An illegal immigrant applying for a law license in California should be allowed to receive it, the State Bar of California argues in a filing to the state Supreme Court.

Sergio Garcia, 35, of Chico, Calif., has met the rules for admission, including passing the bar exam and the moral character review, and his lack of legal status in the United States should not automatically disqualify him, the Committee of Bar Examiners said Monday.

“ … Mr. Garcia’s status in the United States, should not, ipso facto, be grounds for excluding him from law licensure. He has met all of the prescribed qualifications and there is no reason to believe he cannot take the oath and faithfully uphold his duties as an attorney,” the bar said.

Perhaps this story is not as outrageous to anyone who has not had to go through the “moral character review” section of the exam. I have personally known people for whom the Bar Examiners recommended that they not receive their license because they had too many speeding tickets (which allegedly demonstrated a “disrespect for the law.”) More serious criminal convictions are not automatic disqualifiers but you generally have to show that you’ve been Mother Theresa since; it’s quite a strenuous process.

Here, the California State Bar is presented with someone who is admittedly involved in ongoing criminal activity and they have recommended that he get a law license? How will they ever be able to argue again that anyone has failed the moral character review? If someone engaged in ongoing criminal activity isn’t showing “disrespect for the law,” who is?

I hope the ALEC member organizations are paying attention to this massive public uprising…

Of course, these assertions have been from day one based on fabrications generated by the abortion industry. As Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL, admitted:

We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law.

“Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1500% since legalization.

Of course, the revelation that these facts were made up out of thin air has not in the least dissuaded the abortion industry from insisting that they nonetheless conveyed a true story – “fake, but accurate” did not originate with Dan Rather. Problematically, no one had conducted a scientific study to evaluate the evidence one way or another, so these lies took root in the public’s mind and the burden fell on opponents of abortion to disprove an assertion that had never been founded in fact in the first place.

Enter Dr. Elard Koch, an epidemiologist from the Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Chile. Chile provides a somewhat unique opportunity to study the issue of the effects of making abortion illegal. In recent history (in particular since a number of advances that have overall reduced maternal mortality worldwide), most countries that have changed their abortion laws have made abortion more widely accessible, not less. Chile, on the other hand, has moved in the opposite direction. Before 1989 in Chile, abortion was largely legal, but in 1989, Chile banned all “therapeutic” abortions, thus providing an actual laboratory in which we might study the question, “What happens when abortion is made illegal?”

The study by Dr. Koch and his team is vitally important and should be read in its entirety. Most importantly, the study conclusively showed that a) outlawing abortion is remarkably effective at reducing the number of abortions that take place in a country, including clandestine ones, and b) there is absolutely no link between making abortion illegal and an increase in the number of deaths from clandestine abortions. In Koch’s own words about the conclusions of his study:

In Chile, therapeutic abortion was prohibited in 1989 since it was considered unnecessary for protecting the life of the mother and her baby. From the perspective of the Chilean medical practice, the exceptional cases in which the life of the mother is at risk are regarded as a medical ethics problem to be solved by applying the principle of double effect and the concept of indirect abortion.

Thus, in Chile, exceptional problems that require medical intervention to save the life of the mother are considered a decision of medical ethics and not a legal issue. Therefore, any kind of directly provoked abortion was prohibited in 1989, in agreement with Article 19 of the Chilean Constitution which protects the life of the unborn.

The second question — does it save lives? — is very complex and important. We can address this important issue from different perspectives.

First, from a public health view, restrictive laws are hypothesized to cause a dissuasive effect on the population, similar to restrictions on tobacco or alcohol consumption. We observed that reduction of maternal mortality in Chile was paralleled by the number of hospitalizations attributable to complications of clandestine abortions. While over 50% of all abortion-related hospitalizations were attributable to complications of clandestine abortions during the 1960s, this proportion decreased rapidly in the following decades.

Indeed, only 12-19% of all hospitalization from abortion can be attributable to clandestine abortions between 2001 and 2008. These data suggest that over time, restrictive laws may have a restraining effect on the practice of abortion and promote its decrease. In fact, Chile exhibits today one of the lowest abortion-related maternal deaths in the world, with a 92.3% decrease since 1989 and a 99.1% accumulated decrease over 50 years.

Second, from the perspective of human life, especially if a developing country is looking to simultaneously protect the life of the mother and the unborn child, a plausible hypothesis after the Chilean study is that abortion restriction may be effective when is combined with adequately-implemented public policies to increase educational levels of women and to improve access to maternal health facilities. A restrictive law may discourage practice, which is suggested by the decrease of hospitalizations due to clandestine abortions estimated in Chile.

Third, from the perspective of protecting human life from the very beginning, obviously, abortion restriction saves many lives, in contrast to countries where elective — on demand — abortion is allowed, because in these countries all the unborn lose their lives.

Finally, it is necessary to remark that our study confirms that abortion prohibition is not related to overall rates of maternal mortality. In other words, making abortion illegal does not increase maternal deaths: it is a matter of scientific fact in our study.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

Not, mind you, that anything as pedantic as scientific evidence is expected to have any impact on the rhetoric of the same charming people who manufactured and sold “coathanger pendants” a couple years ago. The abortion industry has never been about truth, facts or logic. But to the extent that people in the middle remain persuadable by objectivity, a major arrow in the quiver of the merchants of death has been irretrievably destroyed.

Today’s email, however, really took the cake. Over the last several days, as Lugar’s poll numbers have continued to slide, Lugar’s campaign has released a series of emails hilariously titled “Lugar-mentum.” The last item in today’s email? You’ll have to read it for yourself (and I assure you this is not a joke):

Student Body President Endorses Lugar
Terrence Lawrence, President of Carmel High School
May 1, 2012

“As a three-year member of student Senate and current student body president of Carmel High School, I can appreciate the impact experience has on an organization’s efficiency — whether that be running a school or providing good government. Senator Richard Lugar is a living example of that valuable experience, which is what we need during these difficult times facing our state and nation.”

Now look, I have nothing against Mr. Lawrence, who I am sure is a perfectly nice fellow and a capable President of his high school student body. But when a 36-year incumbent in the United States Senate has to resort to sending out endorsements from high school students, you know that very serious trouble is around the corner. Even more amusing, this particular issue of “Lugar-mentum” started with the following line from Peggy Noonan: “The most recent polls suggest Dick Lugar, the senior U.S. senator from Indiana, first elected in 1976, is on track to lose his primary on Tuesday.”

Being on track to lose apparently is what “Lugar-mentum” is all about.

Which is good news, because according to today’s polling, there’s plenty of Lugar-mentum on tap in the future.

We wondered how long it would take for Senate leadership to punish Johnson for refusing to back down to Blunt’s challenge, and now apparently we know. In their typical cowardly fashion, they have sent anonymous and unknown aides running to the press, speaking on condition of anonymity, badmouthing pretty much everything Johnson has done. In what apparently passes for journalistic integrity, Roll Call saw fit to uncritically pass along this dreck even though everyone who was willing to actually go on the record in the story refuted these claims.

Maybe I just don’t really “get” how journalistic ethics are supposed to work, but if I were working on a story and all my sources refused to reveal their identity, whereas there were lots of people willing to go on the record to dispute the claims of my anonymous sources, I wouldn’t write the piece in such a way that assumes that the guys insisting on anonymity must be telling the truth. This would apply a fortiori if the anonymous leadership aides feeding me the information had a well-known reason to try to discredit the target of the piece. However, none of that stopped Roll Call from running this piece, which puts Johnson’s staff in the unenviable position of trying to refute a story that is based entirely on the alleged personal knowledge of unknown people.

Make no mistake, though, it is clear that this hit piece originated somewhere in the bowels of Senate GOP leadership. McConnell and his cronies continue to show absolutely no shame or decency when dealing with TEA Party challengers who actually have the gall to try to change the way business is done in the Senate. This is part of the reason that we at RedState can’t support any Senate candidate who won’t commit to ending McConnell’s reign as leader of the Senate GOP caucus. Conservatives who worked hard to achieve upset victories for conservative candidates in blue and purple states deserve better than to have their candidates anonymously trashed by the Senate ruling class with the enthusiastic complicity of the liberal gutless media.

The main thing Roll Call’s piece illustrates is that it’s time for change to come to the Senate, starting right at the top.

I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal pretty soon, the way we are going. Of course, people will still be that way in their hearts, but they will be afraid to admit it, and will be punished if they do admit it.

Absolutely nothing that has happened in Derbyshire’s career since then has indicated that he didn’t mean exactly what he said to Kevin way back in 2003. This is the same man who once described welfare thusly:

Following the black riots of the 1960s, these concessions have also been seen by nonblacks as an implicit contract or treaty — that is, as nonblack America saying to black America: “We’ll give you this stuff if you promise not to break our windows.”

And also couldn’t understand all the fuss about the racist comments in the Ron Paul newsletters.

Derbyshire likes to pepper his racist rants with “facts” that generally consist of social studies that are subject to numerous interpretational biases. To me, the question as to whether these studies are accurate or correct is uninteresting and irrelevant – a central tenet of decency demands that every human being is entitled to be evaluated on his or her own merits regardless of what social science may say about any group (racial, cultural, religious or otherwise) to which he or she might belong. It is this very basis which Derbyshire rejects, and that is what makes him (and has always made him) a racist. He is not, as his defenders at the execrable Taki mag say, confronting the world with uncomfortable truths, he is proudly declaring himself to be a racist and arguing that it is correct to be racist. This, I submit, is something that all decent people should reject.

I like and respect the few people I know who are regular contributors to National Review.  I have on numerous occasions spoken to and emailed these people about the danger Derbyshire’s association presents to the magazine, and nothing has ever been done about it, presumably because the decision rests with editor Rich Lowry and others. I don’t know and haven’t ever met Rich Lowry, so I can’t speak to his personal qualities. But I can say that his response to this fracas last night, which sought to distance National Review from the controversy but didn’t declare that National Review was ending its relationship with Derbyshire, showed an absolute lack of leadership and conviction, as does the fact that Derbyshire has been continually allowed to write there for the last several years despite ample evidence of his racism. Derbyshire’s screed was so contemptible, especially in light of his lengthy history, that I cannot imagine a reason that Derbyshire should not have been summarily dismissed within the hour.

The longer this drags on without a definitive severing of the relationship, the more damage will be done to National Review. I cannot imagine what sort of deliberation is required to make this decision, but I hope, for National Review’s sake, that it can be completed before the weekend is over.

At last, the long winter of our discontent is over. America’s pastime has returned to its home fields. Tonight, the World Champion Cardinals take on the revamped Miami Marlins in the United States opener. Tomorrow, the other 28 teams return to work. Although the game has changed to a huge extent since the days when fielders (including catchers) played barehanded and pitchers threw underhanded from 50 feet, and although the game has become almost as international in character as soccer, as fans file into stands today and tomorrow bedecked in their favorite team’s gear, baseball remains an affirmation of the rebirth of spring and of our uniquely American sense of community and competition. And for fans of all 30 teams (except the Astros), it is a day of eternal hope.

May you be lucky enough today or tomorrow to be able to play hookey from work and spend it in a sun-drenched stadium, with a hot dog in one hand and a beverage in another, enjoying the pop of the ball against leather, the luscious green of cross-cut grass, and the exhilirating crack of the bat as science is put in motion.

With that, I leave you with a video from 2008 from George Will about the intersection of politics and baseball. Play ball!

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, let me be very specific. We have not seen a Court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on a economic issue, like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce — a law like that has not been overturned at least since Lochner.  Right?  So we’re going back to the ’30s, pre New Deal.

And the point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but it’s precisely because of that extraordinary power that the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our Congress.  And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this.

The President, of course, is once again either displaying complete ignorance or cynical hackery. Our federal Congress, per the constitution, is a Congress of enumerated powers. It may only do the things which it is authorized to do under Article 1, Section 8. The onus is always on Congress to demonstrate that its actions have fallen within one of its enumerated powers, not on a person challenging an act of Congress to demonstrate that Congress has acted without those powers. However, more importantly, as Powerline pointed out, Obama has once again also gotten his history wrong:

 Is there any truth to Obama’s claim that the Supreme Court hasn’t invalidated any statutes that are “economic” and relate to “commerce” since Lochner v. New York, which was in 1905? Of course not. To name just a few examples a great deal more recent than 1905, the Court ruled unconstitutional provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that had permitted only “for cause” removal of members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in 2010; the 1990 Mushroom Promotion, Research and Consumer Information Act in 2001 (this case was actually quite similar to Obamacare because the Court held unconstitutional provisions that required mushroom growers to contribute to mushroom promotion programs); provisions of the Patent and Plant Variety Remedy Clarification Act, the Trademark Remedy Clarification Act, and the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act in 1992; the Harbor Maintenance Tax Act in 1998; the Transfer Act which authorized the transfer of operating control of Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport from the Department of Transportation to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority in 1991; and many, many more dating back to 1905.

Obama’s bungling on this (which has yet to be called a “gaffe” or more properly “a series of lies” by anyone I’ve yet seen in the media) prompted the Fifth Circuit yesterday to ask a DOJ lawyer who was litigating a case concerning Obamacare to clarify whether the DOJ was now taking the position that the federal judiciary did not have the power to overturn Obamacare. Some folks on the left went absolutely apopleptic over this, because it was an unusual event. Mostly, however, that is because most lawyers aren’t cursed with clients who are dumb enough to say, on the news, that the court currently deciding their case has no legitimate authority to do so. As was pointed out at Hot Air, Obama is the head of the DOJ and the Fifth Circuit was entitled to know if Obama’s statements signaled a change in the government’s position during this litigation.

One final point is in order here, which is to clarify for President Obama what is meant by an activist judiciary. An activist judiciary is not one that strikes down laws passed by Congress. An activist judiciary is one that strikes down laws passed by Congress for reasons that cannot be fairly said to be contained within the text of the Constitution, or more properly one that invents law from the bench.

Allow me to helpfully illustrate. Most conservatives were in favor (generally speaking) of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, which was  passed with broad, bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. When the Supreme Court struck this act down, I don’t recall any conservative accusing the Court of engaging in judicial activism, because the Court’s reason for striking the bill down was firmly rooted in the text of the Constitution. By way of contrast, an excellent example of judicial activism would be virtually every SCOTUS Eighth Amendment decision for the last 65 years. The plain text of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments indicate that the government can constitutionally take a person’s life (so long as he or she is afforded due process of law). At the time these amendments were enacted, capital punishment was virtually the uniform punishment for all felonies. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to declare the death penalty unconstitutional for every crime other than murder, despite the fact that neither the text of the constitution nor history compels this result. At one point, the Supreme Court actually declared that the death penalty was unconstitutional, despite the fact that the constitution explicitly provides for the death penalty. This is what is meant by “judicial activism,” not “striking down statutes that were passed by Congress.”

It would be helpful, if the President wants to debate using conservative terms, if he took the time to understand what they meant.

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected congress.

Look, I’m not here to debate the finer points of Marbury v. Madison with anyone, but the fact remains that since that decision was handed down over 200 years ago, it has not exactly been “unprecedented and extraordinary” for the Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by Congress (no matter the size of the majority). In fact, it happens all the time. That is the entire point of the doctrine of judicial review, first announced in Marbury and affirmed without serious challenge ever since.

I would seriously like to know, and I hope the press gets Obama on the record on this – is it President Obama’s contention that the Supreme Court’s only role in reviewing legislation is to double-check the count on the roll call vote to make sure that a majority in fact voted for the law and to check the President’s signature for possible forgery? Because, I mean, if that’s what we’re going to go back to, I’m open to having that discussion but we are going to have to figure out what to do with several hundred SCOTUS decisions that have taken a decidedly different view.

Of course, in making these comments Obama is exposing himself yet again as a cynical hack who is devoid of anything resembling shame. In 2003, the United States Congress passed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 by substantially larger margins than Obamacare. When the Supreme Court refused to strike down this law, which was passed by a “democratically elected Congress,” then-Senator Obama threw an absolute hissy fit about the fact that the Supreme Court had upheld the clear will of Congress (and the vast majority of the American people).

However, when it’s his own legislation at stake, Obama seems suddenly ready to go back and undo pretty much every Supreme Court precedent over the last 200 years in order to strip the Court of their power to rule on any question other than whether the roll call was tallied properly. The most galling thing of all is that if any Republican had said this, the media would be busily trying to paint them as an uneducated rube who was unaware of Marbury v. Madison - when Obama says it, it’s presented as a thoughtful defense of his brilliant law.

The most stunning admission yet came from something called a Touré, which is apparently an MSNBC contributor. Touré apparently got tired of being on a television channel no one watches so he went on Piers Morgan last week to take Piers to task for the journalistic crime of getting both sides of the story:

You know, at NBC, in the hallways, we were laughing at you today,” Touré told Morgan. “We wouldn’t take [Robert Zimmerman]. Standards and Practices at NBC wouldn’t let him get through door. And you had him on the air and allowed the hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands or whatever number of people watch your show listen to what he had to say.

This is the first time I can remember an alleged news figure explicitly stating that his network had a policy against allowing one of the major players in a national news story to give his side. My favorite part of Touré’s hysterical rant was his indignation at the fact that people would hear what Zimmerman had to say. One thing is clear – the way the media has been covering this story so far validates that Touré really was telling the truth. Journalistic Standards and Practices apparently don’t allow for any coverage of the Trayvon Martin story that would suggest that the race pimps who are currently hustling this story don’t have it right.

The Mourdock campaign has responded:

Since Richard Morudock took office as State Treasurer in 2007, his office has attended more than 99% of all such board meetings.

In addition to managing a $7 billion investment portfolio for the State, the State Treasurer or his appointee sit on 13 boards and commissions, some of which meet at the same time. Just like Governor Daniels and Lt. Governor Skillman, when Treasurer Mourdock cannot attend a meeting personally, he designates a member of his senior staff to attend in his place.

In fact, one board singled out by the Lugar ad, the State Board of Finance, meets for about 5 minutes once a month. When Treasurer Mourdock can’t attend, he sends a senior staff member with full voting powers to attend on his behalf. Governor Daniels is also a member of the Board of Finance. For every single meeting since 2007, Governor Daniels has chosen to send a senior aide rather than attend personally. Does this mean that Dick Lugar is accusing Governor Daniels of not showing up for work?

Additionally, the Mourdock campaign has pointed out that the ad is factually incorrect insofar as Mourdock is not even on the State Police Pension Advisory Board.

I don’t really claim any expertise in the intricacies of Indiana state government but Mourdock’s explanation is entirely consistent with the way I understand most state bureaucracies to run. And whatever the merits of the claim that Mourdock should be attending these meetings personally, it is at the very least ironic that this attack is coming from someone who isn’t even maintaining a legal residence in the entire state of Indiana. There most definitely is at least one candidate in this race who is guilty of absenteeism, and his name is Dick Lugar.

A group of people who believe nothing about President Obama somehow trust him implicitly when he says that Richard Lugar is his favorite Republican.  The Tea Party should be attacking the president for that, not Lugar.  But it’s no surprise that the Tea Party fell for yet another of the Obama campaign’s political tactics.  Why can’t we win the Senate back again?

Well that certainly is one way to go about a Republican primary – call a significant portion of the primary electorate morons and blame them for the party’s electoral failures. But Lugar (speaking through O’Brien) was not done. While accusing Richard Mourdock of carrying the Democrats’ water, the article enthusiastically carried the Democrats’ water:

While President Obama spent last week unveiling another deficit budget, our Republican presidential debate focused on the contraception issue.  Today’s headline in the Wall Street Journalreads, “Obama Proposes Tax Revamp”, as he proposes lowering the corporate tax rate to 28%.  The headline on Drudge shows Rick Santorum claiming that the great Satan has his sights set on America.  I don’t know why we can’t attract young people to this party.

This portion of the article was also included in Lugar’s campaign email. Pop quiz, Lugar campaign – who, specifically, is responsible for the fact that Republican debates have become contraception circuses? Is it because the Republican candidates themselves are out on the stump talking about how contraception should be outlawed or is it because the Press-Democrat has been actively using the issue to drive a wedge between Republican candidates and voters?

Any campaign that had the slightest respect for conservatives or TEA Party voters would never have dreamed of sending this article out in an email. Lugar’s campaign is dropping any pretense that it even wants the votes of conservatives. Let’s hope conservatives get the message.

• The plaintiffs in the case are a family-owned pharmacy (Ralph’s Thriftway) and two individual pharmacists (Margo Thelen and Rhonda Mesler) who could be forced out of the pharmacy profession solely because of their religious beliefs.
• Washington is one of only two states in the country that requires pharmacies to stock and dispense these drugs in violation of conscience. The other state (Illinois) recently had its regulations, which are modeled on Washington’s, struck down as unconstitutional.
• The Regulations were passed under a cloud of controversy. In 2006, the State Board of Pharmacy unanimously voted to support a rule protecting pharmacists’ right of conscience. When Governor Christine Gregoire learned of the vote, she publicly threatened to fire the Board’s members, replaced several Board members with candidates screened by Planned Parenthood, and personally joined in a boycott of Ralph’s Thriftway. ?
• Buckling under the Governor’s pressure, the Board ultimately adopted a version of the Regulations drafted by Planned Parenthood and recommended by the Governor. The Regulations prohibit pharmacies from declining to dispense Plan B for reasons of conscience—even though the Board found no evidence that anyone in the State had ever been unable to obtain Plan B (or any other time-sensitive medication) in a timely fashion because of religious objections.

Now, obviously, the Ninth Circuit is going to have their say on this particular issue and perhaps even the Supreme Court. I’m not really here to provide a legal analysis of the First Amendment issue anyway. To me, whether or not the regulations are constitutional, they are anti-American and despicable. What right does the government have to tell a wholly private business that they cannot refuse to carry a certain class of goods because of moral objections?