Gun Violence in the United States: What to Do?

Only used once or twice in the past 12 years in mass shootings

Used three times in mass shootings 

The real threat. This is the gun most often used

President Obama expressed the frustration of liberal Americans when he said the latest shootings at the Oregon school were horrifying precisely because they have become so ordinary--oh, just another dozen students and teachers shot at a school or a playground. Oh, hum. What else is new?

 Of course, beheaded bodies by the dozens appear on the streets of Mexico daily but we never see those on CNN. Among well developed "civilized" nations, America stands alone as the home to routine mass murders by psychopaths wielding guns.

The problem is, nobody has any good ideas about how to stop this.  The President has suggested, vaguely, there oughta be a law. John Boehner, predictably blames the lack of a solution on the President--won't it be good to be rid of Mr. Boehner?  Democrats talk about more extensive background checks.  Republicans say we need to arm school teachers.

In medicine, when you have an epidemic, an outbreak of disease, you do epidemiological studies to identify patterns to understand how the disease is spread in hopes of figuring out what to do about it. Actually, the New York TImes did something like this recently, printed out each mass murder since 2013 and showing the guns used and noting when or if the shooter had shown evidence of a psychopathology and whether or not the guns used were obtained legally. For the most part, the guns were acquired legally, would not have been denied to the shooter by current law and the shooter had not eluded psychotherapy but simply was not identified as a likely mass murderer.

So, it appears none of what we have in place works well enough to reliably predict who will "go postal" and nothing works very well to prevent it. 

There are so many guns floating around America--estimates are 250 million guns and 1/3 of all homes have guns--it is hard to imagine we can keep guns out of the hands of maniacs, because all they have to do is break into a neighbor's home if their own home doesn't have a handy supply.

The Tea Party types say it's simple--just arm everyone and soon shooters would be too frightened to start shooting.  Trouble with this is you are dealing with psychopathology and many of these shooters shoot themselves in the end, so fear of the other guy with the gun is not likely to be a deterrent and, in any case, the shooter is likely to do what bank robbers do--they look for the guard with the gun, use surprise to draw first and take out the guard. 

The other argument against the armed population as the best deterrent is there has never been a case, or at least there are only rare instances, of an armed citizen intervening to save his fellow citizens from a shooter.  We have an armed population, and we have lots of guns but they never seem to be in place to save lives when the shooter starts shooting. One of the things shooters seem pretty good at is the element of surprise. They look around to be sure nobody present can stop them before they pull out their guns.

As I've mentioned before, the Army is very controlling when it comes to bullets. If you send a soldier to the firing range for target practice, he gets twelve bullets and he must return with 12 spent casings. If he comes back with 11 then hey may be planning to shoot his drill sergeant and he is in trouble and likely headed to the brig.

If only we had such a system for the rest of American society. 

But, the fact is, we do not have a working system. Nobody, not the Democrats in Congress, certainly no the Republicans or their benefactors, the NRA, nor the courts, nor the social workers nor the psychiatrists have any good ideas. 

We have traffic laws and yet we lose, what? Fifty thousand lives a year on the highways?  We just cannot control human behavior down to the lone wolf with the pocket full of Glocks.

Shawn O'Connor Takes Hampton

Last night, Shawn O'Connor spoke to about a score of people at the monthly Hampton Dems meeting. He is running for the New Hampshire first Congressional district seat now held by Frank Guinta and being sought, for the umpteenth time by Carol Shea Porter, the Democrat who's played musical chairs with Guinta for several election cycles.

O'Connor spoke at the Democratic convention in Manchester and about all I could recall about him was he said he would not accept as a salary in Congress anything more than the minimum wage in New Hampshire, about $15,000 a year and he was gay, which seems to be something of a merit badge in New Hampshire Democratic circles lately.

Tonight, he started with the Ghandi-esque thing about not wanting to live any better than the least among us, the minimum wage thing, which had me squirming.  I don't resent a Congressman making $170K annually.  We have an unpaid legislature in New Hampshire and that has resulted in a selection bias in favor of kooks like Fred Rice, who have nothing better to do and an independent income. Much of our governmental dysfunction may derive from the amateur hour we have going in Concord.

So the I'm not taking money to do this-job-which-should-be-a-calling thing did not resonate with me and my friends all said, "How bogus."    It comes off as an insincere gimmick. Most people here understand Congress can be a fun job, for the right insane individual.

However...when he started answering pointed questions about how he would keep the Portsmouth shipyard open,  how he would react to the prospect of a propane terminal in Portsmouth, how he would respond to the periodic gun events which seem to claim students from elementary school to college on a regular basis, how he would respond to being called a tax and spend Democrat, he transformed from callow clueless youth to a very polished, thoughtful, persuasive and effective man.  

Turns out, he worked on Capitol Hill for 4 years; he went to Georgetown undergrad, Harvard Law (where his favorite professor was Elizabeth Warren!) Harvard Business School and he started a firm with 40 employees, so he's met a payroll.

Forty five minutes later, he had me on his team. 

Now, if I can just get him to listen to me about this Gandhi thing. It's a distraction.

He could also use some prepping on how to keep his answers short and how to arm himself with arrows of zingers to answer The Donald and any other Republican when they sling their own arrows...this guy could be a keeper.

He is smart, does not back down from a fight, and he could serve a long time. 

What to Look for in a Republican President

Okay Mad Dog fans, you knew it was coming. 

Maud has implored, "Say it ain't true," but it can no longer be denied.

In the long dark teatime of his soul, Mad Dog has had to face a certain longing for an illicit love:  He has found he can no longer deny his attraction to that forbidden love--a Republican! 

Mad Dog is out of the closet. He admits to illicit longing!

Thinking back of his favorite Presidents, Obama, of course leads the list, back to Lincoln (a Republican) or maybe Roosevelt (either one.)  But right up there in the top 5, a man Mad Dog would never have expected to name, none other than Tricky Dick Nixon, the man who was a Communist hunter, a McCarthy type Red Baiter, who characterized his opponent in a Congressional race as "pink right down to her underpants."  

But when you stop listening to the bluster and anti Commie rhetoric and start looking at what he did, at the legislation he signed, you have to be impressed:

1/ He signed legislation into law creating the Envirnomental Protection Agency.
2/ He signed legislation creating the Occupational Safety and Health Agency to protect workers on the job.
3/ He floated the idea of not just a higher minimal wage, but a guaranteed annual income.
4/ He signed cost of living rises for Social Security benefits.
5/ He ended the war in Vietnam, however belatedly, but faster than President Obama has ended Afghanistan.
6/ He ended the draft!!!!
7/ He engaged China and opened up trade and relations with that communist regime.
8/ He put wage and price controls into place.
9/ He got us off the gold standard.
10/ He raised food stamps spending from $600 million to $2.5 billion. 
11/ He created the Supplemental Security Income portion of Social Security which constitutes  a guaranteed annual income for the aged, blind and disabled.
12/ He embraced Keynesian economics which advocates government spending in times of economic recession (which Paul Krugman had advocated). 
13/ Under his administration spending on social resource programs exceeded defense spending for the first time since WWII. 
14/ He imposed a minimum tax on the wealthy, the Alternative Minimum Tax. 
15/ He dramatically increased federal employee salaries.
16/ He oversaw the first large scale integration of public schools in the South. 
17/ He created the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which goes out and fights for preservation of fisheries and "charismatic mammals" like sea otters. The man was green!
18/ Three of the Supreme Court justices he appointed voted for Roe v Wade.
19/ He promoted the Legacy of Parks program
20/ He implemented the first significant federal affirmative action program. 

Of course, he was a paranoid who used the IRS to harass his "enemies."  
He also devised the "Southern strategy" by which he pried the Southern Dixiecrats away from the Democratic Party after Lyndon Johnson had passed the Voting Rights Act, which had shaken the solidly Democratic South from fidelity toward divorce and Dick Nixon knew just how to appeal to the jilted Southerners. 

But he remarked to one of his top aides, John Whitaker, when William F. Buckley lost the mayoral race for New York City mayor in 1965 to the liberal Republican, John Lindsay, "The trouble with far-right conservatives like Buckley is that they really don't give a damn about people."

He described the patron saint of today's Republicans, Ronald Reagan, as a showy "know nothing" who did not have the intellect to be president. 

Nixon pushed for a health care program which would have required employers to buy health insurance for their employees and subsidized the employers who couldn't afford it. 

It has been said, "Only Nixon could have gone to China," by which it is meant that only someone with conservative street cred could do something really liberal because he has the trust of the conservative half of the country--Nixon was thought to be so Machiavellian that conservatives could look at him toasting Mao in Peking and tell themselves, "He's up to something: It'll be okay."  

So, in a sense Nixon was the executive version of Earl Warren, a man advertised as a dyed in the wool conservative who was able to execute a liberal agenda. 

None of the Supreme Court justices since has shown such wisdom and certainly none of the current crew of Republican candidates are likely to see the light--they are all William F. Buckley's.  

They just don't give a damn about people.

President Obama and His Loyal Opposition

In my lifetime, there have been the following Presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush and Obama.

Looking at this list, one has to admit  it is not a strong field, but clearly, the best by a country mile has been Barack Obama.  

Much as I liked Kennedy and was wowed by his glamour and humor, truth be told, he did not accomplish much and the one big issue which confronted him, Civil Rights, paralyzed him, mostly because his party was comprised of an unworkable alliance of Dixiecrats and liberals. 
Johnson would have been a great president but for a little thing called Vietnam, but that's like saying the play at Ford's Theater would have been a great success had it not been for that assassination.   
Carter was well intentioned but ineffectual, for whatever reasons.
Clinton squandered his opportunity by, inexplicably, spending his political capital on gays in the military, a good cause, perhaps, but not nearly as important as healthcare, which he handed off to his wife and Ira Magaziner, who were simply not adequate to the task--they were the classic case of ineptitude packaged in academic splendor untested by actual accomplishment which required real world competence. He might have recovered from that, but he had this little problem with libido and he discovered he could not be as reckless in the 1990's as Kennedy had been in the 1960's.  

Richard Nixon, when you look at what he actually did, was more liberal than Kennedy or Carter and but for his personal history of Commie baiting and his generally sleazy personality, he did finally manage to get us out of Vietnam, however belatedly. But look at the legislation he signed, and you'd think he was the best Democratic President in a generation.

Obama focused on the most important thing, healthcare, and spent his political capital there--and he accomplished something which had eluded every President who cared about it, going back to Roosevelt.  He also tried to staunch that fetid abscess called Gitmo, but then the roof fell in and he was stabbed in the back by even Democrats, including the Senator  Schumer  from New York,  and he never had another Congress he could work with.

As important as any other accomplishment, Mr. Obama did get the right people in place to save us from diving into the chasm of the next great world wide Depession, which  the banks and the masters of the universe on Wall Street and Main Street, selfish capitalists all, nearly steered us into as they gunned their engines toward personal financial gain. President Obama grabbed the controls of the airplane hurtling toward a fiery crash and pulled us out of the tail spin and finally got the thing righted and rising again. 

And he had the insight to know there was still unfinished business with Osma Bin Laden and he had the guts to call the shot when he had the chance, knowing if he missed the shot he would be repeating the Jimmy Carter thing with the helicopters in the Iranian dust storm and he could kiss good by to a second term. He took his risk and he took his shot. The guy has guts. 

Having said all that, President Obama has been a failure in some ways:
1/ He took way too long to pull out of the Middle East, especially Afghanistan.
2/ He allowed the criminals of the banking community and Wall Street to walk away from the crimes they committed and sent nobody to jail for crimes far more consequential than the crimes 90% of the prison population currently incarcerated is serving time for.
3/ He has embraced what can only be described as untested liberal dogma without applying his famous analytical, dispassionate inclinations--to wit, he has embraced the idea that somehow raising college enrollment and graduation will be good for individuals and for the economy, when, in fact, any real scrutiny of manpower and the needs of industry will reveal that we do not need more college graduates who have spent four years drinking beer on fraternity porches majoring in English, but we do need more machinists and technically trained people, people who can program and who are trained for vocations, which could happen in high school and at most, at community colleges.

4/ He has pushed for trade agreements which may not be, by themselves a bad thing, but which do seem to have ignored the injury to American workers wrought by NAFTA and now he is applying  this same approach the the Pacific trade agreement.

As Paul Theroux points out in today's New York Times, American capitalists have ruthlessly calculated it will be more profitable to close shop in America and ship the jobs to China and in doing so, have raised large number of Chinese out of poverty but plunged large numbers of Americans into despair. 

It is not the job of the capitalist to worry about the effect of his business decision on the local community, but it is the job of the federal government to worry about American workers. It may be that the global economy is such that those jobs would inevitably have been lost, but I'm not convinced of that.  I am not sure what the answer is to those lost American jobs making shoes and shirts and furniture--would it have been tariffs and trade wars and military wars?  I'm just not sure all the options were thought through and I am sure it's not enough to say, well, we just need to retrain the man who makes shoes to wrote software or the woman who sews dresses to operate a computer driven power lathe.

5/ He has been understandably all too human in response to the cavalcade of mass murders which was with us before his term and will be with us afterward--he keeps calling for legislation to deal with these deviant shooter types, when there is no real evidence there is any legislation which will help.  
Just look at the New York Times chart in today's paper showing the type of gun used and the time of purchase to use and you come away with the strong impression no legislation would help. Only once was an assault rifle the weapon of choice--more often hand guns and even shotguns. And the crazy often bought the gun months before he used it, but most often had access to the guns from supplies owned by family members or others.  
If 1/3 of American homes have guns and if 250 million guns are out there in the land of the free and the home of the brave and the fully armed, what good will background checks and point of purchase control do? 

It may be that like Lincoln, Mr. Obama has discovered that he is less in control of events and economic and psychopathologic  forces than they are control of him. 

For the most part, his failings have not been failure of his character, which is exemplary, or his intellect, which is unquestionable, but the failings of his presidency have been the consequence of things beyond the control of any president--after all,   Lincoln failed to keep the country out of the Civil War, but we hardly can blame him for that any more than we can blame the crossing guard for the drunk driver who runs off the road into the schoolchildren standing on the corner.

Like President Lincoln, President Obama's  problems have been directly attributable to the categorical obstinance of those who oppose him. 

And why do they oppose him?   

I've tried to examine the various types of people who oppose him, from Bible thumpers to Right Wing Talkers like Ann Coulter to economic conservatives, to Rush Limbaugh blow hards to Red State businessmen, and I can find no unifying principle, save one. 

It was most evident in that conversation I had with the Tennessee Republican who could not point to a single policy which he thought Obama had wrong. Obama was simply a "bad man, a dishonest man." And what, exactly, made this white Tennessee Republican say that? "Well, I can't rightly say. He just is... bad, that is."

Which is to say, "Black, that is."

From Ann Coulter to Charles Krauthammer to Rush Limbaugh to Mike Huccabee to Donald Trump to Joe Sixpack to John Boehner to Mitch McConnell to Eric Cantor to Carly Fiorini they all share that, on some level. When you really listen to them, you do not hear them point to any specific, substantive points--it's just really all hate. Resentment and hate. Fear and hate. Frustration and hate. But mostly, hate, that is.

There may be people who do not care about Mr. Obama's not being white, people like Jeb Bush who simply wants his job and are willing to take support from whomever.  

On thing you can say for John McCain, who is, it must be agreed, not the sharpest blade in the drawer--a man who would love to send another American Army of half a million to the Middle East to re fight Vietnam and to stay there for 20 years if necessary--but when that woman at his town hall meeting said Obama was some alien of questionable provenance, Mr. McCain rose to the level of Duty/Honor/Country and slapped her down.  "He is an honorable man. A family man. I just disagree with him."

In that single remark John McCain distinguished himself from about 40% of our fellow citizens, who look at Mr. Obama and can't say why they don't like him, they just know, somehow they don't. 

Does it take a scientist to figure that one out?

One thing about racial hate, I find intriguing--I can't be sure, never having been in the military, but my sense is that white men who have served in the military with Black me have less racial animosity  than others.  It all goes back to getting to know people. There is the famous example of the white colonel who commanded one of the first Black regiments during the Civil War. His initial letters home to his wife were filled with racial prejudice, but after a few engagements he was writing his wife saying  he felt honored to serve with such fine men. 

All I can say, with a year left in his presidency is every day I hear the man on the radio, or see him on TV I say, "Thank you, Lord." 

Bang, Bang, Hug, Hug, Shrug, Shrug

Renny Cushing, Anti Violence Advocate

Welcome to America, where summer gives way to Fall, baseball finishes and football begins, mowing lawns yields to raking leaves to shoveling driveways and some maniac with guns mows down a score of school kids.  Just part of the American tapestry now. 

Just now part of what is predictable in American life.  Kids on a playground, kids in a classroom or a library or a cafeteria, and some, slightly older, usually white male appears and pulls out a gun and starts shooting.

Afterward, the news media swarm and photographers take pictures of people hugging and the local police get on camera and mouth some formulaic stuff about the shooter was found dead and the investigation is ongoing and President Obama fumes about the long list of events which no other country in the developed world has.  Of course, in Africa, Mexico, the Middle East people are killed violently every day--it's hardly news. 

At the hospital we have always had certain "codes" which come over the PA system to alert doctors and nurses and members of various cardiac or resuscitation teams--code blue in the ER, means cardiac arrest team is needed. We now have a code black, "Active Shooter." I'm not saying I've ever heard that code come across the PA, but the very fact we have that now says something.

I have no solutions. I wish I could believe it would be effective to pass laws but we are talking about deviant behavior here. The argument that our current system puts guns within easy reach of mad men is the animating idea about gun control. 

I'd love to believe this would be effective, but much as I hate to agree with the National Rifle Association, I doubt any law restricting access to guns will help much, if the episodes we all remember are any guide. Most often it's been semi automatic hand guns, not AK15 attack rifles,  and the guns are the street guns which any reader of George V. Higgins (The Friends of Eddie Coyle) or viewers of "The Wire" will know has no impact on availability of guns to crazies.  As Chris Rock once suggested, the most effective ploy might be limiting or taxing heavily the bullets.  

My father-in-law, a lifetime member of the NRA but a man who used guns to hunt not to strut, once noted there are already so many millions of guns out there in the USA you could stop sales tomorrow and there would be hardly a pause in the use of guns.  Guns are not like cars--they don't age out. And the number now cited is 1/3 of American homes have a gun. I was talking with some friends in Hampton, saying that number, 1/3 of all homes, has got to be wrong. Where do they get such a number and one, piped up, "Oh, I believe it. We have guns in our house."  And this is a liberal Democrat. Her husband owns guns. 

It's getting so you can't tell the liberals from the conservatives.
Mad Dog himself finds he is not as liberal as he thought. Doubting that gun laws are the answer on one hand, and now a crack has appeared in his attitude toward immigration, despite the presence of the Donald, who should be pushing everyone into massive sympathy for immigrants.

BUT...there was a piece on NPR this morning about Texas being sued because illegal immigrants who have come across the Rio Grande and had their babies in Texas and Texas towns refused to issue birth certificates to the kids, so now the babies are stateless. 

One of the plantiffs, who refuses to give her name because she is undocumented, but she is part of the lawsuit against Texas, complains that she cannot enroll her baby in Medicaide or in school because there is no birth certificate. Am I the only one thinking--Wait, this woman feels offended because the state of Texas refuses to pay for her child's medical care and education, although the entire family is in Texas illegally?  

Have I just stroked out and turned into Paul LePage or am I beginning to see that even our most wacko crazies might have a point?  How crazy does the world have to become when Mad Dog finds himself gravitating toward Paul LePage.

Please tell me this is all just a bad dream.

What Is Planned Parenthood?

The Republican party has, over the past decade, been very good at one thing: Selling a delusion. In essence, that delusion is that tax and spend Democrats want to take your hard earned money and give it away to undeserving, free loading immigrants, poor people and welfare queens because Democrats are, well, feeding on these people to keep themselves in power, which is why they push Medicare and Social Security, those unconscionable  welfare programs for the incompetent and effete who cannot invest in a smart way in the stock market.

But now they are trying to market a new delusion.  Watching the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee pillory Cecile Richards, the image they are trying to sell of Planned Parenthood is this is a nefarious organization right out of a  Robin Cook novel, which exists to profit from the sale of fetal parts got from late term abortions. All that contraception, sexually transmitted disease screening and treatment (for welfare queens and prostitutes), breast cancer, breast feeding are just a cover for the real business, which is selling baby body parts.  It's just the way they launder the money, all that other 97% of their income is just a screen. The real money is in baby body parts.

The outraged Republican members of the committee proclaimed:  1/ Abortions have nothing to do with women's health  2/ Planned Parenthood hands out exorbitant salaries and spends lavishly on parties and travel perks and behaves like the most despicable Russian oligarchs. The wonder is they did not show photos of the luxury cars driven by Ms. Richards (if she owns a car.)   3/ Planned Parenthood dupes the federal government into paying for abortions by using the Medicaide reimbursement money the government pays for contraception and screening so they can free up money to do abortions.

But wait, if Planned Parenthood's true profit center is its abortion baby body parts mill, then how have they make it look to the auditors that only 3% of its income comes from abortions?   

To say Republicans have vilified Planned Parenthood would be an understatement--they have said if Planned Parenthood is allowed to exist, it will so destroy the moral fabric of the nation, we will all perish, so we have to stop everything to attend to this urgent moral imperative. It's the 21st century equivalent of slavery--so important, we have to stop doing all other work to address it.

One might ask, what if Planned Parenthood said, "Okay, we'll stop doing abortions.
We'll split our organization into an abortion wing and an everything else wing," then what would the Republicans say?

Unlike the slave owners of the 19th century, Planned Parenthood could easily stop doing abortions, from a financial point of view.  But then we'd still have these overpaid, wine drinking, contraceptive distributing reprobates at large. What would the Republicans say then?

The major problem with the Republican campaign is there are literally millions of women and some men, who have used Planned Parenthood and who love Planned Parenthood. So the Republicans are trying to denigrate a beloved enterprise.  Liberals had trouble with Chic Filet for precisely the same reason: A lot of people love what they make, what they do.   

Trying to kill Planned Parenthood is like trying to kill McDonalds--you may not approve of it; you may think their food makes people fat, causes obesity and heart attacks and despoils the environment and you make think McDonalds underpays its employees, but people vote with their feet, their wallets and they may think it a guilty pleasure but they love it.

Okay, Don Draper, you've got this account:  How do you sell Planned Parenthood to a voracious nation?

Congressional Hearings: The Face of the Enemy Planned Parenthood vs Republicans

What would we do without CNN?  We would not see that spectacle which Mark Twain described as a pack of jackasses, the elected representatives of the people, engaged in that favorite Congressional circus called the "hearing"

Anyone who has ever watched his kid looking at pitch after pitch and never even swinging in little league, striking out  time after time, will know what it feels like watching Cecile Richard, president of Planned Parenthood, testifying before the House Committee on Oversight. Agonizing does not begin to describe the effect.

This morning,  I caught only 40 minutes (while on the treadmill) of 5 hours of testimony, but that was enough.  

There was that Republican from South Carolina or Alabama or someplace South asking Ms. Richards if she could understand how he felt when he thought about partial birth abortions, if she could understand the depth of feeling he had about that.  And she responded, brightly, that the phrase partial birth abortion is not a medical term.  What you wanted to hear her say was:

"Congressman, I, like you, am appalled by the idea of infanticide. The difference is, you may believe life begins when a single cell, the sperm, penetrates the egg.  Destroying those two cells may strike you as infanticide.  I do not agree, but that does not mean I think less of you.  You may also believe God instructed Abraham to murder his son. I do not.  You may draw your line at where life begins at two cells, I may draw the line at  21  weeks, or even 8 weeks, but as President of Planned Parenthood, I am not the one to draw the line. That has been done by Congress and by the Courts. Planned Parenthood follows the law of the land. I respect your right to disagree."


Or the Congresswoman who asserted abortion is not a healthcare procedure. 

"Congresswoman, you may not consider abortion part of a women's health clinic, but then again, you may never have seen the results of abortions performed outside healthcare facilities, the sepsis, the death."

Or the crafty Republican from Ohio who asked her what she understands the term "Over head" means. This is all part of the Republican strategy to say that any federal taxpayer  money given Planned Parenthood, whether it's used to pay the receptionist who schedules the appointment or to the doctor who performs the abortion is all the same because it supports the organization which, whatever else it might do, also performs abortions.

"Congressman, you are talking about 'mingling' of funds, but as anyone who ever read George Bernard Shaw's 'Major Barbara' knows, there are those, not accountants but philosophers, who would argue there is no such thing as 'clean' or 'dirty' money in the world. In company which makes airplanes, there must be a janitor or a secretary who opposes war, who draws a salary which sends her children to school, which pays her mortgage, and yet that company may make airplanes which drop bombs on a village in Iraq, a village where her grandparents still live. You would use accounting tricks to separate guilt, or to indict. I would say we follow the law of the land at Planned Parenthood. We pay lawyers to be sure of that.  You are in Congress. You don't like the law, you can try to change it."

And there was the congressman wearing only a shirt, not in his Congressman's suit, who asked whether anyone from the Justice Department or from the White House had contacted anyone at Planned Parenthood since the infamous videos of selling fetal parts surfaced.  

"Congressman, we have ten thousand, seven hundred some employees. Has anyone  from Justice or the White House called?  I wouldn't know. Nobody has called me from Justice or the White House about the videos, although it seems like everyone else has.  I did sit next to a young man on the Metro yesterday, however, whose photo ID said 'Department of Justice' and he grinned at me and said, 'Illegitmus Non Carborundum,' and I went to college once, and recalled enough Latin to know that meant, "'Don't let the bastards grind you down.'  I didn't catch his name. But you might think he was talking about the videos or maybe he was talking about these hearings. Hard to be sure."

Ms. Richards almost rose to the occasion when Congressmen prodded her on how much money Planned Parenthood had contributed to Democrats vs Republican congressional candidates. She said Planned Parenthood would be happy to support any candidate who supports women's health. But she could have said:

"Congressman, Planned Parenthood would be happy to contribute to your campaign or to any Republican candidate's election if we could only find a Republican candidate for federal office who cares enough about women's health.  But your party has become a party of extreme positions and extreme candidates.  We'll support Republican candidates,  just as soon as we can detect signs of real concern for women's health, rather than the bombast we see evident today among the Republican members of this committee who persist in trying to destroy the most vital force in women's health in this country."

Several Republicans said if there were no Planned Parenthood women could easily be served by the many other health care facilities which exist in every state to serve women. 

"Congressman, you and your Republican colleagues are often quoted as saying that free enterprise and the marketplace ought to determine which enterprises survive and which perish. Well, as you have noted Planned Parenthood is just one of many options for women seeking health care, and yet we have survived, no we have flourished over the past fifty years, despite the large number of alternative clinics which you have noted exist as alternative sites for women's health care. Doesn't that say something about the value our patients, or you might call them our 'customers' place on our services?"

Oh, those are the kinds of answers we wanted to see.  Instead, we got infinite patience and courtesy. 

Where is Barney Frank when you need him?