Public Policy; Policing Personal Preference and Planned Parenthood's Persistance

In a post today on RedState, John Hayward covers the recent address of Planned Parenthood by President Obama on Friday. In it he calls out "the most strident abortion radical ever elected to the White House" (in a somewhat paradoxical fashion) for not once using the word abortion, but he also works to back up other claims about Planned Parenthoods business practices and attempts to legitimize the narrative of the left's "failed economic policies and social degeneration(.)" The piece goes from reporting to a complete Op-Ed somewhere after the third paragraph, but the point is the same; public policy on the case of abortion has yet to be fully hammered out and in fact may never be. The divide created over Roe V. Wade in America is deep and incredibly complicated thanks to the diversity of the U.S. population and the significance of religious belief in shaping ideology and public policy as a whole. And while there are certainly a lot of detractors out there, there were also plenty of positive pieces written about the speech from a few "choice" outlets.

So where does all of this leave us? Well it leaves public policy still in turmoil as is the natural state for anything in which both sides think of themselves as socially-forward; thus we remain at political war. As Roe v. Wade continues to stand, those opposed to it continue to fight it in anyway they can short of ransacking the SCOTUS. But it also is a great example of the cycle of politics and how one organization can use its influence--and of course, its money-- to keep standing even in the face of those who say it supports killing infants. While of course those who are pro-choice face a number of challenges such as a sudden surge of restrictions on abortion rights that just go to show how public policy mirrors the discourse of the public at large, an established right being picked at by the minority in the hopes of reclaiming that lost ground and potentially leading to the deaths of hundreds of women at the hands of quack abortion doctors.

The future is bright my friends.

Bound (and waterboarded) for Justice

A recent article in the Huffington Post has pointed out that the systematic interrogation of terror suspects and detainees at places like Guantanamo Bay and CIA black sites using "enhanced interrogation techniques" has been deemed torture by an independent investigation. The Constitution Project has pointed the finger of responsibility for this lapse in integrity at senior officials throughout the Bush administration, as there was a press to do "whatever necessary" to keep the country safe after 9/11, even in the face of denying the ideals America tends to pride itself on. The key arguments the task force has put forth revolve around the use of smoke and mirrors like euphemistic language used by the U.S. government to cover up their own acts of torture, and the hypocrisy of doing so while condemning other nations for human rights violations that were close if not the same.  The release is also something of a rebuke to the Obama Administration's calls to move forward rather than dwell on the past and furthermore pushing the administration by being "critical of some Obama administration policies, especially what it calls excessive secrecy." The investigation further calls for an end to indefinite detention at places like Guantanamo Bay, and with the exceptions of Richard Epstein and Asa Hutchingson (two authors on the project) there was an overall agreement that the detainment center should be closed by 2014.

This could certainly be called a dark chapter in the history of the United States of America, and the recent bombing in Boston certainly smacks of what kicked our need for "homeland security" into high gear. But what we have here is a detailing of why aggressive policies that seek a sort of preemptive strike against insurgency can never work. In its zeal to find a satisfying close to the war on terror and ensure the safety of its citizens, instead the U.S. began dropping rights from the people through unconstitutional legislative spyware like the PATRIOT Act and a sudden zest for extraordinary renditions that often accompanied tortures and forced feedings. The U.S. is no longer the shining city on the hill Reagen conjured in the minds of the people when we allow ourselves to sink into the mire of suspended rights and no judicial oversight. The sword and the scales are the tools of lady justice, but as we've moved her blindfold onto the eyes of the people, we see that the use of the sword only fulfills itself; the fastest way to create a terrorist is to treat him like one and above all giving him a reason to hate America.