Sham...Shame

The final insult this weekend was the sham Executive Order announcement that gave several Democrat holdouts the cover they needed, or so they think, to vote for the health care takeover. Executive Orders and signing statements can nibble around the edges or fill a vacuum left in legislation, but they can't override the plain language of a statute. The courts will rule that way or we really will finally have an imperial presidency. Bart Stupak and friends must know this, but they went along with it anyway:

It was especially fitting that the final votes were acquired with a giant wink and a good deal of political cowardice on the part of Bart Stupak and his gang. They know the executive order is an unenforceable fraud, and they know the pro-life movement knows it’s a fraud. But they did it anyway. Just as the Democrats know the CBO score is a fiction, and they know that fiscally concerned voters know it’s a fiction. But they did it anyway.

The cherry on the top of this whole disingenuous mess.

Now we'll see how things work through the Senate. Pelosi ultimately rejected the Demon Pass solution, to her credit, and we'll find out what parliamentary games Reid has up his sleeve. We still don't know what we are dealing with in its final form. As it stands now though, it seems to me that there are so many loopholes and subsidies that the clear language of the Hyde Amendment will be easily circumvented and federal money will be paying for abortions directly and through subsidies. Why else reject the strengthened language? The court rulings making that clear haven't been written yet, but they're coming.

For the record, I am reluctantly pro-choice, but vehemently opposed to federal funding of elective abortion. My opinion is that elective abortion is a grave sin. Under the US Constitution though, I do think I do not have the right to make that decision for another sovereign person. A government that has that power could also insist it has the power to force you to do all sorts of other things, like buy health insurance you neither want nor need, for example.