by LauraLoo

Less than 24 hours before heading to FCI Englewood – a low-security federal prison in Littleton, CO, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich imparts his final words to the public, with wife Patti by his side.

It’s hard to believe, given his gift of gab, that we won’t publicly hear Blagojevich’s voice live for at least 12 years.  He has been sentenced to 14 years for 18 corruption counts after two trials but may actually serve about 12 years.  Sentencing can be reduced for good behavior, as well as his enrollment in an alcohol abuse treatment program while in prison.

Do you think his sentence is excessive based on what he was found guilty of?  I do.  I found him guilty, yet I had hoped he would serve 5 years.  Others are convicted of far more heinous crimes and they serve less time than Blagojevich will have to do.

Also, there was a discussion yesterday on WLS as to whether Blagojevich’s tough dilemma fits the category of calamity (as he states).  Or does this fall in the category of a self-imposed tragedy – that the consequences of his talk and behavior result in his not being with his wife and children for at least a dozen years?  The point made was that calamities can be defined as tsunamis, murders, famines, and such.

Don’t miss exclusive photos and short audio clip courtesy of WLS890AM Chicago.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTrXoayLLhw[/youtube]

Email LauraLoo with your Lunch Break suggestions.

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• UK abortion clinics aren’t used to large protests:
  
  

  The spokeswoman, who requested anonymity because she said she had received hate mail, said the protests were bigger than many other anti-abortion protests.

  “We’ve always had sporadic outbursts down the years, but I think we are seeing something, seeing protest on a scale we haven’t seen before,” she said.

• The office of Governor Rick Perry responds to the Obama Administration announcement that the federal government will defund the Woman’s Health Program because Planned Parenthood wouldn’t get any of its funding:
  
  

  The fact that the Obama Administration would announce its decision to deny care for more than 100,000 low income women during a press event before giving official notice to the state is a clear demonstration of the political motivation behind this decision. This tactic is an affront to the more than 100,000 women served by this program. We await official word from the Administration on this matter and in the meantime, at Gov. Perry’s direction, the state continues to move forward to ensure low-income women will not lose access to this preventative care. Gov. Perry will continue to fight this egregious federal overreach and defend life, our state’s laws and the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution….

  • There are more than 2,500 qualified providers in the WHP that operate more than 4,600 locations across the state.
  • Planned Parenthood represents less than two percent of providers in the WHP.
  • Planned Parenthood’s cost per client is 43 percent higher than most other providers, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

• Sometimes, I wonder if abortion clinic workers at the Abortioneers blog ever notice how ridiculous they sound:
  
  

  So, here is my struggle… I want factory farms to be exposed for their cruelty (not only to animals, but also workers) more than anyone. I know deep down that undercover investigations in factory farms are NOT the same as anti-woman creeps like Lila Rose (and yes I feel bad giving any of her sites web traffic, but google her if you must). The footage and audio that people like Lila Rose obtain from abortion clinics is manipulated and taken out of context and at the end of the day just a downright lie. When it comes to undercover footage from factory farms there is little manipulation going on. I have seen enough of that footage to know that animal cruelty is commonplace in factory farms and no amount of photoshopping or editing can create the horrors I have seen.

  Manipulated? Taken out of context? Downright lie? Umm… do you mean the full, uncut tapes?

  Do these abortion clinic workers really believe the uncut videos are downright lies or does their overwhelming preference for pro-abortion policies and their hate for pro-life organizations prevent them from doing any actual research?

• Spanish doctors announced they carried out the world’s first lung surgery on a preborn child in 2010:
  
  

  During the 30-minute procedure performed in late 2010, doctors introduced an endoscopy through the fetus’ mouth to repair the defected bronchi.

  “It is an extremely delicate operation since it is carried out near the heart on tissues as thin as cigarette paper. But without this fetal therapy, the baby would not have survived,” [director of maternal-fetal medicine] Dr. [Eduard] Gratacos told reporters.

  The baby named Alaitz was born at eight months and is in very good health condition 16 months after birth, said the doctors who unveiled their landmark work on Tuesday.

[Photo via brittanica.com]

… [I]t isn’t pro-lifers who should worry about the Giubilini–Minerva proposal. It’s pro-choicers. The case for “after-birth abortion” draws a logical path from common pro-choice assumptions to infanticide. It challenges us, implicitly and explicitly, to explain why, if abortion is permissible, infanticide isn’t….

And why should the law step in to protect that value against the judgment of a woman and her doctor?

~ William Saletan, Slate, March 12

[Photo via wikipedia.com]

by LauraLoo

This is an original copyrighted song written by First Love (Camille & Haley Harris & parents: David & Cherri Harris).  There are 8 kids in the family.

They started writing the song March 4th and finished it the next day.  Then they rushed to the studio about 30 minutes after it was done and recorded it.

Matt Latta videoed this and edited it for last week’s Super Tuesday.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7pv7sO5Gng[/youtube]

Good victory song!  Especially off the heels of yesterday’s Deep South race.  It truly has become a two-man race!

Email LauraLoo with your Lunch Break suggestions.

[HT: Tyler W]

They found that women who had been pregnant two or more times had a reduced risk of developing [multiple sclerosis]. Women who had five or more pregnancies had one-twentieth the risk of developing MS compared with women who were never pregnant….

It’s not clear what it is about pregnancy that protects against MS or causes its temporary remission. It’s likely that hormones play a role, and studies are under way looking at estrogen as a treatment for the illness. It’s also possible that immune changes that take place during pregnancy alter symptoms of the disease as well as the risk of developing it.

~ Shari Roan, reporting on a recently-published study on central nervous demyelination, NCTimes.com, March 14

[Photo via layoutsparks.com]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• The Washington Times has an article on Abby Johnson’s $5.7 million whistleblower lawsuit against Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast:
  
  According to the lawsuit, PPGC contracted with the state to help prevent unwanted pregnancies among a population of eligible women. The clinics’ main service was to offer women an annual family-planning exam and consultation; only office visits “related to contraceptive management” were reimbursable by the Medicaid program, the lawsuit said.

  However, owing to financial pressures of its own, PPGC leaders and staff collaborated to register all kinds of ineligible services — pregnancy tests, sexual-disease tests, Pap tests — for Medicaid reimbursement, the lawsuit claims, adding that the bosses admitted to Ms. Johnson and other clinic directors that these claims were not eligible for reimbursement, but told them, “We have to keep these people as patients” and “We must turn every call and visit into a revenue-generating client.”

• Dr. Peter Goodwin (pictured left), a leading advocate of Oregon’s assisted suicide law killed himself using pills obtain under the state’s “Death With Dignity Act.”
• Two New York researchers were awarded the King Faisal International Prize for Medicine for their work to treat alloimmune thrombocytopenia, “an auto-immune disease which can cause fatal brain hemorrhages in unborn fetuses and newborn children. The cause is unclear, but the illness causes the mother’s immune system to attack the fetus as if it were a foreign body or disease.”
• In the Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson discusses the “after-birth abortion” bioethicists:
  
  The article doesn’t go on for more than 1,500 words, but for non-ethicists it has a high surprise-per-word ratio. The information that newborn babies aren’t people is just the beginning. A reader learns that “many non-human animals… are persons” and therefore enjoy a “right to life.” (Such ruminative ruminants, unlike babies, are self-aware enough to know that getting killed will entail a “loss of value.”) The authors don’t tell us which species these “non-human persons” belong to, but it’s safe to say that you don’t want to take a medical ethicist to dinner at Outback.

[Photo via oregonlive.com]

UPDATE 3/15, 7a:  LifeNews.com reports Thornton has been ousted as Lubbock Planned  Parenthood’s CEO. I hope and pray he takes this opportunity to get help and reconsider his support of abortion.

3/14, 7:38a: Just as Planned Parenthood wrapped up its “Don’t Mess with Texas Women” bus tour across the state bemoaning its funding cut-off, the CEO of Lubbock Planned Parenthood was arrested for indecent exposure.

Planned Parenthood now needs to conduct a “Don’t Mess with Texas Men” bus tour.

According to Amarillo Globe News, March 13:

Tony Thornton, CEO and president of the Planned Parenthood Association of Lubbock, was arrested and charged with indecent exposure Monday afternoon.

Thornton, 56, was arrested at the baseball field on Municipal Drive in Lubbock, said Sgt. Jonathan Stewart with the Lubbock Police Department.

According to the police report, the alleged victim was a 43-year-old male.

Thornton was transported and booked into the Lubbock County jail, the report states.

According to online records, he was released just after 11 a.m. Tuesday….

Thornton became CEO of Planned Parenthood in 2003….

And what was he doing hanging out at a baseball field where children play?

More from The Daily Caller:

[Thornton] was booked at the Lubbock County Detention Center and released Tuesday morning at 11:05after posting a bond of $750.

During the weekend, Thornton participated in protests against Texas’ decision to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood through the state’s Medicaid Women’s Health Program — an action which has resulted in the Obama administration cutting off all federal funds to the Texas program.

Why am I not surprised the CEO of a baby killing facility is a perv?

[HT: LifeNews.com, which has more on Lubbock Planned Parenthood’s nefarious past]

by Jill and Kelli

We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

• Ethika Politika features a thoughtful, two-part essay by Millie Dasher entitled, “Why I Say No to the Pill.”

• At Live Action, Kristi Burton Brown notices a strange “Personhood for Women” petition on Change.org, which seems to be over-the-top snark only focusing on women’s “reproductive rights.” How tragically far modern feminists have fallen from the likes of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who abhorred abortion and viewed the ability to bear children as a privilege, not a burden.
• MommyLife shares an article on the link between abortion and subsequent premature births.

• Fletcher Armstrong compares doling out contraceptives to feeding bears:
  
  

  We are told not to feed the bears, because it breeds dependency. They end up with the habit of coming to humans for food, and then they forget how to take care of themselves. They can appear friendly at first, but when you don’t give them what they want, they become hostile and dangerous. The greater the dependency, the more aggressive they become. Among humans, we call it Leftist Dependency Syndrome.

• Mark Crutcher writes on the attempt to minimize social issues during the political season:
  
  

  Scripture talks about people who choke on gnats while swallowing camels. Make no mistake, this “drop-the-social-issues” chant is a textbook example of that phenomenon.

  What we must never forget is that God is not going to judge America over unemployment rates, regressive tax policies, immigration laws or any of the other issues we deceive ourselves into thinking are so crucial. But if we continue to behave as if we can avoid His judgment over the slaughter of the unborn, we are presiding over the collapse of this nation.

  It may not be politically correct to say this, but the truth is that if we continue down this path, we have no hope left. Not only is our destruction assured, it is well deserved.

• Canadian blog Big Blue Wave has posted a really snappy promo video for Canada’s March for Life, to be held May 10:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DLz3WG_Lhw[/youtube]

[Image via mahalo.com]