National Republicans Stay Clear of Texas Abortion Debate

After spending the second half of 2012 extracting party candidates’ feet from their mouths, national Republican leadership is staying far away from the abortion debate playing out in Texas’s state legislature, Politico reports. Neither Republican National Committee officials nor the Growth and Opportunity Project members (dedicated to avoiding a 2012 repeat) responded to Politico’s requests for comment on the proposed legislation, which would ban abortion after twenty weeks and close 37 out of 42 of the state's abortion clinics. Though the state Republican Party Chairman did say that the mobilization of Democrats in support of Wendy Davis convinced the national party to give him more money to hire full-time staffers.

GOP pollsters argue that political distractions — rock star personalities, perceived bullying, rude comments — aside, most Texans support a ban on abortion after 20 weeks, when “nonpartisan medical experts say the fetus can feel pain.” For the millionth time, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (a group that has a financial stake in babies being born, after all) says there is "no legitimate scientific information that supports the statement that a fetus experiences pain." No one has polled about the clinic-closing TRAP laws that would make first trimester abortions so hard to get that the twenty-week deadline would become difficult to meet.

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Young Republicans to Make Abortion Funny

Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald has a disturbing dispatch from the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington today, where young Republicans are trying to figure out how to appeal to millennials with some edgy abortion humor. 

“How do you make abortion funny?” That was a key question mulled at a major conservative gathering Friday on how to make social conservatism appealing to young people, after an election where Republicans got trounced in the battle for millennial voters (who are are moving even further and further away from the Christian right on marriage and other issues).

Abortion has to be made funny, the thinking goes, because funny sells on social media, and that’s where one goes to court young people. “You can engage with sarcasm, it’s hard with the abortion issue, but you have to,” said Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins at a breakout panel at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington today on how to win millennial voters. “Unfortunately we have to, because this is the generation that we’ve been dealt.”

It all makes me worried these kids haven't been paying close enough attention. It's not abortion that gets the big laughs, it's the ignorance of anti-abortion politicians. 

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Republicans Urge Obama to Label Boston Suspect 'Enemy Combatant'

Alex Fitzpatrick2013-04-20 15:43:18 UTC

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) posted a statement to Facebook Saturday morning urging the Obama administration to consider labeling Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect in the Boston bombings who was apprehended alive Friday night, an enemy combatant. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) joined Graham's statement.

Tsarnaev became a naturalized American citizen on Sept. 11 of last year.

Tsarnaev became a naturalized American citizen on Sept. 11 of last year. Declaring him an enemy combatant would allow the government to interrogate him for intelligence beyond the degree allowed under normal circumstances. It would also move his case out of the domestic American legal justice system and most likely into a military tribunal.

"We should be focused on gathering intelligence from this suspect right now that can help our nation understand how this attack occurred and what may follow in the future," reads the lawmakers' statement. "That should be our focus, not a future domestic criminal trial that may take years to complete."

U.S. Attorney General Carmen Ortiz has already said that prosecutors opted for a public safety exemption which allows them to delay reading Tsarnaev his Miranda rights. Graham and the other lawmakers don't believe that to be the proper course of action.

" . . . We have concerns that limiting this investigation to 48 hours and exclusively relying on the public safety exception to Miranda, could very well be a national security mistake," reads the statement. "It could severely limit our ability to gather critical information about future attacks from this suspect."

Graham's statement echoed his previous comments made via Twitter Friday night as Tsarnaev was being confronted by police:

If captured, I hope Administration will at least consider holding the Boston suspect as enemy combatant for intelligence gathering purposes.

— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April 19, 2013

If the #Boston suspect has ties to overseas terror organizations he could be treasure trove ofinformation.

— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April 19, 2013

The last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to "remain silent."

— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April 19, 2013

The Obama Administration needs to be contemplating these issues and should not rush into a bad decision.

— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April 19, 2013

Graham continued his arguments after Tsarnaev was taken into custody, arguing that labeling Tsarnaev an enemy combatant would be legal and that he could provide evidence which may stop some hypothetical upcoming attack:

Now that the suspect is in custody, the last thing I want is for him to remain silent. #Boston

— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April 20, 2013

We should be focused on preventing possible attacks over the coming hours and days.#Boston

— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April 20, 2013

The Law of War allows us to hold individual in this scenario as potential enemy combatant w/o Miranda warnings or appointment of counsel.

— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April 20, 2013

Critics immediately attacked Graham's statements, arguing that labeling Tsarnaev an enemy combatant would violate his constitutional rights:

@grahamblog You don't care who you trample all over, do you?

— Brett Blake (@papicek) April 19, 2013

@grahamblog he is anAmerican citizen. It is a crime. Sure, terror, but it is a capital crime.

— Richard Dedor (@RichardDedor) April 19, 2013

.@grahamblog you know there is more than one Amendment to the Constitution, right? It doesn't stop at the Second.

— gideonstrumpet (@gideonstrumpet) April 19, 2013

@grahamblog Did this suspect become an Citizen last year?If he did,I think you need to remember that precious Constitutional 5th amendment.

— Pnthrgrlgail (@Mama4Obama1) April 19, 2013

Several columnists have also argued against law enforcement's comparatively less controversial decision to delay reading Tsarnaev his Miranda rights. "But the next time you read about an abusive interrogation, or a wrongful conviction that resulted from a false confession, think about why we have Miranda in the first place. It’s to stop law enforcement authorities from committing abuses," wrote Emily Bazelon for Slate in a piece that's quickly circulating around Twitter Saturday morning.

Image via Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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