Last week I posted on the egregiously dishonest line of attack being made on a proposed Virginia law requiring all women who are seeking an abortion to be given the opportunity to see an ultrasound picture of the baby before dismembering. The left, led online by Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, who seemingly has the same grasp of medicine and human reproduction that she has of the law, has mounted one of the most transparently fraudulent assaults since anything they perpetrated on George W. Bush.

Her claim was that Virginia was RAPING WOMEN!!1!!!! because an ultrasound was being required before a surgical procedure was undertaken.

Today the story descended into farce.

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So everyone wins on this one.

I’m not going to do a write up on this one, just give you some stray quotes from the story.

The set up:

Earlier in the week, conservative talk show host Mark Levin was removed from Toledo’s WSPD for disagreeing with Ron Paul, after being part of that station’s lineup for more than five years.

The demand:

But when it came time to renew his contract with the station, [program director Brian] Wilson decided to cancel Levin because of his political views, a tactic similar to that used in the former Soviet Union.

Levin said that his team received a note from Wilson basically saying that unless Levin apologized for comments made about Paul and some of his supporters and changes his attitudes, he would not be renewed.

The response

“It’s one thing to drop a program and to add a program, and everything in between. It’s quite another to try and censor a program,” Levin said, in order to control what he says on the air. Levin said that rather than wait the 90 days, “we quit,” and excoriated Wilson for using “Stalinist tactics.”

The retort:

“In response to Mark Levin’s outrageous diatribes, mis and disinformation slanderously leveled at Ron Paul, Tom Woods, Lew Rockwell (personal and professional friends of mine), I will be exploring other options effective immediately.”

and ending with:

“If Mark ever gets a grip on his rational self or develops the class and courtesy to appologize to the three gentleman mentioned above, I’ll give him another listen.”

Personally, I find Levin unlistenable. I don’t understand why he has a syndicated show but that is neither here nor there. I am also stunned that anyone would admit to calling Lew Rockwell a “personal and professional” friend. I have some sympathy for the “professional” part because we have to work with all manner of people but the “personal” appellation shows a lack of good taste if not character.

If you wonder why we ban Paultards, wonder no more.

The Virginia state legislature is fast becoming the nation’s leader in fighting the abortion holocaust. Last summer abortion clinics were required to meet standards appropriate to a medical facility rather than those resembling a chicken factory. A personhood bill is moving forward which will recognize what anyone who passed high school biology already knows, that a fetus is a separate and distinct human being. But the bill that has the left in a tizzy is one that strikes directly at the market for the abortionists’ sales pitch: women who have just discovered they are pregnant. As a result the Virginia GOP is being treated just by the abortion lobby the same way a rehab clinic operator would be treated by drug pushers.

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During the legislative debate over ObamaCare, observant Catholics were stunned at the spectacle of Sister Carol Keehan, CEO of Catholic Health Association opposing the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the issue. The Catholic bishops accurately predicted that ObamaCare would ultimately require religious organizations to violate their own teachings in order to be in compliance.

But nooooooo, said Keehan. The bishops were being irrational and engaging in fearmongering.

Then came another “devout” Catholic, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius who ruled that health insurance provided by Catholic organizations had to provide “reproductive health services” and suddenly Keehan found that not only was she wrong, she was clueless.

Today, the Obama Administration announced that it was pressing ahead with its plan to require contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients to be included in all medical plans by the mechanism of having the insurance carrier provide those services for “free” regardless if the policy held by an employer covered those items. Who was first in line to affix herself to Obama’s fourth point of contact: none other than the egregiously stupid Carol Keehan.

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Following on what my colleague Francis Cianfrocca writes below, the Obama Administration’s ballyhooed “compromise” on the extraordinary rule that gives the US Department of Health and Human Services the final say in how religious groups operate is actually a finger in the eye.

From the White House statement:

Under the new policy announced today, women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she works.

If a woman works for religious employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide contraception coverage but her insurance company will be required to offer contraceptive care free of charge.

If we actually believe that in the real world TANSTAAFL is an immutable fact, who, then, is actually paying for the “free of charge” contraception and abortifacient cover. My guess is that the employer whose employees are getting the “free of charge” service is going to see their bill go up.

This is not a trivial issue. This is an attack, one of several staged by this Administration, on religious freedom. One hopes that the Catholic Church and other religious groups see through this charade and continue to oppose the supplanting of conscience by federal regulations.

Mitt Romney‘s 1992 Democratic Primary vote for Paul Tsongas — a technocratic modernizer and reformer, but very much a Democrat — raised some Republican eyebrows last week.

What hasn’t been mentioned: Romney’s vote formally enrolled him in the Democratic Party. more…

For anyone who either believes in leprechauns or that Mitt Romney is a conservative this should be of significance, especially since his minions haunted this site making much of the fact that Rick Perry was a Democrat before 1989.

The speculation is that Romney had originally intended to challenge Ted Kennedy in the Democrat primary then decided to run as a Republican. This makes his 1994 campaign strategy much more understandable.

According to a Romney campaign spokesperson, Romney “switched back.” One doesn’t know how Romney managed to “switch back.” According to the town clerk, Romney became an Republican only on October 19, 1993. The implication is that Romney had either never voted between his registration as a independent in 1979 and 1992 (so his vote in 1992 automatically enrolled him as a Democrat) or that he was a regular Democrat voters in those earlier elections and changed to Republican to run for Senate.

Now I’m off to National Review and Jennifer Rubin’s precious little blog to read some more on how conservative Willard Romney is.

As the implementation of Obamacare rolls into high gear, we’ve been given insight into how it will be implemented in general. On January 20, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would not exempt health plans provided by non-profit religious employers from the requirement to provide “contraceptive services.”

… Today the department is announcing that the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA -approved forms of contraception. Women will not have to forego these services because of expensive co-pays or deductibles, or because an insurance plan doesn’t include contraceptive services.

The cateory of “all FDA-approved forms of contraception” includes the abortifacients like the “morning after pill.” At the same time I couldn’t help but note that the group of health plans provided by “non-profit religious employers” who do not support contraception winnows the field down rather quickly to those provided by either the Catholic Church or one of its social service or medical subsidiaries.

The best is yet to come.

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That isn’t an exact quote but it is very close.

We are constantly told by Romney‘s supporters, at least those who can still bear the humiliation of being associated with the man, that he’s conservative. Not only is he conservative but he governed Massachusetts as a conservative. Never mind the increased state support of abortion rights, Romneycare, carbon caps, and his opposition to a Traditional Marriages amendment that his wife supported. The fact that he ran to the left of Fat Teddy in 1994 is just… airbrushed or I suppose we could say they are PhotoShopped.

So how did he run for governor? In his own words he tells this particular group of voters in 2002

“I think people recognize that I am not a partisan Republican. That I’m someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive.”

This is a man who, if elected, will throw conservatives and conservatism under the bus because he is a Northeastern liberal Republican.

I’m beginning to like the idea of a Newt Gingrich candidacy.

There.

I said it.

Seven or eight months ago I would have called the nice guys in white coats if I’d even thought the thought but today it is not only thinkable it may be necessary.

I was just pondering Erick’s early morning post and it struck me that this is where I am:

I do know. And if I must choose between Mitt and Newt, I would choose Newt in a heart beat. It is hard to dislike a guy who can filet his opponent with a smile and a side of fava beans and a nice chianti.

But are we sure he’s the guy?

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There are few things more ridiculous than wealthy men trying to convince everyone they know what economic deprivation feels like. Even when the stories are possibly true, such as when Paul O’Neill and aged Klansman Robert C. Byrd dueled over who had the most authentic PWT background, the spectacle is demeaning and degrading to everyone involved: participant or spectator.

When the man involved is fabulously wealthy and from a prominent family with privileged upbringing it is just insulting.

Still stinging from his rather bizarre offer to gift Governor Rick Perry $10,000 during the last of the interminable debates — I say gift rather than bet because Romney‘s book did get the Soviet May Day picture treatment before his latest attempt to become a professional politician — the Romney campaign has now set out to make Mitt v 467753.1: Romney the common man.

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(by way of TIME)

“If Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain, then I would be glad to then listen to him. And I will bet you $10, not $10,000, that he won’t take the offer.”

It is about time someone said this.

As I’ve noted before the whole “flip flopper” line of attack from the White House is kabuki directed a GOP primary voters. The real line of attack will be “Romney vs The 99%.” How Romney handles this particular line of attack will be a clue as to how badly he would get beaten as the GOP nominee. I suspect just as Romney and his lemmings have convinced themselves his multitude of sacred principles are irrelevant they will also convince themselves that Americans don’t care about friends and neighbors losing the jobs so Romney and his friends could pose with currency stuffed in their clothes.

(by way of the Navy History and Heritage Command)

This is just to take a brief time out from politics to reflect on the event that, arguably, more than any other in that century determined America’s role in the world.

In a shocking move, NRO has endorsed Mitt Romney for president… again.

None of us here at RedState saw this coming. Yeah, all of Romney’s oppo drops somehow made their way into NRO after a bit of stenography by Katrina Trinko but we thought surely they won’t make the same mistake they did in 2008 when they essentially ended up atop Romney’s car in the same crate as his dog. They won’t go back to the days of KLo’s palpitating heart being audible every time you read an NRO article. We were wrong. That’s where they are.

Yesterday I posted a brief piece on the first wave of oppo dumps on Newt Gingrich to appear at NRO. No suprise that. NRO has been oppo central for all of the “anti-Mitt” candidates this cycle.

Jim Geraghty thinks he was maltreated by me in the story. I think Jim protests too much.

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Naturally it appears at National Review Online in Jim Geraghty’s Campaign Spot titled “Newt Gingrich Said What?”

A sample

In June 2005, the New York Times raved about a “balanced and thoughtful” report from a bipartisan task force headed by Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, declaring, “Lawmakers should take the time to at least thumb through this report, especially those who have been demanding Secretary General Kofi Annan’s resignation, supporting the ill-conceived nomination of John Bolton as the United States ambassador to the United Nations and backing the latest benighted attempt to withhold America’s legally obligated dues.”

In October 2005, Gingrich called for “universal but confidential” DNA testing.

In April 2006, Gingrich appeared to suggest that too many U.S. troops were in Iraq.

I’m sure there is an army of gnomes out there, this very instant, researching every exotic statement Gingrich has uttered in his career. This will be a full employment plan not only for those gnomes but their children because every time Gingrich has had a thought he has told a newspaper somewhere about it.

In the long run, I think this exercise is a wash because anyone who supports Gingrich has already factored in his stream of consciousness style.

Earlier today I posted a story on why I believe that contrary to what the Establishment would have us believe that Mitt Romney is actually the least electable candidate in the GOP primary. As today is a slow day I decided to follow up this well-received post with a supplementary one.

Not only is Romney not exciting the GOP base… which he has to do if is to win the primary… but his history leaves him open to an attack that will resonate with middle America.

The above photo features a younger Mitt Romney (in the center, naturally) when he was part of Bain Capital. Get used to seeing it. It will be on busses and billboards across the nation if Romney wins the nomination. And it will be the image people take into the voting booth on Election Day.

(h/t to izoneguy for the tip)

Generally speaking, I think the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson is the most profoundly stupid and uninsightful writer on any editorial page in any paper in any country. But file this one under “Blind Hog/Acorn”.

Moderator Wolf Blitzer opened Tuesday’s Republican debate by introducing himself and adding, for some reason, “Yes, that’s my real name.” A few moments later, the party’s most plausible nominee for president said the following: “I’m Mitt Romney, and yes, Wolf, that’s also my first name.”

But it’s not. Mitt is the candidate’s middle name. His first name is Willard.

And people wonder why this guy has an authenticity problem?

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Every political party has its bogeymen. The left live in fear of finding one of the Koch brothers in the bedroom closet or a Diebold machine in the voting booth. The right fears the media. Now that the primary field is being whittled down to plausible and implausible candidates, a cry is rising from the implausible and their supporters that the media, not the voters, are choosing the GOP candidate for president.

Michele Bachmann just weighed in on “Debategate,” telling Whispers that the media is trying to pick the Republican presidential winner, cutting voters out of the process.

“There’s always a suspicion of maybe a bias and I guess this just confirmed it,” she said of a CBS memo before Saturday’s debate, which suggested that the Minnesota Republican congresswoman would be ignored during the foreign policy chatfest.

The memo, she said, “demonstrates that the media wants to choose who our nominee will be and who the next president of the United States will be.”

After Herman Cain’s EPIC editorial board session with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, his supporters are making the same claim.

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Today’s a slow news day moving into a Veterans Day weekend so I’m going to take a few minutes to reminisce about one of the most significant events of my life: the fall of the Berlin Wall.

One can nearly say that the Berlin wall disappeared just about as fast as it went up. It started when the East German army and police closed the border between the Russian sector of Berlin and those sectors administered by the United States, British, and French just after mid-night on the night of August 12-13, 1961 in response to an order signed by Walter Ulbricht. Berliners awoke to find their city divided.

It ended in much the same way. At a news conference on the afternoon of November 9, 1989 Guenter Schabowski, spokesman for the East German regime, announced that effective immediately that travel to West Berlin was permitted. It was broadcast at 7:17 pm and within minutes the six crossing points were jammed with hundreds, if not thousands, East Berliners demanding to leave. The border police stood aside and that was it. The Wall was over.

What follows is a story told just for the sake of telling. So proceed at your own risk.

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The whole Herman Cain story has caused me more disappointment in my political allies than any other event in my time as a blogger. As I sit here, mouth agape, I am watching a number of people I respect, like Andy McCarthy at NRO, become indistinguishable from Lanny Davis and James Carville during the Clinton-Lewinski scandal.

The fact that we have a story that was reported by Politico, or Pravda for that matter, is irrelevant because we know what they reported was correct. At some point in his tenure as president of the NRA, Herman Cain was the subject of two complaints of sexual harassment that resulted in settlements in the $35-45K range being paid to the complainants and the parties are bound by an non-disclosure agreement. The fact that we don’t know anything about the substance of the complaints is the responsibility of one man: Herman Cain. Through a period of four days Cain has engaged in evasions and outright lies over the events. But no one on the right seems to care very much about that as honesty is now a bug rather than a feature in our candidates. Because Politico.

Already people are lining up to accuse the women involved of being dishonest and predatory. We’re told they are anonymous allegations. We’re told that Cain can’t respond to unknown allegations. This is just crap on its face The women aren’t anonymous. The allegations aren’t unknown. The women and allegations were sufficiently known to allow the NRA to cut them checks. We, the American public, are kept in the dark because Herman Cain won’t ask the NRA to release all sides from the non-disclosure agreement. Because Politico.

Herman Cain’s pattern of lying about these incidents began in 2003, by his own admission, when he told his campaign manager there was one incident while he knew there were at least two settlements. This isn’t important. Because Politico.

We’re told that most sexual harassment claims are frivolous and people who make them are just paid off, willy nilly, to leave because of the expense of litigation. Is that true in your company? How many of you have wives, daughters, etc., who have sued their boss for sexual harassment just to collect the money? Can I have a show of hands? But we KNOW these cases are frivolous, even though Cain refuses to cooperate in getting the details out. Because Politico.

Cain and even ordinarily sensible guys like Rush Limbaugh are claiming that Cain is the victim of racism over this, do we really think any WHITE Republican would have received this level of support in a similar circumstance? No. But the allegations are racist. Because Politico.

This is just ridiculous.

Unlike my colleague Leon, I don’t see where anyone but Herman Cain has a responsibility to be concerned about Cain’s future political viability. A career which I have to note has not extended to actually being elected to anything in the past. He has created this mess and it is incumbent upon him, alone, to get out of it. We have enough bored dilettantes running for office out there as is so I find the loss of one underwhelming.

Herman Cain is running for president. It has been reported, quite accurately, that he has been the subject of two sexual harassment settlements. Yes, we all know that this particular accusation has been abused but we also know that sexual harassment does take place. It is incumbent on Cain to come clean on the facts and circumstances and let the voters judge. If he doesn’t he deserves whatever treatment he gets.

Regardless of the actual facts in the case, Herman Cain’s total absence of honesty and integrity since Sunday should be a clue as to the character of this candidate. It also serves as a clue to the truth of the allegations.

This is not a case of letting “the liberal media” choose our candidates. This is a case of a man who wants to be president having over a decade to prepare a response to an obvious question and refusing to do so. And when he is confronted, rather than candor and truthfulness he engages in attacks, lies, and evasions. We’ve elected two men like that to the White House in the past two decades and in both cases we’ve found that their behavior in office is, unsurprisingly, the same as it is out of office.

There is no way under the sun this man gets my vote for any office at any time.