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What Are the Priorities for the U.S. Justice Department?
Concerned Women for America ^ | 3/20/09 | Mario Diaz, Esq.

Posted on 03/21/2009 1:29:24 PM PDT by wagglebee

With yet another radical, life-long committed abortion advocate tapped to a high-ranking position at the United State Department of Justice (DOJ), one has to wonder what the Obama Administration's priorities are when it comes to law enforcement. If this administration were to commission the painting of the President's portrait, you'd assume they would call on an exceptional artist with a proven record in this area, someone whose work is distinguished in portraits and fine art. They wouldn't call on a life-long house painter.

Looking at many of President Obama's nominations, you would think he was staffing Planned Parenthood's legal staff instead of the DOJ.

Dawn Johnsen, nominated to be the next Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, is the latest of such nominees. She has dedicated her life to the promotion of abortion without any restrictions. Johnsen, former staff attorney for the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project in New York and former legal director at NARAL Pro-Choice America, even opposes the partial-birth abortion ban, which prevented the gruesome procedure by which a doctor would crush the skull of a baby whose head was just inches from being out of the mother's womb.

Johnsen is not just "pro-choice." Plenty of pro-choice people are against the horrible partial-birth abortion procedure. For Johnsen abortion seems to be above all laws, including the Constitution. That seemed clear when in a Supreme Court brief she was willing to manipulate the Thirteenth Amendment, directed towards slavery, to promote a woman's right to terminate the life of her unborn baby.

She has also adopted a radical view of rights for the unborn saying, "[F]etal rights laws would not only infringe on constitutionally protected liberty and privacy rights of individual women, they would also serve to disadvantage women as women…"1 Her view is amazingly radical, because while some people believe this way because they argue the fetus is not a child, Johnsen seems to recognize that the fetus is a person, but apparently believes he or she doesn't have any rights until the mother decides the baby should have them. Here was her written answer to a question submitted by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma):

Sen. Coburn: Is there any circumstance in which you believe that law should recognize an unborn child as an individual, separate from the mother?

Johnsen: I have written a few pieces about how law and policy treat the fetus in cases where the woman has chosen to bear a child. In such cases I have encouraged approaches that do not create an adversarial relationship, but instead … seek to support women in acting responsibly and bearing healthy children. There are situations where the law could and should recognize the fetus, in ways that would not be create [sic] an adversarial relationship but actually support healthy childbearing.

This view is important because as Justice Blackmun acknowledged in Roe v. Wade, "[i]f this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe's] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment," (emphasis added).

But according to Johnsen, the fetus magically becomes a person when the mother wants to have the baby. Essentially you could have two women, both six months pregnant, one carrying a "fetus person" protected by the Constitution because she wants to have the child, and the other one carrying a "fetus blob of tissue" with no rights whatsoever because she doesn't want to have that baby.

What is Johnsen being nominated for again?

Obama has been working overtime to make good on the promise he made to Planned Parenthood during his campaign, saying, "There will always be people, many of good will, who do not share my view on the issue of choice. On this fundamental issue, I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield." You got that right.

So if the promotion of abortion at all costs is the end game here, then perhaps Obama should just commission Planned Parenthood to function as the Justice Department. At least it would save the taxpayers some money. Oh wait, Planned Parenthood already get millions of taxpayer dollars. Well then, perhaps attorneys could wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers: "DOJ brought to you by NARAL Pro-Choice America." It would make much more sense than what Obama is currently doing.

Now, I know many of Dawn Johnsen's supporters are quick to point out that she already served at the Department of Justice under former President Bill Clinton. And I'm glad they bring that up, because she should probably be asked about VAAPCOM.

What is VAAPCOM, you ask? Well, it was the "Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy" investigation that was discovered by Judicial Watch, a watchdog organization, after a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents revealed that the Justice Department under Janet Reno started an investigation in 1994 - while Johnsen was a deputy assistant attorney general - where they pressured the FBI to investigate pro-life organizations and its supporters.

Apparently they sought to prove there was a national conspiracy of pro-life "extremists" who were attacking abortion clinics. After months of monitoring several organizations, including Concerned Women for America (CWA), the Christian Coalition and the National Right to Life Committee, among others, the FBI failed to come up with anything. And though the FBI wanted to end the investigation, the DOJ pressured them to continue.

Someone should ask Johnsen, and any other candidate involved with the Clinton DOJ at the time, if they have any knowledge of such investigations. Is this the type of "work" we can expect to see again from the DOJ? Looking at resumes like Dawn Johnsen's, it wouldn't surprise me.

You don't hire professional hunters unless you want to catch a prey.


End Notes
  1. Dawn E. Johnsen, The Creation of Fetal Rights: Conflicts with Women's Constitutional Rights to Liberty, Privacy, and Equal Protection, 95 Yale L.J. 599, 620 (Jan 1986).


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: abortion; agenda; bho44; bhodoj; cwa; moralabsolutes; obamatruthfile; prolife
Obama has been working overtime to make good on the promise he made to Planned Parenthood during his campaign, saying, "There will always be people, many of good will, who do not share my view on the issue of choice. On this fundamental issue, I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield."

Yep Zero doesn't want any "mistakes" and he intends to murder every baby he can.

1 posted on 03/21/2009 1:29:24 PM PDT by wagglebee
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To: cgk; Coleus; cpforlife.org; narses; Salvation; 8mmMauser

Pro-Life Ping


2 posted on 03/21/2009 1:29:50 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: 185JHP; 230FMJ; 50mm; 69ConvertibleFirebird; Aleighanne; Alexander Rubin; ...
Moral Absolutes Ping!

Freepmail wagglebee or DirtyHarryY2K to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.

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3 posted on 03/21/2009 1:30:10 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

I’d say “white guilt” and gun control, from what I’ve read.


4 posted on 03/21/2009 1:32:50 PM PDT by George Smiley (They're not drinking the Kool-Aid any more. They're eating it straight out of the packet.)
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To: wagglebee

The U.S. Justice Department is no longer an organization interested in pursuing criminal behavior and enforcing the law, it has become a political organization with a political agenda.


5 posted on 03/21/2009 1:33:16 PM PDT by Sudetenland (Victory in 2012...but first Victory in 2010!!!)
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To: wagglebee

My guess: a return to the good ole days of

Janet el-Reño

and

Jamie Gorelick


6 posted on 03/21/2009 1:37:31 PM PDT by Notwithstanding (Member of the Long Grey Line)
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To: wagglebee

There is an analogy in the article about picking an artist and the quality thereof to paint Obama’s portrait. How fitting. Remember the no talent, local, liberal idiot poet he selected from chi town to read at his inauguration?


7 posted on 03/21/2009 1:38:35 PM PDT by GOP Poet
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To: wagglebee

Legalizing illegal aliens so they can vote and taking all firearms.


8 posted on 03/21/2009 2:01:47 PM PDT by screaminsunshine (!!)
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To: screaminsunshine

Holder’s Justice Department priorities:

- Releasing Gitmo Prisoners inside the US

- New “Assault Weapon’s” Ban that does not expire

- Targeting and investigating Sheriffs who enforce laws DOJ does not support.

- Use the DOJ Civil Rights Division as a political force to intimidate. Obama has nominated Thomas Saez a radical leftist to head the Division.

....just off the top of my head.


9 posted on 03/21/2009 2:18:25 PM PDT by Red Steel
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To: wagglebee

To destroy our Constitution, to rewrite history, and to hear the lamentations of the people..


10 posted on 03/21/2009 2:19:44 PM PDT by sheik yerbouty ( Make America and the world a jihad free zone!)
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To: wagglebee

It’s always easiest to enforce the law on the innocent and the law-abiding; conveniently, it also serves to deflect attention from the fact that justice officials cannot or will not aggressively pursue actual criminals.

As an adjunct to this policy trend, the current administration will seek increasingly to regulate the lives of average Americans. It’s cowardly and it’s evil, but, then, so are most politicians.


11 posted on 03/21/2009 2:28:56 PM PDT by Jack Hammer (here)
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To: wagglebee

Well, if he passes national health care, he has to have people in the Justice Dept who agree with him on who among the American people no longer to deserve to live. the government can’t afford to pay for everyone’s health care, and hard decisions will have to be made—like in the Weimar Republic.


12 posted on 03/21/2009 3:13:32 PM PDT by browniexyz
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To: Notwithstanding

Oh, no, those will be the good old days we’ll wish were back when we see what these thugs have in mind.


13 posted on 03/21/2009 3:14:11 PM PDT by browniexyz
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To: wagglebee
This defeatist appeasement mindset is controlling Justice.


14 posted on 03/21/2009 9:08:48 PM PDT by M. Espinola (Freedom is not 'free'.)
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