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Monday Overnight Open Thread - January 20, 2025 [Doof]
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July 27, 2010
Pro-Life Groups Demand Inquiry Into Kagan's Perjured TestimonyA letter created by Americans United for Life Action and signed by at least 30 state, national and legal organizations asks for "an investigation into discrepancies between Kagan's testimony before Congress and written documentation of her undue influence on medical organizations while advising President William J. Clinton on partial-birth abortion legislation." The article links this weeks-old analysis from liberal, pro-choice Slate, decimating Kagan. And, actually, William Saletan spins here for her a little bit, and yet it's still damning. Kagan, who was then an associate White House counsel, was doing her job: advancing the president's interests. The real culprit was ACOG, which adopted Kagan's spin without acknowledgment. But the larger problem is the credence subsequently given to ACOG's statement by courts, including the Supreme Court. Judges have put too much faith in statements from scientific organizations. This credulity must stop. No she didn't do just that. The word "may" has a lot of meanings. It expresses a possibility... but what level of possibility are we talking about? I can say the sun may not rise tomorrow -- and, indeed, it is technically possible that some unannounced catastrophe could arrest the earth's spin so that the sun never rose again. Or I can say it "may" rain tomorrow based on forecasts of a 60% likelihood of precipitation. There is obviously a lot of ground covered here, and large differences between that first and second sense of "may." The first sense states merely that something is technically possible, no matter how unlikely; the second sense states it's likely. In Kagan's case, she was specifically told that doctors could identify no situations in which the partial birth abortion was needed to save the life or health of the mother... and, indeed, they had trouble even imagining such situations! In her own notes, she confesses this (this is from that first link): In a June 22, 1996, memo, Kagan admitted that her meeting with the ACOG was "something of a revelation," for she learned that "in the vast majority of cases, selection of the partial-birth procedure is not necessary to avert serious adverse consequences to a woman's health." But the ACOG position was that the doctor should have the right to make a decision on a case-by-case basis. That's a conclusion, not a fact, and what was sought from them was the actual facts that should guide legislators and courts. So Kagan changed the facts. Rather than admit that her position is based upon a situation that trained OB/GYN's have difficulty even imagining, she recast this negative -- this statement of a negative likelihood of the need of a partial birth abortion -- into a positive. It may be necessary. Just like the sun may not rise tomorrow. True -- it may happen that way, but betting men would take odds against. In no possible world would ACOG's actual position -- "we can identify no actual situations in which this procedure is necessary, and in fact have trouble even imagining such situations, but we think doctors should still have that option" -- ever carried the day in courts. That's why she branded the facts a "disaster" for her side -- they were a disaster. So she changed the facts. Rather than the truth -- that this hadn't happened before and seemed unlikely to happen in the future -- she offered a lie: "It may be necessary," as if doctors had in mind a set of circumstances in which this would be the case. In fact, they explicitly did not. This is not "reframing." This is relying upon the inherent ambiguity of the word "may" to turn a clear statement that the procedure has never been necessary under real-world circumstances and in fact it's hard to imagine it being necessary under speculative, imaginary ones into a statement that the procedure may be necessary. (This is why PowerLine says there is no "technical inconsistency" in changing the meaning by use of the word "may" -- because the broad meaning of "may" gives you a lot of room to deceive without being caught in convictable perjury. But they are speaking only to that -- not towards whether there was an effort to deceive and alter meaning, an effort that resulted in wild success for untruth.) Even after Saletan offers his weak "reframing" claim, he notes that Kagan [Kagan answered a question about her role in drafting the language by saying] that she had just been "clarifying the second aspect of what [ACOG] thought." Progressive blogs picked up this spin, claiming that she merely "clarified" ACOG's findings and made its position "more clear" so that its "intent was correctly understood." Come on. Kagan didn't just "clarify" ACOG's position. She changed its emphasis. If a Bush aide had done something like this during the stem-cell debate, progressive blogs would have screamed bloody murder. And yet the spin is offered that she merely "reframed" the issue, changed the emphasis, by turning a the facts -- that in every circumstance imaginable, this procedure simply wasn't necessary -- into the useful lie that it "may" be necessary. Shouldn't her "may" have had a caveat there? As in "It may be necessary, but an exhaustive analysis of every imaginable scenario has yet to uncover a situation in which it is in fact necessary"? Because if you've ruled out all situations you've looked at, but are still claiming it "may" be necessary, the truth demands a disclosure of precisely how unimaginable you yourself have found it to be. And based on this lie, the courts have consistently claimed it was "unconstitutional" to prohibit (or merely limit) this procedure. I'd say "expect that to change," but then, hey, Elena Kagan's soon to be ruling on her own lie. Hm! I just realized -- we commonly differentiate the two uses of may in both written and spoken English. When we are talking about a far-fetched, entirely hypoethetical slim possibility, we draw out the word to highlight that we're using it in that way -- "I guess the 12th Imam maaayyy rise tomorrow and lead Iran in battle against us." "I suppose Obamanomics coooullld work." We italicize them in written English to stress these dubious possibilities as well. No italics, though, for Kagan! No attempt to alert her reader -- the judges she would now presume to join -- that she was indulging in speculations about extreme unlikelihoods. Nope, just plain old fashioned "may," same as you might say on a cloudy day, "You may want to bring an umbrella."
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Monday Overnight Open Thread - January 20, 2025 [Doof]
Invasion of the Apple Snatchers Cafe At Last Night's Rally, Trump Was Joined on the Stage By His Strongest Totally-Not-Gay Supporters Quick Hits Surprise: Defender of Normzzz and Protector of the Criminal FBI Pardons Terrorist Who Murdered Two FBI Agents Quick Update on "Team DeLulu" Cope Border Patrol Trucks Are En Route to the Southern Border Elections Have Consequences: The TSA Official Who Put Tulsi Gabbard on the Terrorist Watch List Has Been Fired The Inaugural Ceremonies, Continued "A Revolution of Common Sense:" Trump's Inaugural Address "For Americans, January 20, 2025 is Liberation Day." Search
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