A Republican amendment to appropriations legislation would bar funding for any government that opposes the U.S. position at the United Nations more often than not. Although unlikely to make it into law, the amendment draws fresh attention to the fact that a majority of countries, including most leading recipients of U.S. foreign aid, would fall into that category.
Among multiple amendments inserted into the State Department and foreign operations authorization bill during a House Foreign Affairs Committee markup last week was one by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) prohibiting any foreign assistance to governments that vote against the U.S. position at the U.N. more than 50 percent of the time.
Grades would be obtained from annual State Department reports on voting practices at the U.N., which have been required under U.S. law for decades, and would relate to votes in the General Assembly during its most recent session, or in the case of members of the Security Council, to their votes in both the council and assembly.
In order to waive the prohibition, the president would, on a case-by-case basis, have to issue Congress with a determination that invoking the waiver was “important to the national interests of the United States.”
Duncan’s amendment passed by a party-line vote of 22-18, and was among those incorporated into the final version of the bill that passed out of the full committee by a 23-20 vote late last Thursday night.
“We’re $14.3 trillion in debt,” the tea party-backed Republican freshman said in a statement Monday. “Why should we pay countries to hate us when they’ve shown they’re willing to do it for free?”
“The United States has no business giving money away to countries and groups who seek to do us harm.”
This bill makes sense, so the Democrats are opposed to it.
Last week, just outside Cuba’s holiest Catholic shrine, government thugs attacked in plain daylight a group of opposition women — beating them, stoning them and stripping them naked to the waist. The women, mostly black and middle-aged, suffered this public humiliation because they were trying to find a dignified way to bring attention to the plight of their husbands, who are in prison for freely speaking their minds.
The archbishop of Santiago de Cuba has condemned the attack. You can find an eyewitness account in Spanish in the above video.
It should make for poignant watching today, the anniversary of the start of the Cuban Revolution.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing unusual in this grotesque attack on the Damas de Blanco (or Ladies in White, the harassed association of wives of political prisoners) on the street outside the shrine of Our Lady of La Caridad del Cobre. It’s routine for Cubans to be publicly degraded, brutalized and imprisoned when they dare speak their minds. Their daily existence has been one of fear and wretched suffering for 50 years now.
Yet the chances are that you probably haven’t heard about this story. A quick Google search of the attacks on the Damas de Blanco turned up only about five hits, none from a major publication. Why?
Not because it’s a dog-bites-man story (literally, in this case), as some journalists might have you believe. No, it’s simply because the media don’t report the daily attacks on the Cuban dissidents.
The left in America seems to really approve of communism in Cuba. One wonders if they have any idea what really goes on there. Or maybe they do know, and they approve of it.
From Life News – an excellent re-cap of Perry’s pro-life record.
Excerpt:
“Every one of Governor Perry’s judicial appointees adheres to a strict constructionist style of jurisprudence; neither do they find a right to privacy in the penumbra of the Constitution, nor do they legislate from the bench,” Graham assures. “Governor Perry’s appointments have created the largest, most conservative judicial body in America.”
Joe Pojman, the head of Texas Alliance for Life, has also worked closely with the governor and confirms to LifeNews that “Perry has always been pro-life throughout his time as an elected official.”
“For many years, Perry has supported the fund raising efforts of pro-life organizations, including Texas Alliance for Life, and he has appeared several times at the Texas Rally for Life held at the state Capitol to commemorate the tragic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision,” Pojman added.”We believe Perry has the right stuff to be president. If elected, he will aggressively defend innocent human life as he has as governor of Texas.”
Pojman pointed to a laundry list of achievements Perry can point to as governor that have advanced the pro-life cause. Most recently, he signed into law a bill that would revoke taxpayer funding of the Planned Parenthood abortion business. But going back to the beginning, as the Lt. Governor in 1999, Perry oversaw the passage by the Texas Senate of the Parental Notification Act, the most substantial pro-life law passed in Texas up to that point. In 2005, Gov. Perry signed the parental consent measure to increase parents’ rights and, in the years since the parental notification and consent laws have been in effect, abortions on minor girls have dropped by 32% per year.
In 2003, Perry signed the Prenatal Protection Act, a law that protects unborn children from violent crimes of murder and assault by expanding the definition of human life in Texas criminal and civil law to include unborn children “at every stage of gestation from fertilization to birth.” Texas’ highest criminal court has upheld convictions of criminals for the murder of unborn children several times, and several are serving life sentences.
In 2005, Perry signed a measure prohibiting abortions in the third trimester and, in 2003, Perry signed the Woman’s Right to Know Act in 2003, which required that abortion businesses offer state-created informational brochures to women considering abortion. That law also prohibits late abortions from being performed excepted in hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers.
This year, Perry appeared to step up his push for pro-life laws even more and, in response to requests from the two Texas pro-life groups, made passing an ultrasound law among his top priorities.
“The bill he signed raises the standard of care for informed consent for abortion, for the first time, to the level of other surgical and medical procedures. It mandates a sonogram and gives women the right to see the image of the unborn child and hear the heartbeat. The bill also requires the physician who will perform the abortion to meet with the woman for an in-person consultation session 24 hours before the abortion to describe the procedure, its risks, and the alternatives,” Pojman said. “Abby Johnson, the former director of a Texas Planned Parenthood abortion facility turned pro-life advocate, believes that provision will “devastate” the abortion industry.”
Perry, this year, also signed a bill to create a “Choose Life” license plate to promote infant adoption as an alternative to abortion in the Lone Star State. Perry long promoted compassionate alternatives to abortion. Since 2005, Perry has signed budgets that include millions for pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life agencies that assist pregnant women.
Perry has also funded adult, not embryonic, stem cell research and treatments since 2005, and has spoken out against embryonic stem cell research.
This is what I like to see. Not rhetoric, but a record. A strong record with many different lines of engagement. We know what he would do, because we can see what he has done. That’s how you pick a candidate. You pick the one with the best record. You don’t listen to speeches read off of a teleprompter.
November 5, 2008 – Obama selects pro-abortion Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his White House Chief of Staff. Emanuel has a 0% pro-life voting record according to National Right to Life.
November 24, 2008 – Obama appoints Ellen Moran, the former director of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List as his White House communications director. Emily’s List only supports candidates who favored taxpayer funded abortions and opposed a partial-birth abortion ban.
November 24, 2008 – Obama puts former Emily’s List board member Melody Barnes in place as his director of the Domestic Policy Council.
January 23, 2009 – Forces taxpayers to fund pro-abortion groups that either promote or perform abortions in other nations. Decision to overturn Mexico City Policy sends part of $457 million to pro-abortion organizations.
February 27, 2009 – Starts the process of overturning pro-life conscience protections President Bush put in place to make sure medical staff and centers are not forced to do abortions.
February 28, 2009 – Barack Obama nominates pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius to become Secretary of Health and Human Services.
April 14 – Obama administration releases document that claims pro-life people may engage in violence or extremism.
May 5 – Details emerge about a terrorism dictionary the administration of President Barack Obama put together in March. The Domestic Extremism Lexicon calls pro-life advocates violent and claims they employ racist overtones in engaging in criminal actions.
May 8 – President Obama’s budget eliminates all federal funding for abstinence-only education.
May 26 – Appoints appeals court judge Sonia Sonotmayoras a Supreme Court nominee. Sotomayor agrees that the courts should make policy, such as the Roe v. Wade case. Sotomayor is later opposed by pro-life groups and supported by pro-abortion groups and those who know her say she will support abortion on the high court.
July 14 – Obama science czar nominee John Holdren is revealed to have written before that he favors forced abortions.
August 4 – Information becomes public that Ezekiel Emanuel, an Obama advisor at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research, supports rationing health care for disabled Americans that could lead to euthanasia.
December 17 – Signed a bill that overturned the 13-year-long ban on funding abortions with tax dollars in the nation’s capital.
January 26, 2010 – Renominates radical pro-abortion activist Dawn Johnsen to a top Justice Department position.
February 8, 2010 – The Obama administration admitted it improperly conducted a threat assessmenton pro-life groups in Wisconsin who were preparing to rally against a new abortion center at a University of Wisconsin health clinic.
March 22, 2010 – Signs the pro-abortion health care bill into law that contains massive abortion funding, no conscience protections and rationing.
May 10, 2010 – Names pro-abortion activist Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court; she is strongly opposed by pro-life groups.
September 30, 2010 – Obama administration exposed as to how it partnered with leading pro-abortion organizations to host an FBI training seminar in August with the main focus of declaring as “violent” the free speech activities of pro-life Americans.
December 14, 2010 – Obama administration admits it is working to rescind conscience protections for medical professionals who don’t want to participate in abortions.
February 18, 2011 – President Obama weakens conscience protections for pro-life medical workers.
March 2, 2011 – Obama administration refuses to investigatevideos showing Planned Parenthood helping alleged sex traffickers get abortions for victimized underage girls.
I just picked some of his record from that post on Life News. Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion President we’ve ever had.
