Posted on 03/26/2010 8:09:16 PM PDT by Steelfish
Why I Wrote The 'Stupak Amendment' And Voted For Health-Care Reform
By Bart Stupak March 27, 2010
When I saw that Kathleen Parker's March 24 op-ed, "Stupak's original sin," defined me as a "backstabber," it reminded me of a Bible verse. Matthew 7:3 asks, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"
The true motives of many blogs and organizations claiming to be pro-life have become clear in recent days: to politicize life issues as a means to defeat health care reform. One group even sent an e-mail to supporters saying they are "working feverishly to stop this legislation from going forward."
The pro-life groups rallied behind me -- many without my knowledge or consent -- not necessarily because they shared my goals of ensuring protections for life and passing health-care reform but because they viewed me as their best chance to kill health-care legislation.
Last November, an amendment I introduced succeeded in making sure the House health-care-reform bill contained the current law prohibiting public funding for abortions. I was disappointed that the Senate could not pass my language and only mustered 45 pro-life votes, far short of the 60 votes needed to keep the amendment intact.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I would accept, but the TBWs may be a different story.
NO, executive orders do NOT as a matter of principle carry the full force and effect of law.
The president is ONLY empowered to regulate in areas where the Constitution or Congress has DELEGATED to him the power to do so.
It is astonishing that a United States Congressman does not know this! Does he think our presidents have the same power as Napoleon, Hitler, or Stalin? They can by diktat rule over the people?
There is a reason the Emancipation Proclamation did NOT purport to free slaves in the area comprising the Union. It was because Lincoln did not have the legal AUTHORITY to do so. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he freed the slaves only in the area that had taken up arms against the Union and did so only pursuant his military authority to declare contraband.
As to Stupak's argument that Obama's executive order is similar to Bush's on stem cell research, here is the response of Yuval Levin, who worked on that order for Bush:
This argument makes no sense whatsoever. I was part of the team that produced Bush’s executive order, the text of which you can read here. The order was in no way designed to “prevent stem-cell research,” or to change an existing law, modify the treatment of the life question in federal law, or anything else that Stupak is suggesting President Obama's order will do.
The rest of Yuval's discussion is at: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTZhYjBhMjFhMjBmOGJmM2Q3N2ZjMTAwYjVkNjcwN2E=
In contrast, Obama did NOT have discretionary authority to make new law by executive authority on the topic of abortion funding, as that area has already been covered in statutes and legal precedents, which have not granted to the president discretionary authority to make law in this area.
Stupak is either appallingly ignorant of the separation of powers in our government, or is being intentionally deceitful.
Stupak needs to bone up on his history. As most democrats, he gets everything ass backwards.
If the Emancipation Proclamation was “as good as law”. then why oh why was the Fourteenth Amendment necessary? Because the Emancipation Proclamation was a political tool, not a lawful instrument. The dictator Lincoln couldn't lawfully deprive his fellow countrymen of their property as the laws that made slavery legal were still in force and recognized by the Supreme Court.
Stupak is an idiot of historic proportions as as well as a traitor to the pro life cause.
The fact that he feels constrained to excuse his betrayal is proof of it. Why would anyone believe something from a Democrat? Their lies are a tangled knot of twists and turns
Matches my impression of him.
Give it up Bart. You are a phony hypocrite and will go down in history as such.
He ended up with neither.
Now his enemies (who are also our enemies) have his head on a pike, his soul in a matchbox, and his guts in a Hefty bag.
But they've also convinced him that his "enemies" are the thousands of pro-life people who loved him and voted for him for all these years; and that they, the Pelosi pack who captured and morally decapitated him, are his friends.
I think it's heart-crushing and abysmally pathetic. It motivated me to look up "Stockholm Syndrome".
I could not have said it any better than you did.
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