Mac-Coleman

13 May 2013 –

What a day.  Two things. 

A jury in Philadelphia rendered a verdict of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter in the Kermit Gosnell trial.  The three murder counts were for three of the babies whose spinal cords this “doctor” severed with scissors after they were born alive during botched abortions.  The involuntary manslaughter verdict was for his killing of a woman with an overdose of drugs while he was preparing her for a late-term abortion.  On 21 March, the trial will enter the penalty phase with deliberation for sentencing.  Pennsylvania has the death penalty and life in prison for first-degree murderers.  Much now should be written about the appropriateness of the death penalty for this murderer of innocent children.  I defer those remarks to others.  I don’t have the skill to express my feelings and still maintain control on a keyboard.

This sad moment in history is too long time in coming.  Elite intellectuals in the last century choked legal logic until it finally vomited up new privacy rights in the penumbra of the Constitution, i.e., abortion on demand.  An abortion industry sprang up and soon gained enough power to stretch “the right to abortion,” to extend it well beyond the first trimester of a pregnancy.  This killing industry’s spokesmen then pushed the argument even farther from original intent, enabling a junior senator from Illinois and presidential candidate to use the term “women’s reproductive rights” instead of “abortion on demand” to soften the issue beyond all original recognition.  At the same time, other senior lawmakers were proposing that life isn’t life until a mother and doctor say that it is. 

This trial of a monster murderer of babies finally yanked the argument away from the hollow parsers of language and the obfuscators of original meaning.  It put the argument in the hands of twelve ordinary citizens on a local jury.   One may contend that these jurors were unprepared to be Solomon.  But, these jurors performed a far wiser act than did Solomon when he determined the actual mother of a live baby.  They saw killing babies for what it was—murder—and declared it so.  Theirs was the right decision.  We should thank God that the jury system often brings us back to stark, simple reality.  Now, these same jurors need to recommend to the judge to do the right thing in the final, punishment phase of the trial. 

I cannot imagine a more tyrannical use of government power than the Internal Revenue Service’s recent harassment of conservative, non-profit organizations.  Such corrupt, politically motivated actions are real dangers to the Founders’ original concept of property and speech rights.  Perhaps, only dictatorship could be worse. 

The IRS’s role is to collect taxes.  It should do so by impartially implementing tax codes.  But, its corrupt day-to-day operations appear to have made it a dangerously powerful arm of the executive branch of government.  Alas, the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 seems to have done little to prevent the IRS from using its audit and policy powers to harass and rob those who exercise their constitutional rights to oppose the present administration.  

The IRS’s public statement that it targeted conservative political organizations with “increased scrutiny” is a stunning admission that demands immediate corrective action.  The President must treat this corruption as a crisis.  He must quickly move this situation to near the top of his “to-do” list instead of leaving it where he penciled it in during today’s press conference.  The President should aggressively cleanse the IRS and prosecute those responsible for their latest crimes.  He should do this for his own protection.  After all, corruption honors no code but its own.  An unrepentant IRS could target an ex-president after 20 January 2017, especially if the new president turns out to be as flexible in his moral standards as the present one has shown himself to be.