Pence Amendment Passes, Reichert Supports, McDermott Makes Fool of Himself

Washington Democrat
"Baghdad" Jim McDermott

The Pence Amendment to end federal funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country (for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year) passed Friday by a vote of 240-185.

All eyes are watching what happens in the Senate, which is still under Democrat control, but where numerous Democrat Senators from Republican states are up for re-election in 2012. If this amendment becomes federal law, it will have a dramatic impact on Washington State.

The passage of the amendment in the House was a truly historic moment for those who have fought to end the annual distribution of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the nation's largest single killer of human beings, and most controversial organization.

For Washington's State's Congressional delegation, the vote split across party lines: Republicans Doc Hastings and Cathy (McMorris) Rodgers from the eastern part of the state voted for it, in addition to freshman Jaime (Herrera) Beutler, and Western Washington Republican Dave Reichert. Reichert's vote was not a surprise -- he has voted for previous versions of the Pence Amendment -- but ever since the famed Sheriff voted to let Terry Schiavo be killed, pro-lifers have never considered him to be a sure thing when it comes to voting on issues that the lunatic fringe abortion bloc west of the Cascades might consider sacramental.

Democrats all lined up to support their abortion industry masters, including Norm Dicks, the misnamed Adam Smith, Jay-I-have-never-seen-abortion-I-didn't-like-Inslee, Rick Larsen, and "Baghdad Jim" McDermott. Interestingly, McDermott was the only Washington Congressman to speak to the issue during the debate from either side.

The abject idiocy of his comments are truly noteworthy. One of McDermott's themes was that the Republicans should "get out of the doctor's office, and leave women, and families, and the doctor alone".

Um, Jimbo, this is exactly what this amendment did. It got the government out of hundreds, if not thousands, of "doctor's" offices around the country. The federal government, via the distribution and regulation of taxpayers money, will no longer be involved in the sex lives and reproductive decisions in any of the medical clinics operated by the 102 Planned Parenthood affiliates named in the amendment.

The government won't be involved in aborting babies, nor will it be involved in examining women's breasts, nor asking them what form of contraception they are or not using, or selling them condoms or birth control pills, or examining their most intimate areas via pap smears.

There will now be perhaps a thousand medical clinics where the federal government will truly have exited the doctor's office, and will have left women alone with their doctor (though, in fact, when it comes to abortion, it is almost never the woman's doctor, but usually a nameless, faceless, circuit-rider abortionist like Elizabeth Bianchi, sometimes from another state, who lines up a days worth of women like slabs of meat with their legs in stirrups.)

Then McDermott claimed, without any self-evident irony, that this $350 million budget cut was a distraction from the task of cutting the deficit and balancing the budget!

It's stunning that McDermott, who represents downtown Seattle, essentially has a job for life thanks to an electorate that deem themselves one of the most educated in the country. Yet when he gets up to speak about the nation's most critical business, he reveals himself to be an ignorant fool.