More Footage From Live Action Still Nothing To Support Their Claims
Live Action's latest undercover video of a Planned Parenthood health center is notable for one thing and one thing only: Lila Rose still cannot do away with the simple fact that Planned Parenthood reported potential sex trafficking to law enforcement officials.Live Action and Lila Rose appear to be the new James O'Keefes of the rabid right conservatives. Since they cannot make their case with the truth - some lies and highly edited video will do. Both intellectually and emotionally conservatives seem incapable of honest debate.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Rose and her cohorts have backed down from their ludicrous accusations. Indeed, in a press release accompanying the new video, Rose insists that her organization's efforts have unveiled an "institutional crisis" within Planned Parenthood, an organization she claims is "willing to aid and abet the sexual exploitation of minors and young girls."
It's worth noting here that in at least one of the Live Action videos exposing this so-called "institutional crisis," a Planned Parenthood employee actively tells people who claim to be sex workers that clinics are required to report statutory rape.
Happy Birthday to the guy with a Pleasant demeanor with supported the murder of thousands - Reagan’s Third-World Reign of Terror
As the nation pays tribute to Ronald "Dutch" Reagan on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, media coverage is every bit as laudatory as when he turned 90. I wrote in 2001 about PBS's fawning tributes on the Charlie Rose show and the Jim Lehrer NewsHour. Then, as now, one of the most glaring omissions was the human cost of his foreign policies. In the interest of filling out the Reagan portrait, let us consider a few regions unfortunate enough to capture his attention, starting with Central America.
In January 1981, the newly inaugurated Reagan inherited Jimmy Carter's policy of supporting a Salvadoran government controlled by a military that, along with the security forces and affiliated death squads, killed about 10,000 civilians in 1980. In the first 27 months of the Reagan administration, perhaps another 20,000 civilians were killed. El Salvador's labor movement was decimated, the opposition press exterminated, opposition politicians murdered or driven into exile, the church martyred.
In April 1983, seeking to shore up shaky public and congressional support for continued aid to El Salvador, Reagan went on national television before a joint session of Congress and -- with a straight face -- praised the Salvadoran government for "making every effort to guarantee democracy, free labor unions, freedom of religion, and a free press." The Great Communicator/Prevaricator achieved his objective; aid -- and blood -- continued to flow.
In neighboring Nicaragua, the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship slaughtered perhaps 40,000 civilians from 1977 to 1979 in a desperate bid to hold power. Candidate Reagan was sad to see Somoza go, and once in office his administration turned to officers from Somoza's hated National Guard to spearhead a "liberation" movement. Known as the contras, they never managed to hold a single Nicaraguan town in their eight years as Reagan's proxy army, though they were quite proficient at raping, torturing and killing defenseless civilians. Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans died in a war that never would have been were it not for good ol' Dutch.
A common criticism of Reagan is that this self-proclaimed fighter against the scourge of terrorism traded with a designated "terrorist state" -- the hostage-holding fundamentalist regime in Iran -- to generate funds for the contras after Congress turned off the tap. That's true as far as it goes. But the contras themselves were terrorists, as were those elements of the Honduran army that the CIA and Ollie North employed to help the contras, as was the notorious Salvadoran air force that assisted in the contra resupply effort. All murdered noncombatants to achieve political objectives. If they were "terrorists" -- and if words have meaning, they were -- what does that make their paymaster and cheerleader in the Oval Office?
In Guatemala, after the "born-again butcher" Efrain Rios Montt implemented in 1982 a scorched-earth military campaign that left thousands of Indian civilians dead, Reagan was furious. Not at our blood-soaked ally, but at Amnesty International and others who documented his depridations. Rios Montt was getting a "bum rap," Reagan whined.
