Those Planned Parenthood videos

Their purpose is to gross you out.

Many people get sickened and disgusted when they sneeze out a blood clot, or when the doctor pulls a hairy orange pebble from their ear, or when the orthopedist starts explaining the process by which he will attach a cadaver's ligament to your knee to replace the one you snapped.  Forget a vivid description of removing a tumor from your bowel or the cardiac surgeon's process of tearing out a blood vessel from your thigh to reroute the clogged ones around your heart.

For years, abortion opponents have relied on graphic descriptions and bloody imagery to make their case against legal abortion. By focusing on the fetuses, rather than on the women who seek to end a pregnancy for their own personal or financial reasons, the anti-choice movement can successfully stoke outrage over the moral implications of a medical procedure that falls squarely in a gray area for most Americans.

[...]

It makes sense that this works. Despite the anti-choice movement’s characterization of abortion as a black-and-white issue, it’s quite possible to both support legal abortion rights and believe that pregnant women are carrying unborn children. Even Americans who believe that abortion should be legal may be squeamish about the nature of the medical procedure, and feel uncomfortable with graphic depictions of fetal tissue.  

As far as I am concerned, this is the only news being made.

On Monday evening, Planned Parenthood announced that they had notified, separately, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of a recent hack into their information systems by an allegedly separate pro-life activist group has announced the hack and its intention to post internal email from the non-profit women’s healthcare provider.

On Friday, California state attorney general, and senatorial candidate, Kamala Harris also announced her preliminary investigation into whether the Center for Medical Progress has broken any state laws in its work against Planned Parenthood.

The Center for Medical Progress has yet to release its tax filings, so details remain unclear as to from where and whom the Center for Medical Progress, which has non-profit status, has received its funding and the way in which it has allocated those funds. 

New polling released today from Hart Research Associates on behalf of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF) found that 64 percent of voters — and 72 percent of Independents — do not agree with Congressional action to immediately end all government funding for Planned Parenthood. Furthermore, 58 percent of voters say that they would support a candidate who favors continued funding for Planned Parenthood over one who wishes to defund the women’s healthcare provider and 57 percent of voters say they are skeptical of Republican motivations behind the Congressional investigations of Planned Parenthood, believing the investigations are being used to further a specific political agenda.

In a statement, Cecile Richards, President, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said, “Today’s poll shows much of what we already knew: that defunding Planned Parenthood is a losing proposition not just for the millions of men and women who come through Planned Parenthood’s doors every day, but also with voters who don’t want to see their politicians focused on restricting lifesaving care….The anti-abortion extremists behind these videos don’t have any credibility with the American people, and neither do the politicians behind these political attacks against women’s health and the care Planned Parenthood provides.”

And then there's Texas.

Buoyed by the release of undercover Planned Parenthood videos, a few dozen anti-abortion activists gathered Tuesday at the Texas Capitol called on Texas lawmakers to defund Planned Parenthood.

Dubbed the #WomenBetrayed rally, supporters cheered as Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, read statements from Texas officials, including Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, who have called for an investigation into Planned Parenthood. The rally preceded a Senate Health and Human Services Committee meeting on Wednesday, which Republican lawmakers called to investigate the fetal donation practices of the group’s Texas abortion facilities.

I stand with Planned Parenthood.  Join me.  Tell your Senators and Congressmen AND your state representatives as well to stop the witchhunt.  After all, birth control and sex education prevents many more abortions than smear campaigns and gotcha videos.

More from Andrea Grimes at RH Reality Check.

Update:

An investigative hearing that many Capitol observers described as bizarre ended with a bang Wednesday when members of the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee called state officials back to the witness stand to ask whether they’d lied during testimony given just hours before.

Specifically, Department of State Health Services assistant commissioner Kathy Perkins was asked to respond to Abby Johnson, a former employee of Planned Parenthood and current full-time anti-abortion activist who claimed under oath that HHSC always gave abortion clinics advance notice of inspections, which would be a felony.

The answer was “no.”

It was perhaps a fittingly strange close to the tense and wandering four-and-a-half hour hearing which had a specific goal that remained unclear throughout.

Hillary Clinton's climate goals

They're getting raked over the coals.

Brad Friedman:

"It's so polarized between the parties that Hillary can say anything she wants," (environmental journalist David) Roberts tells me about her plan to add half a billion solar panels to the nation's grid by 2021. "But, as long as the House is in Republican hands they are foursquare against any of this --- any clean energy, any efficiency, anything that restrains fossil fuel in any way...If we're being honest with ourselves, what she's capable of doing is what the Presidency can do without legislative help."

CAF:

If you want a presidential candidate who supports a carbon tax and vociferously opposes the Keystone pipeline, you should vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

If you want a presidential candidate who has thought through how to best communicate to swing voters how a clean energy-fueled America will help, not hurt, economic growth, Hillary Clinton is probably your best bet.

In conjunction with an announcement of her renewable energy strategy, Clinton released the three-minute climate ad “Stand for Reality.”

We can’t fully analyze her program because what she has unveiled so far is only a portion of her overall plan. Vox’s Brad Plumer says, “We’ll need to see more detail” before knowing if her policies are sufficient to meet her goals. The New Republic’s Rebecca Leber notes Clinton still avoids taking clear stands on matters that have divided Democrats: “Keystone XL pipeline, tar sands oil extraction, natural gas, fracking, and Arctic drilling.”

Those who dislike the evasion and want firm pledges to keep as much fossil fuel in the ground as possible will naturally gravitate toward Sanders. Those who don’t mind clever politicking when navigating sticky subjects will be more partial to Clinton.

Among my many issues with the future Madam President is that she will simply not ever be the change we need to have in order to save us from ourselves.  Hers will be a caretaker administration, not a transforming one.  This was among the reasons she was defeated for the nomination seven years ago. (The difference -- and the problem -- is that Barack Obama turned out to be a minimalist transformer himself.)

But her refusal to abnegate KXL, her Wall Street coziness, her perpetual dissembling on her e-mail, and even the botched NYT story about her e-mail are together not as objectionable as one of the very few things she is unequivocal about: her stated preference for war on Iran.

As a presidential candidate you simply do not use the words "if I am president, we will attack Iran" in 2008, and in 2015 soften your rhetoric with words like "existential threat", and not be forced to back those words up at some point.  I say that point will occur sometime in 2017.

And if you think that's progressive, I have a used dictionary to give you.  Post your mailing address in the comments.