The Brown campaign has hilariously filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Democratic Party (hat tip, Rob at Red Mass Group) alleging defamation for advertising a bill that the candidate himself introduced. That’s sort of like suing the publisher of one’s autobiography for libel. Mailer image below the flip. Here is the text:
Cover: 1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008. Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away. Text: Scott Brown would allow hospitals to ban emergency contraception birth control even after women are raped. There should be places where politics just don’t belong. But Republican Scott Brown doesn’t think so. Republican Scott Brown takes us backwards on women’s rights and health, even sponsoring a law to let hospitals turn away rape victims in need of emergency contraception. Even Brown’s fellow Republicans criticize him calling his law “unbelievable.” Brown’s Republican colleagues know he takes it way too far.
This is a foolish move. First, it draws even more attention to a piece of legislation that won’t sit well with many voters. Coakley’s allies are paying big money to get this information out. Now their opponent’s campaign is doing it for them. Second, the Brown campaign has said they will wait until election day to go to court. Thus, publicity is the only real electoral impact. Third, the ad is reasonably accurate as such things go. The headline pushes the argument, but the text is straightforward and there is a citation to the legislation and the State House News Service in the credit (Factcheck.org has a related discussion here). The piece is aggressive (not my style, personally), but for a candidate who is a proto-birther and cast aspersions on the mother of the President (mothers should be left out of it), a campaign that has called up a national teabagger army to “invade” and “take” Massachusetts, and a Party whose members have said unbelievable things about Senator Kerry, the late Senator Kennedy (for decades), and President Obama, not to mention Attorney General Martha Coakley, on local talk radio, Fox News and elsewhere, a lawsuit of this type will strike many independent voters as whining at best and a grotesque double standard at worst.
The bottom line is: did Scott Brown introduce this legislation, and would it allow a hospital to deny a rape victim emergency contraception. The hard truth is, yes.
As to Brown failing out of National Guard JAG, the Globe described the pitiful story here.
Discuss
25 Comments . Comments are closed.Disagree
You're sending negative ads to your base. How is that helpful? The amendment says the hospital has to have in place a referral process; it was rejected, and Brown voted for the emergency contraception bill anyway.
Link: http://www.mass.gov/legis/jour... (Senate, No. 2073)
His flip-flop makes things even worse
He doesn't stand by his principles, or he was just grandstanding in the first place.
If Brown had had his way, hospitals could deny rape victims emergency contraception.
That does not go down well with a lot of voters.
Rape victims go to hospitals for other reasons too
The cover says Brown wants hospitals to "turn them all away", as if he was trying to make all hospitals completely refuse all care for rape victims.
And I wonder what in the act enforces the "rape victim" part? Is there a requirement that the rape be reported and the rapist sought and apprehended? Or can women just say they were raped to get EC after completely consensual sex?
RE $quot;turn them all away$quot;
If your deeply held religious conviction says that all rape victims deserved what they got, maybe he'd be all for that too?
Just saying. I mean, it could be a deeply held religious conviction after all!
Do hospitals refuse EC for women that weren't raped?
Why the requirement that they were raped? Is it to save their virtue, or the legislature's virtue? Is it free if you were raped, but costs money if it was consensual?
A zero?
Wait, hospitals admit thousands of people a year for care after consensual sex. Thousands of people have consensual sex and then worry about STD's, pregnancy, bleeding and injury, heart attacks, etc, and surely they go to a "medical facility" for "timely access to emergency contraception". Was it just politically impossible to require facilities to provide EC for consensual sex? Even in Massachusetts? So all they could get was mandating they provide it for rape victims?
I think that the police should be called to treat rape victims, and hospitals shouldn't treat rape victims until a special state police officer who is trained in helping rape victims arrives and collects evidence, unless there is an immediate danger to her health requiring immediate care. And I think that all rape victims (and rape perpetrators, if the perp is a woman) should be forced to take EC to stop the crime in progress, just like thieves should give back the money they stole. I don't think being raped is a suitable way to get pregnant, and people should be spared from being created that way. I think even Catholics should agree that whatever can be done to stop a rapist from succeeding and causing a pregnancy should be done, and that EC does not kill a life, just like natural family planning doesn't, even though many embryos are created by practicing NFP that never implant and become living.
Screw the referral process...
Why should I have to go to a second hospital? Whatever ER I show up at should do their job and treat me, in full, to the best of their abilities.
I just have to question what kind of person would sponsor a bill like this, especially somebody with 2 teenage daughters. Ugh.
Anne, that's what floored me: he has TWO TEENAGED DAUGHTERS!
Talk about no empathy...
the clause...
Federal Bill Includes A Conscience Clause. "PROVIDER CONSCIENCE PROTECTIONS.-No individual health care provider or health care facility may be discriminated against because of an willingness or an unwillingness, if doing so is contrary to the religious or moral beliefs of the provider or facility, to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions." (Sec. 1303(a), H.R. 3590, Amendment In The Nature Of A Substitute, "Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act," Introduced 11/18/09) also In A Letter To The Pope, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) Said "I Believe In A Conscience Protection For Catholics."
Did I miss something?
DOes that article really talk about failure somewhere? I'm not seeing it.
Read between the lines
He didn't complete the required coursework
And had to leave the Guard.
If what is presented is factual,
I don't see this as a big deal.
$quot;failing out$quot;
usually means getting failing grades. this is not the same thing as dropping out, which it sounds like he did. there is so much wrong about brown that i don't think anyone needs to use hyperbole about his shortcomings.
Apparently this is a time...
...for lawyers instead of patriots.
I would rather see Scott
instead of another Nancy Pelosi clone.
Right
Better a Pelosi clone than a RepubliCloneTM
Hell, I'd love a Pelosi clone, she's great. We need more of her toughness in the Senate.
Your factcheck link
Skewers an even lesser ad, did you bother to read it? Here's the meat:
And that was just "favors letting.." not "wants to turn them ALL away"
How silly.
Great Job. No, Really..
What the heck? Your factcheck link pretty much says you guys are making something out of nothing. Did you even read it? And the article about his JAG experience pretty much says the same.
gop1776 says," Read between the lines..." What make crap up?
This is the best we can do? This?! We're no better than they are!
This guy needs to lose but we've run the lamest lame duck EVAH. EVAH. Coakley keeps running typical smear ads, that nobody wants to see anymoe. Brown is taking the highroad, for the most part, and look how well he's doing. In Massachussetts! Coakley can't even spell it correctly.
Read between the lines, Har Har Har. Jesus F.Christ on a popsicle stck, we're supposed to be the ones with principles!
have to agree...
My mother and both my sisters just told me the were voting for Brown ... Just because of how distorted they think this ad is!!
They are three woman who never vote Republican, but because if MC's ad campaign, they will be on Tuesday.
here come the Redmassgroup trolls
Pitiful, really
And, yes, of course I read the FactCheck piece. That is why I linked to it. It is, of course, talking about a different ad.
if you think....
thinking that everyone who disagrees with how MC is running her campaign is a RMG troll.... is how we will lose this election!
I think she's run a shitty campaign. But she has way more substance than Scott.
National Guard reality
Quick notes about the National Guard comments. I served as an officer in the Mass guard from about 1986-90 and on active duty during the 1990s, so my info may be dated. For more disclosure, I'm an unenrolled voter leaning towards Brown. I certainly don't think he's perfect, but he certainly did not 'fail out of the Nat Guard JAG'.
1) The training which I am guessing Scott didn't complete is a fairly extensive equivalent of a 10 month full-time course called Command and General Staff College. Many reserve, and some active officers complete this training in a correspondence course format, mixed with some on-site seminars. Many of my friends who have done so used a lot of their vacation time to get through hundreds of books, or completed them during periods of unemployment (after corporate layoffs or during summers if they are teachers). I believe it is somewhat common for part-time Guard officers, especially those with successful and busy full-time jobs, to decide that the workload is more than they want to deal with, and it thus signifies the end of their careers. In summary, if he already had 20 years in, than completing hundreds of hours of extra work may not have been his top priority, and he was willing to retire honorably instead of essentially studying nights & weekends in addition to his full-time job, family, and ongoing part-time guard duties.
2) While millions of reservists & guardsmen have obviously fought and served in Afghanistan and Iraq, many others, and even some active soldiers, have not. A close friend of mine who's served in a mix of active and reserve units since 1989 has never been sent to the middle-east and was recently deployed to a combat zone for the 1st time- to Kosovo. If his unit was called, I imagine Scott would have gone. His units haven't been called- so he hasn't deployed.
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