From: National Review Online
| April 15, 2013
| John Fund
Posted on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 12:32:15 AM by neverdem
COMMENT - John Fund is the fellow who once worked at the Wall Street Journal and evaded charges of domestic violence with the cooperative efforts of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, the first two numbers on his speed dial, in 2003.
In 2001 an article, titled, "Sex, Lies, and the Tape," authored by John Connolly of Vanity Fair and the Tape, made its appearance online, accompanied by what is now known as the Weaselsearch Tape. Transcript
The tape was made by the woman John Fund had talked into aborting his child, then battered and tried to kill. Morgan Pillsbury, left destitute, recorded the tape to persuade her mother, Pillsbury-Foster, in 1999, she was not lying.
Morgan has issues with the truth, there is no doubt. But then again, so does John. In late 2002 Morgan was living in hiding in Georgia because of attempts on her life.
John Fund is pro-life, you know. He says so. But, the reality behind his article, hiding behind the horror of the Gosnell Clinic, is using abortion for political positioning, his real job being as a political operative working with and for Karl Rove.
Back to 2003. Where did I read that date before? Right, an earlier entry on this blog regarding an article appearing in the Wall Street Journal., the COMMENT to which, in part read, "Craig
Franklin and Dan O'Dowd rendered service to the Wall Street Journal's
long time Editorial Page Editor, John Fund in 2003 by providing to him a
document which could not legally be supplied, this being an uncertified
deposition from a prior action for which Dan O'Dowd had asked to hold a
Power of Attorney for purposes of ensuring the settlement agreement was
carried out. Fund immediately put the document
up on line, where it remains today. A third party saw the enveloped
document, was told what it contained, and that it was addressed to
Fund. This was reported to Pillsbury-Foster only in 2008, five years after government contracts began to flow for Dan."
Motive, motive, motive. Piles of money fast tracked into Dan O'Dowd's pockets moved Green Hills to generously share the uncertified deposition in their file.
Why would Karl and Dick be so motivated? An article outlining their motives, which became far more urgent in November of 2002, will be out soon. Sign up to receive updates.
Article below:
Now it’s time for journalists to report on the “meat-market style” abortions at a Delaware clinic.
If there were an award for Most
Constructive Shaming of the News Media, the clear winner would be
Kirsten Powers, the brave Fox News pundit and Daily Beast
columnist. Last Thursday, she called out the mainstream media for
failing to adequately report on the ongoing trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell,
the Philadelphia abortionist who is charged with murdering seven
newborn infants and a patient seeking an abortion. Powers’s USA Today piece provoked an instant response from many sheepish journalists.
Megan McArdle of the Daily Beast acknowledged she
“should have” written about the “horror Doc’s” clinic. The Washington Post made the stunning admission that “we should have sent a reporter sooner.” Dylan Beers, Politico’s
media reporter, flatly stated that “Gosnell should be front-page,
top-of-the-hour news by prime time tonight.” Jeffrey Goldberg, a
Bloomberg View columnist, concluded, “It’s remarkable that it took this
long.”
Indeed, the silence had been stunning since the Gosnell trial began back on March 18. No mention of the story at all on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, or MSNBC, and no front-page stories in any major paper. National Review, The Weekly Standard, Breitbart.com, and Michelle Malkin, on the
other hand, provided early
and consistent coverage. J. D. Mullane, the columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times
who has been a tiger on the story, reported last week what he found in
the courtroom: In the entire 40-seat section reserved for the media, he
was the only one present. A couple of local journos were scattered
elsewhere around the courtroom.
The lack of interest is striking in an era when “if it bleeds it leads” thinking pervades the media. As Valerie Richardson of the Washington Times noted last week:
that abortion politics
played a role in the blackout. When Mullane asked a member of the
court’s staff why there was so little media interest, the man pointed to
the filthy medical equipment set up in the courtroom as an exhibit and
asked, “If you’re pro-choice, do you really want anybody to know about
this?”
It’s not as if there isn’t good reason for pro-choice journalistic sleuths to pursue the story for simple muckraking purposes. It’s a stunning tale of bureaucratic neglect and incompetence. Despite its law against partial-birth abortions, Pennsylvania stopped regular inspections of abortion clinics in 1993. But regulators still received frequent — and credible — complaints about unsanitary or horrific practices taking place behind Gosnell’s clinic door. And they did nothing.
A 2011 grand-jury report singled out racism and politics for the “see no evil” attitudes. “We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion,” the grand-jury report stated. Philadelphia district attorney Seth Williams, a liberal Democrat and one of the prosecutors in the case, maintains that abortion clinics are held to lower standards than other businesses are. In 2011, he asked, “How is it that we have more oversight in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania of women’s hair salons than we do over abortion clinics?”
Kudos to those in the media who are now quick to play catch-up on Gosnell. We might owe some of this course correction to the fact that the chief critic of media malpractice on Gosnell, Kirsten Powers, is not a conservative. Powers is a former Democratic political consultant who worked in the Clinton White House, and she supports most liberal causes, but she hasn’t spent her entire career in the media or the professional Left. She grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, understands the values of the Heartland, and is a practicing Christian. From her perspective, many people at both ends of the political spectrum wear ideological blinders. “This inability to engage in debate or handle disagreement is becoming the calling card of the Left,” she told the Religious News Service last week. “It should be a top concern for Americans, especially if you are a liberal and you believe dissent is a critical part to democracy.”
It’s sad that it took a liberal such as Powers to shame so many journos into waking up and doing their jobs. The blunt truth is that if a conservative had written her piece, the response would have been far more muted — or journalists would have attacked the messenger. Jeff Toobin of CNN offered a preposterous explanation for the media’s handling of the Gosnell case: “Well, the people making those [media] criticisms are by and large conservative. They are saying the liberal media is trying to protect abortion rights by not showing this horror show. I don’t buy that at all. . . . It’s a business decision. We are not operating with the political agenda here. We pick stories, by and large, for reasons that we think people would be interested. I don’t think we’re covering this up.”
Moving forward, there are two good ways to test Toobin’s hypothesis.
First, two former nurses at Planned Parenthood of Delaware told WPVI-TV in Philadelphia this month that conditions at the clinic there are dangerous. Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich, one of the former nurses, said: “It was just unsafe. I couldn’t tell you how ridiculously unsafe it was.” “They could be at risk of getting hepatitis, even AIDS,” added the other nurse, Joyce Vasikonis. Channel 6 reported that both nurses were stunned “by what they called a meat-market style of assembly-line abortions.” It noted that in Delaware, abortion clinics are not subject to routine inspections: “Planned Parenthood is essentially in charge of inspecting itself.” Will any national reporters follow up on Channel 6’s reporting?
Second, a leading Democratic candidate for governor of Pennsylvania is Allyson Schwartz, a five-term Democratic congresswoman who represents part of Philadelphia, where Gosnell had his clinic. Democrats are openly fretting that Schwartz, a passionate liberal, has political baggage. Not only has she voted against any and all restrictions on abortion, but from 1975 to 1988 she ran a women’s health clinic in Philadelphia where abortions were performed. Schwartz is “a dream candidate for Republicans,” one Democratic strategist told Philly.com this month before the Gosnell story erupted nationally.
J. D. Mullane is one journalist who is on the case. He has peppered Schwartz with questions on Twitter for days now. One sample: “Thoughts on Gosnell? Did you know him? Did you ever refer women to his clinic while you directed yours?” We’ll see how many journalists follow his lead with questions about her stance on partial-birth abortion, her record at her clinic, and her thoughts on the poor regulatory history of abortion clinics in Pennsylvania. So far, there has been only silence from the Schwartz camp.
— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO.
Megan McArdle of the Daily Beast acknowledged she
Indeed, the silence had been stunning since the Gosnell trial began back on March 18. No mention of the story at all on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, or MSNBC, and no front-page stories in any major paper. National Review, The Weekly Standard, Breitbart.com, and Michelle Malkin, on the
The lack of interest is striking in an era when “if it bleeds it leads” thinking pervades the media. As Valerie Richardson of the Washington Times noted last week:
The Gosnell case would seem to contain all the ingredients of must-see television: a formerly respected community leader accused of unspeakable acts; the death of a young immigrant woman; a parade of former employees offering graphic testimony on the gruesome deaths of more than 100 just-born infants; and even the implication by the doctor’s lawyers that the charges have been motivated by racism. Dr. Gosnell is black and his clinic was in a mostly minority neighborhood.It’s natural to think that some of the lack of interest stems from the gruesomeness of the details. Gosnell’s “practice” was so grisly that some people might wish to turn away and ignore the nightmare. But unpalatable images and facts don’t stop the media from reporting on the horrors of famine-stricken North Korea, even though there are almost no pictures available. It seems undeniable, then,
It’s not as if there isn’t good reason for pro-choice journalistic sleuths to pursue the story for simple muckraking purposes. It’s a stunning tale of bureaucratic neglect and incompetence. Despite its law against partial-birth abortions, Pennsylvania stopped regular inspections of abortion clinics in 1993. But regulators still received frequent — and credible — complaints about unsanitary or horrific practices taking place behind Gosnell’s clinic door. And they did nothing.
A 2011 grand-jury report singled out racism and politics for the “see no evil” attitudes. “We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion,” the grand-jury report stated. Philadelphia district attorney Seth Williams, a liberal Democrat and one of the prosecutors in the case, maintains that abortion clinics are held to lower standards than other businesses are. In 2011, he asked, “How is it that we have more oversight in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania of women’s hair salons than we do over abortion clinics?”
Kudos to those in the media who are now quick to play catch-up on Gosnell. We might owe some of this course correction to the fact that the chief critic of media malpractice on Gosnell, Kirsten Powers, is not a conservative. Powers is a former Democratic political consultant who worked in the Clinton White House, and she supports most liberal causes, but she hasn’t spent her entire career in the media or the professional Left. She grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, understands the values of the Heartland, and is a practicing Christian. From her perspective, many people at both ends of the political spectrum wear ideological blinders. “This inability to engage in debate or handle disagreement is becoming the calling card of the Left,” she told the Religious News Service last week. “It should be a top concern for Americans, especially if you are a liberal and you believe dissent is a critical part to democracy.”
It’s sad that it took a liberal such as Powers to shame so many journos into waking up and doing their jobs. The blunt truth is that if a conservative had written her piece, the response would have been far more muted — or journalists would have attacked the messenger. Jeff Toobin of CNN offered a preposterous explanation for the media’s handling of the Gosnell case: “Well, the people making those [media] criticisms are by and large conservative. They are saying the liberal media is trying to protect abortion rights by not showing this horror show. I don’t buy that at all. . . . It’s a business decision. We are not operating with the political agenda here. We pick stories, by and large, for reasons that we think people would be interested. I don’t think we’re covering this up.”
Moving forward, there are two good ways to test Toobin’s hypothesis.
First, two former nurses at Planned Parenthood of Delaware told WPVI-TV in Philadelphia this month that conditions at the clinic there are dangerous. Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich, one of the former nurses, said: “It was just unsafe. I couldn’t tell you how ridiculously unsafe it was.” “They could be at risk of getting hepatitis, even AIDS,” added the other nurse, Joyce Vasikonis. Channel 6 reported that both nurses were stunned “by what they called a meat-market style of assembly-line abortions.” It noted that in Delaware, abortion clinics are not subject to routine inspections: “Planned Parenthood is essentially in charge of inspecting itself.” Will any national reporters follow up on Channel 6’s reporting?
Second, a leading Democratic candidate for governor of Pennsylvania is Allyson Schwartz, a five-term Democratic congresswoman who represents part of Philadelphia, where Gosnell had his clinic. Democrats are openly fretting that Schwartz, a passionate liberal, has political baggage. Not only has she voted against any and all restrictions on abortion, but from 1975 to 1988 she ran a women’s health clinic in Philadelphia where abortions were performed. Schwartz is “a dream candidate for Republicans,” one Democratic strategist told Philly.com this month before the Gosnell story erupted nationally.
J. D. Mullane is one journalist who is on the case. He has peppered Schwartz with questions on Twitter for days now. One sample: “Thoughts on Gosnell? Did you know him? Did you ever refer women to his clinic while you directed yours?” We’ll see how many journalists follow his lead with questions about her stance on partial-birth abortion, her record at her clinic, and her thoughts on the poor regulatory history of abortion clinics in Pennsylvania. So far, there has been only silence from the Schwartz camp.
— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO.
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