Gosnell was just an outlier, right?

A Summit County abortion clinic that was connected with a Toledo abortion clinic that lost its transfer agreement from the University of Toledo has been shut down by the state because of deficiencies found during a February inspection, including allowing under-qualified people to administer drugs and using patients’ blood without their knowledge.

Capital Care Network in Cuyahoga Falls was notified on March 5 that the Ohio Department of Health would issue an order that the center at 2127 State Rd. could no longer perform surgical procedures. (Source)

From the “isn’t birth control great” files.

Health Canada says it has received reports of at least 23 young Canadian women who have died while taking one of two commonly prescribed birth control pills, Yaz and Yasmin.

More than half the reported deaths were in women younger than 26, including one who was 14.

The agency reports it has received 15 reports of deaths among women taking Yasmin up to the end of February. It has received eight reports of deaths among women taking Yaz. (Source)

Kudos to the Catholic parents of Ottawa and to Parents as First Educators (PAFE) for pressuring the Ottawa Catholic School Board into modifying it’s existing policies so that ”Catholic and social and moral teaching” will guide partnerships undertaken in the board. Apparently Archbishop Prendergast played an important role in obtaining this change.

Despite this improvement, the language in the policy remains ambiguous to the extent that it’s not clear that anti-life speakers will be systematically turned away or that students will be protected from going on trips to visit anti-life organizations in the Global South.  In fact, during the meeting, some trustees were still defending the decision to invite Justin Trudeau speak in the schools. Clearly, some trustees just don’t get it.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. The parents have obtained a first positive step in the right direction. With continued vigilance, we can build on this going forward.

We have the momentum in our favour and change is starting to happen. Let’s keep the heat on.

Word to the trustees: if anything goes wrong under this policy, we’ll be back for more changes. Count on it.

New data from the US Census Bureau:

More white Americans are dying than being born for the first time in modern history—suggesting minorities and newcomers will play an important role in fueling the population growth America’s recovering economy needs to thrive.

The number of non-Hispanic white Americans who died in the year ended June 2012 exceeded the number who were born during that period by about 12,400, the first “natural decrease” for this group. (Source)

I’m sure its no better in Europe (probably worse). So globally, it would appear that whites are beginning a slow but steady decline.  Granted, the current decline is very modest and partly due to the economic slowdown. However, demographic trends are so hard to change, much like moving tectonic plates. Once they get going, they’re hard to reverse.

You’ll see those numbers accelerate in coming decades as the population ages and more white people kick the bucket.

You don’t say? Are you shocked that this would ever happen? 

But the problem seems to go beyond the patients simply becoming drug dealers. There’s evidence that the doctors might be in on it. According to one cop:

“We’ve seen some very unusual and high amounts of dried marijuana that’s been prescribed, and there’s just no realistic way that anyone could smoke that much marijuana in one day,” he said. (Source)

Can’t say I’m shocked here either.

Fortunately, it seems that the government has introduced legislation to end the practice of people growing their own dope.

Personally, I think that suffering patients need better support networks and coping skills, not hallucinogenic drugs. It’s tough to have to endure chronic pain and terminal illness, but pot is a lousy pain-killer compared to the good stuff on prescription. It’s the escape that seems to drive users towards pot.

According to a leaked memo, it would appear that Pope Francis has recognized the existence of a “Gay Lobby” within the Vatican.

“The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there.…We need to see what we can do,” Pope Francis is quoted as saying in the memo, which was leaked to Chilean website, Reflection and Liberation. CLAR issued a statement late Tuesday confirming the authenticity of the memo while emphasizing that it had been written from memory by the meetings’ attendees.

“The Presidency of CLAR deeply regrets the publication of a text referring to the conversation held with the Holy Father Francis in the course of a meeting on this past June 6,” CLAR’s leadership said in the statement.

A Vatican spokesman didn’t deny the reports of Pope Francis’s remarks to CLAR, but declined to confirm them. (Source)

The good news is that Pope Francis is apparently driving some serious reforms of the Vatican bureaucracy. Let’s pray that he can clean up this mess.

And let’s also pray that groups like CLAR will exercise a bit more discretion with documents relating to their meetings with the Holy Father.

As you’ve probably heard, Brent Rathgeber has resigned from the Conservative Party and will sit as an independent MP. He just couldn’t stomach Stephen Harper’s strong-arm tactics any more.

Good on him.

As Andrew Coyne points out in a very thoughtful article, this is part of the unrest that started several weeks ago when Mark Warawa had his democratic rights quashed when he tabled a motion to condemn sex-selective abortions. Let’s see if anybody else jumps ship.

A great witness by retired Baltimore Ravens center Matt Birk, who won the Superbowl a few months ago:

“I have great respect for the office of the presidency but about five or six weeks ago, our president made a comment in a speech and he said, ‘God bless Planned Parenthood,’” Birk, a former Minnesota Viking, told a local Minnesota sports blog . “I’m very confused by [Obama's] statement,” he explained. “For God to bless a place where they’re ending 330,000 lives a year? I just chose not to attend.”

Birk said he’s a pro-life Roman Catholic. “Planned Parenthood performs about 330,000 abortions a year,” he said. “I couldn’t endorse that in any way.” (Source)

God bless Matt Birk.

Pope Francis to future diplomats: No to careerism

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Thursday spoke to the members of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, which is dedicated to training priests to serve in the diplomatic corps and the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. In his address, the Holy Father reminded the students that they must cultivate a deep spiritual life in order to attain the “inner freedom” that is necessary for their future work.

He also warned against ambition, and once again denounced careerism, which he called “a leprosy.” (Source)

Yikes, leprosy?

Well done, Bishop!

While the event was titled “Two Catholic Views on Marriage,” Bishop Paprocki corrected that error.

“There is only one authentic Catholic view,” said Bishop Paprocki. “There are two views being presented here tonight by two people who are baptized Catholics, but only one of those views, the one I will present, is consistent with Catholic teaching, while the other view clearly dissents from Catholic teaching.” (Source)

Story here. Signs of hope.

Here.

It’s all part of the Obama master plan:

• First, unleash the IRS hounds on your political opponents.
• Then, abuse your power by strip-searching the media.
• Send to FBI to investigate pro-life groups as if they were terrorists.
• Turn the army from a fighting machine into a sensitivity-training camp.

You see the pattern? This President is so oppressive. Americans should wake up fast. It’s not as though he deserves to be in power because he’s doing an awesome job on the economy, either.

The National Post is worried about new poll results on the Rob Ford controversy. They should be:

Respondents were presented with two options: that the “alleged video showing Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine with drug dealers … exists and is real”; or that it’s “just a hoax and part of a conspiracy by the Mayor’s opponents to discredit him.” Fully 45% chose the hoax/conspiracy option. Meanwhile, 49% said they believed Mr. Ford when he said he “does not smoke crack cocaine”; and 49% agreed, either “strongly” or “somewhat,” that “this is another example of a persistent agenda by the Toronto Star and other media outlets to bring [Mr. Ford] down because they don’t like his agenda.” Read the rest of this entry »

No need to invoke mythical videos on this one. We have direct testimony based on an investigation by the Ontario privacy commissioner.

I hope heads roll on this. Do you know how much could have been accomplished with the squandered $585 million? It’s mind boggling.

There are some politicians in Washington who think that to avoid horrific abortionists like Gosnell we just need more Planned Parenthood facilities. I’m not so sure:

Two former nurses at a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Wilmington, Delaware, testified before a Senate hearing yesterday, describing what they said were “nightmare” conditions characterized by a “meat-market assembly line” style of performing abortions in which patients were treated like cattle, and profit was king.

(…)

“The doctor would be in such a hurry to get the patients in and out himself that he would bring patients back into unclean procedure rooms where the examination table would still have bloody drainage and body fluids from the previous patients,” she said.

The nurses also recounted how surgical instruments were improperly sterilized, surgical suites were not properly cleaned between patients, equipment was outdated and in some cases broken, staff were unqualified and untrained and drugs used were expired. (Source)

The headquarters of Planned Parenthood was notified on numerous occasions, but it chose to not do anything.

The two women showed lawmakers copies of numerous e-mails that they sent to state authorities and Planned Parenthood senior officials reporting the horrendous conditions they witnessed.

“There was no real response to fix it,” said Joyce Vasikonis. “Planned Parenthood is a very powerful organization.”

[Nurse] Mitchell-Werbrich complained that while other medical facilities are subject to thorough oversight, Planned Parenthood is apparently tasked with policing itself.

“I said, who regulates them, who watches over them?” she said. “Planned Parenthood has no one. Planned Parenthood Federation watches themselves, which didn’t make sense.”

It’s funny how the Democrats are acting all outraged at the IRS scandal. As Karl Rove points out, many of them actually wrote letters to the IRS a few years ago precisely to ask them to investigate conservative groups. This includes Senator Dick Durbin, Senator Max Baucus, Representative Peter Welch and Senator Chuck Schumer, to name a few.

The IRS was just doing as they were asked by their Democrat masters.

Pope Francis is right. If we look grumpy, people will never want to be Christians because they won’t want to be miserable like us.

By squeaker

By now you’ve all heard about the controversy brewing around Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto. I won’t take any position on whether Rob Ford is a good mayor or even if he’s used crack or not. But I will comment on due process.

The Globe and Mail severely crossed the line on Friday when they published an article by Chris MacDonald, who says that Rob Ford must resign now even if he’s innocent. Why? Basically because the controversy has grown so much that it’s a full-blown crisis.

This is very disturbing from Canada’s biggest national newspaper. Just take a step back and look at what has happened in this whole controversy:

• First, the leftist media cooked up a story without providing a shred of evidence.
• They then proceeded to speak of nothing else for two weeks and whipped Toronto into a frenzy, thus manufacturing a crisis
• They then conclude that since there’s a crisis, Ford must resign even if he’s innocent. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a narrative going around Washington that the IRS scandal could have been prevented through proper safeguards. This is nonsense. There’s already a gazillion oversight groups:

The agency at the center of Washington’s latest political storm hardly lacked for institutional safeguards. The 1998 restructuring — the first such changes in nearly half a century — created a nine-member IRS Oversight Board designed “to oversee the IRS in its administration, management, conduct, direction, and supervision” of the tax laws.

By 2010, when the IRS began struggling to process applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status, the support apparatus had expanded to include an IRS Advisory Council, the office of the National Taxpayer Advocate, the inspector general and several subject-specific advisory committees, including one for tax-exempt entities. Read the rest of this entry »

Here.