Deripaska sanctions lifted.

Syrian troops out.

No wall.

AG nominee slammed obstruction probe.

On and on and on and on

[guest post by Dana]

A marginalized group of neighbors to the North of us who are concerned about the increasing lack of support for their community, recently rolled out a campaign highlighting the needs of people with Down syndrome. The ‘Endangered Syndrome’ project is the brainchild of the Canadian Society for People With Down Syndrome. Concerned about a deliberate and systematic attempt to eliminate this category of people throughout parts of Europe, the basis of the project is a belief that this community is now critically endangered :

All of this is despite the fact that the vast majority of people with Down syndrome report having an extremely high quality of life, exposing the empty and evil excuses of some abortive parents that abortion is “best for the baby” as the transparent lie that it is. Life expectancy has also gone up steadily: Now, people with Down syndrome generally live to about sixty years old, with some living into their seventies. Their life expectancy post-birth has skyrocketed just as their life expectancy pre-birth plummets.

That is precisely why the Canadian Down Syndrome Society (CDSS) is attempting to draw attention to the plight of people with Down syndrome via a daring new campaign, “Endangered syndrome”: They have launched a petition calling for those with Down syndrome to be placed on the “endangered” list, noting that that by the standards of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Down syndrome community qualifies.

The Society lists five major points explaining why they believe the Down syndrome community is endangered:

*ACROSS EUROPE AND ASIA, DOWN SYNDROME BIRTHS ARE 50% LOWER THAN PROJECTED.

*OVER 65% OF PEOPLE WITH DOWN SYNDROME ARE OUT OF THE WORKFORCE.

*IN DENMARK, DOWN SYNDROME BIRTHS FELL BY AN AVERAGE OF 13% ANNUALLY FROM 2004-2010.

*25% OF THOSE WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES LIKE DOWN SYNDROME LIVE IN POVERTY.

*ANIMAL WELFARE ORGANIZATIONS HAVE 90% MORE RESOURCES AND FUNDING THAN DOWN SYNDROME ORGANIZATIONS IN NORTH AMERICA.

Because the birth rates of individuals with Down syndrome have sharply declined, particularly in Iceland, where only 1-2 babies per year with Down syndrome are actually born (often due to inaccurate test results), and 90% of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted before birth in England, the Endangered List petition has specific goals that they hope to see met if enough attention to their cause can be generated. These would include ensuring their right to work and self-sufficiency, and being active members of society; their right to independent living is recognized by providing more housing facilities; more support services provided to those with Down syndrome so that they can be included in society; better educational support for their community, and help removing stigmas frequently attached to individuals with Down syndrome.

Here is one individual’s story:

There are more of these stories at the link above.

Meanwhile, back here in the U.S., the newly selected president of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Leana Wen wants you to understand what defines standard medical healthcare at Planned Parenthood:

From here on out, we want to be clear: Planned Parenthood services, from birth control to cancer screenings and abortion, are standard medical care. Reproductive healthcare is healthcare. Women’s healthcare is healthcare. And healthcare is a basic human right. #ThisIsHealthcare

Abortion is part of the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare, and should be treated as the normal experience that it is. Nearly 1 in 4 women in America will have an abortion at some point in her life. And her decision should stay between her and her doctor. #ThisIsHealthcare

Clearly, what constitutes standard medical care is up for interpretation, as well as what is considered “normal.” There is no doubt that the objective has always been to normalize the killing of the unborn, and to solidify in the public mind that the little victims are but inconvenient faceless blobs of tissue and blood. Because if allowed to have a face, and personhood is recognized, then a very difficult road of reckoning ensues. And that eventual and inescapable reckoning traverses deep down to the bone and pierces the soul with its pain and sorrow. Until that time, the Shout Your Abortion movement provides a forum in which a woman can muffle the cry in her soul by sharing the story of her abortion, and thus feel good about the normal, standard medical care in which she partook.

While Dr. Wen wants us to believe that abortion is simply standard medical care, her position conveniently ignores the intrinsic humanity of unborn babies, wholly innocent and unable to defend themselves. It reduces the unborn baby to an unwanted entity, rudely intruding on an already established life. Thus the need for elimination, even through the most vicious of procedures. This, ironically, so that life can go on. But just not theirs.

It all more than breaks the heart.

–Dana

The pronouncements of Mollie Hemingway are often taken as Gospel truth by the Trump superfan section of the Internet, so a little debunking of a false claim she has recently made about James Comey is in order. Here is Mollie Hemingway on Twitter:

Comey just told Congress he only leaked his memos in response to Trump's 5/12/17 tweet about "tapes" of his meetings with Trump. In fact, Trump's tweet was *in response* to Comey's latest leak, which had appeared on the front page of the NYT that morning. pic.twitter.com/HiKNFmRcHE

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 19, 2018

Not the first time he's made this false claim to Congress, only the most recent. And Comey's designated leaker or leak conduit Daniel Richman is all over super friendly stories about FBI business and Comey in the months prior to his firing, for whatever it's worth.

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 19, 2018

Mollie is here claiming that Comey lied to Congress. Her evidence does not support her claim.

Mollie, in the first tweet above, suggests that Comey could not have leaked his memo in response to Trump’s tweet, because “in fact” Trump’s tweet was “in response” to “Comey’s latest leak.” Therefore, Comey’s testimony is a “false claim” — one that he has made several times.

But Mollie’s evidence does not support her claim, which rests on a false implication that the New York Times article to which Trump was responding was based on a leaked memo from Comey. It wasn’t. Instead, that New York Times article was sourced to two anonymous “associates” of Comey’s. Mollie is dead wrong here and I have called her out.

Comey's claim is not a "false claim." You're making it sound like one by falsely implying that this NYT story is based on a leaked memo. It's not. https://t.co/10XDaLgDM3 https://t.co/jDfoOQr8Tt

— Patterico (@Patterico) December 19, 2018

In case this is not already crystal clear, I’m going to explain it step by step. It’s a little intricate, but stay with me and I promise that it won’t be that difficult.

Here’s the order of events as they actually happened. A New York Times story appeared on May 11, 2017, and appeared on Page A1 of the May 12, 2017 edition, titled In a Private Dinner, Trump Demanded Loyalty. Comey Demurred. The story opened with these paragraphs:

Only seven days after Donald J. Trump was sworn in as president, James B. Comey has told associates, the F.B.I. director was summoned to the White House for a one-on-one dinner with the new commander in chief.

The conversation that night in January, Mr. Comey now believes, was a harbinger of his downfall this week as head of the F.B.I., according to two people who have heard his account of the dinner.

As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him.

The story is sourced to “two people who have heard [Comey’s] account of the dinner.” Elsewhere in the story they are described as Comey’s “associates”:

Mr. Comey again replied that he would give him “honesty” and did not pledge his loyalty, according to the account of the conversation.

But Mr. Trump pressed him on whether it would be “honest loyalty.”

“You will have that,” Mr. Comey told his associates he responded.

Throughout his career, Mr. Trump has made loyalty from the people who work for him a key priority, often discharging employees he considers insufficiently reliable.

As described by the two people, the dinner offers a window into Mr. Trump’s approach to the presidency, through Mr. Comey’s eyes.

Keep in mind that Comey reported the events of the meeting to top FBI officials after it happened, as well as writing a memorandum. But Comey’s memorandum is not referenced in the story. Instead, two associates described what Comey had told them at the time:

Mr. Comey described details of his refusal to pledge his loyalty to Mr. Trump to several people close to him on the condition that they not discuss it publicly while he was F.B.I. director. But now that Mr. Comey has been fired, they felt free to discuss it on the condition of anonymity.

This is the NYT story that Mollie is referencing in her first tweet, above, which embeds four images: 1) Trump’s tweet, 2) a section from Comey’s testimony, 3) a screenshot of the opening of the NYT article, and 4) a screenshot of a notation stating that the story appeared on page A1 of the May 12, 2017 edition. Here are the third and fourth images from Mollie’s first tweet above:

Later that same morning, May 12, 2017, Trump tweeted an implication that he had taped the meeting:

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

A screenshot of this tweet is the first image in Hemingway’s first tweet, followed by the second image: a screenshot of a portion of Comey’s testimony:

Comey, in other words, testified that he leaked his memo summarizing the meeting in response to that Trump tweet. This is the testimony that Mollie is claiming is “false.”

But the claim that Comey’s testimony is false rests on the false implication that the NYT story I just discussed in great detail is based on a leak from Comey — in particular, a leak of Comey’s memo. If you put Mollie’s two tweets together, the allegedly “false claim to Congress” is the claim described in her first tweet:

Comey just told Congress he only leaked his memos in response to Trump’s 5/12/17 tweet about “tapes” of his meetings with Trump.

This is “false,” we are told, because “in fact” Trump’s tweet was made “in response” to “Comey’s latest leak.” The very strong implication here is that “Comey’s latest leak” is the leak referred to in the Comey testimony highlighted by Hemingway’s second screenshot, describing why he leaked his memo.

In other words, Hemingway is implying that the NYT story was based on Comey’s leak of his memo memorializing his dinner with Trump.

But it wasn’t. There is zero evidence of that. It’s something Hemingway is pulling out of her hind quarters. The NYT story based on the memo that Comey leaked through his friend Daniel Richman came days later, on May 16, 2018. The article was titled Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation:

President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

It’s a different story.

Hemingway is conflating that May 16, 2018 story, which appeared four days after Trump’s tweet, with the May 11, 2018 story to which Trump was responding in his tweet. The earlier story was not based on a leaked Comey memo. The latter one was.

The timeline is consistent with Comey’s version of the events, and inconsistent with Hemingway’s revisionism. She owes James Comey a retraction and an apology.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]