Obama’s Record Speaks for Itself

Mixed messages will fly during these days of commencement flurry. Who is Notre Dame honoring?

Michelle Malkin sees a showdown in the making. I would perfer heavenly intervention (thunder and lightening would do.) I would be glad to settle for Catholics being Catholics. What are the chances?

President  Obama will give a speech in which his “gift” of gab will leave both sides of the Life issue thinking he gave them something.  In the end, for every 23 seconds of Obama’s speech, a human being will have died by abortion without audacious HOPE or  CHOICE.

Gallop Poll – Pro-life exceeds Pro-Abort

The truth of the value of one human life does not rest on a poll, but as a sign of hope in a very dark time for our country it does show movement in the direction of the law written on the heart. HotAir reports the good news with the results of the latest Gallop Poll:

“May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion and 42% “pro-choice.” This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.”

“The new results, obtained from Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002.

The May 2009 survey documents comparable changes in public views about the legality of abortion. In answer to a question providing three options for the extent to which abortion should be legal, about as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%). This contrasts with the last four years, when Gallup found a strong tilt of public attitudes in favor of unrestricted abortion.”

Opposition to Abortion Growing

Light on the horizon?….Michael Novak amazed at the numbers in the latest Pew Research survey showing opposition to legal abortion in growing.

The latest Pew Research survey (April 30) shows an amazing drop in support for legal abortion since August 2008, and a corresponding jump in numbers of those who now hold that abortion should be made illegal in most or all cases. This trend shows an astonishing rise in resistance to abortion among people of all ages, and an eye-catching jump in opposition to abortion among moderate and liberal Republicans.

Read the entire report here.

Civil Rights At the Heart Of Abortion

A question of truth, a question of conversion; the Anchoress asks can Obama be converted on abortion?  I ask, and I think posterity will ask, how can this black man, who knows the Black Man’s pain of Slavery, the history of popular resistance to change, who knows the history of  a Stephen Douglas ignoring an Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln who finally pricked Douglas into debate by clubbing him verbally, until, as Edward T. Oakes, S.J. says, “Douglas finally had to take notice of Lincoln’s ceaseless hammering away at Douglas’ ‘pro-choice’ platform (which said, in effect, ‘I’m personally opposed to slavery but can’t impose my choice on other states, including other Norther states.’),” not only ignore but side against so utterly defenseless a part of American humanity? ” How can such a man, now President of a country, founded on the principal that all men are created equal, now consent in his heart of hearts to  discriminate against the obviously created human person growing from day to day, as all men grow, just because he/she is still under the protection of a mother’s womb.

How can this President, the citizen of the greatest free nation, ever, be content while people conspire to deprive the weakest most dependent members of their civil rights; when to steal or negate life, black,white, red,yellow, male, female,old or young, is intrinsically evil and morally wrong?  How can this be-gifted man standby, a blind, deaf, and mute creature, while this glaring, screaming, appealing and appalling issue of Civil Rights is left to cry in the arms of Lady Justice?

The questions continue, nagging and still unanswered.  How can a professor, a teacher, a sworn defender of the Constitution, forget the cries of these similarly beleaguered, disenfranchised, these who endure discrimination, these forgotten and forbidden human beings? Is it simply that they have no power, but the power to be, while Obama,  himself, who knows the benefits of life, and the gifts of God and has sworn an oath in the Creator’s Name, forsake his power refusing just consideration? Could he not use his powers of rhetoric to acknowledge our posterity and his power of intellect to comprehend their potential? How can such a man claim his “pay grade” justifies the “choice” not to chose life or engage his own reason and heart and soul?

The buck Mr. President not only stops here but demands you at least use the means you possess; ears, eyes and brain to watch a simple, state of the art and science, video of life in the womb. The thumb-sucking, kicking, jumping, hiccupping creature you see before you may well declare the reality; “I am here, now.  I am alive, unless you allow my life to come to naught.”

What price freedom; what price honesty? History begs you not to hide behind polls and politics.  Don’t ask people with vested interests in the abortion industry, or who purchase human parts for research, who like slave owners count it lose if right prevails. Ask Martin Luther King, Jr. when you should stand for the civil right SIMPLY TO BE!

Obama’s First 100 Days Counter to Glendon’s Life Work

Elizabeth Lev, daughter of Mary Ann Glendon has responded to this written by Kaitlyn Riely at Politics Daily.  Riely,speaking of Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, says:

“But Glendon has been trained in diplomacy. Shouldn’t being in the same place and engaging someone of an opposing view be right up her alley? Wouldn’t the better decision be to use her platform — or at least her proximity — to persuade Obama to change his views? Her diplomatic style seems to be less suited for U.S.-Vatican relations and more for U.S.-Cuba relations.”

Reponse by Elizabeth Lev, Mary Ann Glendon’s daughter:

“The Laetare Medal is the highest honor conferred on Catholics in the United States. For a Catholic, it has greater prestige than a Nobel Prize for a scientist or an Academy Award for an actor, as the award is given for career-long achievement, for “staying the course” in the words of St. Paul. It doesn’t just showcase a single discovery or film role.


To renounce it, therefore, is not the lightest of matters. Professor Glendon has spent a month thinking, consulting, and given her deep faith, praying about this decision. (This, for those of you who don’t know, means asking God to help one put aside one’s own personal concerns and act in the way that will produce the greatest good). (Kaitlyn) Riely’s dismissive “thanks, no thanks” rendering of her decision, while pithy, is reductive.

Professor Glendon was to have been honored for not only for her scholarship, but for her second career, her pro-bono work — ranging from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the great civil rights issues of the present day — namely, the defense of human life from conception to natural death. Her concerns range from the aging and dying population to the unborn to the well-being and dignity of every life, regardless of race, religion, or economic status. Her outstanding work in this field has earned her the respect of the most brilliant minds of the international community, regardless of whether they agree with her position. So again, to see her merely as “strongly anti-abortion” instead of as a tireless defender of the dignity of life, is to reveal not only a lack of understanding of the subject’s work, but also the writer’s real interest in this question.

Furthermore, during his first 100 days in office, President Obama has worked tirelessly to undermine Professor Glendon’s lifetime of work; he is funding abortion out of the bailout package and planning to suppress the protection of conscience for health care workers.

Your notion that her “training in diplomacy” might somehow ease this situation does not take into account that she has a five-minute acceptance speech and he will have a lengthy commencement speech. There is no “engaging” here. Diplomacy generally teaches that if you have a rapier and your opponent has a missile launcher, try not to engage.

That Professor Glendon “did not like that Notre Dame was claiming her speech would serve to balance the event” is again facile and simplistic. What is there to like in being the deflector screen for inviting a profoundly divisive figure to give the commencement speech? What is likeable about a Catholic University named for the most important woman in Christianity exploiting a woman who has already dedicated her life to protecting the Church’s teaching by turning her into a warm-up act for a grotesque twist on a reality show?

Finally, after 50 Catholic bishops condemned the university for its direct defiance in honoring a man in open conflict with the Church’s teaching, it is right that Professor Glendon let her silence speak louder than her five-minute allotment of words would have.
Readers might be wondering how I know all this. Well, for one I am her daughter, but more to the point, I read her letter with the careful consideration it deserves.”

Elizabeth Lev is an art historian and writer based in Rome, where all of her three children were born… more

Michelle Malkin sums up Obama’s first 100

Liberals Want to See Shameful Photographs

Our President seems bent on shaming America before the world with pictures.  Not for the faint of heart, but here are the pictures that should shame the President and the world.

Priests for Life reports:

Baby Body Parts

Priests for Life has known for some time of the grisly trade in baby parts taking place in abortion facilities throughout the nation. Through the efforts of our friends at Life Dynamics, Inc., the details of this trade have come to light. You may obtain from Life Dynamics (1-800-401-6494) copies of the actual order forms used. Some of the forms request that there be no abnormalities. Many mistakenly think that abortions in later stages of pregnancy are performed only in cases of fetal abnormality.

Fetal tissue wholesalers are companies which place employees in abortion clinics to harvest tissue, limbs, organs, etc. from aborted babies. This material is then shipped to researchers working for universities, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies. Although it is against federal law to sell human tissue or body parts, these organizations have devised a system to circumvent this restriction. Technically, all fetal material they harvest is “donated” to them by the clinics. However, they do pay a “site fee” to the clinics for the right to access the tissue. The tissue is then “donated” to the researchers who in turn pay the wholesalers for the cost of retrieval. Profit is realized by the wholesalers’ ability to set their own retrieval fees.

As to the harsh realities of keeping our country safe, the Gateway Pundit says Fox reports:

The release of the photos along with Obama’s decision last week to release CIA memos has federal agents feeling dispirited.
Jake Tapper reported:

Calling the ACLU push to release the photographs “prurient” and “reprehensible,” Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production, tells ABC News that the Obama administration should have taken the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

“They should have fought it all the way; if they lost, they lost,” Lowenthal said. “There’s nothing to be gained from it. There’s no substantive reason why those photos have to be released.”

Lowenthal said the president’s moves in the last week have left many in the CIA dispirited, based on “the undercurrent I’ve been getting from colleagues still in the building, or colleagues who have left not that long ago.”

“We ask these people to do extremely dangerous things, things they’ve been ordered to do by legal authorities, with the understanding that they will get top cover if something goes wrong,” Lowenthal says. “They don’t believe they have that cover anymore.” Releasing the photographs “will make it much worse,” he said.

Along the same lines of disclosures that hurt our country, Michelle Malkin points to the Rasmussen report in her, “Public to White House”:

Results from the latest Rasmussen poll show a public more in tune with Dick Cheney than George Soros:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) believe the Obama administration’s recent release of CIA memos about the harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects endangers the national security of the United States. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 28% believe the release of the memos helps America’s image abroad.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of voters now believe the U.S. legal system worries too much about protecting individual rights when national security is at stake. But 21% say the legal system is too concerned about protecting national security. Thirty-three percent (33%) say the balance between the two is about right.

This reflects a significant shift over the past couple of years. In several surveys conducted during 2008, Americans were fairly evenly divided as to whether our legal system worried too much about individual rights or too much about protecting national security…

…Forty-six percent (46%) of voters disagree with Obama’s decision to close the prison camp for terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, while 36% agree with the president’s action. Support for the decision has fallen since the president announced it in January.

Ed Morrissey says more:

Instead of the headlines being about what the Bush administration sanctioned, they became about Nancy Pelosi’s denial and then non-denial of her knowledge on waterboarding interrogations, the success of the interrogations in preventing an attack, and Obama’s lack of testicular fortitude in sticking with his original position to let sleeping dogs lie. Small wonder that he began backtracking in earnest yesterday when meeting with Congressional leaders.

Now we have confirmation that Obama planned this all along as a political attack against a man who hardly matters on the national political scene any longer – or at least he didn’t until Obama decided to pick a fight with him. Just as with his strange attack on Rush