Bush's "Priorities:" Misdirect, Fib, Spin

I was sitting around watching the news last night when a Bush ad came on called, "Priorities." It was the one that says Kerry missed two-thirds of the Senate votes but still found time to against the Laci Peterson Bill. You know, as if Kerry put down the donut he was eating in California, hopped on his special John Kerry Jet and winged it back to D.C. just so he could vote to make it ok to kill pregnant women. Here’s the script:

Leadership means choosing priorities. While campaigning, John Kerry has missed over two-thirds of all votes. Missed a vote to lower health-care costs by reducing frivolous lawsuits against doctors. Missed a vote to fund our troops in combat.

Yet Kerry found time to vote against the Laci Peterson law that protects pregnant women from violence. Kerry has his priorities. Are they yours?

Where’s the lie? I suspect most viewers will miss the whopper in this ad, even pundits like Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post.

The truth is, Kerry found time to vote against the bill, but the so-called Laci and Conner’s Law doesn’t protect pregnant women from violence. The bill, literally, has nothing to do with the protection of pregnant women. We already have plenty of laws that protect people, pregnant or otherwise, from violence. Laci and Conner’s Law does something different. It makes killing or injuring a fetus during the commission of an act of violence against the mother a separate crime. For the first time, according to the law, “…a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb” is now protected. From zygote to birth, from the moment the strip turns blue to the momenet the head crowns, whether the criminal knows the woman is pregnant or not, Laci and Conner's Law makes the interior of a woman's body covered by law.

Depending on which side of the abortion rights debate you fall, that can be good or bad. I think it's a dangerous intrusion on individual liberty. Either way, defining a fetus as a homicide victim has deep ramifications. That’s why the pro-life crowd, lead by the Christian Coalition lobbied hard for this narrow victory. It realized the bill was much less about law-enforcement than it was an effort to marginally reduce abortion rights.

Kerry supported an amendment to the bill that would have re-structured the language to preserve a woman's right to choose. Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade stated the Kerry postion:

John Kerry strongly supports making it a federal crime to commit an act of violence against a pregnant woman. He agrees with the vast majority of Americans who want tough punishment for anyone who would commit such heinous crimes and knows we can do so without undermining a woman's right to choose.

The ad, and the bill itself, are classic Bush lies. The real intentions and messages are carefully hidden beneath a blanket of lurid, emotional language impossible to resist if one has even a single patriotic bone in his body. And the message one finally receives is poison.

As for priorities, if resisting the urge to use real-life soap operas and emotionally laden language to erode civil liberties is a priority - then yes, I share Kerry's priorities.