Mass. Democrats Ram Through an Abortion Bill Too Extreme for Their Pro-Choice Governor

On Tuesday, the Massachusetts State Senate voted to override Gov. Charlie Baker’s (R-Mass.) veto of the ROE Act (H.5179), codifying Roe v. Wade (1973) into state law and lowering the age of consent for abortion from 18 to 16. Baker vetoed the bill on Christmas Eve because it lowered the age of consent for abortion. The State House overrode his veto on Monday.

Baker, who is pro-choice, said he “strongly” supports a woman’s right to abortion. “However, I cannot support the sections of this proposal that expand the availability of later term abortions and permit minors age 16 and 17 to get an abortion without the consent of a parent or guardian,” the governor wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

The law eliminates the 24-hour waiting period for abortion, changes the judicial bypass process to make abortions more accessible to minors who cannot obtain parental consent, and allows abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy if the baby would not survive after birth. Baker said he supported these provisions.

However, the law also allows 16- and 17-year-old girls to get abortions without their parents’ consent and makes abortion after 24 weeks legal “if it is necessary, in the best medical judgment of the physician, to preserve the patient’s physical or mental health.” Pro-life activists have warned that this amounts to a blank check for abortion, as some doctors will claim that elective abortion is necessary for a woman’s mental health.

“This dangerous new law allows for late-term abortion on-demand across Massachusetts, and secret abortions for minor girls as young as 16,” Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) President Marjorie Danenfelser said in a statement after the legislature overrode Baker’s veto. “Governor Baker is pro-choice, but this legislation was too much for him to stomach: his veto exemplifies just how extreme it is.”

“The actions taken by Democrats to ram through this legislation are a reflection of just how extreme the party has become on abortion. Led by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats’ agenda for the entire nation is reflected in this bill: abortion on-demand, up until the moment of birth,” Dannenfelser argued.

Last year, SBA List and the Tarrance Group released polling showing that most Massachusetts voters oppose the extreme policies in this law. Sixty-two percent of Massachusetts voters said they oppose allowing more late-term abortions, while only 38 percent support allowing late-term abortions. Even 49 percent of Democratic voters opposed expanding access to late-term abortion.

Similarly, 62 percent of Massachusetts voters said they support laws requiring permission from a parent before a minor girl can get an abortion. Only 38 percent said they oppose this limitation. Even most Democrats (55 percent), pro-choice voters (52 percent), and women (60 percent) support parental consent requirements.

Democrats have pushed radical abortion bills into law partially out of fear that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority would overturn Roe v. Wade (1973). In January 2019, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) signed a radical abortion law that stripped protections from wanted babies and expanded abortion in ways that 79 percent of New York voters say they oppose.

After Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett replaced the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Democrats and abortion activists have grown even more anxious. The override of Baker’s veto shows just how anxious they have become.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/12/29/massachusetts-lowers-abortion-age-of-consent-to-16-codifies-roe-v-wade-n1291198

America’s Ongoing Imperial Scam

One week after the most attention-demanding election of our lifetimes, another Veteran’s Day came and went. For the occasion, presumed President-elect Joe Biden laid a wreath at the Korean War Memorial in Philadelphia; whilst yet-to-conceded incumbent President Donald Trump held a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Both channeled and invoked the great reverence Americans still hold for veterans of the bygone Second World War and more complicated Korean conflagration. Only some 300,000 of the men, and women, who fought in the former are still living. No doubt we will continue to hear how many succumbed to Covid-19 in the past year, and whose fault that is.

Yet, in his official statement, Biden added a personal touch — his son Beau’s service in Iraq — and a “personal commitment:” “I will never treat you or your families with anything less than the honor you deserve.” If he really means it, rebalancing U.S. war-making authority and ditching the dated Second World War analogies would be a good start.

World War II remains the go-to conflict for commemoration almost 80 years after America entered the fray. It marks the last time the U.S. Congress did its constitutional duty and actually declared war before sending America’s young men off to kill and die on foreign fields.

All subsequent “wars,” from Korea and Vietnam, to the Iraqs (1991, 2003, 2014), Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and a host of military deployments on every continent around the world were waged at the pleasure of the sitting president, amply funded by the Congress, yet conveniently never rose to the level of a declared war.

Little Wars & Presidencies

We should consider these wars linked to the presidents themselves, or — perhaps more accurately — to their executive staffs, and the Department of Defense. War policy-making power has almost completely shifted from the people’s representatives (House and Senate) to unelected appointees often recruited from think tanks — these funded by an array of organizations interested not in peace, but in accessing tax dollars, and gaining revenues at home and abroad.

Biden’s incoming national security team is chock-full of them. War spending, even in the absence of any notable war, is so compelling that for years, a Congress often unable to come up with a budget ensured the flow stayed strong to the Pentagon — and its cousin, the CIA — through continuing resolutions.

So-called overseas contingency operations, or little wars, have seen their funding go “off-book,” as the Pentagon budget now covers just its routine expenses — wars are paid for on top of that budget, so long as the Congress can be convinced by their Pentagon liaisons. And they nearly always are.

This obscene spending for military weapons, training, gifts to allies, technology enhancement — for everything from cyberwar, surveillance, data collection, AI, robotics — as well as for standard “pocketbook” weapons systems like the F-35 fighter and aircraft carriers, represent the Military Industrial Complex’s (MIC) mainstay.

Consider a disturbingly accurate recent diagnosis of the current situation:

“…the U.S. Presidents and their aides are quite aware of the current state of the US military: it is a military which simply cannot win even simple conflicts…a military whose Air Force spent absolutely obscene amounts of money to create a supposedly “5th generation” fighter which in many ways is inferior to US 4th generation aircraft!”

The imperial scam we’ve kept calling a republic these past 70 years is collapsing, and it will take all of us — veteran and civilian alike — to ensure a soft landing.

https://patriotrising.com/americas-ongoing-imperial-scam/

Gavin Newsom recall effort just got a major boost

The campaign to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom is picking up steam

The California governor’s days could be limited thanks to a growing effort to invoke a statewide referendum.

A campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom is picking up steam after individual donors offered tens of thousands of dollars each and scored $500,000 from an Irvine-based consulting firm.

Prov 3:9 LLC contributed $500,000, and Sequoia Capital's Douglas Leone and his wife Patricia Perkins-Leone contributed roughly $100,000.

Since 1911, Californians have attempted to recall their governor 55 times, but were successful only in 2003 against Gov. Gray Davis, who lost his special election to Arnold Schwarzenegger. That effort was propelled into the spotlight after Rep. Darrell Issa donated $2 million. After Prov 3:9 became the first major donor in the effort to recall Newsom, other big donors may step forward.

Fed up with the Democratic governor’s shutdown orders, which some found erratic, Rescue California organized to circulate petitions that call for Newsom’s governorship to be recalled and a special election to take place, well before the next governor’s race in November 2022. Newsom, currently in his first term, has not yet said if he plans to run again.

Rescue California needs a minimum 1,495,709 valid signatures to recall the governor, and the group says it’s collected some 800,000 so far.

Thomas Liu, listed as the manager of Prov 3:9, told Politico: "We have our beliefs in terms of the direction the state needs to go, and we felt that this effort was worthy of our contribution."

The effort to recall Newsom was launched on June 10. In November, a judge extended the signature deadline to March 17, 2021, after supporters argued their deadline should be extended 120 days due to COVID-19 hindering their efforts.

Anne Dunsmore, the campaign manager and finance director of Rescue California 2021, told Fox News earlier this month that the effort was a "citizen tide" against the missteps Newsom had taken during the pandemic.

"Closing the beaches and closing the parks really was the beginning, that I saw on the ground, of the beginning of the end for him, as far as people taking the recall stuff seriously," Dunsmore said.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gavin-newsom-recall-effort-major-boost