Lieberman and the Unborn

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Jan. 4 — The most conservative Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., declared in a Jan. 4 interview with the Associated Press that if elected his first official act would be to lift current restrictions on government funding to stem cell research, which destroys human embryos.

“These restrictions aren't compassionate,” Lieberman said. “They're not fair. They're cruel. On the first day I enter the Oval Office, I will repeal the Bush restrictions on stem cell research. And I will work to create an American Center for Cures to help find cures to the chronic diseases that now afflict 100 million Americans and cost us $750 billion a year.”

Complainants File Flurry of Clergy-Abuse Lawsuits

THE OAKLAND TRIBUNE, Jan. 6 — Catholic dioceses in California were not surprised by the wave of clerical abuse cases that hit them at the turning of the calendar.

Complainants trying to meet a legal deadline had filed the suits by Dec. 31, pushing many plaintiffs to make a decision or lose their chance to sue.

Many of the new litigants now live outside California, attorneys told The Oakland Tribune, and might have only recently heard of a state Supreme Court decision enforcing a statute of limitations on decades-old abuse allegations.

Sister Barbara Flannery, chancellor of the Oakland Diocese, told the paper a complete count of civil suits against the local Church would be announced “as soon as the dust settles from Dec. 31.”

“We were expecting this,” she said. “For some people, it takes a long time to come forward.”

She added that all of the complaints she'd received so far were against men already removed from ministry.

The War on Children

UEXPRESS, Dec. 27 — Maggie Gallagher, in her syndicated column published by the Web site UExpress, publicized a conspiratorial document from the Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion group.

The memo outlines a strategy for creating a “right” to abortion recognized by international law and imposed through the United Nations. Sound fantastical? It's right there in black and white, in a document obtained by Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, who sent it to Gallagher.

She characterized the pro-abortion plan's goal: “[T]o quietly get quasi-judicial tribunals, a.k.a. human-rights commissions, to start to create an international right to abortion that can then be imposed on vulnerable poor countries dependent on international aid.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights has tried to suppress the information, threatening Ruse with legal action for citing it.

But Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., has already read the entire memo into The Congressional Record. Smith called the plan a “Trojan Horse of deceit,” which shows “how abortion-promotion groups are planning to push abortion here and abroad, not by direct argument but by twisting words and definition.”

Smith pointed to a section in the document that admits, “There is a stealth quality to the work” of legalizing abortion internationally “without a huge amount of scrutiny.”