Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

This fight is for everything.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

We still have time to mess this up!

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Let there be snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

The willow is too close to the house.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

This really is a full service blog.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Women's Rights / The War On Women / Time To Face the Courts

Time To Face the Courts

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Well, well, well:

Recordings secretly made by an anti-abortion group at meetings of abortion providers do not show criminal activity and could put the providers at risk, a federal judge said Friday, citing the recent shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick made the comments during a hearing over the National Abortion Federation’s request for a preliminary injunction that would continue to block the release of the recordings. Orrick did not immediately issue a ruling. He previously issued a temporary restraining order blocking the recordings pending the outcome of the preliminary injunction hearing.

The Center for Medical Progress has released several secretly recorded videos that it says show Planned Parenthood employees selling fetal tissue for profit, which is illegal. Planned Parenthood has said it abides by a law that allows providers to be reimbursed for the costs of processing tissue donated by women who have had abortions.

Alright, legal eagles. Does this mean that David Daleiden and the sociopaths at the “Center for Medical Progress” are in danger of facing criminal and/or other charges?

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  1. 1.

    mmeep

    Facing charges? More likely facing approbation, disdain, ridicule and mockery…which can be leveraged. Not sure if a DA could make an air-tight connection, but certainly, please proceed. CMP has earned whatever bad stuff comes its way.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Depends on this

    The National Abortion Federation says the recordings violate agreements the center entered into not to make such recordings of any meetings or discussions at the federation’s conferences and not to disclose information learned at its conferences to any third party without first obtaining the federation’s consent.

    If they violated their agreement, then the lawsuit might succeed. I believe true investigative reporting has been suppressed based on less.

  4. 4.

    currants

    @srv:

    could put the providers at risk

    (Goal is for safety of providers, i.e. preventing violence, not for showing the malevolent idiocy of the people haunting them)

  7. 7.

    Arm The Homeless

    It’s unfortunate that whatever shady financiers pumped this outfit with just enough cash to perpetuate their falsehoods won’t be brought to financial ruins.

    Hopefully a mole and or hacker steals their emails and dumps them on the interwebs so that the rest of America can go digging through their underwear drawers. Eww, I know.

  9. 9.

    Arm The Homeless

    @debbie: Considering that we aren’t even to the ‘banging shoes on table’ portion of this melodrama, I would say about 9 months.

  15. 15.

    BBA

    Count me among those who fear that Casey is no longer good law. When abortions are banned nationwide any crime anyone has ever committed against an abortionist will be retroactively legal because reasons.

  16. 16.

    Debbie(aussie)

    Why can’t these anti choice nutters use their passion and rage for something that really matters; like childhood poverty, income inequality or maybe even saving the planet from the ravages of climate change. Gad damn it, its so awful as to be beyond funny. They and their followers and their enablers (who probably couldn’t care less about abortion) have a lot to answer for in this world. Pity there is no hell.

  19. 19.

    max

    Does this mean that David Daleiden and the sociopaths at the “Center for Medical Progress” are in danger of facing criminal and/or other charges?

    There’s no criminal charges to be made unless the recordings were made illegally (according to that’s state law). If the recordings were made in violation of contract, that’s a civil suit. If the recordings were altered to misrepresent what happened in these meetings, and then published, that’s a pretty slam dunk libel case there.

    Hrmm. If the recordings were deliberately altered to falsely represent something, and they used the altered recordings to do fund raising, that might be fraud. Although that’s going to be a real stretch given the climate in federal courts, and actually, in prosecutor’s offices everywhere.

    Mostly just embarrassing and maybe good for coughing up a chunk of change in a civil suit.

    max
    [‘Back of the envelope.’]

  20. 20.

    MomSense

    Every week I fill backpacks with canned food so kids can have something to eat over the weekend when they don’t get lunch at school. The anti abortion people don’t give a crap about hungry children. They do not care about babies once they are living, breathing human beings outside the womb. The right wing constantly vilify poor parents.

    This anti abortion/fetus obsession has nothing to do with religion or compassion or “life”. They are so horrible that I almost wish there were a hell so they could spend eternity there miserable.

  21. 21.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks: Sensible people have always known anti-abortionists/forced birthers were liars. They could care less about babies once they’re born and cannot stand the fact that women can exercise reproduction rights.

    Hope Planned Parenthood sues for damages. Go after the anti-choicers/forced birthers with the same venom they go after women’s rights.

  22. 22.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Barney Frank said it best:

    … [they] believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth…

  25. 25.

    bemused

    Trump coliseum games just on msnbc. He boasts he has the most amazing vocabulary and then calls people stupid. A protester interrupted and the crowd went batshit mad. Their roaring made my skin crawl. So malevolent.

  27. 27.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Speaking of the War on Women, this is kinda related.

    Hillary said Trump was a great recruiter for Daesh. Lots of the press screamed “No Proof!!1” and Donald demanded an apology.

    (roll-eyes)

    SiteIntelGroup says otherwise.

    (via LOLGOP on Twitter)

    (edited to include dungeon post with proper URL.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  28. 28.

    Baud

    @bemused:

    I caught MSNBC earlier today and they were talking about Jeb with a huge crowd in the background, and I was like, there is no way that’s a Jeb rally. I guess it was the Trump rally you were watching.

  29. 29.

    Roger Moore

    @Baud:

    If they violated their agreement, then the lawsuit might succeed.

    There are also state-level laws about consent to record conversations; some states (notably including California, where some of these things were recorded) require consent from both parties. I am a bit surprised I haven’t heard arguments based on that.

  33. 33.

    Feathers

    My guess is that everyone going into the conference had to sign an NDA. I’ve worked at a medical org and that was the case in all meetings where details of cases were discussed. You either were from an org where you were bound by HIPPA, et al. for the details of these cases, or you signed an agreement with the rules as to what you could say later.

    It was a pain because I had to take minutes for some of these meetings. At my old job, I’d run a recorder as backup, but here I wasn’t allowed to.

    Smart move on National Abortion Federation’s part.

  36. 36.

    Germy

    President Obama will be a guest on Jerry Seinfeld’s popular web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, the Washington Post reports. The series usually features Seinfeld describing in detail and driving around in vintage cars with various fellow comedians, including Chris Rock, Amy Schumer, Larry David, Sarah Silverman, David Letterman, and Jon Stewart, but he’s made an exception to the premise for the president. Obama’s comedy credits include appearances on Zach Galifianakis’s public-access parody Between Two Ferns, Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast (during which Obama named Seinfeld as his favorite comedian, leading the “CICGC” producers to reach out), his monologues at various White House correspondents dinners, and that one time he told us about those folks who “wanna pop off” about Syria.

    According to the Post, Seinfeld and Obama take turns driving a 1963 Corvette Stingray in circles on the South Lawn of the White House, then chill over coffee in a staff dining room in the basement to talk about things that don’t involve health care or gun control. “He’s done some really good work as a monologist at those correspondents dinners — that’s how he qualifies to be on the show,” Seinfeld told the Post. In a statement, the White House said, “This was an opportunity to pull back the curtain for Americans on life in the White House. The president and Jerry had a unique, candid conversation that focused largely on the lighter side of the presidency.”

    The show will be available on December 30 and also features scenes filmed in the map, diplomatic, and China rooms at the White House before coffee. “It was out-of-body for me,” Seinfeld continued. “I’m not a guy who likes honor. In fact, I hate any kind of honoring. That I get to be a comedian — that’s the honor. But this was an honor: that [Obama] was okay with me, that he trusted me to do some comedy with him in the real White House.”

  38. 38.

    bemused

    @Baud:

    That made me search my memory and I don’t recall any Jeb events with attendance numbers even approaching a crowd. Maybe there were but couldn’t have been for long.

  43. 43.

    Bobby D

    While I will certainly vote for Hillary, I ‘ve never been impressed in the past. I’ve always been a “hold my nose, she’s the best chance we’re going to get” voter. That said, I am very impressed with Hillary in the lsat month or so. Especially today with the “hell no I won’t apologize to Trump” bit. Seems like the Dems may finally be cottoning on to the fact that people want someone who will fight back, and call these odius a-holes out for the ignorant bigots they are.

    Good show, Hill, now HIT HIM HARDER.

  46. 46.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    We Have A WInner:

    PolitiFact’s 2015 winner for Lie of the Year is: the collected statements of Donald Trump(they couldn’t narrow it down to one).

  47. 47.

    Calouste

    Well, apparently Christie said that he would formally instruct New Jersey to refuse refugees, but then he didn’t actually do it. (Not that it would have had any effect anyway.) That’s some serious ammo he has handed Trump there to accuse him of being a waffler and a wimp. Luckily for Christie the next debate is a while away.

  50. 50.

    Prescott Cactus

    @BillinGlendaleCA: or Gulag Archipelago. Darn Ruskies keep calling each other by different names. Nickname, first name, middle name, last name, maiden name, etc. . .

    Solzhenitsyn could make a 4 man card game read like the World Series of Poker.

  52. 52.

    J R in WV

    Trump is so despicable, I hope Hillary sticks with her declaration.

    Just the fact that international TV networks have run Trump’s hate filled speeches on every sat news channel in the world means her statements are true.

    What a maroon! And he thinks a majority of voting Americans will elect him president. If it happens I’m seeking amnesty in France!

  53. 53.

    raven

    @J R in WV: He said some shit about his people not going anywhere win or lose. What that really means, of course, is that the fuckers have always been here and they always will.

  54. 54.

    Anne Laurie

    @bemused:

    I don’t recall any Jeb events with attendance numbers even approaching a crowd. Maybe there were but couldn’t have been for long.

    Some of the early New Hampshire “house parties” looked pretty crowded — you put a few dozen people in even a fairly spacious McMansion, it’ll be standing-room-only. I honestly think some of those early JEB! donors, not to mention the Ripe-to-Rot parasites, mistook the polite attention of a lot of people who’ve been supporting the Bush clan since Prescott was a Nazi sympathizer for “Jeb-mentum”.

  55. 55.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Debbie(aussie): and @Villago Delenda Est:
    It’s a bit of a perfect storm. Opposing ‘baby killing’ makes them super righteous, while letting them freely vent their hate and be the meanest shits they want. A big chunk of that hate is against young women who have sex. As Palin lets slip, a chunk of it is racism, because one of the racist memes is that black women are not just sluts, but so irresponsible that they would rather kill a baby than control themselves. It’s a tribal war, and the evangelicals are feeling desperately anxious about the power of their tribe. They not only get to hurt other people and feel like heroes, they get to feel like their tribe are the only heroes while exerting power over everyone else. Wrap it all up, and you can see why they absolutely love their forced birth movement.

  56. 56.

    Anoniminous

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Pew Research has Evangelicals at 25.4% (down 0.09%) of the US population, next is Unaffiliated at 22.8% (up 6.7%,) Catholics come in third with 20.8% (down 3.1%,) Mainline Protestants with 14.7% (down 3.4%,) and Other Faiths dragging last with a measly 5.9% (up 1.2%.) Christians still vastly outnumber people with brains everybody else but they are aging while the Unaffiliated are young and getting younger even as more olds join the Unaffiliated. Evangelical retention rate is a hard question to answer, Pew puts it:

    for every person who has joined a religion after having been raised unaffiliated, there are more than four people who have become religious “nones” after having been raised in some religion. This 1:4 ratio is an important factor in the growth of the unaffiliated population.

    So it is reasonable to assume young Evangelicals are moving to None along with the rest of their age cohort.

    Which means, the God Bothering Morons are facing a loss of political power and a loss of social and cultural power. Given their whole ‘thing’ is to be officious authoritarian assholes we should expect them to get even more hysterical over the next 8 to 10 years.

  64. 64.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: The SPLC has sued both the Klan and the Aryan Nation. Their win against the Klan, though, is the largest award ever won in hate crimes case to date ($36-ish mil – IIRC they got about $6 mil in the Aryan Nation case).

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: the difference is they put Aryan Nations, as it was then set up, out of business. Butler lost the Hayden Lake compound, which was also his home, as a result of the settlement. Unlike the Klan, Aryan Nations never recovered. While there’s a couple of successor groups using, and fighting over the name, they’re not anything close to Richard Girnt Butler’s operation.

  66. 66.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: So let’s call it $40 some million taken from racist assholes and some of them put out of business. For that, I can put aside that Morris Dees can be kind of a dick in person.

  68. 68.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: Deal. BTW, if you haven’t missed it, the new(ish) National Alliance (Vanguard) director was arrested today for choking his secretary. He’s been released on bond, but with the two restraining orders out on him from the secretary and the witness, who both live on the compound, he can now not go on the site in West Virginia.

  69. 69.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: My buddy, Brian Levin, now a criminal justice professor at CSU-San Bernadino, used to work for Dees. Even though Brian has got this squeaky voice and New York accent, he does a hilarious Morris Dees impression.

  74. 74.

    The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...

    @Adam L Silverman: Agreed… in some ways, Brooks was far more challenging at the time than he was seen as, IMHO…

    Stuff like ‘The Sheriff is a N*gger’ & ‘Spring time for Hitler’ are really kinda jarring, when you come right down to it… and he made it work and made you laugh at those people…

  77. 77.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: It’s also a question of who is really the target of the mockery. Brooks never really made fun of any minority or downtrodden group. Except ignorant hicks.

  78. 78.

    The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...

    @Omnes Omnibus: He was/is Jewish and he did live in the post-WWII years… I can’t imagine he didn’t lose relatives to the Nazis… KKK… Nazis… tomato, tomato… (long ‘a’, short ‘a’)

  79. 79.

    burnspbesq

    @efgoldman:

    Meanwhile, things are quiet enough on the Krispie investigation front that I’d bet the US attorney is beavering away, maybe with a grand jury.

    The quiet is hardly surprising. See Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 6(e). For DOJ personnel, knowingly leaking grand jury information is both contempt of court and career suicide.

  81. 81.

    The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...

    @Omnes Omnibus: I recently read ‘Eichmann In Jerusalem’ for the 1st time… hard reading… it’s difficult to live w/ that information in your head… even after 50 & 70 years… for Brooks to make fun of Nazis the way he did is a real act of courage… it’s a way of saying, ‘No you won’t tell me who I am and run my life for me, for the rest of my life… I’ll show everyone how ridiculous and pathetic you are and they’ll all laugh at you’…

  83. 83.

    The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...

    @Omnes Omnibus: Absolutely… he couldn’t pull a trigger or the lever on a trapdoor at Nuremberg but he could fillet them w/ his words and he did it superbly…

    In my somewhat limited experience, one thing psychos and bullies (they’re actually the same) can’t stand it’s being laughed it…

  84. 84.

    Manyakitty

    @Adam L Silverman: Thank you! I’ve been saying this for years! Mel Brooks is a subtle genius. Plus, he did a ton of research. Watch History of the World, Part 1 as a historian and you’ll be impressed.

  85. 85.

    Miss Bianca

    @Manyakitty:

    “The Producers” and “Young Frankenstein” were always my favorites, but for sheer, shocking audacity, I have to pick “Blazing Saddles” as his masterpiece. It’s a little sad to reflect on how stinging and pertinent it still is, and how little chance Hollowwood – sorry, Hollywood, that really was a typo – will allow anyone to produce something like it again.

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