Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow

Back in April, Hare called abortion “a mortal sin” but averred that it was his “job” to legislate it.  Now, in another contradiction, Hare states that “protecting the health and safety” of an “unborn child” is of “utmost importance.”  Unless that is, the unborn child’s mother wishes to kill it.  Here’s the entire statement:

Protecting and promoting the health and safety of a woman and her unborn child is of utmost importance to me. I also believe a woman should have the right to consult with her physician and make the choice that she feels is right in relation to her pregnancy.

I guess Hare’s rule of thumb is: if the mother wants it, it’s an unborn child, and it’s “of utmost importance” to protect its health; but if the mother doesn’t want it, it’s a pregnancy, subject to “choice,” and it’s Hare’s job to promote a woman’s right to kill it.

It’s obviously not a question of “viability,” or anything like that, as Hare  answered “no” to the question “Should abortion be legal only within the first trimester of pregnancy?”

Hare also thinks that we as taxpayers have a different job to do, even if it conflicts with our belief that abortion is a mortal sin.  Hare answered “no” to the question “Should federal subsidies be prohibited from being used for abortion procedures?”

Thus, Hare thinks it’s his job to legislate a mortal sin, and it’s our job to pay for it.  I wonder if anyone will ever ask him to explain this….

Hare is phamous for his deep thoughts, and so comes up with this little gem:

 If we are to address the issue at the heart of the debate, reducing the number of abortions, we must increase comprehensive sex education and increase access to safe, affordable contraceptives.

Why is “reducing the number of abortions” at the heart of the debate?   Why would a self-proclaimed pro-choicer want to reduce the number of abortions? Isn’t the real issue at the heart of the debate whether the “unborn child” (your own words) a person entitled to the protection of the Constitution, or simply a “pregnancy” or fetus, that can be “terminated” at will?  This guy is so phony….  According to Hare, abortion is a mortal sin, but he lists himself as pro-choice.  Good grief.

Check out this point made by RedState’s Erick Erickson at John King USA:

Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL) is a backbench Democrat who should be safe, but is imploding in Illinois, now filing an FEC complaint against a veterans group. If Phil Hare is not safe, there are many Democrats in “leans Democrat” districts who will disappear after November. Just how big is this swing going to be?

So James L. Moody, the Chairman of the Sangamon County Democratic Party, has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Committee, sniveling about the fact that Veterans For the Constitution don’t support his buddy, His Phatness.

In footnote 9 of the complaint, Mr. Moody cites this post from QC Examiner.  Proof that, to the extent they can read, Hare’s supporters are following QCExaminer’s yeoman’s work!!  Congrats!!!

As evidenced by this petty filing of the FEC complaint, methinks His Phatness is getting worried…  Every day, it’s looking more and more like we’re gonna have a Bald Congress!

Just over a month ago, Maggie Depoorter laughed off a poll showing Bobby Schilling leading His Phatness by 13 points by saying 

a 13-point lead doesn’t even pass the laugh test. The fact that this partisan poll was released just as the independent Gallup organization shows Democratic candidates for Congress ahead by six points nationwide makes it even more ridiculous. 

Well, I wonder what Ms. Depoorter will say now, when the same independent organization finds its largest lead ever for Republicans?  As stated by Gallup:

Republicans lead by 51% to 41% among registered voters in Gallup weekly tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences. The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP’s largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup’s history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress.

In addition, the same independent organization finds that:

Republicans are now twice as likely as Democrats to be “very” enthusiastic about voting, and now hold — by one point — the largest such advantage of the year.

Not so ridiculous any more, is it Ms. Depoorter?  I would not be surprised to see Schilling beat Hare by 13 points.

Listen to the first :15 seconds of this video, (the second one) – a nice flashback to Quincy.

Phil Hare – “There’s some people that want to repeal this bill [health care]…  And I would tell them, first of all – that ain’t gonna happen.

At 6:47-  Phil Hare, on abortion:

As a Catholic, I believe – as a Catholic – that I believe abortion is a mortal sin…  but as a legislator, I’ve got a different job to do.

Think of that – this guy thinks his “job” as a legislator is to legislate a “mortal sin.”  Nice.

Then, immediately after – and remember, Hare is speaking at the town hall about the government mandated requirement to purchase insurance — and he says:  ”I don’t think, I don’t think I have the right, I don’t think Congress or anybody has the right to tell people what to do…”  Wow.

Just a quick link to this article, regarding Phil Hare’s claim to be a veteran.  I don’t care too much about the semantics of the use of the word, but the claim does seem a bit disingenuous. 

What troubles me more is Hare’s reaction to the incident:

“After I pointed out that according to the law he is not a veteran, he became very upset and demanded to know my name. I refused to tell him my name, saying that this was about his claim of being a veteran and not about me.

Mr. Hare then told one of his aides who was with him, to follow me to my car and get my license plate number so he could find out who I was. I have since been told that Mr. Hare’s daughter works for the DMV.

I then asked Mr. Hare if he was going to stop telling people that he was a veteran. Mr. Hare again demanded to know my name, and again told his aide to get my name or to follow me to get me license number so he could find out who I was, so he could tell the former reservists what I said.

I asked Mr. Hare if he as a public official was going to use his official office to run name checks on private citizens, in order to intimidate them into not asking questions he did not want to answer.

As Mr. Hare was turning to walk away from me he paused, and turning back to my direction, he glared at me intently, and while leaning forward pointed his finger at me, and in a threatening and intimidating manner said, “I’ll find out who you are!”

Unbelievable.

A few days ago, Phil Hare’s office released a statement, explicitly stating that at the now-famous meeting in Quincy (“I’m not worried about the Constitution” and all that), Hare “was handed a piece of paper that said ‘The White House is No Longer White.’”

I questioned whether this was true at the time, stating:

And where’s the piece of paper?  Why didn’t he hold it up on the video (WGEM was there), and call out the racist who handed it to him?  (Let’s see, if it took him a whole day to read those seven words, I wonder how long it took him to read the 2,700 page Health care Bill three times…?)

Illinois for Growth has now conclusively shown that the piece of paper did NOT say “The White House is No Longer White.”  It was a lie.  The Congressional Representative for the 17th Congressional District in Illinois lied.  And not a simple misstatement, either – this was a deliberate and premeditated falsehood, and smear.  Phil Hare wanted people to believe that the people at the meeting — his constituents! — were racists.  The press release issued by his office explicitly stated, and placed in quotation marks the supposed quote from the paper that “The White House is No Longer White.”

But the actual document never said that.  More importantly, it never implied anything remotely racist.   Instead, it used some admittedly over-the-top imagery of historical political figures and stated “America’s White House?  Not Anymore!”  This is a far cry from what Phil Hare said was on the document, and is not racist is any way, shape or form.

Hare’s sliming of his own constituent as racist is reprehensible, but certainly not beneath the  Democrats in Congress.

Hare has already silently backtracked, though.  If you click on the link for his prior press release, it has been silently changed, and now the quote reads:

“Yesterday, Congressman Hare held what was supposed to be a meeting with seniors in Quincy to discuss important provisions in the health care bill. But Bobby Schilling, Congressman Hare’s opponent in the fall, politicized the event by sending his supporters to disrupt it. Congressman Hare was called a Nazi. He was called a liar. He was handed a piece of paper that said “America’s White House? Not Anymore!.” So much for a civil debate.

Notice how the updated release now shows the actual quote, confirming that Illinois for Growth’s document is correct?  So, in sum, Representative Phil Hare called one of his constituents falsely, a racist, and has now confirmed the fact by changing his press release, without informing the public, or apologizing.  This was no innocent mistake, it was a smear, through and through.

Confirmation that Hare changed the press release to remove the defamatory remark is found in this article from the Quad Cities Online, which quotes the slanderous statement from Hare’s (prior) press release:

But Rep. Hare’s office alleges that Bobby Schilling–the congressman’s Republican opponent–sent his supporters to derail the event.

“(Rep. Hare) said several times during the meeting yesterday that he supports the Constitution, but that conveniently didn’t make the tape,” the release from the congressman’s office states.

In the statement, the congressman’s office also contends there were other things not shown on the tape.

“Congressman Hare was called a Nazi,” the release states. “He was called a liar. He was handed a piece of paper that said ‘The White House is No Longer White.’ So much for a civil debate.”

WGEM also confirms the smear here; The Quincy Herald-Whig here.

Hare thinks he can silently back out of this, but I beg to differ.  This is news, folks.  Mr. Hare has been caught in a white lie.  And it ain’t pretty.  As Mr. Hare said, “so much for a civil debate.”   This guy is a disgrace. 

ps- anyone know how to get a “screen grab” or a cached view of the prior statement?

Have you noticed that since his now-famous discourse on the Constitution, Phil Hare won’t speak to reporters or others to himself explain how he was “taken out of context”?  Instead, Hare’s only direct comment is a silly one-minute video, which he read from notes (and still stumbled around on).  But from now on, it seems Mr. Hare will be on a much shorter leash.

Doing most of Hare’s talking is his “communications director,” Tim Schlittner.*  The other day, he said that Hare had been “railroaded.”  He went on to say:

Schlittner tells WGIL the whole incident masked what the meeting was all about.

“The disappointing thing is, there were honest, hard-working senior there that had legitimate questions,” Schlittner said. “But, the meeting turned into a political exercise. In the end, (the bloggers) were people that, no matter what Congressman Hare said, it wasn’t good enough for them.”

First of all, it was a political meeting, for crying out loud!  I can’t stand it when politicians (particluarly those that have just orchestrated a government takeover of one-sixth of the American economy) want to cry that their meetings are turned “political” by those who disagree with their actions.  They are politicians — meetings they hold with their constituents are by definition political!

As for the seniors that had “legitimate questions,” what does Schlittner have to say about the “majority” of the crowd that started chanting BS in response to Hare’s earlier bloviating at the same meeting? 

Finally, I’m not sure how Schlittner thinks that Hare was “railroaded” — all he did was respond to a question, and spoke what he really thought. 

But if by “railroaded,” Schlittner means “run out of town on a rail,” that will happen on November 2nd.

*Was that Mr. Schlittner there taking and holding Mr. Hare’s jacket as he scrambled into his SUV at the end of the famous video?  If so, why didn’t the communications director step up there and clear up the misconception right then?

This is a good summary of what I would write had I more time to respond to Phil Hare’s backtracking on his “I don’t worry about the Constitution” on the Health Care Bill:

Note well: He doesn’t mean ‘I don’t worry about it because I’ve studied the Commerce Clause and I’m confident we’ll win in court.’ When pressed, he flatly says he doesn’t know which part of the Constitution justifies the law, which is his way of saying he doesn’t care and hasn’t thought about it. In fact, the best he can do by way of legal authority is to cite life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — which of course comes from the Declaration of Independence. His response, when corrected? ‘Doesn’t matter to me. Either one.’

This is yet another example of the political gaffe that consists of telling the truth when one really ought not to do so. When the YouTube of Phil Hare saying these things went viral, Phil Hare cut a YouTube video of his own explaining what he really meant. No, he explained, I really meant to say that health care reform, in my opinion, will pass Constitutional muster otherwise I would never have voted for it.

That remains to be seen, as the matter is being litigated in the courts. But Phil Hare’s original statement, before he revised and extended his remarks, illustrates the attitude of too many politicians toward the dictates of the Constitution, which is filled with admonishments about what the government can’t do. To politicians like Phil Hare, what is Constitutional is not so much what is written and the meaning of what is written, but what politicians like Phil Hare think they can get away with.

Amen.

That’s the title of this editorial from The Augusta Chronicle.  A taste:

This Congress isn’t just openly flouting the U.S. Constitution.

They’re openly admitting it.

Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., was recently caught on video saying — despite his oath to the contrary — that he doesn’t care whether the new health-care law is constitutional.

When pressed about the constitutionality of the law, Hare says, starkly, “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest.”

Wow.

Hare argues that he worries more about “the people who are dying every day out there that don’t have health care.” Surely he knows what a specious, cynical claim that is: No one in America goes without health care, not even illegal immigrants. That’s the law, and it’s rigidly observed in the health-care field. Those who can’t pay get it free. Period.

Then, to join ignorance of the Constitution with his contempt for it, Hare says, “I believe that it says we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

One big problem: That phrase emanates from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

When reminded of that, Hare shrugs, “That doesn’t matter to me. Either one.”

That’s Hare, all right – where ignorance and contempt meet.  In fact, that’s the modern Democrat party summed up — ignorance of our founding documents and philosophy, combined with contempt for those they seek to govern.