News Argus

How Canadian can you get?

The Finance Minister understates the deficit by $16 billion. Do we get mad?

Nah. The guy's doing his best. Let's give him another chance.

Canadian Press:

OTTAWA - Canadians appear to be willing to cut Finance Minister Jim Flaherty a little slack over his deficit shocker.

A Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll shows few Canadians think the
finance minister should resign just because he made a $16-billion
mistake on his deficit projection.

The survey of 1,000 people finds only 28 per cent who want Flaherty to
step down, while 59 per cent think he should stay on the job.

Even among Liberal supporters, 54 per cent don't think he should lose
his position because the budget deficit has ballooned to more than $50
billion - not the $34 billion predicted in the budget four months ago.

A reader writes:

My wife and I are/were staunch choice advocates; we'd both done our

share of marching on Washington for the cause. Actually enduring the

process gave us a much more nuanced opinion about abortion.

For us, it was Trisomy 21 -- Down Syndrome. The test came after my

wife awoke one night in a pool of blood screaming and thinking she'd

suffered a miscarriage. After she ran to the toilet, it fell upon me

to call her doctor and then scoop out the remains--that actually

turned out to be huge clots--and take them to the doctor the next day.

The geneticist said that because of all the bleeding and other

complications there was almost no chance the fetus would make it to 20

weeks let alone full term.

My wife says one of my finest moments as

her husband came when I somehow made her laugh while she awaited the

abortion. My wife doesn't talk about her feelings of the abortion and

the "failed" pregnancy. But we've been together for more than a decade

and I know she will always be crushed by it. I know we made the right

decision for us but it still hurts badly. This was the son we would

never have.

A presidential proclamation marking Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.

Available in full after the jump.

Via KMBC of Kansas City, MO, here's video from the scene of Dr. George Tiller murder suspect Scott Roeder's arrest -- including the little-reported detail that Roeder had a handwritten Operation Rescue phone number on his dashboard:

So whose number was on Scott Roeder's dashboard?

It turns out the number belongs to Operation Rescue senior policy advisor Cheryl Sullenger, who was convicted of conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic in 1988. Justin Kendall of The Pitch has the details:

The phone number is written on an envelope with the name "Cheryl" and "Op Rescue." Cheryl is Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue's senior policy adviser, who in 1988 was convicted of conspiring to bomb a California abortion clinic. She served two years in prison.

Kendall spoke with Sullenger, who says she hasn't spoken with Roeder "recently."

"No, he hasn't called me recently," Sullenger said. "No."

"You know, he's somebody who's been around. My name is on the Internet. It's on every press release. My phone number is on every press release it. It's all over the internet. I don't know. He probably has lots of people's phone numbers. You know? So I don't know. I don't have any more comment other than that."

To recap: The man accused of killing George Tiller had on his dashboard the phone number of convicted abortion clinic bomber Cheryl Sullenger, the senior policy adviser for the very same organization that has been all over the airways today to saying that they are a strictly non-violent group.

According to Sullenger, who in 2006 was Operation Rescue's outreach coordinator, Roeder is "sombody who's been around." She says he hasn't called her "recently," whatever "recently" means to her.

Meanwhile, Operation Rescue has claimed the organization has had no connection with Roeder other than comments on their website.

At this point, the more we learn about the relationship between Roeder and Operation Rescue, the more questions there seem to be.

by Mark Silva

Who kills an abortion provider?

Police in Wichita, Kan., say Scott P. Roeder did.

They have arrested the 51-year-old from Merriam, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, in the Sunday church-hall slaying of Dr. George Tiller of Wichita.

In the rear window of the 1993 Ford Taurus that Roeder was driving: a red rose, a symbol favored by abortion opponents. On the rear of the car: a Christian fish bearing the name of Jesus.

The Kansas City Star's Judy L. Thomas offers a picture of the alleged assailant of the 67-year-old physician who was one of the few in the nation willing to perform late-term abortions, who had been shot before and whose clinic had been bombed. Kansas City, Roeder allegedly wrote, is "the nation's abortion capital'' -- and it was time that "some attention'' be brought to Tiller's work, a Scott Roeder allegedly posted on the Internet.

Those who know Roeder say he viewed the killng of abortion doctors as an act of justifiable homicide, the Star reports:

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."

See the profile of the alleged murderer from Merriam, Kan., in the Star.

• Lindsey Graham's protestations aside, it seems clear that there's neither the will nor the numbers to filibuster the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. I'm sure that won't stop Newt and Rush from alienating the rest of the country from the GOP, however.
  


• The president sent a letter to Max Baucus and Edward Kennedy reiterating his support for a public option for what feels like the inevitable health care reform bill that's slowly working its way through Congress. Meanwhile, Ezra Klein helpfully explains the relevance of MedPAC and why it might finally get some teeth, and Greg Sargent documents the Canadian influence.


• It's hard to disagree with the thesis of this Politico piece, that Obama is deliberately poaching GOP moderates for his administration in order to reduce the Republican party down to its core base of Southern supporters.
  


• The right has predictably been freaking out over a New York Times piece that asserts President Obama believes the United States could be "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." As usual, it helps to read the official transcript in these situations. The jury's still out on whether this is sillier than the latest mutterings coming from Michael Goldfarb.


• Mark Levin, last seen screaming at and berating a woman on the air, has a list of "The World's Most Deranged Bloggers." You'd think it would be a roll call of the Left's most pugnacious but actually it's four conservative pundits who tend to point out that people like Levin are nuts. It's odd to think that Levin, author of a book called "Liberty and Tyranny," apparently knows nothing about either subject, but we'll just call this Jonah Goldberg Syndrome from now on.


• Remainders: Tim Pawlenty suggests he'll do what the Minnesota Supreme Court tells him to do; Dave Weigel watches PajamasTV so you don't have to; and Stephen Colbert edits Newsweek?

--Mori Dinauer

The NH House and Senate today approved a bill that would allow gay marriage in the Granite State, making it the sixth nationally to back such an initiative. The final vote in the House was 198-176; the state Senate earlier approved the proposal along party lines, 14-10.

Gov. John Lynch (D) has said he would sign the legislation, which was revised at his request to include greater protections for religious groups and officials unwilling to marry gays or lesbians.

NH joins CT, IA, MA, VT and ME.