As many people have pointed out, Obama has taken several administrative steps that would have been considered quite radical in years past.

*He has committed us to the full escalation of a land war that we have already been engaged in--unsuccessfully, apparently--for eight years.

*He has embraced the Bush doctrine of unfettered executive lawlessness, asserting his right as the POTUS to imprison American citizens indefinitely without charges, and engage in the torture of prisoners.

*He presided over the conclusion of what was probably the largest transfer of wealth in global history, the transfer of nearly a trillion dollars from working American taxpayers (or their children, really, at this point) to the criminally incompetent and already-obscenely-wealthy overseers of the American "finance industry."

Sounds like a man who knows his priorities to me, moving swiftly and decisively to achieve what's important to him.

Obama's practical continuation of radical legal "theories"--which are really just assertions of unrestrained executive privilege and power and declarations that the President of the USA is not accountable to anyone, even under our codified, democratically-created rule of law--are much more than a metaphorical thorn in anyone's foot. They represent a true repudiation of American values just as they did under Bush.

You can take that reality, mask it in political idealism and partisanship, parse it, snip it, re-phrase it and dress it up with all the semantic silliness you want, but there the truth remains.

The need for round-the-clock surveillance on these right-wing wackos is so obvious as to preclude any serious debate (like just about anything related to abortion)...put all the anti-choicers and gun nuts into a domestic terrorist database and makes sure that they are fully aware of their new second-class status.

Let's show them we meant business when we said we would undo the attack on American ideals suffered under George W. Bush by waging a political intimidation campaign against people who question fundamental Constitutional rights like unrestricted abortion-on-demand. Let's show those hysterical idiots just how wrong they are about liberal Democrats, by outlawing their politically-unacceptable beliefs.

...marching lockstep with the grimmest of intensity to angrily protest the tragic and imminent births of thousands of unwanted human children who could have otherwise been exterminated before receiving the chance to interfere with their mothers' busy lives.

People can choose many actions, all of which might be moral or not. I am not intending to commit a wholesale denigration of women who have made difficult choices, even if one was the choice to terminate their child's life in the womb.

I simply find it (very darkly) comical that this man Tiller is treated as some kind of hero or saint by anyone.

..I surrender to your searing wit.

Valkyrie:

Well, as long as he did one (arguably) good thing in his life, I guess he was a hero. My thanks to you and the good folks at Socialist Webzine for straightening me out. I myself once carried an old lady's groceries for her even though I was late for an appointment....donations in my name can be made to your local Red Cross.

..so I definitely believe in freedom. But I believe the government does have a duty to protect citizens against two things: force and fraud. Abortion falls into the former category, in my opinion.

The preclusion of an action is not necessarily force unless it precludes the lawful use of one's own rightful property--and a child is NOT its mother's property. Laws that protect unborn children from a surgeon's killing scalpel are "forcing" only in the sense that a spotted owl is "forced" to give birth by those intrusive Endangered Species laws which protect the lives of its species.

...with its own heartbeat and its own functioning life systems, separate from its mother. A fetus depends on its mother for nutrition and shelter--the same as a newborn baby outside the womb does--but it is still a separate living entity.

The right to life among fellow humans is the most fundamental protection against force (i.e. violence) that people-based societies can hold against their governments. It is, in my opinion, a "natural" right that cannot be abrogated by plebiscite or public opinion, and it is equally vital whether it is held by adult, child, black, white, etc.

Heh, that was almost alliterative.

Can I just say that all the "but-abortionists-are-only-fixing God's-mistakes" arguments just don't wash with me?

I am well aware of the "social expediency" argument at the heart of all eugenics-based social policies such as abortion: the idea that certain people are too economically inefficient, or too inconvenient to care for, or just plain too undesirable for their very existence to be afforded any kind of protection from utter annihilation.

I don't buy the premise, and therefore certainly not the conclusion, of that argument.

namely that, because the fetus/baby/child can't speak for itself, it doesn't need or deserve any protection from violence by its parents.

How does an embryo exercise its right to life? The same as you and I do--by living. You know, being alive. That's the only action required to exercise the right to life.

and my neighbors--as represented by our common elected officials--have no right to stop me.

But only if they can't talk or fight back.