Hannity actually suggested that the Boston bomber be waterboarded tonight. Maybe they could have a double session – one for Sean, one for the bomber?

Jonathan, your post makes very little sense. You are conflating things and essentially comparing oranges to lettuce.

You fail to understand that women’s reproductive choices ARE legal, whether you personally approve of them or not. The issues in the Gosnell case are not about whether women have a right to terminate a pregnancy. They have to do with what happens when poor women become desperate, particularly when they don’t have any options or don’t know what those options are, and people like Gosnell take advantage of them.

Your comparison to heroin use is odd, but beyond that, it’s simply offensive to compare someone choosing to take addictive narcotics with a woman making reproductive health choices. The comparison with assault weapons is even sillier, and it’s odd that you would try to shoehorn that into your response.

Science absolutely does not “prove” that a fertilized egg is just as human as a fully developed fetus. It is a collection of cells that are starting to form. It is not a baby with any consciousness or sense of identity. If you’re saying that just a collection of cells is the same as a fully matured new baby, then you must also believe that amoebas are intelligent life forms, that bacteria and viruses are intelligent life forms, and that all forms of life on this planet, including plants are life forms that should be getting the same protection. Which is a ridiculous argument. As is your statement about the “baby’s right to live” when what you’re discussing is again, a collection of cells starting to form.

The laws we already have on the books make very reasonable and proper restrictions on when during a pregnancy we all agree that the baby has developed far enough that terminating it is impermissible. And those are some of the ones being used to prosecute Gosnell, and they will likely result in a long and severe sentence for him.

It is not up to you or anyone else to tell a woman what her priorities are in the event that she gets pregnant. Who are you to determine what her situation is? Who are you to lecture that woman? Women make the hard choice to have abortions for a variety of reasons, and not just because the pregnancy was “inconvenient” or an “accident” and it is frankly offensive to hear someone tout that as a primary motivator. In many cases, the woman in question cannot afford to go through a pregnancy and/or cannot afford to care for a newborn child. In many cases, the woman would like to have the child but has a medical problem that will make it unsafe for her to do so. It is not up to you to tell that woman to carry a child to term whether she likes it or not.

Your argument about handicaps is specious. If you mean that the parents shouldn’t have the right to terminate a pregnancy if the doctor tells them that the fetus has a variety of major issues that will potentially give the child an extremely difficult and/or short life, your argument is even more specious. It is not up to you to tell those parents that they should bear a child just to watch that child suffer. There are some really serious birth defects that can render a child unable to see, hear or even breathe upon birth. There are defects where the child’s organs simply don’t form, and those organs can include the brain. Who are you to tell the parents that they should bear a child under those circumstances?

In the case of a late-term abortion, this isn’t something that anyone does lightly and you know it isn’t. That’s a situation where there are complications that come up, once again either threatening the mother’s life, or insuring a situation where the developing baby is already compromised for a number of reasons. That’s when a doctor is forced to discuss options with the parents about what can be done to save the mother’s life and ease everyone’s pain. Kermit Gosnell’s little setup was nothing like this, and deliberately trying to fog the difference between a medical clinic and a man taking advantage of poor women is deeply, deeply offensive to anyone who understands these issues.

Your idea of somehow conflating parental responsibility to apply to a collection of cells in the process of formation is a heck of a reach. Your attempt to describe abortion as an automatic felony is both uniformed and again, offensive. We’re not talking about a 2 year old child. We’re talking about an undeveloped fetus that a mother chooses not to carry to full term. That is NOT a felony and you should know that. That is a medical procedure and a decision made by a doctor and a patient – one that you don’t get to make for them. If you’re thinking this is a matter of law, then you need to look at the Supreme Court rulings on the matter – they’ve repeatedly affirmed that women and their doctors are well within their rights to make this choice. If your goal is to overturn that, good luck. Right wing state legislatures have been trying for decades, and they always lose, even while they rile up their more hardheaded fans. Your logic about wanting the undeveloped fetus to have the “highest level of legal protection” smacks of the same thinking that we now see prompting right wingers to propose more and more legislation to chip away at the basic right already affirmed by the Supreme Court.

And while we’re on the subject of more and more legislation, I thought that right wingers wanted LESS government, not more.

I actually did hear various ideas thrown around on Monday and Tuesday night, but in person at the pub I frequent. The right wingers tended to take the point of view of “I don’t care WHY!” The more middle of the road of us tended to look at the possible causes. Some people jumped on the idea of the apartment being searched and a supposedly Arabic guy being under investigation. Some people noted that it was tax day and that it was also Patriot Day in Boston. All of us agreed that nobody would know anything until real evidence came in, but it was odd that nobody wanted to take credit for the act.

The “evidence free speculation” was going on on every channel, both on right wing radio and on all the cable news channels. Fox in particular had its pundits leaning to this being the work of foreign nationals coming to the US to commit terrorist acts. Rush Limbaugh devoted hours during the week to fomenting that the suspect was “brown skinned”, and specifically to trying to attack the left wing for waiting to see more facts before automatically assuming who did this.

The approach taken by the right wing media has clearly been to start with the notion that this was an organized terrorist attack by Muslims, build the groundwork for that and then scream, “See! We told you!” The left wing response has tended to be to wait for more evidence. The mainstream media has tended toward the middle of the road, as usual – some going down the Fox News road, some noting that there are plenty of other possibilities.

What happens next will likely be Fox and the right trying to tie these two guys to something bigger, as a way of fomenting against immigration reform and reinforcing people’s paranoia.

GCT, what point are you trying to make here? The Saudi from Boston to whom you return is not a “bombing suspect”. That’s a hoax that Fox News tried and failed to promulgate. Are you trying to start that up again?

And what are we to make of your website? Are you saying that we should rely exclusively on one person’s opinion – a person who you say is a “former Muslim Brotherhood member”?

We have confirmation that the Fox News story was erroneous. And now we have Glenn Beck going down the road you’re advocating – except that he thinks he can threaten someone (the Congress? the President?) or else he’ll do “something” on Monday. So are you agreeing with Glenn Beck? If so, you may find yourself in a lonely place.

I haven’t seen the clip, but I’m sure that O’Reilly immediately scolded Henry and told him that this was not an appropriate time to interject partisan politics. I’m sure that O’Reilly reminded him that people in Boston are mourning right now. I mean, O’Reilly wouldn’t be hypocritical about this stuff, would he?

Let me see if I understand this correctly.

Bill O’Reilly is angry that somebody made a political statement concerning the Boston bombing. (He actually went on and on about this, not only regarding Barney Frank but also about any left wing commentators he could find making comments.) And Barney Frank’s statement is a reasonable one, in which he notes that the hard right approach of cutting all services and having a government you could “drown in the bathtub” would have meant that the people of Boston would not have been able to get the help they needed. That’s actually not so much political as it is a simple dose of reality. The libertarian approach of “I got mine, heck with you” means that those people who can afford to take care of themselves will be okay, and everyone else, well, you’ll just have to deal with it. So Frank is correct on this.

But let’s allow that and just stay with O’Reilly not liking the left wing political statements he was hearing. And I’d agree with him that anyone stating that they hoped that the bomber turned out to be caucasian was saying something fairly distasteful.

However, O’Reilly must also be condemning the political comments being made from the right – such as Rush Limbaugh repeatedly screaming that he’d heard that Boston had arrested a man with “brown skin” and crowing about it for hours. O’Reilly must also be preparing an on-air confrontation with not only Limbaugh but Greg Gutfield to deal with their comments about banning pressure cookers, since both guys thought it would be funny to compare that with the gun legislation they were trying to ridicule. And O’Reilly must be preparing a Talking Points memo in which he apologizes to his viewers for his own politicizaton of the matter on the very night of the bombings, when he shoehorned the failed Benghazi smear into the discussion.

I’ll be waiting to see if O’Reilly can actually walk the walk on this – he says he’s equally hard on the right doesn’t he? (We’ll try not to shine too hard a light on that “We need to hold the House and take the Senate” line…) Or does O’Reilly only care about this stuff if the political language he hears is coming from the left?

I didn’t know about the gag order, but it makes sense.

At the same time, the gory and unpleasant details of this story make it unlikely that any newspaper of any political stripe would make this Page 1 material anywhere. And the fact is, it WAS covered fairly extensively in 2011, at the time that Gosnell was charged and the state officials were held responsible. At that time, multiple media sources, particularly on the left, made the appropriate point that this situation is what happens when poor women either don’t have any options or don’t know they have any options. If the anti-choice people were to have their way, this rare situation would become sadly more common.

It isn’t just Fox News trying to blare this meme. Right wing radio hosts are having a field day with this. Gary Hoffman at Los Angeles AM radio’s KFI spent a good amount of time this Sunday on the matter. He dwelled on the gory details, took a very moral tone in his voice and intoned against the media that was shockingly not telling the story. And at the end of 30 minutes of banging this drum, he then piously tried to connect the case to the safe and legal abortions that many women choose to have. He did admit that the case was rare, but he forgot to discuss the gag order or the plentiful coverage the case has already received. His listeners immediately responded on his Facebook page with plaudits. I went on there to respond to a few of them, to correct the record.

The kicker here is that neither Fox News nor the AM radio hosts are being honest about why they are trying to spotlight this story. They’re hiding behind the victims and a projected moral outrage over the crimes. But they don’t normally come out and say what Gary Hoffman admitted at the end of his show – they just don’t want women to have abortions, period. They wish that Roe v Wade would be overturned, and if they can’t get their way on it (and they can’t), then they’ll just keep trying to chip away at it – using situations like this, or the attempted “gotcha” in the Florida State House last month. It’s clear that they’re trying to shame women out of choosing to have abortions by describing the most heinous images possible. And if they can’t shame them, they’ll settle for terrifying them. But the agenda is the same.

It points out the reason for websites like Newshounds and projects like Outfoxed to exist in the first place. Someone has to keep the record straight.

This is another right wing dog whistle.

Ostensibly, the idea is to say that it’s just “too darn expensive” to contemplate immigration reform and that we’ll just bankrupt ourselves. That’s of course in the face of the facts of where these people already are. And it goes hand in hand with the right wing outrage that they can’t just call people illegal aliens whenever they want without being called on it.

Peel it back, and you get the emotional underbelly – these guys don’t want the undocumented immigrants to get any standing in this country. They’re angry enough that the group is here in the first place, even though the undocumented people do all the menial jobs that other people won’t do. The sentiment ranges from making these people do menial labor for no benefit to themselves and then kicking them back over the border, to throwing them out of the country en masse. The latter solution is of course the preferred option for right wing AM radio hosts who cater to that kind of thought. The reality that neither of these solutions will be taken has to be in the minds of programmers both at Fox News and at right wing radio, but constantly playing these ideas helps keep their listeners riled up about a situation they can’t affect.

And that dog whistle goes hand in hand with the other dog whistles we’ve been getting lately – including the ridiculous stories about the “gotcha” hearing attended by a Planned Parenthood rep in Florida and the overblown outrage about the trial of a criminal “doctor” in Pennsylvania, both of which stories are intended to ring the bells of the anti-choicers. One has to wonder what new whistles we’ll get to hear within the coming months – or will they just be the same ones we’ve been hearing for the past four years…

Thanks for noting this Ellen. This is the sort of thing that needs to be documented and not swept under the rug.

There was an interesting and telling moment on Wednesday night. In the middle of a refreshing session on the President’s proposed Budget wherein O’Reilly got in some Obama bashing (I know that will be a surprise for some…), he offered this gem: the only hope for America is for the GOP to win the 2014 midterm elections. Give him points at least for directly saying what he’s advocating. So now he cannot say that he’s impartial.

And now Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is calling for an investigation into the conduct of McConnell and his people, considering that they were using taxpayer funds to put together a smear campaign against Ashley Judd.

Let’s keep in mind that it doesn’t mean that there is actually an ethics investigation. It just means that one has been called for by a nonprofit group.

That’s the same thing as McConnell and his people frantically calling for an FBI investigation to try to distract everyone from the main part of the story – their attempt to smear Ashley Judd. And that pending “FBI Investigation” that Fox wants to trumpet really just means that if an FBI investigator has time, he or she will listen to the tape and ask a few people in the room some questions. This is not a major criminal matter, particularly given the circumstances. It is not Watergate. And the simplest explanation tends to work in these cases – meaning that a person in the room didn’t like where this was all going and recorded it for posterity.

This is similar to the person who recorded Mitt Romney talking about the 47% – was that person charged with a felony? No. And the person who saved these remarks won’t be charged either.

But now, thanks to CREW resetting the emphasis where it should have been all along, we can enjoy the spectacle of Rush Limbaugh and Fox desperately trying to spin things back in their direction. This is even funnier than Wag the Dog.

I think Bill was advised to stop being so tantrumy to both sides of the equation. He screamed at Alan Colmes and then he blew off the right wing and screamed at Laura Ingraham.

Last night, he suddenly made an effort to try to appear equal opportunity. So he cut off Alan Colmes (while Colmes was making a reasonable point about the relative differences between the stats he was mentioning between the 50s and now – and let’s be reasonable here – O’Reilly’s real point was that civil rights aside, things really were better for “family values” people in the 50’s… and Colmes was appropriately calling him on the silliness of that claim.) But then he cut off Monica Crowley when she made an obviously nasty comment about the Great Society programs.

And then, yes, in a subsequent segment, he toyed with Ed Henry (late of his spiteful grandstanding from last week) about the reality of cutting into the usual adjustments to Social Security payments.

And let’s be clear about Social Security – if anyone is concerned about its long-term viability from 2037 on, there are some very simple solutions available that would address it. One, you remove the cap on withholding – particularly since that cap was set decades before inflation devalued it. Two, you make the same minute adjustments in the withholding that were done during the Reagan Administration the last time these “Social Security is Doomed!” screams were heard. These are the kind of ideas that could have and should have passed years ago. In the current environment of angry GOP members who just want to privatize such things or do away with them, I don’t know how much pressure it will take. But the fact is that even GOP pundits like Laura Ingraham have admitted that messing with things like Social Security or Medicare for seniors – whether they be GOP or anything else – usually has lethal consequences.

It could be that the GOP is trying to trick President Obama into touching the “third rail” on his own, after which they would try to pin any consequences on him. We’ll have to see what happens when the real plan is announced in the morning…

So will Sean Hannity take a moment to defend Professor Poole from these threats? Considering this is far more serious than the criticism spoken at Ben Carson, shouldn’t Hannity condemn this kind of thing?

I’m frankly confused by the American Eagle poster, although I’m pretty sure we’ve seen that poster here before under a different name.

His response post to me makes very little sense, indulges in name-calling, and simply repeats the same debunked material he previously attempted to present.

I believe he may not have read my post to him, as he did not address any of the points I made to him. But that may never have been his intention. It appears he is simply trying to stir people up.

I’d recommend ignoring such a poster.

I’m going to repeat some material I put into the other thread, just to make sure there’s no confusion on this matter.

Alisa LaPolt Snow appeared before the Florida State House of Representatives on Wednesday March 27 to discuss HB 759, the so-called “Infants Born Alive” bill which was sponsored by Republican Cary Pigman. Planned Parenthood initially opposed this bill, noting it to be “politically motivated and inflammatory language”. Planned Parenthood has also noted that the bill just states what is already part of existing medical procedures and Planned Parenthood policies. Meaning that the bill isn’t going to save lives. It was intended as another way to chip away at Roe v Wade, as I discussed in my earlier posts. That has been the intent of GOP politicians and pundits ever since they failed at their last major challenge at the Supreme Court.

During Ms Snow’s appearance, as preserved online, she was questioned by four Florida state legislators. The first three – Jim Boyd, Daniel Davis and Jose Oliva are all Republicans, who have been heavily featured in GOP outlets like Fox News with the “gotcha” questions they took the opportunity to throw at Snow. Their intent was clearly to get her to make a definitive statement they could use as a soundbite to help their cause. Snow realized this and refused to give them that opening. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out – the bill was specifically crafted to be an attention-getter, to rile up the GOP base. The sponsor is apparently trying to convince his House colleagues that he’s addressing some kind of a loophole, but Snow made clear in her comments that this matter was addressed last year in the Federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act of 2012, specifically in the Neutrality Clause. A fourth representative, Democrat Mike Clelland, asked Snow some questions, trying to tie her down as to why Planned Parenthood opposed this bill, noting that Cary Pigman had stated that he didn’t think the federal law applied in this specific case, thus allowing him to introduce this bill. Snow corrected Clelland as simply as she could. He pressed her as to Planned Parenthood’s opposition and Snow clarified that there were two areas of concern – the biggest one being the surrender language.

To be clear, the original language of HB 759 had language that required the birth mother to surrender any infant born during an abortion procedure. This was a big part of the inflammatory nature of the bill, since the rest of it just restated what is already on the books. Planned Parenthood opposed this as it was clear the point of it was “to shame and judge a woman” rather than to accomplish anything helpful. There was a second issue having to do with the logistics of what measures could be taken to try to take an infant in this situation to a hospital. The point of the transportation element had to do with the requirement that this be done – Planned Parenthood had a logistical question about what happens when the travel time and distance is too great, the infant dies, and the physician is then held responsible for not fulfilling that part of the law. This part of the law still hasn’t really been answered.

But after this hearing, Cary Pigman backed down and removed the surrender language, at which point Planned Parenthood dropped their opposition and the bill passed the Florida House. I note that Mike Clelland also had issues with that language and only voted to approve this after the language was removed. Clelland was surprised to hear about this potential situation (a live birth during an abortion procedure) and was concerned to make sure that all attempts were being made to protect any life involved. We should be aware that Clelland ran in a newly-drawn, GOP-leaning district in 2012. Taking this position will no doubt help him in his re-election campaign with his conservative constituents.

I note that there weren’t two Democrats questioning Snow in the footage. Only one – Mike Clelland, for the reasons I gave above. And I note that it’s the GOP who’s been trying to make hay out of it ever since, whether that be Reince Priebus or Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford. Having one Democrat, who’s running in a conservative seat, and who has fallen for a GOP semantics gambit, say something in support of a bill that he thinks might be advantageous to him, does not constitute bipartisan support. HB 759 was a politically motivated bill that had no real purpose other than to generate headlines for the GOP and rile up their base.

I also note that Obama’s voting record in Illinois reflects that he and the other Democrats were deftly avoiding a series of “gotcha” bills that the GOP state legislators were trying to throw at them. In certain cases, the Dems would vote “present” rather than be put on the record making a ridiculous statement. These were not critical bills but instead the GOP making wild political statements and trying to force the Dems into an impossible position – either agreeing with the GOP on an extreme view of women’s rights or allowing themselves to be labelled as somehow supporting murder – just as Fox News is trying to play the current situation. In neither the Illinois matters nor the current one with the March 27th hearing is the Fox News position accurate or appropriate.

It’s always been fascinating to me to see the double standard for conservatives between what they hold as a libertarian ideal (no government) and what they hold as a “family values” ideal (laws that set their personal preferences in stone for everyone else.)

The anti-choice laws being promulgated around the country are unfortunately nothing new. The real reason they are put forward by GOP state legislators as happened in Dakota a few years back as well has been openly, brazenly stated: they want to get another case to the Supreme Court, hoping to get Roe v Wade overturned. Hope springs eternal on this idea. They keep thinking that if they can just get enough right wing justices up there, they can eventually pull the lever and have the slot machine give them the jackpot. They never seem to keep in mind that even if they had the full majority they want (rather than the 5-4 one they currently have), there’s no guarantee that one or two of the justices like Roberts or Kennedy wouldn’t just vote to uphold Roe, specifically to avoid a massive political fallout – the same way that Roberts voted against the grain regarding the ACA.

As for libertarian thought, as it is spread around right wing radio and Fox News, I heard a very interesting analysis of it just this past weekend by left economist Doug Henwood. He was asked about the rationale behind libertarianism, and he defined it succinctly as “I’ve Got Mine, The Hell with You”. He described it as an economic philosophy for people with lots of money (or for people who hope to have it someday), as a philosophy of individualistic selfishness that works for people who have poor social skills. Which explains the idea of privatizing everything – why pay for other people’s education, health, safety? Henwood summed it up as “a very gruesome hyper-competitive, hyper-individualized, atomistic vision of life.” It’s a sobering picure of it, particularly when you hear it being espoused every day by right wing radio hosts advocating for cutting public funding, cutting taxes and essentially telling everyone to take care of themselves and not be part of a community. It’s born from an instinct not to help others (which you would think the “family values” crowd would embrace) but instead to hoard for ones’ self instead. For that reason, I tend to receive libertarian arguments with an extremely quizzical ear.

Oh boy. To quote Joe Biden, the segment was full of “malarky”.

The Jon Hammar case was discussed at length here and elsewhere. Hammar broke Mexican law by trying to bring his shotgun into their country. His family says he tried to clear this with US Border agents, but the Mexican government correctly responded that the no guns policy is clearly stated for anyone going there. Hammar knew this and thought he could get away with bringing a firearm into a foreign country. Since he broke Mexican law, he was then imprisoned by the Mexican officials while his case took an agonizing amount of time to go through the normal channels. During that time, it’s clear that the Mexican officials took pains to separate him from other inmates and not endanger his life. The point of the exercise is that he broke the law and there was a penalty. After this had been going on for some time, Hammar’s family reached out to government officials, GOP legislators and pundits, trying to build up the same uninformed groundswell that happened around the Ramos and Compean mess 7 years ago. In the end, Hammar was finally released by Mexico just before Christmas, once his case had been processed. It was not due to Bill O’Reilly or any other pundit, and it’s shameful of him to be trying to take credit for it.

The two school situations are each unique. The first one is an obvious attempt at fanning outrage over a classroom exercise. The second one is just flat out ridiculous. Both demonstrate why it’s never a good idea to let a pundit into your classroom – inevitably they get trounced by the five year olds.

Andrew, that’s a fascinating opinion you’ve got there. Let’s look at the facts so we can clarify this matter, shall we?

Alisa LaPolt Snow appeared before the Florida State House of Representatives on Wednesday March 27 to discuss HB 759, the so-called “Infants Born Alive” bill which was sponsored by Republican Cary Pigman. Planned Parenthood initially opposed this bill, noting it to be “politically motivated and inflammatory language”. Planned Parenthood has also noted that the bill doesn’t break new ground – it states what is already part of existing medical procedures and Planned Parenthood policies. Meaning that the bill isn’t going to save lives – it was intended to call attention to what is a very rare situation that is already covered by existing practices in a manner that would do what was possible to save the life of an infant born as part of an abortion procedure. But this bill was never intended to save lives, was it? It was intended as another way to chip away at Roe v Wade, as I discussed in my earlier post. That has been the intent of GOP politicians and pundits ever since they failed at their last major challenge at the Supreme Court.

During Ms Snow’s appearance, as preserved online, she was questioned by four Florida state legislators. The first three – Jim Boyd, Daniel Davis and Jose Oliva are all Republicans, who have been heavily featured in GOP outlets like Fox News with the “gotcha” questions they took the opportunity to throw at Snow. Their intent was clearly to get her to make a definitive statement they could use as a soundbite to help their cause. Snow realized this and refused to give them that opening. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out – the bill was specifically crafted to be an attention-getter, to rile up the GOP base. The sponsor is apparently trying to convince his House colleagues that he’s addressing some kind of a loophole, but Snow made clear in her comments that this matter was addressed last year in the Federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act of 2012, specifically in the Neutrality Clause. A fourth representative, Democrat Mike Clelland, asked Snow some questions, trying to tie her down as to why Planned Parenthood opposed this bill, noting that Cary Pigman had stated that he didn’t think the federal law applied in this specific case, thus allowing him to introduce this bill. Snow corrected Clelland as simply as she could. He pressed her as to Planned Parenthood’s opposition and Snow clarified that there were two areas of concern – the biggest one being the surrender language.

To be clear, the original language of HB 759 had language that required the birth mother to surrender any infant born during an abortion procedure. This was a big part of the inflammatory nature of the bill, since the rest of it just restated what is already on the books. Planned Parenthood opposed this as it was clear the point of it was “to shame and judge a woman” rather than to accomplish anything helpful. There was a second issue having to do with the logistics of what measures could be taken to try to take an infant in this situation to a hospital. The point of the transportation element had to do with the requirement that this be done – Planned Parenthood had a logistical question about what happens when the travel time and distance is too great, the infant dies, and the physician is then held responsible for not fulfilling that part of the law. This part of the law still hasn’t really been answered.

But after this hearing, Cary Pigman backed down and removed the surrender language, at which point Planned Parenthood dropped their opposition and the bill passed the Florida House. I note that Mike Clelland also had issues with that language and only voted to approve this after the language was removed. Clelland was surprised to hear about this potential situation (a live birth during an abortion procedure) and was concerned to make sure that all attempts were being made to protect any life involved. We should be aware that Clelland ran in a newly-drawn, GOP-leaning district in 2012. Taking this position will no doubt help him in his re-election campaign with his conservative constituents. That’s the reason he used the language you cited.

I note that there weren’t two Democrats questioning Snow in the footage. Only one – Mike Clelland, for the reasons I gave above. And I note that it’s the GOP who’s been trying to make hay out of it ever since, whether that be Reince Priebus or Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford. So your implication that this is a bi-partisan bill is a bit of a reach. Having one Democrat, who’s running in a conservative seat, and who has fallen for a GOP semantics gambit, say something in support of a bill that he thinks might be advantageous to him, does not constitute bipartisan support. HB 759 was a politically motivated bill that had no real purpose other than to generate headlines for the GOP and rile up their base.

Andrew, now that we’ve dismissed your first concern, let’s move on to the second. You bring up Kermit Gosnell, an unscrupulous doctor in Philadelphia who is on trial for eight counts of murder, and who has been in serious trouble before. Not sure why you’re mentioning him, since his situation is irrelevant. If your only comparison is the rare situation where an infant survives a late term abortion procedure, you really need to do a little more research about Gosnell before bringing him up. His methods and character have been condemned by Planned Parenthood. He was not running your typical women’s health clinic. He was running a very specific operation – mostly providing procedures to poor minority and immigrant women. It’s been alleged he does not have certification in gynecology or obstetrics. And his real racket was providing, at a high cost, a very late term procedure that no doctor in their right mind should be doing. That’s not the same thing at all as a professional doctor trying to save the life of a patient. Gosnell was bilking the clients he could, who would come to him too late to get a legal abortion, and essentially delivering near full-term children. Gosnell’s trial started last month. We’ll see how it turns out, but I doubt it will be a happy conclusion for him.

But again, what’s the point of discussing this guy? Planned Parenthood doesn’t send women to people like Gosnell – they specialize in women’s health and preventative planning. That’s most of their work. The GOP would like gullible people to think that all they do is run “abortion mills”, which is patently false. Someone like Gosnell was running a racket like that, and an extremely dangerous one. But that’s something which is already illegal and is being punished under the law as it is. The Florida GOP’s attempted “gotcha” has nothing to do with Kermit Gosnell and it’s odd that you would think that it did.

Now, Andrew, since I’ve addressed your concerns as clearly as I can, I think we can all agree that the matter is nothing like the way you presented it, right? Right. (By the way, are you sure you haven’t posted here before, under another name perhaps?)

After watching this, I am compelled to agree with Ellen 100 percent. Something is up with O’Reilly and I don’t think it’s just about last year’s election. He is genuinely on a tear over the last month or so, and it may not have anything to do with politics.

This segment consists of him and Ingraham stubbornly yelling at each other for 6 and a half minutes solely over the semantic term “thump the bible”. I’d say this was a popcorn segment, but after a while it just got really irritating.

Powers’ argument was essentiallly correct. Since the GOP blew the election last year, they’ve been reduced to cruder and cruder tantrums. The swipes about the number of vacation days, etc, are a kind of last refuge now. Hannity wasn’t even able to refute Goolsby last week when the point was made about the massive number of vacations taken by GW Bush at the ranch in Crawford.

But then you have Pavlich, who’s not been noted for her ability to master the facts at hand (see the attack materials she has thrown at President Obama with no effect), and once again she was unable to do anything more than offer Karl Rove’s talking points. They bring up the idea that President Bush only went to Camp David during the holidays and how he made sure the Secret Service could spend the holidays with their families. Not sure that this is actually the case. Among other things, it’s always possible for Agents to arrange to take their holidays, etc. Like any other high security position (or hospital position for that matter), there are different people who wind up working each holiday. You work Thanksgiving, but you get Christmas off. You work New Years, but you get Labor Day off. And so it goes. The implication Hannity and Pavlich were trying to make, that President Obama doesn’t care about the Secret Service, or that the Agents are all working every holiday, is ridiculous on its face.

One has to wonder again what Hannity thinks the President ought to be doing – staying locked in the White House at all times with his family?