I'm sure there'll be more weeks like this one, when members of the Red Team make total fools of themselves on the issue of abortion.
I mentioned a few in my Wondering on Wednesday post, including Rep. Jim Jordan, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, and Ohio AG David Yost.
And let's take James Bopp Jr. According to this Alternet article, Mr. Bopp is "the top attorney" for the National Right to Life Committee," and he's on the bad week list for his grossly inconsiderate and tone-deaf comments about the 10-year old Ohio child who had a legal abortion in Indiana. Under legislation Bopp's promoting, a child rape victim would be banned from having an abortion.
She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child.
Seriously? What "reason and ultimately the benefit" is there for a ten-year-old, traumatized, raped child to bear a child of her own?
And there's Indiana's AG Todd Rokita, who stuck his landing on the bad week list, for going public with efforts to find out of the doctor who performed the child's medical abortion had timely filed the appropriate paperwork. From a Politico article,
...Rokita is threatening criminal charges against the doctor who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape survivor from Ohio — a major escalation in the ongoing saga that has put the midwestern state on the frontlines of the post-Roe war.
In a letter dated July 13th, Rokita asked Gov. Eric Holcomb for help in getting info on the case. Here's what he's looking for, and the inflated urgency associated with his request:
In this case, the paperwork was filed - on time - and now the doctor's lawyer, Kathleen DeLaney, is speaking her mind, planted firmly on the good week side of the ledger. Her client
took every appropriate and proper action in accordance with the law and both her medical and ethical training as a physician. She followed all relevant policies, procedures, and regulations in this case... She has not violated any law, including patient privacy laws, and she has not been disciplined by her employer. We are considering legal action against those who have smeared my client.
Good for her, and for the doctor for stepping up.
Another good week representative? Attorney and podcast host Ken White was quoted in the Alternet article above about the danger of relying on "the exception to protect the life of the mother." He thinks it's "a grave risk for anyone involved in the abortion," as doctors will be dealing with frequently politically-motivated District Attorneys in these cases.
Speaking of the risk of prosecutorial bad judgment, it seems some hospitals in Texas are also not willing to take a chance they'll run up against one of those prosecutors. According to this AP article,
Some hospitals in Texas have reportedly refused to treat patients with major pregnancy complications for fear of violating the state’s abortion ban, the Texas Medical Association said in a letter this week.
The association did not name the hospitals but said it’s received complaints that hospitals, administrators and their attorneys may be prohibiting doctors from providing medically appropriate care in some situations, The Dallas Morning News reported.
In one case, a doctor was reportedly told not to treat a woman with an ectopic pregnancy "until it ruptured." This type of action "...creates a substantial risk for the patient’s future reproductive ability and poses serious risk to the patient’s immediate physical wellbeing." Immediate, as in, she could die.
The Biden administration issued guidance this week that said hospitals must provide abortion services if the life of the mother is at risk. Texas sued Thursday over that guidance, arguing that the federal government isn’t authorized to require emergency healthcare providers to perform abortions.
Also having a bad week? Efforts to positively impact climate change, as WV Sen. Joe Manchin (D-Yeah? Make Me!) announced another delay in his willingness to consider a big ugly bill covering climate change, among other things.
Democrats have struggled for months to pass a slimmed-down climate and energy package as part of a budget reconciliation bill that would require the support of all 50 Senate Democrats, including Manchin. He had previously said he could reach agreement on climate if legislation included elements helping both renewables and fossil fuels.
But Manchin informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday that he wouldn’t support the investments in climate and energy ahead of the August recess, and his office pointed to his concerns about stoking inflation in a statement.
Manchin said he hadn't walked away, he just wanted to wait for July's inflation numbers.
Let's give Manchin a bad week mention, while we're at it, and a good week mention to Sam Ricketts of Evergreen Action, who said, after Manchin's decision broke, who said he struggled to think of a "single elected official in American history" who'll cause "more massive suffering."
...if you want to look decades out from now, this decision by this one senator from West Virginia is going to have repercussions that affect millions, if not billions.
Speaking of millions and billions - dollars, not people - there's this bad week list entry, brought to us by the Defense Department and its first mandatory report on Congressional defense appropriations: Congress "funded more than $58 billion worth of military projects that the administration did not request..."
Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-MI, wrote the bill which requires the report, and gets a good week mention for that. And her fellow lawmakers in the House and Senate who added all this junk to the bill get the bad week mention. Some of it was 'reasonable' in some eyes - disaster aid, funding for Ukraine, and what not, but a lot of it was pork - pure pork, such as
more than $4 billion worth of unrequested warships, many of them built by the constituents of senior appropriators.
And, the article notes, "a substantial portion of the money goes for programs of arguable utility to the US military, critics say." There are examples included in the article, if you want to check them out.
The upcoming fiscal year's NDAA is being debated now; it "would add $37 billion to the amount the president requested for all national defense programs..." And there's this.
On Wednesday, the House rejected an amendment by California Democrat Barbara Lee to subtract that $37 billion. And the House soundly defeated another Lee proposal to take away $100 billion from the authorized level... The House also rejected an amendment by Washington Democrat Pramila Jayapal to make the unfunded priorities lists optional, not mandatory.
Yay, us, or something.
Finally, a resounding bad week to those Secret Service employees and others in the Department of Homeland Security who are actively thwarting investigations by the Inspectors General of DHS departments.
You're likely aware of the deleted Secret Service texts from around the insurrection. Some have said this was intentional (to protect pro-Trump folks, for example). Others say the deletions were part of a transition to different equipment. Yeah, right.
The Intercept is reporting some stonewalling on other investigations, not just on the insurrection. From the article, we learn that it's "not uncommon" for IGs, to face resistance. "Tasked with rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, inspectors general are not always welcomed." And, on that last part, there's a scoop. A Customs and Border Protection official shared some info with the reporters.
A briefing memo produced by the agency for a leadership meeting with the DHS Office of Inspector General on July 7 instructs participants on how to push back against what it calls the inspector general’s “persistent” request for “direct, unfettered access to CBP systems,” as part of its “high number of OIG audits covering a variety of CBP program areas.”
Again, yay us, or something...
Why do I feel like we're all having a bad week, courtesy of the folks who are supposed to be working in our best interests?
TGIF, everyone.
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