Republicans Botch Planned Parenthood Hearings
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Sometimes republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
At the beginning of a five-hour committee hearing on Tuesday with Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards as the sole witness, Chairman Jason Chaffetz made a surprising announcement. The Utah congressman and oversight committee chairman said he wouldn't focus on the undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood's practice of harvesting and selling the organs and tissue of aborted babies to biotech companies.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/how-not-make-planned-parenthood-squirm_1038585.html?page=2
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Did not help that Chaffetz's "chart ambush" backfired...
Also not helping...- To date every state investigation of the video charges has found no evidence of wrong-doing. I think it's 8 states and counting... nine if you count Florida, where Gov. Scott pulled his state's report with the same conclusions, so his office could issue its own report.
- That every independent review of the 12-hours of "raw" footage has failed to note anything approaching the horrors Carly Fiorina tearfully claimed during the 2nd debate to have viewed.
Maybe there was a reason Chaffetz did not go the video route...
Facts matter...
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Congressman Ron DeSantis of Florida was one of the few Republicans to ask Richards directly about the undercover videotapes. In doing so, he showed just how much of a mistake it had been to focus on line items in Planned Parenthood's publicly available tax returns.
"Ms. Richards, if a child survives an abortion attempt should it be given nourishment and medical care?" DeSantis asked.
"I've never heard of such a circumstance happening," Richards said. "We don't provide abortions after viability so--but certainly in my experience at Planned Parenthood we haven't ever had that kind of circumstance."
"But you would say that medical care would be in order at that point?" DeSantis asked.
"I want to be responsible for Planned Parenthood and what we do there certainly in this situation which, again has never occurred that I know of a baby born, that baby should, as the mother should, get appropriate medical care from the physician and would," Richards replied.
Asked if she had watched all of the videos, Richards said: "I've watched many of the videos and I've read through all the transcripts."
DeSantis then turned to the eyewitness testimony in one video by a technician named Holly O'Donnell--the testimony cited by Carly Fiorina in the last Republican debate that has been the source of much controversy in the press.
DeSantis: There was one specific that there was a technician, Holly O'Donnell, she was describing harvesting the brain of a late-term boy, she said she wasn't sure if the baby was alive since its heart was still beating and she harvested its brain by cutting his head open starting with the chin. Do you recall that?
Richards: That woman does not work for Planned Parenthood, so I cannot speak to anything she said. I'm not responsible for her.DeSantis: Do you deny that her description of what happened is something that does occur in planned parenthood clinics?Richards: Abso--I have never. There is nothing she has ever described that I could attest to has ever happened.DeSantis:So you can categorically testify to that then?Richards:Categorically testify to what? I want to be very careful.DeSantis: That what she describes--Richards:Well, I don't remember that particular video of Holly O'Donnell, but I will tell you she has never worked at Planned Parenthood.I don't remember that particular video?
If Republicans were prepared, they would have had the videos ready to play at the moment Richards said the words "I don't remember that particular video." But the videos didn't begin to play, and DeSantis let Richards off the hook on this particular line of questioning as he tried to get in a couple more good questions before his five minutes of time for questioning ran out.
DeSantis's questioning pointed to a number of obvious follow-up questions, such as:
1. If Richards thinks a baby should get "appropriate medical care" if born alive during an abortion, why doesoppose the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, and why has President Obama threatened to veto it?2. What would constitute "appropriate medical care" for a baby born alive at 18 weeks into pregnancy?3. How would Planned Parenthood go about harvesting brain tissue from such a baby, and how would that differ from what Holly O'Donnell described?4. Why does Planned Parenthood oppose any legal limits on abortion when its own affiliates refuse to perform abortions past a certain gestational point?5. What's the difference between aborting a healthy baby of a healthy mother at 23 weeks into pregnancy and killing that same baby born alive at 23 weeks?There are many more questions that come to mind, but no one on the committee really pressed her on these issues. This was a failure both of establishment Republicans and staunch conservatives. -
Boehner's cowardice and smoochiness to the feared peelosi monster is
probably the reason....
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this "president" dirtbag would welcome that afghani pervert that was
assaulting young boys.
per his pedophile friend and mentor when he was a boy....
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ahh yes the pesky PAC - like gum stuck on the bottom of the shoe
Chaffetz would do well to put these guys as #3 and then cleanup....
and the follow through -
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Do fetuses have souls?
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