanted pregnancy up to, and even beyond the minute of birth, rather than encouraging and assisting in the prevention of pregnancy, or suggesting adoption of the baby? 

Why do those in positions of authority in education or who teach in our public schools think it is okay to diverge from the approved curriculum and/or covertly insert controversial and often-dangerous social concepts into classwork?

Why is it suddenly necessary to change things that have worked to our benefit as a country for more than two centuries by trying to do things like packing or doing away with the Supreme Court, eliminating the Senate filibuster, or eliminating the Electoral College? Why do Democrats in the federal government not insist on a secure southern border that is able to prevent deadly drugs, child and sex traffickers, criminals and other illegal aliens from coming into the country so easily?

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, who ended America’s energy dominance, now uses our Strategic Petroleum Reserve — which is intended to be used to provide fuel during real emergencies, not to lower Biden’s price increases by a few cents for a few days — to attract voters to Democrats in the mid-term election two weeks from now.

If America does not very soon reject these subversive efforts and return to the tried and true traditional values upon which it was established, it will be only a relatively short time before we will be kneeling to and obeying the Communist Chinese, or a cabal of Chinese, Russians, Iranians and North Koreans, all of whom are working hard to take us down.

Democrats are upset by recent decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court

“Conservative” justices are not political conservatives. They are Constitutional conservatives, originalists. The conservative view of the Constitution is that it means today and forever what it meant to the Framers when they wrote the Constitution.

Liberal/activist justices do not view the Constitution the same way as the originalists. They see the Constitution as a “living” document, the meaning of which changes with time and our culture.

This essentially means that we don’t really have a Constitution if its meaning can be determined differently at any time, depending upon the views of nine unelected justices.

The late and brilliant Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia had it right: “The Constitution is not a living organism. It’s a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t say.”

If the principles of the Constitution should ever turn out to be wrong, or hurtful, it can be changed through a process of amending it. But it should not — must not — be ignored or changed with the fickle winds of social “needs” or “wants.” The faithful allegiance of the conservatives/originalists is the great obstacle the left cannot conquer.

What so many do not understand, or prefer to ignore, is that what the Supreme Court did regarding Roe v. Wade was merely to undo a previous wrong action by the Court. It did not deny women a Constitutional right. There is no Constitutional right to abortion. Freedom of speech, religion, and the press, and the right to due process are among those specifically mentioned in the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. But the word “abortion” does not appear in the document, and stretching the meaning of privacy to include abortion was a gross error 49 years ago.

The Court’s action simply returned the decision about if there can be legal abortions and what the rules are regarding abortion to the states, where it belongs.

The concept of federalism, upon which the United States of America is based, holds that the states have certain authority over how they do things, and are not always at the mercy of the federal government. Laws on abortion, if there are such laws, belong in the states, not the federal government.

The radicals among the Democrats and liberals are ready to totally rebuild the United States so that their un-American ideas can become the norm.

They want to do crazy things to shove their ideas down the throats of every American. Such things as:

* Packing the Supreme Court with activist/liberal justices so that they can push their ideas through the legal system 

* Getting rid of the Senate filibuster that protects the rights of the minority so that their majority can easily have its way 

* Making the District of Columbia and/or Puerto Rico a state, so that they will have additional electoral power; 

* And even trashing the Electoral College, which protects the smaller and less populated states against the tyranny of a few states with large populations

These are some of their radical solutions to their inability to convince a majority of Americans to support those ideas.

Two recent decisions by the Court last Thursday provided fodder for more Court criticizing, one on the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and the other on the EPA’s actions.

The latter focuses on the fundamental structure of our government as established in the Constitution. That structure established three branches of government: the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Each one has its specific function, and the Constitution imposes a separation of powers, meaning that each branch must not stray into the given area of another branch.

The legislative branch makes the nation’s laws. The executive branch has the power to enforce or carry out those laws. The judicial branch has the power to apply and interpret the laws.

In recent decades the departments of the executive branch have taken on power, making rules with the power of law. But laws are to be made by the legislative branch, not the executive branch. The EPA ruling puts the brakes on the executive branch’s straying into the legislative branch’s area.

Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent from the majority opinion, paints a picture of environmental catastrophe if the EPA is not allowed to continue its growing control of things that produce pollution.

Accusing the conservative/originalist justices of making themselves the "decision maker on climate policy," she wrote, "Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change."

Well of course not. The justices are not supposed to know about climate change, or any other such topic. They are supposed to know about and rule on laws and the Constitution.

How wonderful and helpful it would be if people would understand that our government is never going to do only those things that everyone agrees on, because there is little or nothing that everyone agrees on. The government is charged to do things that benefit the people as a whole, not any specific segment.

How nice it would be if we all understood what a wonderful, if imperfect, place America is, and how fortunate we all are to be able to live here.

Protecting the judiciary from illegal influences is critical

When someone at the United States Supreme Court leaked a draft of an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito regarding the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion supporters flew into a rage.

The Huffington Post reported, “Activists protesting against the Supreme Court’s expected ruling gutting Roe v. Wade gathered outside the homes of two conservative justices over the weekend and plan to do so again later this week. 

Close to 100 protesters chanted and waved signs Saturday evening outside the Maryland house of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, then marched to the nearby home of Chief Justice John Roberts.”

Some who support this disgraceful activity remind us that peaceful protests are a guaranteed right, and that is true, to a point. 

The obvious intent of these gatherings is to intimidate the justices into changing their position on the constitutional question before them, and allow Roe to stand.

According to an article on the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) website, “Protesters outside Brett M. Kavanaugh’s house warned the Supreme Court justice this weekend, ‘If you take away our choices, we will riot.’ They marched on Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s home chanting ‘Abort the court!’ and stood outside the home of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. (who apparently did not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade) yelling ‘The whole world is watching!’”

This outlandish behavior smacks of attempts at “vigilante justice,” or mob rule on what is a matter of constitutional law. And, more importantly, these “protests,” however peaceful they may or may not be, are against the law.

The AEI article continues: “This is not just noxious behavior; it is illegal. Federal law — Section 1507 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code — clearly states that it is unlawful to protest near a ‘residence occupied or used by [a] judge, juror, witness, or court officer’ with the intent of influencing ‘the discharge of his duty,’ adding that anyone who ‘uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.’”

If people want to protest on behalf of some cause on which the Court is going to rule, they may peacefully protest legally outside the Supreme Court building.

Protests in front of the homes of judges, justices, and others involved in legal decisions is expressly outlawed because of the need for these people to make their decisions absent intimidation. Further, this chaos is also a problem for neighbors, who are unfairly subjected to unwanted noise, and other negative aspects of these illegal gatherings.

So, while both federal law and some state laws forbid this behavior, why is it still going on? And more importantly, why has there been no law enforcement action to arrest these criminals? Why is the Department of Justice failing to respond to these illegal activities? 

After all, an attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh was recently discovered and stopped. And, a former judge was recently killed in his home by a person he sent to prison years earlier. These illegal gatherings are threats to the safety of the justices and their families.

Yet, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland sits complacently in his office more worried about the non-whipping of people illegally crossing the southern border, and the actions of parents concerned about the education of their children in tax-supported schools at boards of education meetings.

And President Joe Biden has been strangely quiet about this development. Biden has said publicly that we need to “stop treating our opponents as our enemy.” And in his inaugural address, he vowed to “end this uncivil war,” and bring America together. And yet, he has said and done nothing about this disgraceful development.

This failure on the part of the Attorney General, the Department of Justice, and others with authority to act against this illegal behavior seems to be part of the recent epidemic of so-called “progressive” thought on justice and the law.

There has been a rash of district attorneys and prosecutors across the country who were elected or appointed to enforce laws and who somehow believe they have the authority to ignore whichever laws they so choose. In doing this, they place the rights and concerns of criminals above the rights and concerns of their victims, and of innocent Americans.

Criminals are not prosecuted to the fullest, or sometimes hardly at all, and they often commit additional crimes. Two Los Angeles police officers were recently ambushed and killed by a career criminal who was given light treatment by District Attorney George Gascon. The killer should have been in jail, and would have been if he had been treated appropriately by Gascon.

People are plainly breaking the law in protesting at justices’ homes, trying to intimidate them to rule a certain way, and no one is doing anything about it. That is not acceptable.

Will the United States Supreme Court correct a previous error?

 

May 10, 2022

The United States Supreme Court is currently reviewing a case that may reverse Roe v. Wade, which the History website explains “was a landmark legal decision issued on January 22, 1973, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure across the United States. The court held that a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.”

The History website also explains that “In May 2022, the nation's highest court agreed to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, regarding the constitutionality of a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The case presents a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.”

The news broke when a draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to and published by Politico. This draft opinion, secretly and wrongly provided by someone associated with the Court, has started two huge reactions. 

One reaction is outrage that the decision beloved by abortion supporters may be reversed. The other is disgust and anger that the leak has damaged the integrity of the Court as never before in its history, and that it was done by someone on the inside.

"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives."

He also wrote that while defenders of Roe point to the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to justify the decision, they are mistaken, CNN reported.

“In the draft, Alito batted away arguments that other provisions of the Constitution dealing with privacy or liberty might be relied upon to uphold a right to an abortion,” the network’s story continued.

“That's because, according to Alito, while the Due Process Clause might guarantee some rights that aren't mentioned explicitly in [the] Constitution, such rights have to be ‘deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition. The right to abortion does not fall within this category,’ he said.”

Alito went on to say that Roe was "egregiously wrong" from the start and its reasoning is "exceptionally weak," CNN reported.

His conclusion was that the issue must be decided by the states, not the Supreme Court. "That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand," he wrote. "Our Nation's historical understanding of ordered liberty does not prevent the people's elected representatives from deciding how abortion should be regulated," he added.

Paul Stark, writing for Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (mccl.org) on Jan 20, 2017, provided three reasons why Roe was an improper ruling.

“First, and most importantly, the outcome of Roe is harmful and unjust. Why? The facts of embryology show that the human embryo or fetus (the being whose life is ended in abortion) is a distinct and living human organism at the earliest stages of development. ‘Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, a zygote,’ explains a leading embryology textbook. ‘This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.’"

“The second problem with Roe is that it is an epic constitutional mistake. Justice Harry Blackmun's majority opinion claimed that the ‘right of privacy’ found in the ‘liberty’ protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is ‘broad enough to encompass’ a fundamental right to abortion. There is no reason to think that's true.”

“Third, Roe is undemocratic. Roe and Doe v. Bolton together struck down the democratically decided abortion laws of all 50 states and replaced them with a nationwide policy of abortion-for-any-reason, whether the people like it or not. Of course, the Court may properly invalidate statutes that are inconsistent with the Constitution (which is the highest law). But Roe lacked any such justification.”

A National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) factsheet estimates that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, "18 states would protect unborn children immediately." This is due to laws implemented prior to the Roe ruling, or “trigger” laws that would go into effect upon Roe’s reversal, or both.

The NRLC also estimates that action to “allow abortion either through legislatively-enacted statute or a court ruling interpreting the state constitution to convey the right to abortion” would occur in 23 states. 

The leaked document predictably has liberals and conservatives blaming each other. PBS online said, “Republican members of Congress are suggesting a sinister left-wing plot to derail the outcome of the final decision. Liberals are alleging machinations from the right to lock the justices into their preliminary vote.”

Regardless of who leaked the opinion and why, this is a serious problem for the Court, which has been immune to such scurrilous behavior, thus far.

Chief Justice John Roberts called the act “absolutely appalling.” Appearing at the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference in Atlanta, Roberts said he hoped “one bad apple” would not affect “people’s perception” of the Court, adding that “the person” or “people” who leaked the document are “foolish” if they think it will affect the courts work.

Put abortion in the hands of the states, and punish the leaker accordingly.

Potpourri: Some thoughts on current topics

 ** A liberal journalist has set aside his ideology and written something honest and positive about President Donald Trump. Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser, in an article examining the Trump judicial appointments and their likely effect on the courts, wrote, “In less than three years as president, President Trump has done nearly as much to shape the courts as President Obama did in eight years.”

But in what could be expected to be nothing more than a leftist lecture against Trump’s judicial selections, Millhiser gave this objective evaluation. “Trump hasn’t simply given lots of lifetime appointments to lots of lawyers. He’s filled the bench with some of the smartest, and some of the most ideologically reliable, men and women to be found in the conservative movement.”

And then, this: “In other words, based solely on objective legal credentials, the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive résumé than any past president’s nominees.”

** Poor Joe Biden. He’s failing in his bid for the Democrat presidential nomination, and unlike Bernie Sanders in 2016, he has no one to blame but himself. Uncle Gaffy continues to issue non-sequiturs at a dizzying pace, and recently he said that immigrants, legal and illegal, are “a gift” to America.

Immigrants have been, and can still be a gift to the country. But they must be here for the right reasons, and they must become true Americans and contribute positively to the country in order to qualify for that honored status. However, Biden does not understand, or ignores, that illegal immigrants are not “a gift,” and too often are dangerous.

** A criminal investigation that began nearly two years ago with a referral from the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, which concluded that Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had repeatedly lied about having authorized a subordinate to share information with a newspaper reporter for a 2016 article about an FBI investigation into possible crimes by Hillary Clinton. The DOJ has decided not to bring criminal charges against McCabe, despite the investigative conclusion that he lied to officials.

Many believe that the same result will apply to all those whose criminal behavior attempted to overturn the legitimate election of President Donald Trump.

** One of the most ill-advised actions taken recently by some Americans is the desire to remove things that remind them of events in times past that they dislike. One example is removing statues of people who represented the south during the Civil War.

Fortunately, some people still understand that while some things in the nation’s history are not proud moments, they still are part of its history, and therefore should not be destroyed. History is history, and we need to be reminded of both the good and the bad elements of it.

Thankfully, Virginia Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Moore has ruled that the statues of General Robert E. Lee and General Stonewall Jackson are now protected monuments and will remain standing. He said the way the statues made people feel did not change the fact the statues paid homage to the Civil War heroes.

“While some people obviously see Lee and Jackson as symbols of white supremacy,” Moore stated in his decision, “others see them as brilliant military tacticians or complex leaders in a difficult time.”

Moore is absolutely right.

** One of the most divisive topics in America today is abortion. The point at which life begins is an ongoing debate. And the question of when, if ever, it is okay to terminate a pregnancy is the major factor in the abortion debate. 

From the moment of conception, when the male and female reproductive cells unite, what occurs is the development of a new person over a nine-month period. The miracle of the birth of a new human being once was an almost universally valued event in our country.

Years ago, the result of passionate interludes between a woman and a man was the blessed event of a child, a new family member. Today, that result is regarded by many as an inconvenience to be corrected by ending the pregnancy through a medical procedure.

After millions of future children have been terminated before their birth, we find people who want to terminate children even after they have been born following a failed attempt at abortion.

Despite the desires of the mother, when a baby is born, that baby is a living person. It requires and is entitled to the same efforts by medical personnel to save its life as any other person in the ER, an OR, or in a patient room. Deliberately failing to provide that critical medical attention should be punishable as manslaughter, or murder.

Yet state legislators routinely defeat measures to assure that born-alive abortion survivors may be killed or allowed to die.

If a child’s life can be ended after a failed abortion on the basis of a weak rationalization based on the intent of the mother, can it be long before other rationalizations will be cited to end the lives of the elderly, or the infirm, or those with serious diseases?

Boys in DC marching for a cause get attacked, shamed and punished

On Jan. 18 a group of students, mostly from Catholic high schools in Kentucky, were in Washington, DC. to attend the March for Life. The group was near the Lincoln Memorial, and nearby were two other groups, the Black Israelites and members of the Indigenous Peoples’ March (IPM), both of whom also had events that same day.

Some videos made public showed a member of the IPM, Nathan Phillips, standing right in front of one of the students, who happened to be wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. Phillips banged on his hand-held drum and chanted, while the student merely stood smiling at him. As things progressed, other students in the group began reciting a school cheer in response to Phillips’ chanting.

Based upon information on social media, videos that showing only a small piece of the nearly two hours of the entire event, the “Shoot First, Ask Questions Later, Or Not” media sprang into action.

The story that dominated was that the students confronted Phillips, but the truth is that the students stayed where they were, and Phillips deliberately walked up to the student and stood there chanting at him for quite a while. The Black Israelites shouted profane and vulgar slurs. Phillips, it turns out, has a checkered past. 

Some of the offending media have acknowledged their mistakes, and some – gasp! – even apologized for their colossal blunder.

The opportunity provided by a group of white boys from Christian schools, some wearing MAGA hats – a gift from Heaven – effectively buried any chance of their reason for being in DC from getting ink or air-time. That doesn’t fit the general media narrative, anyway.

And why is the phrase “Make America Great Again” suddenly racist, when it was seen as patriotic when former President Bill Clinton used it? And before that when former President Ronald Reagan used it?

These students were not in DC to be an easy target for irresponsible media and the two activist groups to attack. They were there to participate in the March for Life, which is a statement for protecting the developing lives of babies not yet born.

Things sure have changed over recent years and decades. Take how we react to unwanted pregnancies, for example. 

Time was when an unmarried female got pregnant – a fairly rare event, years ago – one of two things usually happened: First, she and the father married and became a family, as they should have. Or in other cases she went to live with relatives in another town, carried her baby to term, gave it up for adoption, and then returned to her home. 

Less often, the mother would have a so-called  “back-alley” abortion, or a self-induced abortion. Both were very dangerous. Planned Parenthood reports, “In 1965, illegal abortions made up one-sixth of all pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths.”

Then, things changed. The Encyclopedia Britannicaexplains: “The case began in 1970 when ‘Jane Roe’ – a fictional name used to protect the identity of the plaintiff, Norma McCorvey – instituted federal action against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas, where Roe resided. The Supreme Court disagreed with Roe’s assertion of an absolute right to terminate pregnancy in any way and at any time and attempted to balance a woman’s right of privacy with a state’s interest in regulating abortion.“

Thus the floodgates were opened; abortion became a big business. Various estimates place the total number of abortions since Roe from 50 million to more than 60 million, as pregnant women availed themselves of their right to privacy in getting their pregnancy terminated.

Differing ideas exist as to when life begins. And most of us would not agree with aborting a human life still in the womb. But that question has not been resolved well enough to establish a definitive rule on when life begins, and after which abortions may not be performed.

In 2015 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the following statistics:

** Nearly 75 percent of abortions are surgical

** 41 percent women who had abortions in the U.S. had no other children

** 44 percent of women who had abortions in the U.S. had at least one previous abortion

** 86 percent of women who had abortions in the U.S. were unmarried

** 41 percent of abortions are among women and teens 24-years-old and younger

And the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, noted: “At current rates, an estimated 1/4 of American women will have an abortion by the age of 45.” And, “About 15,000 abortions are attributed to rape and incest — representing 1.5 percent of all abortions.”

If there is good news on this horrible practice, it is that the number of abortions in the U.S. is declining.

The bad news is that acceptance of abortions at any time is growing. New York just passed a law that means a baby born at 1:15 p.m. was eligible to be aborted at 1:14:30 p.m.

Unwanted pregnancies need to be prevented, not expunged. We know what causes them, and there are means to protect against them. The most effective among them is abstinence. It never fails, and it is free.

Ideas on citizenship and abortion reveal the left’s extremes

Hillary Clinton devalues citizenship

Apparently, nearly anyone who wants to be a full-fledged citizen of the United States ought to be able to gain citizenship, regardless of who they are or how they got into the country, with a few notable exceptions, according to Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.

She recently said, “We can’t wait any longer. We can’t wait any longer for a path to full and equal citizenship” for those who crossed our border illegally or deliberately over-stayed their visas.

Demonstrating how one’s strong opinions can change due to political considerations, Mrs. Clinton reversed her previous position, likely to appeal to Hispanic voters. Last June, she said that children who traveled from South America to the U.S. through Mexico should be sent back where they came from.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked her, “So should they be sent back?” 

“Well, first of all, we have to provide the best emergency care we can provide,” Mrs. Clinton said, but “they should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are.” She also said, “We need to do more to provide border security in southern Mexico.” And perhaps on our southern border, too?

“We have to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” she said. “So we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws...” By that reasoning, adults who sneak in or stay beyond the limits of their visa ought to be sent back, as well.

But that was last year. Now her thinking is if they sneak in, oh, well. If they sneak their kids in, well, we can’t keep families separated, you know? Therefore, award citizenship to them.

And no Clinton campaign would be complete without a degree of distortion and exaggeration. “This is where I differ with everybody on the Republican side,” she said. “Make no mistakes — today not a single Republican candidate, announced or potential, is clearly and consistently supporting a path to citizenship. Not one. When they talk about legal status, that is code for second-class status…”

What Republican candidates generally support is granting legal status, but then legal immigrants can follow a path to citizenship, like the system that millions utilized to become citizens in the past.

American citizenship once was something of extremely high value. People came here through the approved process and they adopted American principles and values and made the country better.

Now more people than ever want to come here, but for the wrong reasons. Our foolish policies about immigration and pandering to illegals have turned citizenship into a path to welfare. Today there are more than 11 million illegal aliens in the country, and more coming every day.
 
The March for Life Rally in Ottawa

Organizers of the March for Life rally in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada said the rally drew 25,000 people and was the largest in the event’s 18-year history. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, however, pegged attendance at a much lower 8,000, according to the Ottawa Citizen.

However large or small the pro-life contingent was, it dwarfed the faction of pro-abortionist demonstrators on hand for the event, which was estimated to be between 50 and 100. One thing must be said for the abortion lobby, however: What they lacked in numbers they more than made up for in support of their radical position.

A TV interviewer named Marissa Semkiw talked with an abortion supporter named Alex, who made some startling claims about what he thinks ought to be the universally accepted position on unwanted pregnancy. Carrying a sign that read, “Guess What, A Woman’s Body Is Her Own F***ing Business,” Alex proceeded to defend his statement. And he took it to a level that no moral person should be able to support.

Advancing the idea that the only person involved in the decision of whether and when to end pregnancy is the pregnant woman. When asked by Ms. Semkiw if a woman should have the right to end her pregnancy one month before the child was born, Alex said that the woman alone should make that choice. Asked if a woman should have the right to end her pregnancy one week before child was born, he gave the same answer. And Alex gave the same answer when asked if the woman ought to have the right to end her pregnancy one day before the child would be born.

And finally, asked if after the child was born a woman ought to have the right to have the baby’s life ended, Alex said, “I’m not advocating for murder of any kind — again, it’s not my choice.” But apparently it is the woman’s choice.

Abortion at any time is radical enough a position. Is it now the position of abortion advocates that a child’s life can be ended even after birth?

Two points: First, if when we die the heart stops beating, what do we call it when the heart starts beating? Life? And second, have you noticed that everyone who advocates for unfettered abortion has already been born?

A Scottish “slam poet’s” sad story of her abortion while a teenager

“I Think She Was a She” is a poem written by “slam poet” Leyla Josephine, in which she talks about the abortion she had as a teenager.

Before getting into the content of this poem, you might like to know just what a “slam poet” is. “A slam itself is simply a poetry competition in which poets perform original work alone or in teams before an audience, which serves as judge,” according to poets.org, the online site of the Academy of American Poets. “The work is judged as much on the manner and enthusiasm of its performance as its content or style, and many slam poems are not intended to be read silently from the page.” 

This slam poem was delivered via an online video. “I think she was a she,” the poem begins. “No, I know she was a she, and I think she would have looked exactly like me,” Ms. Josephine declares. With a heavy Scottish brogue that is sometimes difficult to understand she then goes into much detail, explaining how that as a mother she would have taken pains to protect her baby daughter, would have talked about her grandfather when the daughter was older, and would have taken pains to teach her all the things the poet’s mother had taught her.

The poem is touching and almost melancholy, something that might have been written by the mother of a child unfortunately lost before birth. But, of course, that is not what this poem is about. Here, Ms. Josephine condemns the cultural shame forced on her ever since making that fateful decision.

The tone of the poem then takes a sharp turn: “But I would’ve supported her right to choose; to choose a life for herself, a path for herself. I would’ve died for that right like she died for mine. I’m sorry, but you came at the wrong time."

Ms. Josephine is not sadly recounting a miscarriage; instead she is proudly describing why she had an abortion and how it was truly the right decision for her. “I am not ashamed. I am not ashamed. I’m so sick of keeping these words contained. I am not ashamed," she says of her decision to abort her child. She said that the child she created with the “boy I loved” was just too much responsibility for her as a teenager.

Lines of rationalization follow, as she tries desperately to justify what she did. She stubbornly claims dominion over her own body. And she regurgitates the statistics on how many abortions occur in a year in order to justify hers as just one more. And then this, in conclusion: “But this is my body, and I don’t care about your ignorant views. When I become a mother, it will be when I choose.”

Let’s review some of what she said.

Ms. Josephine states, "I would have died” for her aborted daughter’s right to choose, “just like she died for mine." The right to choose what? Aren’t we told abortion is just the process of eliminating a mass of unwanted cells, like having a tumor excised?

But she said her daughter had “died” for her right to choose, tacit recognition that her baby was living person; that abortion ended the life of her child. In which case abortion is murder, the deliberate killing of the child she and her lover created through a willful act.

"I'm sorry, but you came at the wrong time." You “came” at the wrong time? The child decided to create itself without first checking with mom and dad? Among the three persons in this story, the child, as the creation of mom and dad, had no choice whatsoever in this situation.

However, the artfully designed words that are intended to justify what she did in fact subvert that effort. She and her boyfriend willingly indulged in a sexual act, likely unprotected. For her, abortion is nothing more than a way to be rid of the consequences of her behavior.

Abortion is not a crime only because it has not been legally established that life begins at conception or at some point prior to birth. However, Ms. Josephine admits abortion ended her child’s life.

But her statement that she lacks shame at the same time reveals the contempt she holds for the life she created, and her comfort with being able to wash away that inconvenience at will.

Once accepted as a solution for inconvenient situations, abortion takes on even more bizarre forms.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sees abortion as a means to reduce the number of poor children. 

“Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe v Wade] was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.” … “It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.” 

That is a stunning perspective from an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and helps explain why our country is in such deep trouble today.

Planned Parenthood president thinks when life begins isn’t relevant

Many of us living today remember when pregnancy was regarded as the beginning of a new life, was usually a welcome and celebrated event, and religious people often viewed pregnancy as a gift from God. There were baby showers where the mother was treated to gifts for use after the birth of her child, and a positive air about the “blessed event.”

Abortion was considered taboo by society and was illegal, and because of the social and legal strictures, it was rare. As a result, abortions were usually performed in secret by the woman or by some shady character. It was dangerous to the mother because of the unsanitary “back alley” conditions of the procedure. A physician rarely performed an abortion, unless the life of the mother was at stake, or some other unusual situation required it.

Back then, people accepted responsibility for their behavior and took great care to prevent pregnancy until they were ready for parenthood. In those comparatively rare times when an unwanted pregnancy occurred, the man and the woman most often became parents, or perhaps the mother gave the baby up for adoption. Unwed mothers were a rarity.

Through the decades unintended and unwanted pregnancies have increased from rare episodes of bad luck and careless behavior to epidemic proportions, and instead of being seen as a reason to make changes to accommodate the new life that had been created, unwanted pregnancy is viewed today as an intrusion on the woman’s freedom, an inconvenience that demands relief, not so different from a headache or a cold. And to accommodate many women’s preference not to have the baby they have created, abortion has evolved from a rare thing to a routine procedure performed thousands of times each year. Now, many view a woman deciding to end the life of the child developing inside her as a right she may exercise as freely as the right to speak her mind.

Today, half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and about 40 percent are terminated by abortion. Twenty-one percent of all pregnancies, excluding miscarriages, end in abortion.

In 1981, world-renowned scientists and physicians testified before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee that life begins at conception, which was the traditional view through the centuries. However, the question of when life begins is now being questioned by abortion advocates, and knowing the exact instant that life begins after conception and before the birth of a child is an important, if difficult to identify, piece of data to determine the point after which abortion becomes murder.

However, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards thinks when life begins is not important.

Appearing on Fusion TV's America with Jorge Ramos, she was asked, “For you, when does life start? When does a human being become a human being?”

“This is a question that I think will be debated through the centuries,” she said.

“But for you, what's that point?” Ramos asked.

"It is not something that I feel like is really part of this conversation,” she said. “I think every woman needs to make her own decision,” she finally said.

"But why would it be so controversial for you to say when do you think life starts?" Ramos pressed.

"I don't know that it's controversial. I don't know that it's really relevant to the conversation," she replied.

“I'm the mother of three children,” she finally said. “For me, life began when I delivered them,” adding that her children have “probably” been the most important thing in her life since their birth.

“But that was my own personal, that's my own personal decision,” she said.

The abortion industry certainly does not want to know the absolute point at which life begins, because then it would be clear that aborting a fetus is at some point killing a child. That would not be a good thing for those who perform abortions for money, for organizations like Planned Parenthood that get federal money for advising women on unwanted pregnancies, or for those who think women should have a right to end an inconvenient pregnancy at anytime.

From this less strict attitude about when life begins all sorts of horrors might evolve. And they have.

For example, some Planned Parenthood officials have gone so far as to advocate infanticide, giving women the right to end their child’s life after it has been born.

And only a little further down that slippery slope are the preposterous acts of Kermit Gosnell, the disgraced and imprisoned former physician who was in the habit of ending the lives of babies who were inconsiderate enough to survive his efforts to abort them by clipping their spinal cords after they were born alive. He is in prison for life after being convicted of murdering three babies.

An interesting sidebar to this story is that the baby-killer managed to spare himself a death sentence when he waived his right to appeal in return for a life sentence, an option millions of aborted babies never had.

It must be pointed out that all of those who support the unfettered right for women to abort their babies have already been born.

Forty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion is still a national disgrace

An abortion-related event occurred last week, and if you were paying close attention to the news, you might have been aware of that. Hundreds of thousands of abortion opponents gathered in Washington, DC for the “March for Life,” protesting the grisly process that has terminated about 55 million future Americans in the womb since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

It wasn’t easy to find news accounts of this event. The Media Research Center reports, “the broadcast networks combined devoted a total of just 46 seconds to the March. ABC offered 24 seconds and NBC gave it 22 seconds, correctly noting the ‘huge turnout’ despite brutal weather conditions. CBS didn’t bother to cover it at all.”

This coverage totaled about 18 percent of the coverage the birth of a panda cub at National Zoo received a few days earlier. In the eyes of our dedicated network news people, one new panda is six times more important than 55 million aborted potential children, and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who braved the cold to make their position known.

This helps confirm the long-held idea that we do not have a news media that furnishes the public with what it needs, but instead provides what it wants the public to know.

A fact sheet published by the Guttmacher Institute tells us that at least half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age 45. Given that the cause of pregnancy is not a medical mystery, that is a shocking statistic.

Web4Health explains that sex without contraceptives carries an 85 percent likelihood of pregnancy, and if the most effective contraceptive methods are used properly, the chance of pregnancy drops to eight percent or less, but abstaining from sexual intercourse has a zero percent pregnancy rate, except for in vitro fertilization.

According to Guttmacher, fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76 percent of pill users and 49 percent of condom users report having used their method inconsistently. Forty-six percent of women who had abortions used no contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant.

Other factors contribute to unwanted pregnancy. Some men and women are uneducated about how to have responsible sex, and contraceptives can be expensive for some.

Abortion was, in fact, the solution for more than a million women who got pregnant unintentionally last year. But as long as abortions are an easy corrective for bad luck, carelessness or bad judgment, it seems unlikely that more responsible use of contraceptives will occur.

The problem with abortion is that at some point in the pregnancy the fetus will have developed enough to be justifiably considered a human being. That point may or may not be the same point as when the fetus can survive outside the womb, but whenever that point occurs and afterward, abortion is murder. The debate goes on over just when the fetus reaches that point.

It is commonly accepted that at 20 weeks the fetus can feel pain during an abortion, and at least one researcher believes that as early as eight weeks after conception the neural structures needed to detect certain stimuli are in place. As science progresses more and more becomes known about fetal development, pushing backward toward conception the point at which the fetus is a person.

Be that as it may, it is absolutely scandalous that in America in the 21st century so many women get pregnant who don’t want to, and that so many of them choose to abort the developing life inside them.

It ought to be a point of humiliation that the great majority of unwanted pregnancies result from carelessness or negligence in the use of contraceptives, or not using contraceptives at all.

A major provider of abortions is Planned Parenthood for America, and it receives more than $500 million each year in taxpayer funds to deliver “vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of women, men, and young people worldwide,” according to its Website, “the key program [of which] provides essential health care to women, the Title X Family Planning Program.”

Planned Parenthood provided 360,000 abortions in 2013. Providing abortions to women who are pregnant and don’t want to be is not planning for parenthood.

There are couples all across this nation who cannot conceive a child and would gladly adopt an unwanted child given up for adoption. Perhaps Planned Parenthood could shift its focus from abortion to adoption, and nurture women through their unwanted pregnancy to an end that both honors life and helps those who want children, but can’t have their own.

How many great writers, scientists, artists, inventers, athletes, etc., have been summarily snuffed out before they got started?

A young pregnant wife was hospitalized for a simple attack of appendicitis and had ice applied tfso her stomach. Afterward, doctors suggested that she abort the child, because the baby would be born with disabilities. The young wife decided not to abort, and the child was born. That woman was the mother of Andrea Bocelli.

Continuing our head-long slide down the slippery slope of abortion

When people challenge and attempt to liberalize valued traditions, there is usually great concern that doing so is the first step down the "slippery slope," which ultimately leads to bad results. The “slippery slope” is considered a logical fallacy, but in the case of abortion, evidence supports that it is an apt argument.  

We started down this slope when abortion was legalized 40 years ago. If it was not the original intention, abortion certainly has become a thinly disguised mechanism for after-the-fact birth control. Pregnancy is not a mystery; we know what causes it. There are numerous ways to prevent pregnancy whenever people decide to forego the one certain way to prevent pregnancy: abstinence.

Birth control devices, while not perfect, are very dependable when used properly. However, somewhere along the way it was recognized that there were a lot of people facing the eventual birth of an unwanted child, and some thought that society was obligated to find a way to relieve these folks of having to bear responsibility for their actions. Abortion became the solution for unwanted pregnancy, under the curious label, "a woman's right to choose."

Each now-pregnant woman and her male partner had the right to choose to abstain from sexual intercourse and chose not to. They had the right to choose to use birth control, and either chose not to, or chose not to use it consistently or correctly, or it just didn't work one time. In the great majority of cases, birth control measures do work when used properly, and that means that in the majority of cases the right to use birth control actually was not chosen.

The "right to choose" is little more than a mechanism for prospective parents to avoid creating a child at an inconvenient time: In 2004 fully 74 percent of women getting an abortion said a child would "dramatically change their life."

Since Roe v Wade imposed legalized abortion on the nation in 1973, 55 million abortions have been performed, and approximately 1.2 million future Americans were aborted in each of the last several years. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, and nearly half of those are aborted.

Planned Parenthood is the nation's most prolific provider of abortions, performing about 1-in-4 total U.S. abortions each year, chalking up 334,000 in 2011. It received $542 million from taxpayers that year, about 40 percent of its total revenues.

And since 1973 we have witnessed the slide down that slippery slope. It has been considered acceptable by a significant number of Americans to end a pregnancy anywhere from the morning after to the day when the baby should be born healthy and ready for life.

We have been treated to horrors such as partial birth abortion where the baby is allowed to be born, but not completely, with part of the child still in the birth canal so that a butcher with MD or DO after their name can kill the child before it is "born." This nefarious procedure takes hair-splitting to a new level.

A year ago a giant slide down the slippery slope occurred when two Australian ethicists – Alberto Giubilini with Monash University in Melbourne, and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne – provided an answer to the question, "When does a fetus become a person?" Their answer: it doesn’t matter. They argued in the online edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics that if abortion of a fetus is allowable, so, too, should be the “termination” of a newborn.

This cold-blooded idea has now infected the United States. That same concept appeared in testimony at a Florida legislative committee that was considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion and is moving on the table and struggling for life. A Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates lobbyist endorsed the right to "post-birth abortion." The lobbyist, Alisa LaPolt Snow, stunned legislators when she said that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion "should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician."

This is nothing more than pre-meditated murder, and is not so different from first responders executing a seriously injured accident victim. And just how far does this "right" to post-birth abortion extend? The first birthday? The difficult years of adolescence? Or perhaps it will extend many years after the botched abortion when under as-yet-unknown elements of the Affordable Care Act bureaucrats may be in the position to determine that it will cost too much to keep an elderly patient alive.

Fortunately, the tide appears to be turning against the grizzly practice of abortion. Last June a Gallop poll showed that 50 percent identified themselves as "pro-life" compared to 41 percent who said they were "pro-choice." And, 51 percent said abortion is morally wrong, compared to 38 percent who said it is morally acceptable. And some state legislatures have passed tighter restrictions on the procedure.

This attitude favoring preserving life and restoring personal responsibility is one small ray of light in America's otherwise darkening culture.