There’s no question that anti-abortion activist David Daleiden surreptitiously recorded healthcare and biomedical services employees across the state of California with the intent of discrediting the healthcare provider, Planned Parenthood — something his heavily edited videos failed to do. There’s also no question that it’s against state law to record confidential conversations without the consent of all the parties involved.
But that doesn’t mean that California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra should have charged Daleiden and his co-conspirator, Susan Merritt, with 15 felony counts — one for each of the 14 people recorded, and a 15th for conspiracy. It’s disturbingly aggressive for Becerra to apply this criminal statute to people who were trying to influence a contested issue of public policy, regardless of how sound or popular that policy may be. Planned Parenthood and biomedical company StemExpress, which was also featured in the videos, have another remedy for the harm that was done to them: They can sue Daleiden and Merritt for damages. The state doesn’t need to threaten the pair with prison time.
The videos — recorded in California and elsewhere — were published online nearly two years ago by Daleiden’s organization, the Center for Medical Progress. They caused an uproar, energizing anti-abortion activists and prompting threats against abortion providers. Officials of Planned Parenthood, whose staff members were seen on some of the recordings, denied any wrongdoing and were outraged that the tapes appeared edited to make it sound as if they were selling fetal tissue.
Daleiden describes the effort as journalism, although his methods were decidedly not those employed by respectable reporters. He and Merritt allegedly concocted fake identities and business records to dupe Planned Parenthood officials into taking the pair into their confidence, and misrepresented themselves throughout. Nevertheless, as misguided as they were, their aim was to change people’s views on important and controversial issues — abortion and fetal tissue research.
In similar cases, we have denounced moves to criminalize such behavior, especially in the case of animal welfare investigators who have gone undercover at slaughterhouses and other agricultural businesses to secretly record horrific and illegal abuses of animals. That work, too, is aimed at revealing wrongdoing and changing public policy.
That’s why the state law forbidding recording of conversations should be applied narrowly, and to clear and egregious violations of privacy where the motive is personal gain.
When the LA Times says you might have overreached, you have really overreached!
This is possibly one the best videos to come out of the White House, in a very long time. Some might complain that this was overly produced and might even look like a propaganda video. However, I say, I would rather have slickly produced videos, that promote the love of this Country, than doom and gloom.
I hate to be the one to say this, but, I absolutely knew that this was going to happen.
This is not to say that this sort of thing doesn’t happen all the time in Washington DC. But, the New York Times acts like it’s something rather new:
WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders, facing a revolt among conservatives and moderates in their ranks, pulled legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act from consideration on the House floor Friday in a major defeat for President Trump on the first legislative showdown of his presidency.
“We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, conceded.
The failure of the Republicans’ three-month blitz to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement exposed deep divisions in the Republican Party that the election of a Republican president could not mask. It cast a long shadow over the ambitious agenda that Mr. Trump and Republican leaders had promised to enact once their party assumed power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
And it was the biggest defeat of Mr. Trump’s young presidency, which has suffered many. His travel ban has been blocked by the courts. Allegations of questionable ties to the Russian government forced out his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. Tensions with key allies such as Germany, Britain and Australia are high, and Mr. Trump’s approval ratings are at historic lows.
President Trump basically spells it out right here:
That my friends is how the normal government process works. It was nothing big, it was nothing devastating to the president of the United States or his presidency. It’s simply how government works.
Think maybe somebody could tell that to the liberal media?
Hey guys… I’m dictating this blog posting via my phone, because I don’t feel like typing.
I’ve made some changes around here and I wanted to let everybody know that does come here and read.
I removed the Christianity section, I’ve removed the mentions in the media, accusations of racism and bigotry and the Salvation part of this blog.
Here are the reasons why I have removed all that stuff. First of all, why I have removed the Christianity part of this blog is this right here: for one, I don’t believe I am even remotely qualified to sit and talk about Christianity in any sort of depth anymore. I am so far removed from the Church world anymore, that it isn’t even really funny. I am also not exactly lined up with the independent fundamental Baptist Church anymore. I have not attended one of those churches since 2006. Don’t misunderstand me I still love the King James Bible and I still am a fundamental Baptist doctrinally and only doctrinally.
I haven’t attended one of those churches in a long time and I’m not exactly enamored with the church world anymore. Some people would say that I am a backslidden Christian. I disagree. I don’t take any illegal drugs ,I do not drink, I do vape instead of smoke. But, I don’t go to church anymore. So, having that sort of section on my blog here; is kind of hypocritical in my book.
Also too, I will not be removing any of the old postings on this blog on the topic of Christianity. But, I will most likely not be writing on that subject anymore, unless something drastic happens. In short, I am leaving the Jesus stuff to the Jesus bloggers. 😉 😛 😀 🙂
Now as for the mentions in the media section and the defending against the accusations of racism and bigotry section; A lot of those accusations that were brought against me by bloggers many years ago are quite dated and quite frankly a lot of the people who brought those accusations, I haven’t seen hide or hair of them on the internet in a long time. I decided to remove the mentions in the media part. A lot of that stuff was mentions that happened many years ago as a matter fact the mayor of Detroit who answered me on Twitter is now cooling his heels in a jail in Texas!
So, I decided to remove all those pages. There are plenty of people out there who are promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ even fundamental Baptists doing that and if you want to know more about that stuff, I suggest you find one of their pages. As for me this blog is about politics and the defense against the Marxist Left, who wishes to remove any sort of Christian conservative thought in this country.
Do not misunderstand me, I do not believe that you can separate conservatism from Christianity. Now having said that I don’t believe in a church-state. I am not a Kingdom now theology type Christian, nor am I a neoconservative. But, I believe that conservative values and Conservative Christian values do go together. I just don’t believe that we should be trying to rig the government to become a theocracy, if that makes any sense
As you probably have noticed, I have avoided this blog a bit. I just haven’t been writing mainly because politics since the election of Donald Trump has become incredibly stupid, even more stupid than it was, when Barack Obama was President. Quite frankly, I’m burned out on all of it and I really just haven’t been looking at the news and wondering what next thing that President Donald Trump has said to cause the liberal media to go into a full-body tizzy.
I have also been spending a lot of time playing American Truck Simulator. I bought, as I said in a earlier post; a gaming laptop and I’ve spent a lot of time gaming.
So, there you have it what I’ve been up to and why I made some of the changes that I made on this blog. I hope you understand and one of these days when the stupid dies down and bloggers on the right and the left start writing about substantive issues about this country, I may come back and add my voice to the conversation.
Well, it’s official we’re two days into a massive power outage around here in my neighborhood. This all started yesterday around 4 o’clock in the afternoon, after we had 60 mile an hour winds come blowing through here and the power flickered a few times and finally went out. I’m dictating this to my blog via text to speech on my Galaxy View 18.4. Needless to say I’m blogging via flashlight and accessing the internet via 4G LTE on my Samsung Galaxy S6 phone.
I will keep this short because they mobile hotspot feature on my phone is killing my battery so I will simply say this pray for us here because the temperature is supposed to go down to 26 degrees outside and we have no heat and they’re saying that the electricity around here will not be restored until Sunday. You’re really got to love DTE Energy, which is a union ran Electric Company. I believe that in times like this that the minimum wage that those guys make should be suspended and they should be paid based upon performance and not an hourly wage. I also believe their Union contract should be temporarily suspended until this big power outage is over. I bet that power would get turned on really quick then.