[guest post by Dana]

One day after the release of a second Planned Parenthood video, Livers for Lambos, which showed another high-ranking Planned Parenthood official haggling over the price of fetal baby parts, Republican senators sent Attorney General Lynch a letter demanding an investigation:

Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), along with 10 others, sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell on Tuesday, urging them to examine whether the organization broke a law that bans the sale of fetal tissue.

“The disturbing facts revealed in this video raise the question whether the employees of a federally funded organization have violated federal law by engaging in the transfer of human fetal tissue for profit,” they wrote.

Also reeling from the videos, House Democrats sent their own letter demanding an investigation into the group responsible for… making the undercover videos :

A group of Democrats, led by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), sent a letter Wednesday to the Department of Justice arguing the undercover videos from The Center for Medical Progress may have broken federal and state laws.

Their letter expressed concern about the tactics used by the pro-life group to gain access to high-level officials in Planned Parenthood:

“This elaborate scheme raises serious questions about whether any federal or state laws were violated in securing the LLC or the personal identification that were part of its execution,” the Democrats wrote to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The members also raised questions about “possible coordination between the Center for Medical Progress and members of Congress who knew about the first video weeks in advance of its release.”

Yesterday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced her department will be investigating the matter:

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Wednesday that the Justice Department is examining “all the information” surrounding two videos that Republicans say are evidence that Planned Parenthood may be illegally selling fetal remains for profit.

“I’m aware of those matters generally from the media and some inquiries that have been made to the Department of Justice,” Lynch said. “And at this point, we are going to review all the information and determine what steps we need to take.”

As a reminder, during her confirmation hearing, Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch was asked whether she had once signed onto a brief supporting Planned Parenthood’s opposition to partial-birth abortion ban. Lynch confirmed that she had.

She argued that the ban against the killing of partially born children was “unconstitutionally vague and threatens the integrity of the criminal justice system.”

Wouldn’t it be something if AG Lynch had an epiphany and could see the gruesome butcher market for what it really is, and as a result, develop a deep resolve of single-minded focus on truth – politics be damned? This no matter what it might cost her professionally, no matter that Democrats and Planned Parenthood are two sides of the same coin, no matter anything because the brutality must be stopped, and the back of this sacred cow must be broken instead of the back of a baby. God willing, it will be at the hands of this woman. I’m not too optimistic. But I am always with hope.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

John Kerry is in Washington today attempting to persuade lawmakers to support the Iran nuclear deal:

“If the U.S., after laboriously negotiating this multilateral agreement with five other partners, were to walk away from those partners, we’re on our own” Mr. Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

A Congressional rejection of the accord, Mr. Kerry said, would amount to “a great big green light for Iran to double the pace of its uranium enrichment, proceed full speed ahead with a heavy water reactor, install new and more efficient centrifuges, and do it all without the unprecedented inspection and transparency measures that we have secured.

“Everything we have prevented would then start taking place,” he said.

Which is interesting given his comments this weekend:

DICKERSON: Last question. If you don’t get majority in Congress to support this deal, doesn’t that undermine the deal?

KERRY: No, not in the least. The Congress — they don’t care over there whether it’s majority or a minority or whatever it is, as long as the deal is implemented.

And that’s what we care about, that this deal be implemented. We would love see the Congress listen carefully. And we’re going to go up and we’re going to meet with them. We’re going to do our utmost to persuade people.

But, no, I don’t think that undermines this deal. This deal will stand ultimately on the fact that there’s unprecedented inspection, unprecedented access, unprecedented restraint in their program which they have agreed to. There will be an increase in the breakout time for fissile material for one weapon from two months to one year for the next 10 years.

In spite of Code Pink greeting Kerry with cheers and applause, it didn’t take long for Republicans to accuse Kerry of being “fleeced” and “bamboozled” as well as Marco Rubio telling him the “deal was fundamentally flawed” and that it would “weaken our national security and make the world a more dangerous place”.

(Fortunately for Kerry, Sen. Boxer (CA-D) stood at the ready to to defend him from the cruelty, “Republicans had been “disrespectful and insulting.” Their accusation, she said to Mr. Kerry, goes to the secretary of state’s “core as a human being and your intelligence, and I think you are very intelligent.” *She then batted her eyes while Kerry trembled with gratefulness for her quick intervention on his behalf…)

Kerry was unyielding, claiming that it was “fantasy” to believe that the US could have held out for a better deal from Iran.

Today’s meeting follows Kerry finding it “very disturbing” that shortly after the deal was struck, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei publicly vowed to “defy American policies in the region” while his audience chanted “Death to America”. It also follows the White House acknowledging “side” deals between Iran and the IAEA. These raise concerns about “inspection of the Parchin military base, where Iran reportedly has conducted explosive testing related to nuclear-warhead development” and “how the IAEA and Iran will resolve outstanding issues on possible military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran’s nuclear program.”

From Rush:

It turns out the US made a secret side deal with Iran on two of the more important sticking points in the negotiations. Number one, the inspection of a military base where Iran had done major nuclear weapons research in the past, and, number two, the requirement that Iran tell us about their past nuclear work, which is necessary in order to for there to be a baseline for the inspectors.

Senator Tom Cotton and Congressman Mike Pompeo, “there will be a secret, opaque procedure to verify Iran’s compliance with these side agreements.” They say, “Both arrangements will not be vetted by any organization other than Iran and the IAEA, and will not be released even to the nations that negotiated the JCPOA [Iran nuclear agreement].

“This means that the secret arrangements have not been released for public scrutiny and have not been submitted to Congress as part of its legislatively mandated review of the Iran deal,” which means Congress will have no way of knowing whether Iran complied with either of these side agreements. “The United States has been shut out of this aspect of the verification of the deal, the inspection of a military base where Iran had done major nuclear weapons research.”

We have no access to it. We agreed to this! Secretary of State Kerry agreed to this, and the requirement that Iran tell us about their past nuclear work so we can get a baseline of how far they had made it? Not allowed to know that. Two side deals were made between the United States and Iran to eliminate the US ability to learn either data point.

*This may or may not have happened. Likely not.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Anthony Weiner (aka Carlos Danger) comes full circle:

A top “crisis” public-relations firm with ties to Hillary Rodham Clinton has hired the last person in the world that most people would call on to dispense advice on dealing with a scandal: disgraced, penis-texting former Congressman Anthony Weiner.

The man who destroyed his own promising political career by botching a 2011 sext-message imbroglio with bald-faced lies — and who then ruined his comeback by running one of the most disastrous mayoral campaigns of all time — will now get paid to dispense advice to high-paying clients of the MWW p.r. firm, sources told The Post.

About the only thing that makes sense about this is that one of the company’s clients is Ball Park Franks.

–Dana