Fighting For Faith, Family & Freedom

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

To: Friends & Supporters

From: Gary Bauer

Pro-Abortion Extremism

While some pro-life conservatives are still back on their heels, worried about managing the abortion issue and worried that they will be labeled as extremists, pro-abortion liberals at the state and federal level are taking the most extreme positions possible. 

Pro-abortion politicians are promoting radical bills that allow third trimester abortions – destroying an innocent baby in the eight or even ninth month of pregnancy. Polling shows that only 13% of Americans support that extreme position. Yet, somehow we’re still playing defense.

The latest example of the left’s obsession with abortion comes from Minnesota. So-called “progressives” in the state Senate there just jammed through a measure that is one of the most extreme in the nation. It is telling that the people advocating for this bill constantly referred to “pregnant people,” not women.

Once upon a time, abortion was a “women’s rights” issue. Not anymore. Insane leftists can no longer define what a woman is and now insist that men can get pregnant, too!

Conservatives in the Minnesota Senate offered 35 moderating amendments to this extreme bill, but they were all defeated by one vote, reflecting the 34 to 33 split in the chamber.

One defeated amendment would have made it optional for a mother to ask for anesthesia for her late-term baby who could feel pain. It was voted down on a party-line vote. If you immersed a kitten in saline solution to burn its skin off, you’d rightly be sent to jail. But in Minnesota, who cares if the preborn baby is feeling intense pain!

In states with conservative majorities, legislatures are advancing pro-life laws. Generally, they include exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. In these states, they are seeking the common ground where most Americans are. 

But in every state with large left-wing majorities, they are adopting the most extreme positions possible, positions mimicking communist China and North Korea. 

Yet, pro-life politicians are not able to get critical mass in the media, through ads or grassroots pressure to expose how extreme the left is. Maybe that’s about to change. 

The Republican National Committee is urging candidates to “go on offense” and calling on state legislatures to pass pro-life bills that “underscore the barbarism of the” left. 

Regardless, the GOP cannot avoid this fight. The pro-abortion left is going on offense, too, so those of us who value the sanctity of life had better be ready.

A Great Victory

In contrast to the barbarism of Minnesota liberals, there was a great victory yesterday for a persecuted pro-life family and, by extension, a victory for all of us who care about rule of law. 

In the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, the pro-abortion Biden Administration began aggressively targeting pro-life activists. One is Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven children. 

Houck had a minor altercation with a volunteer abortion clinic escort in October 2021. The escort was harassing Houck’s 12 year-old son, and Houck pushed him away twice. Local authorities refused to press charges against Houck because nothing happened.

But the Biden FBI raided the family’s home a year later and threatened to lock him up for 11 years. Houck wasn’t an accused bank robber. He wasn’t an accused terrorist plotting to overthrow the government. He didn’t cheat thousands of investors out of billions of dollars. 

He got into a shoving match with a pro-abortion advocate on a sidewalk near an abortion clinic. For that, the FBI sent 15 agents to his home to scare his family and, more importantly, to scare all of us.

This was an overt act of intimidation. Thankfully a jury of his peers found him not guilty on all charges. 

Even though this case turned out the right way, the fact that the case was pursued at all is evidence that the Biden Administration has weaponized federal law enforcement against conservatives, and particularly values voters, hoping to demoralize us.

But that’s not the only way the Biden Administration is trying to intimidate its opponents. By inaction and omission, they continue to allow militant leftists to disrupt the neighborhoods and homes of conservative Supreme Court justices, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett.  

President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and left-wing local officials are refusing to enforce federal and state laws that prohibit demonstrations outside the homes of judges. 

The law has an obvious purpose – to prevent the intimidation of the judiciary, which is exactly what the Biden Administration is encouraging.

Here’s an idea: Perhaps the conservative justices should approach their liberal colleagues on the high court and show them the laws that are being ignored. Then they could recommend that the justices issue a joint statement insisting that the executive branch fulfill its constitutional obligations to enforce the law so the justices don’t have to worry about radical activists threatening their homes, and even their lives.

It would be a powerful statement highlighting the left’s double standard of justice.

Draining The Swamp

A regular theme of these daily reports is the desperate need to drain the Swamp. That’s not just partisan rhetoric or talking points. Accountability and transparency in government is essential to preventing corruption, and the rule of law is the essential difference between our constitutional Republic and authoritarian regimes.

But as we have repeatedly noted, the left is increasingly intolerant and authoritarian. Thus, it feels justified in bending the rules and or even breaking them in pursuit of the leftist agenda. 

It’s bad enough when leftist teachers try to evade laws that ban critical race theory and other divisive topics. But it is totally unacceptable for elements of the government to engage in a “soft coup” against the duly elected administration, as the FBI did against the Trump/Pence Administration.

So, kudos to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and other members of the new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The work of this select subcommittee may be the most significant thing the new House majority accomplishes in the next two years.

Chairman Jordan recently released a 1,000-page report full of whistleblower testimony and interviews with FBI agents who told members of Congress what they experienced at the Bureau.

In contrast to many politicians who go out of their way to praise the FBI before condemning the “few bad apples,” these whistleblowers described an agency that is “rotten to its core” and that regularly intimidates and harasses conservative agents.

I urge every conservative presidential candidate, including some who are my friends, to rethink their constant praise of the FBI. If the FBI was a fine organization, agents would not be following the orders of the “bad apples” in leadership.  They would be exposing them!

Exposing government corruption shouldn’t be a partisan issue. History has demonstrated over and over that corruption at the highest levels of government has always been an existential threat to human liberty.

As the old adage goes, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”