Obama Cover-up Revealed On Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Bill

New documents just obtained by NRLC, and linked below, prove that Senator Obama has for the past four years blatantly misrepresented his actions on the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill.

Summary and comment by NRLC spokesman Douglas Johnson: "Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an Illinois state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion -- even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion. Obama's legislative actions in 2003 -- denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions -- were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress. The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose."

In 2000, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) was first introduced in Congress. This was a two-paragraph bill intended to clarify that any baby who is entirely expelled from his or her mother, and who shows any signs of life, is to be regarded as a legal "person" for all federal law purposes, whether or not the baby was born during an attempted abortion. (To view the original 2000 BAIPA, click here.)

In 2002, the bill was enacted, after a "neutrality clause" was added to explicitly state that the bill expressed no judgment, in either direction, about the legal status of a human prior to live birth. (The "neutrality" clause read, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being ‘born alive’ as defined in this section.”) The bill passed without a dissenting vote in either house of Congress. (To view the final federal BAIPA as enacted, click here. To view a chronology of events pertaining to the federal BAIPA, click here.)

Meanwhile, Barack Obama, as a member of the Illinois State Senate, actively opposed a state version of the BAIPA during three successive regular legislative sessions. His opposition to the state legislation continued into 2003 -- even after NARAL had withdrawn its initial opposition to the federal bill, and after the final federal bill had been enacted in August 2002.

When Obama was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, his Republican opponent criticized him for supporting "infanticide." Obama countered this charge by claiming that he had opposed the state BAIPA because it lacked the pre-birth neutrality clause that had been added to the federal bill. As the Chicago Tribune reported on October 4, 2004, "Obama said that had he been in the U.S. Senate two years ago, he would have voted for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, even though he voted against a state version of the proposal. The federal version was approved; the state version was not. . . . The difference between the state and federal versions, Obama explained, was that the state measure lacked the federal language clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that legalized abortion."

During Obama's 2008 run for President, his campaign and his defenders have asserted repeatedly and forcefully that it is a distortion, or even a smear, to suggest that Obama opposed a state born-alive bill that was the same as the federal bill. See, for example, this June 30, 2008 "factcheck" issued by the Obama campaign, in the form that it still appeared on the Obama website on August 7, 2008. The Obama "cover story" has often been repeated as fact, or at least without challenge, in major organs of the news media. (Two recent examples: CNN reported on June 30, 2008, "Senator Obama says if he had been in the U.S. Senate in 2002, he, too, would have voted in favor of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act because unlike the Illinois bill, it included language protecting Roe v. Wade." The New York Times reported in a story on August 7, 2008 that Obama "said he had opposed the bill because it was poorly drafted and would have threatened the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that established abortion as a constitutional right. He said he would have voted for a similar bill that passed the United States Senate because it did not have the same constitutional flaw as the Illinois bill.")

National Right to Life and other pro-life observers have always regarded Obama's "defense" as contrived, since the original two-paragraph BAIPA on its face applied only after a live birth; the "neutrality clause" added in 2001 merely made this explicit, and therefore the new clause did not change the substance of the original bill.

Moreover, the overwhelming majority of liberal, pro-abortion members of the U.S. House of Representatives did not embrace the initial NARAL position that the original bill was an attack on Roe v. Wade. The Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, then as now, were a solidly liberal group, yet only one of them voted against the original BAIPA, without the "neutrality clause," and he cited a different reason. Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who supported the bill, and who described himself as "as pro-choice as anybody on Earth" -- argued that under his understanding of Roe "if an abortion is performed, or a natural birth occurred, at any age, [even] three months, and the product of that was living outside the mother, and somebody came and shot him, I don't think there's any doubt that person would be prosecuted for murder." When the original bill -- with no "neutrality clause" -- came up on the House floor on September 26, 2000, it passed 380-15.

These facts should give pause to those who have unskeptically accepted Obama's claim that the Illinois BAIPA bills that he opposed in 2001 and 2002, which were modeled on the original federal BAIPA, were crafted to attack Roe v. Wade.

For the moment we can set that debate aside, however, for this reason: Documents obtained by NRLC now demonstrate conclusively that Obama's entire defense is based on a brazen factual misrepresentation.

The documents prove that in March 2003, state Senator Obama, then the chairman of the Illinois state Senate Health and Human Services Committee, presided over a committee meeting in which the "neutrality clause" (copied verbatim from the federal bill) was added to the state BAIPA, with Obama voting in support of adding the revision. Yet, immediately afterwards, Obama led the committee Democrats in voting against the amended bill, and it was killed, 6-4.

The bill that Chairman Obama killed, as amended, was virtually identical to the federal law; the only remaining differences were on minor points of bill-drafting style. To see the language of the two bills side by side, click here.

To see the official "Senate Committee Action Report" on this meeting, click on one of the links below. (The document is dated March 12, 2003, which is the day that the committee convened, but Chairman Obama recessed the meeting until March 13, which is the day that these votes actually occurred.)

Here are links to the official document that records these votes, in three different formats.

In this report, the left-hand column shows the roll call vote on adoption of "Senate Amendment No. 1," which was verbatim the neutrality clause copied from the federal bill. The right hand column shows the roll call by which Obama and his Democratic colleagues then killed the amended bill -- the bill that was virtually identical to the federal law that Obama, starting in 2004, claimed he would have supported if he'd had the opportunity.

To view the text of SB 1082 as it was originally introduced (without the neutrality clause), click here. To view the text of Senate Amendment No. 1 (the neutrality clause copied from the federal law), which Obama and his colleagues added to the bill at the March 13 meeting (before killing the bill), click here.

NRLC has also obtained two additional documents that report information on these events that is fully consistent with the Senate Committee Action Report.

To see the "Senate Republican Staff Analysis: Senate Bill No. 1082," click here. (If this Word document requests a password, simply hit "cancel" and it will be displayed.) The first portion of this analysis was written before the March 12-13, 2003, meeting of the committee that Senator Obama chaired. The committee's actions, amending the bill to exactly track the federal born-alive law, and then defeating the bill, are reported on the bottom half of the second page.)

Finally, to see an Associated Press dispatch dated March 13, 2003, reporting on the 6-4 committee vote that killed the bill, click here.

Less than two years after this meeting, Obama began to publicly claim that he opposed the state BAIPA because it lacked the "neutrality" clause, and that he would have supported the federal version (had he been a member of Congress) because it contained the "neutrality" clause. His claim has been accepted on its face by various media outlets, producing stories that have in turn been quoted by the Obama campaign and Obama defenders in attacking anyone who asserts that Obama opposed born-alive legislation similar to the federal bill. It has also been forcefully repeated by advocacy groups such as NARAL (see, for example, this June 30, 2008 "alert" from NARAL).

It appears that as of August 7, 2008, only one writer -- Terence Jeffrey, a contributing editor to HumanEvents.com -- had correctly reported the essence of this story, in a column posted on January 16, 2008 (read it here), but his report was ignored by the Obama campaign and overlooked by others at the time.

Now, the uncovering of the Senate Committee Action Report and the contemporary Associated Press report shed new light on Senator Obama's four-year effort to cover up his real record of refusing to protect live-born survivors of abortion.

OT- but an interesting article I found snooping around on the Dem Puma sites:

by Shtuey

And you may ask yourself, how did this happen? How did we get here? Who is responsible? You think you know the answer, don’t you? You lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Coward Dean, Donna Grendel Brazile, Naughty Nazi Nancy, and Dirty Harry Reid. They most certainly have shared responsibility, and will go down in the annals of PUMA history as complicit executers of the coup, and as enemies of Democracy. But some elusive trouble is festering underneath the duplicity of the Democratic Party leadership. What is it? Perhaps we should ask Leah Daughtry.

Daughtry now serves as the Chief of Staff to Howard Dean. She is also the Chief Executive Officer of the Democratic National Convention. Everything that occurs in the Pepsi Center will be run down to last detail by her design. Perhaps now we understand why the announcement of Obama’s Nuremberg Rally at Invesco received not one word of scoffing from party leaders, not one bit of concern as to how a party that was canceling convention events in June due to a lack of funds, was so nonplused by this massive financial undertaking and extravagant waste of time and resources. When you examine where Leah Daughtry comes from, and what she represents, you will have a better understanding of how and why we are standing on the precipice of a free fall into the pit of despair.

According to the Democratic Party’s website http://www.democrats.org/a/2007/04/democratic_nati_21.php Ms. Daughtry worked at the U.S. Department of Labor as Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management during the Clinton Administration. She was in charge of the development of the Department’s management programs and policies, as well as being responsible for managing their budget to the tune of $35 million. She has also been, in the opinion of the party leadership, “…widely recognized as bringing sound, principled management and leadership practices to organizations with which she has worked.”

As Howard Dean’s Chief of Staff she is, “…responsible for managing day-to-day strategy and operations of the national party.”

In other words, Leah Daughtry is running the DNC, developing and moving its strategy, and bringing us the fiasco we are currently experiencing. Howard Dean is simply the errand boy. Of Daughtry, Dean has said, “Her strong guidance, skilled leadership and counsel have been invaluable to me during my tenure as DNC Chair and to the Democratic Party as a whole. I am confident that Leah will play a key role in the success of this important event [the Democratic National Convention] that will help us elect the next Democratic President of the United States.” But why would anyone choose to lead the Democratic Party down a suicide road?

Her extracurricular activities include, “Pastor of The House of the Lord Church in Washington, D.C., member of the Board of Visitors of The Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College, as well as the Boards of Directors of The House of the Lord Churches, and The Randolph Evans Memorial Scholarship Fund. She has previously served on the Board of Directors of the National AIDS Action Council. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Ms. Daughtry has also served as Executive Director of Man-to-Man/Sister-to-Sister, a not-for-profit human service agency dedicated to enriching and enhancing the lives of Brooklyn families, during which she created a specialized mentoring program for girls with HIV-infected mothers.”

Very impressive. Let’s go to church.

Her father is Herbert Daughtry, the leader of the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn, founded by Leah’s grandfather. The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/magazine/20minister-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin reports that, “His ministry has always combined consuming spirituality with black liberation theology — the theology Jeremiah Wright invoked this spring to defend his controversial sermons — and zealous political activism. Leah holds these forces within her.”

The NYT goes on to report that a pro-reparations banner hangs in this church bearing the legend, “They owe us.” So Leah Daughtry, the woman running the DNC, is steeped in black liberation theology, as is Barack Obama (I’m going to assume that since he sat in the church of Jeremiah Wright and listened to his bigoted spew for 20 years, and only left when he could no longer justify the politics of membership). You wouldn’t have joined the Trinity Church simply to suit your political desires would you Barry? That wouldn’t be very new politics would it?

I lived for a time in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, without doubt one of the loveliest areas in the country. Pastoral, academic, ringed by the Holyoke Range, it is home to five colleges including Amherst, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts. It is also a sheltering home to an active LGBT community. As a Jew I am always reading the social barometers of tolerance in the communities in which I reside. In my opinion, the LGBT community is the most easily marginalized in America. Assailed from all sides of American society, any community with an active and tolerated gay population is one in which I am happy to live, and one I feel safe in. If the gay community is accepted, so am I. Where gays are marginalized, pushed to the fringes, driven underground, or outright attacked, there is trouble for all minorities, be they religious, cultural, or racial. The LGBT community is under attack by the leadership of the Democratic Party. Do you feel safe? With this kind of leadership at the DNC I certainly don’t.

Citizen Crane http://citizenchris.typepad.com/citizenchris/2008/04/deeply-disappoi.html reports that in a March deposition regarding a discrimination suit filed by Donald Hitchcock http://advanceindiana.blogspot.com/2007/06/dnc-hit-with-discrimination-lawsuit.html, Howard Dean testified that Donna Brazile put up strong objections to a gay Democrat proposal to include LGBT delegates to the the Party’s affirmative action rules (noted by Harold Ickes on May 31, 2008 as being the only thing more sacrosanct than fair reflection to the Party’s delegate distribution rules).

The Washington Blade reported http://washingtonblade.com/2008/3-28/news/national/12301.cfm:

Dean said some ‘influential individuals’ within the DNC Black Caucus, such as Donna Brazile, opposed the plan because it was seen as “an affront to the civil rights movement.” Dean said the dispute grew to the point where “we had two very important groups of people in the DNC disagreeing with each other” and several DNC and caucus officials were asked to broker a deal that would make peace on the issue.

“I wanted equal representation for gay and lesbian Americans,” he said, “and I wanted to achieve it in a way that wasn’t offensive to the history of the civil rights movement.”

Other case documents suggest Leah Daughtry, Dean’s chief of staff and coordinator of the party’s upcoming convention in Denver, also opposed Shay’s proposal. Dean, however, said he couldn’t recall her position.

Would someone please explain how standing up for equal protection for gays is an afront to the civil rights movement? Equal protection under the Constitution for all people is the definition of civil rights in America. There is only one reason why anyone would hold this sick, twisted, hypocritical view: Homophobia. And where does Leah Daughtry stand on this issue?

Though Dean stated that Daughtry’s role in these discussions was simply to mediate, the fact is that her personal religious values make me more confident in the Kiwi bird’s ability to fly than Leah Daughtry’s ability to be an impartial mediator in any party business involving the LGBT community.

Again from the Washington Blade http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=16291:

Leah Daughtry, the Democratic National Committee’s chief of staff, opposes same-sex marriage, according to transcripts of her deposition in the Hitchcock lawsuit http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1850.

“I believe, as the church believes, that marriage is intended for one man and one woman,” Daughtry said in transcripts obtained by the Blade this week.

Despite her stance, Daughtry noted in the transcripts that she has not advised Dean to oppose same-sex marriage.

Daughtry is a Pentecostal minister to a small congregation in Washington. She has said that she speaks in tongues and considers the practice “a gift given by God.”

According to the transcript, she denied that her religious beliefs impact her work at the DNC.

Uh-huh.

The obvious rift between African American and LGBT Democrats is the Party’s dirty little secret, or not really secret; it’s just not being widely reported by the MSM who, at least up to now in this election cycle, have staked their collective professional reputation on kissing Barack Obama’s ring.

Leah Daughtry also has one more dirty little connection in her roll as DNC puppet master. Newsweek reports that in 1997 http://www.newsweek.com/id/67933/page/1, family friend Alexis Herman, hired Daughtry as her chief of staff. Herman was the Secretary of Labor at the time. You remember Alexis Herman don’t you? She co-chaired the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting on May 31, 2008
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/Nelson-Hastings%20Letter%20to%20RBC%20Chairs0001.pdf. Isn’t that special?

This coup runs deep, and the powerplay doesn’t even let the LGBT community reside under the bus. The marginalization of this large, politically active, and financially generous segment of the Democratic Party, by what must be Donna’s new coalition, puts all of us in jeopardy. They have taken it upon themselves to determine who will fall under the umbrella of the Equal Protections Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause.

This is Donald Hitchcock’s statement regarding his suit:

“As a lifelong, loyal Democrat I am filing this complaint against the DNC because the road to social justice sometimes demands that our political family and friends be held accountable when they do not act for the common good.

Respecting the Democrats’ opportunity to regain the majority in both Houses of Congress, I remained silent throughout the last year about my illegal termination and subsequent ongoing defamation from the DNC. Prior to filing this lawsuit I tried several times to settle this matter in a reasonable and professional manner, but the DNC refused and continues to attempt to discredit me and my political opinions.

Prior to my position at the DNC, I worked for 10 years advocating for equality for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community. When I was recruited by the DNC to serve as the Director of its Gay and Lesbian leadership Council, I was told that my professional and activist background would be helpful to achieving Governor Dean’s goals. Once I joined the DNC, however, senior staff made it clear that they had no interest in LGBT equality. Instead, Democratic LGBT constituents and employees are treated as second-class citizens, whom the DNC tries to ignore unless fundraising is involved ?reducing the community to a little more than an ATM. As a DNC employee, I tried to push the organization to treat the LGBT community with greater respect. The DNC ultimately terminated me after my long-term partner criticized the Democrats’ lack of a strategy to combat anti-gay ballot measures - a critique made without my input and which the DNC recently admitted was accurate.

It is clear that the DNC fundraisers have no intention of ceasing their personal attacks against me. Their goal is to keep LGBT money flowing to the DNC, no matter what. For some, if truth is not convenient they find it expendable for the cause. They have spent time researching my political and charitable contributions and even claimed publicly that I was not a loyal Democrat since I did not donate a part of my salary back to the party. Social justice is not for sale, nor should it have to be bought.

The LGBT press has rightly criticized the DNC for its failure to recognize and promote basic human rights for the community. Rather than respond to legitimate questions about DNC policy and strategy impacting the LGBT community, the DNC has retaliated against publications and former employees by attacking the messengers personally. The DNC now has fewer openly gay and lesbian members than before the 2004 election. This is not progress.

I expect my party to embody the Democratic values of fairness and honesty. It is important that the DNC be able to acknowledge its failings and live up to its promise to protect the human rights of the LGBT community as we move forward. To help attain this goal, I cannot remain silent on matters of policy and substance.”

Let’s be clear. It will not be enough to defeat Obama, should his candidacy survive the Democratic National Convention. If Daughtry, Brazile, Herman, and the rest of the new coalition squad continue to maintain power in the party, then PUMAs will have no party to return to, and nothing to build but a third party; a center/left PUMA party that takes on the roll of being the Big Tent that the Democratic Party’s affirmative action rules were supposed to make it. What are you prepared to do to take your party back, or build a new one? Start asking yourself. The road is long. The work is hard. The need is urgent. Your liberty is at stake.

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