From Washington:

Jan 25, 2011 / 05:47 am

Around 10,000 Catholics, many of them young people from schools around the nation, met to pray for an end to abortion at a pro-life vigil Mass in D.C. on the eve of the annual March for Life.

The Opening Mass of the National Prayer Vigil for Life was held at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on Jan. 23. On Jan. 24, crowds thronged to the D.C. area to participate in the annual March for Life, which occurs near the date that Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the U.S. in 1973.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston and chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, was the principal celebrant and homilist at the vigil Mass. During his remarks to the thousands in attendance on Sunday night – including numerous bishops, priests, seminarians and religious – he underscored the significance in the amount of young people participating in the annual March for Life.

“I want to thank all the young people here, the seminarians, postulants and novices, the children, youth in high schools, the university students and young adults,” he said. “You have been, have become and remain the genuine leaders and pioneers of this March for Life and this Vigil Liturgy.”

“We your elders become exhausted just watching you!” he said. “May you never cease to give your beautiful witness to the gift of human life.”

Cardinal DiNardo also reflected on the “astonishment” of the “jaded media” at the young people who have gathered from throughout the U.S. to serve as “unflagging witnesses to the inestimable worth of each human person.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

In a Monday Associated Press dispatch, reporter Tom Krisher virtually celebrated the idea that Government/General Motors “may be Number 1 again,” with happy talk of “dethroning” and “overtaking” Toyota.

Nowhere did Krisher mention the inconvenient fact that Toyota’s revenues dwarf GM’s to the point where comparing unit sales is an absurd waste of time. Specifically:

• Toyota’s sales from its automotive operations for the first six months of its fiscal year (April through September, 2010) amounted to 8,863.6 billion yen (go to the segment information in the report), which translates to roughly $104 billion at an average exchange rate of 85 yen to the dollar.
• GM’s revenues during those same two quarters were $67.2 billion.
• Thus, Toyota’s auto operations are over 50% larger than all of GM. We’re supposed to be impressed that GM is close to selling the same number of cars? We wouldn’t be if Krisher had chosen to report revenues, something any who follows business news would clearly have wanted to know.

Here are a few paragraphs of Krisher’s free advertising — er, report:

Resurgent GM nips at Toyota’s heels in sales race

General Motors has a shot at being No. 1 again.

The resurgent automaker reported Monday that its worldwide sales last year came within 30,000 of beating Japanese rival Toyota, which took a big hit because of safety recalls.

GM is hiring, producing more and basking in a better reputation for quality. It expects to sell even more cars and trucks this year, putting it within reach of the title of biggest in the world – an honor it held for 76 years before losing it in 2008.

… Dana Rouse, a union official at the pickup truck factory here, called overtaking Toyota the Heisman Trophy of the auto business.

“We’re going to take Toyota on, and the people in Flint are going to be a part of that,” he said. “This is the birthplace of General Motors. We kind of take it a little more seriously than maybe some other towns.”

… Now GM is outselling Toyota in fast-growing China, and its U.S. business is bouncing back. To overtake Toyota, it needs a sales increase of half a percentage point, about the number of Chevy Silverado pickup trucks it sells per month in the U.S.

Toyota is still wounded from recalls of more than 10 million vehicles, mainly to fix gas pedals and floor mats that could make cars speed out of control.

… Dethroning Toyota, experts say, might also help GM with marketing, even if it adds little value to the business. Their advice: GM, which has shed four of its weaker brands in recent years, should focus not on size but on making money.

… GM’s global sales grew by a dramatic 12 percent last year, and it turned a $4.2 billion profit in the first nine months of the year. Financial results for the final three months of 2010 aren’t in yet, but more profit is expected.

Krisher also erred in at least these items not excerpted:

• He claimed that GM took “nearly $50 billion in government help.” No Tom, it’s far more than that. Even if your “nearly $50 billion” in direct aid is the correct figure (I believe it’s low), there’s the roughly $17.5 billion it won’t have to pay on its first $50 billion in profits thanks to being helped through TARP. Companies emerging from bankruptcy as new entities normally don’t get that break. And that’s even before considering the money shoveled into GMAC.
• He also asserts that GM “has limited rebates and low-interest financing.” Even a casual TV viewer should know that the alleged limit on low-interest financing Krisher cites is a product of his imagination. GM has been aggressively promoting 0% interest for 60 months almost since it came out of bankruptcy, and more recently has been pushing no payments for the first 90 days. As to rebates, this table from Edmunds shows that GM level of rebates was higher than any other of the Big Six makers in December 2010, November 2010, and December 2009 (though by narrowing amounts in more recent months). Who do you think you’re kidding, Tom?

And of course, Krisher never mentioned any of the other thuggish assistance GM has received from Uncle Sam, ranging from ripoffs of disfavored creditors in bankruptcy to far more aggressive and from all appearances orchestrated use of product recalls against its larger rival. Why let the facts get in the way of a phony story, right Tom?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

In an editorial this morning (“Ho-Hum Horror; Roe at 38″):

Obama did not refer to the word “abortion” (in his official statement “celebrating” the anniversary of Roe v. Wade), preferring instead to discuss “reproductive freedom” and the “fundamental principle” that “government should not intrude on private family matters.” The stories about Gosnell were a little less abstract. They told of a clinic where dirty instruments spread venereal disease, cats roamed and defecated freely, and some patients died. The state government conducted essentially no oversight; administrations of both parties wanted to keep abortion as free from governmental intrusion as possible.

Gosnell’s Philadelphia clinic’s lack of hygiene is not the detail that has captured the most attention, or inspired the most outrage. It turns out that Gosnell frequently, perhaps hundreds of times, fully delivered intact fetuses and then used scissors on the newborn. In his words, he engaged in “snipping” to “ensure fetal demise.” In many cases, the fetuses were in the third trimester.

This procedure, sometimes called a “live-birth abortion,” is illegal. But not thanks to President Obama. As a state legislator in Illinois, he argued that the law should offer no protection to neonates if they had been delivered before viability. He said that protecting them would violate Roe v. Wade and undermine the right to abortion. What looked like infanticide to most people was for him, it must be inferred, a “private family matter.” When Gosnell applied his scissors to pre-viable children, he was, on Obama’s terms, merely exercising a cherished freedom.

Credit Obama with a real insight: The physical location of a human being conceived five months ago may mark the difference between whether he is considered a “fetus” or an “infant,” but it cannot mark a moral difference. Nor can it make a moral difference whether this being is partly inside the womb.

… Start with the correct view that location does not matter; add the liberal view that partial-birth abortion is justified whenever an abortionist says so; and it is hard to escape the conclusion that a live-birth abortion is justified whenever an abortionist rules it the safest method of killing.

… In the academy, as well, liberals have been notoriously unable to articulate defenses of abortion that do not justify infanticide, and not particularly eager to try.

… Concluding his statement, President Obama said, “I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.” Let us commit ourselves to ensuring that our sons and daughters have the opportunity to live; an opportunity cruelly snatched away from more than 50 million human beings since the day the president commemorated.

If location doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t, then there’s really nothing to stop a parent or parents, as long as they have guardianship responsibilities, from making “private” decisions to kill their underage child for any reason.

If location doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t, there’s nothing to stop a guardian — or a doctor overruling a guardian who wishes to provide care — from denying treatment or ordinary care to senile, dementia-ridden, or otherwise “inconvenient” dependents or patients.

Indeed, location doesn’t matter. That’s why protection of life from conception to natural death is the only morally viable position.

Interesting Admission of the Weekend, via Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters: “Krugman Shocker — 1990s Economic Boom ‘Had Nothing Much To Do With Bill Clinton.’”

Everyone should know that. It arose primarily from the first two years of the Gingrich Congress, the capital-gains tax cut of 1997 … and now-Ohio Governor John Kasich.

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Mudville Gazette (HT Instapundit) looks at what happened to certain former military members involved in the Iraq antiwar movement. Instapundit’s succinct summation: “They used to be useful idiots. Then they stopped being useful.”

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Bias at the Blade (HT Maggie Thurber) — Tom Troy’s contrasting descriptions of Policy Matters Ohio and the Buckeye Institute give away his disposition:

The Cleveland-based (Policy Matters Ohio) think tank didn’t disappoint in its Dec. 30 statewide news conference in which it issued a sharply worded statement in support of public sector collective bargaining, a challenge to what Ohio’s labor and progressive community sees as an anti-union agenda from the state’s new governor, John Kasich.

“Labor and progressive community”? Which leftist flyer were you cribbing from, Tom?

Note that Troy doesn’t directly describe PPM as liberal or leftists. For the record, here’s how far left:

In 2008, the Nation magazine named Policy Matters the most valuable state or regional organization in the country.

Our mission is to create a more fair, prosperous, sustainable and inclusive Ohio, through research, media work and policy advocacy. Ohio faces enormous challenges from the global recession, three decades of deindustrialization, rising inequality, and global warming.

The Nation describes itself as “the flagship of the left. PPM must have missed the memo that “global warming” is now “climate change.” Add PPM to the believers in what has clearly been exposed as the global warming hoax.

The Blade’s Tom Troy isn’t at all cryptic about the Buckeye Institute:

Recently, the conservative Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions offered an alternative opinion on the subject.

The core problem is that public-sector employees in general are making way more than the private-sector people who pay their salaries, and that collective bargaining is creating most of the unwaranted advantage:

According to U.S. Department of Labor data for 2009, the average wage in collective bargaining states was $51,064 for state workers and $41,457 for local government workers, while the average wage in states without collective bargaining was $46,025 for state workers and $32,560 for local workers, (the Buckeye Institute’s) Mr. Mayer said.

That’s before figuring vastly different health, retirement and other benefits.

USA Today’s August comparison showed that the total comp package for state and local workers averaged $69,913, compared to $61,051 in the private sector. Correlating with the Buckeye Institute’s numbers, it look like all or nearly all of the roughly $8,900 difference would be found in the states with collective bargaining.

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The aforementioned Ms. Thurber has a very informative post on “me-too” union contract clauses.

I’m guessing that most people don’t know about these (until today, that included me), which she explained four years ago:

When it comes to union negotiations, government unions have it made. Most contracts with public unions contain what’s known as a ‘me-too’ clause. Meaning that anytime a union within the government’s jurisdiction gets a benefit, the other unions get it too.

In some instances, this is politically expedient…if you’re able to negotiate a 2% pay increase with one union, you’ve got better standing for sticking with a 2% pay increase for other unions.

But in other instances, such provisions are extremely costly and negate the value of the concept of ‘negotiation.’

On Friday, she further noted that “me-too” turns into “not us” when contract concessions occur, at least in Toledo:

the city – meaning council and the mayor – have previously agreed that any ‘economic’ benefit that the Firefighters or the Command Officers may negotiate, regardless of what they give up in order to get it, must be given to the members of the TPPA (The Toledo Police Patrolman’s Association). These are the legally-binding terms the city must meet as they approved the contract and the language.

One-way “me-too” is apparently pretty common. It’s also a taxpayer ripoff — in both directions.

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“Politico’s Photo Trickery.” Here’s the photo. No bias there, eh?

Nice story.

At Investors Business Daily:

The union idea of civil discourse is to protest outside opponents’ private homes. Now union supporters are targeting a developer , with fliers showing a bull’s-eye and his home address.

Cue the chirping crickets. That will be the soundtrack for mainstream media reaction to the latest example of thuggery perpetrated by Wal-Mart opponents who are not happy that the non-union retailer wants to build a Wal-Mart-anchored development on the site of an abandoned Chevy dealership in Washington, D.C. The development would employ up to 1,200 people in a city with 10.2% unemployment.

A group calling itself Wal-Mart Free DC is organizing a protest, not at one of the proposed sites or at Wal-Mart headquarters, but at the private home of the developer. A flier produced by the group gives his name and home address and invites protesters to assemble on his front lawn. Oh, yes: There’s a smiley face centered on some cross hairs on the flier.

The group claims no formal union affiliation, yet prominently displayed on the group’s website are links to sites such as WalMartWatch funded by Service Employees International Union and United Commercial and Food Workers International Union. Certainly they are employing the thuggish tactics used before by the purple shirts of SEIU.

Sarah Palin’s position indicators (third item at link)? Bad. Cross hairs on a flier targeting a specific individual at his home? What’s the big deal?

There’s a larger lesson for Wal-Mart in all of this.

Wal-Mart supported Obamacare. If the company thought this would buy it any kind of peace, it was sadly mistaken. There is no appeasing the union thug-driven far left.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, July 2009:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

New York Times; January 23, 2011 (“Squalid Abortion Clinic Escaped State Oversight”):

On Wednesday, the Philadelphia district attorney, Seth Williams, indicted Dr. (Kermit) Gosnell on eight counts of murder in the deaths of seven infants and a Bhutanese refugee who died after a late-term abortion in 2009.

A grand jury report issued on the same day offered its own theory on why so little happened for so long.

“We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color,” the report said, “and because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion.”

Does Ms. Ginsburg find the grand jury’s theory a bug or a feature?

From Washington:

Jan 21, 2011 / 06:08 am

Catholic politician and public servant Robert Sargent Shriver died on Jan. 18 at the age of 95 in Bethesda, Maryland. He was remembered for his faith and leadership, his service to the poor and his prominent stand as a pro-life Democrat.

“Today we mourn the passing of one of America’s most beloved and respected citizens,” Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston, commented.

Shriver was born to a prominent Maryland family on Nov. 9, 1915. He was educated in law at Yale University and served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during the Second World War. He married Eunice Kennedy in the early 1950s and served on the Catholic Interracial Council of Chicago. His brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, appointed Shriver to create the Peace Corps program which sends American volunteers to developing countries to teach and to work on community projects.

As head the Office of Economic Opportunity, Shriver led many government efforts to combat poverty. His office developed the Head Start program, the Volunteers in Service to America and Job Corps.

His political life included service as U.S. ambassador to France, a vice-presidential run in 1972 and a run for president in 1976.

He later became president and chairman of the Special Olympics, which his wife founded.

The last years of his life included a struggle with Alzheimer ’s disease. His daughter Maria Shriver, a former television journalist and former First Lady of California, published a children’s book on the subject.

Shriver leaves behind five children and 19 grandchildren. His wife Eunice died in 2009.

In a Jan. 18 statement, Cardinal O’Malley described him as a “champion” for millions of people and as a man dedicated to his family and public service.

Go here for the rest of the story.

In an Associated Press report by Patrick Walters yesterday afternoon, the following two reasons were offered as to why the Philadelphia abortion “clinic” operated by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who was arrested and charged earlier this week “with murdering seven babies and one woman who went to him for an abortion,” had not been inspected since 1993:

• Democratic former Governor Ed Rendell, who left office on Tuesday after eight years as Keystone State chief executive, claimed that officials at the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH), in the AP’s words, “didn’t think its authority extended to abortion clinics.”
• The grand jury indictment of Dr. Gosnell says that DOH “decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all.”

According to the indictment handed down against Gosnell, the hard-to-handle first explanation (If DOH doesn’t have jurisdiction, who does? No one?) is a subset of the second, i.e., the opinion on lack of jurisdiction was part of a longer-term effort to come up with reasons to avoid inspections. Walters never told readers that, and in doing so largely let Rendell off the hook for the fact that almost half of 17-years involved — the longest time period of any Keystone State governor contemporaneous with the non-inspection regime of non-inspection occurred on his watch (the others: Bob Casey, prolife Democrat, somewhere between 13 months and two years; Tom Ridge, prochoice Republican, 6-3/4 years; Mark Schweiker, prolife Republican, 15 months). Walters also saved the grand jury’s overall “political reasons” assessment for Paragraphs 9-12 after giving Rendell’s explanation paragraphs 1-4.

Bob Casey? Yes, though the grand jury for some reason didn’t recognize it.

Here are the relevant paragraphs from Walters’ report:

Pa. ex-gov. flabbergasted by lax abortion scrutiny

Former Gov. Ed Rendell said Friday he was “flabbergasted” when he found out last year that the state Health Department didn’t think its authority extended to abortion clinics such as the one in Philadelphia where prosecutors say a doctor used scissors to kill viable babies.

Rendell, a Democrat whose second term as governor ended last week, said in a statement that he ordered increased inspections after a clinic raid early last year yielded gruesome accounts of bloody floors and baby parts in jars. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who ran the clinic, was charged this week with murdering seven babies and one woman who went to him for an abortion.

“I was flabbergasted to learn that the Department of Health did not think their authority to protect public health extended to clinics offering abortion services,” Rendell, also a two-term Philadelphia mayor in the 1990s, said in a statement released through a spokeswoman.

… In its report, the grand jury said the department and other agencies – including the Department of State, under which the Board of Medicine falls – allowed Gosnell’s clinic to operate nearly unimpeded since the late ’70s. It hadn’t been inspected since 1993.

… The grand jury said politics played a role in the abortion-oversight issues.

In its report, the panel said the Health Department “decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all.”

Health Department lawyers changed their opinions and advice “to suit the policy preferences of different governors,” the report said. The department dropped its policy of annual inspections in the mid-1990s under Gov. Tom Ridge, who supported abortion rights, the report said.

A health department lawyer testified about a 1999 meeting of high-level state officials “at which a decision was made not to accept a recommendation to reinstitute regular inspections of abortion clinics,” citing a concern that routine inspections would lead to “less abortion facilities, less access to women to have an abortion.”

While conveniently skipping Schweiker’s tenure, which followed Ridge and preceded his own, Rendell is strongly implying that Ridge was fully aware of what Department of Health officials were deliberately not doing. That’s interesting, especially because even the grand jury has the no-inspection timeline out of sync with the timing of gubernatorial terms, in at least three places:

(Page 9) But at least the department had been doing something up to that point, however ineffectual. After 1993, even that pro forma effort came to an end. Not because of administrative ennui, although there had been plenty. Instead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay.

(Page 15) Senior legal counsel Kenneth Brody insisted that the department had no legal obligation to monitor abortion clinics, even though it exercised such a duty until the Ridge administration, and exercised it again as soon as Gosnell became big news.

(Page 147) Under Governor Robert Casey, she said, the department inspected abortion facilities annually. Yet, when Governor Tom Ridge came in, the attorneys interpreted the same regulations that had permitted annual inspections for years to no longer authorize those inspections. Then, only complaint- driven inspections supposedly were authorized. Staloski said that DOH’s policy during Governor Ridge’s administration was motivated by a desire not to be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.

This next sentence requires bolding: The problem is that Casey served until January 1995, so a no-effort period of more than a year occurred under his watch, because the grand jury says that annual inspections ended in 1993. How could they mess up something so obvious so completely?

This is not to imply that Casey was aware of DOH’s laxness. It seems inconceivable in light of his prolife convictions, which among other things caused him to be denied the opportunity to speak at the 1992 Democratic convention when proabort Bill Clinton was nominated, that Casey could have known and would not have done something about it. In fact, it seems reasonable to ask if DOH began the complaints-only inspection regime in secret for “political reasons” under Casey in order to embarrass him if he followed through with an attempt to challenge Clinton in the 1996 Democratic primaries. Casey appeared intent on running against Clinton until health problems sidelined him. It’s hard to understate how furious Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Pennsylvania supporters were at Casey’s non-support during the 1992 general election campaign.

The policy begun under Casey appears to have remained on autopilot for the next 15-plus years without Ridge’s, Schweiker’s, or Rendell’s knowledge, until last year. The grand jury indictment does mention “a meeting of high-level government officials in 1999 at which a decision was made not to accept a recommendation to reinstitute regular inspections of abortion clinics,” but does not say who those “high-level government officials” were, or how high-level they were.

As far as I can tell, though it’s reasonable to wonder why a deliberate policy of non-inspection in the absence of specific complaints continued for so long under Ridge, and it’s reasonable to believe that an involved governor should have eventually found out about it, it has yet to be established that he actually knew. Rendell’s contention about Ridge advocating a deliberate non-inspection policy, and his “somehow” forgetting that Ridge wasn’t his immediate successor, both seem conveniently contrived. Patrick Walters’ failure to challenge Rendell, especially on the succession issue, was a really weak moment.

It would also be useful if someone would look into the grand jury’s obvious timeline problem, what may have caused it, and what may have motivated it. Someone other than Patrick Walters, please.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Trick? Or “tweak”?

On Friday, a Reuters report at CNBC noted the Federal Reserve’s journey into the accounting and reporting twilight zone earlier this month. In doing so, it conducted a clinic in how to make unreality look acceptable and make a dangerous situation appear palatable.

In the el bizzarro world at Reuters and those the wire service interviewed for its article:

• A change in how one accounts for things can magically make a functionally insolvent entity solvent again.
• Such a change can also mean that an entity which has run out of cash and has to beg for funds no longer has to.
• Calling a genuine erosion of capital something other than an erosion of capital means that it’s no longer an erosion of capital.

Gee, why didn’t they just do this at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers 2-1/2 years ago and let things go on as usual?

Here’s most of the Reuters report (bolds supporting the bullet points above are mine):

Concerns that the Federal Reserve could suffer losses on its massive bond holdings may have driven the central bank to adopt a little-noticed accounting change with huge implications: it makes insolvency much less likely.

The significant shift [1] was tucked quietly into the Fed’s weekly report on its balance sheet and phrased in such technical terms that it was not even reported by financial media when originally announced on Jan. 6.

But the new rules have slowly begun to catch the attention of market analysts. Many are at once surprised that the Fed can set its own guidelines, [2] and also relieved that the remote but dangerous possibility that the world’s most powerful central bank might need to ask the U.S. Treasury or its member banks for money is now more likely to be averted.

“Could the Fed go broke? The answer to this question was ‘Yes,’ but is now ‘No,’” said Raymond Stone, managing director at Stone & McCarthy in Princeton, New Jersey. “An accounting methodology change at the central bank will allow the Fed to incur losses, even substantial losses, without eroding its capital.” [3]

The change essentially allows the Fed to denote losses by the various regional reserve banks that make up the Fed system as a liability to the Treasury rather than a hit to its capital. [3] It would then simply direct future profits from Fed operations toward that liability.

This enhances transparency [4] by providing clearer, more frequent, snapshots of the central bank’s finances, analysts say. The bonus: the number can now turn negative without affecting the central bank’s underlying financial condition. [5]

“Any future losses the Fed may incur will now show up as a negative liability as opposed to a reduction in Fed capital, thereby making a negative capital situation technically impossible,” [3] said Brian Smedley, a rates strategist at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and a former New York Fed staffer.

Other notes:

• [1] — When does an “accounting tweak” turn into a “significant shift”? It seems that the answer is: “When you’re no longer worried about  writing a deceptive headline.”
• [2] — When a hardened leftist is in the White House and the central bank is trying to save his administration from the consequences of its historically unprecedented profligacy, silly things like “guidelines” don’t matter.
• [3] — In all three instances cited the correct term is not “capital,” it’s “reported capital.” What’s really happening is that the accounting change involved enables the Fed to tell financial statement readers that it has more capital than it actually does.
• [4] — You know you’ve entered the twilight zone when an accounting maneuver designed to cover up losses is tagged as a transparency enhancement.
• [5] — This is where entering the accounting and reporting twilight zone ultimately takes you. In the real world, all the numbers-manipulating exercises in the world can’t change an entity’s “underlying financial condition.”

Such accounting trickery wouldn’t work, even in the short term, unless it were presented favorably by an establishment press desperately trying to keep the economy from hitting a wall while its favored president is in the White House. It’s not at all unreasonable to believe that if the Fed had done this while George Bush was still around, it would have been treated as accounting chicanery of epic proportions — which is what it really is.

It would appear that the Fed is one serious spike in interest rates away from becoming the newest member of the “Progressive Hall of Shame.” Current members include Social Social Security, Medicare, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac — all government monsters which, having been allowed to grow far beyond their original charters, subsequently became “too big to fail.” The fact is that all of them have failed. They may soon have to make room for the country’s central bank.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Germanown, Maryland, and Hyannis, Massachusetts:

Jan 21, 2011 / 01:35 am

A pro-life group’s first whistleblower award will go to a former clinic worker in Massachusetts who provided evidence that an abortionist’s negligence played a role in the death of a woman injured in an abortion.

Abortionist Rapin Osathanondh ran an abortion clinic in Hyannis, Massachusetts. He was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the case of a woman, 22-year-old Laura Hope Smith, who died in 2007 after an abortion he performed.

Prosecutors charged that he failed to monitor Smith while she was under anesthesia, delayed calling emergency services when her heart stopped, and then lied to try to cover up his actions, the Associated Press says.

Osathanondh was also a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Kim Nichols was one of the clinic workers who testified against the abortionist. She will receive $25,000 from Operation Rescue’s Abortion Whistleblowers Program at a Jan. 22 pro-life rally at the Neelsville Presbyterian Church in Germantown, Maryland.

“Due to Nichols’ courageous and truthful testimony before the Massachusetts Board of Physicians, Osathanondh was declared a danger to the public. His two abortion clinics were closed and he surrendered his medical license, rather than suffer the humiliation of revocation,” commented Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue.

Newman said Smith’s testimony was the basis for the criminal charges which resulted in the abortionist’s conviction. She also endured threats and harassment from Osathanondh.

Nichols told Operation Rescue she had begun to work at the abortion clinic about 10 years ago because she was bothered by the upset young girls in the waiting room and wanted to help them. She said the doctor’s treatment of both patients and employees was “very bad” and many quit because of the abuse.

She reported that Planned Parenthood sent many referrals to the abortionist from both the Boston area and from other states. Though she at first thought she was helping the girls at the clinic, Nichols’ world came “crashing down” when Smith died while Nichols was holding her hand during an abortion.

“Laura’s death shook me to my core. I told the doctor that we should close this clinic down. This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Nichols commented, according to Operation Rescue.

Osathanondh tried to get Nichols to lie for him. When she refused, he began to make harassing phone calls and told her she would hurt the clinic employees and the girls seeking an abortion if she told the truth. He also claimed that she would lose her house in Smith’s mother’s lawsuit if she did not go along.

Nichols said she is now “definitely pro-life” and wants to tell young girls who are considering an abortion to reconsider.

“I want to tell them that abortion will affect them for the rest of their lives and that that it may even sterilize them. I want them to know that they can be physically maimed or worse; they could die, like Laura did,” Nichols commented. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Tom Troy of the Blade, in a letter to the Toledo Free Press:

Finally, I am very proud of The Blade’s handling of this story and of my own part in it. We did not misquote Brian Wilson.

It wasn’t a story until the Blade decided to make it a story. That’s not journalism.

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