Dems Call For End To GOP Witch Hunt On Planned Parenthood (WITH VIDEO)

Marsha Blackburn at the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference (image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
Marsha Blackburn at the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference (image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)

The Republican war against Planned Parenthood shows no sign of letting up, even with the now-infamous videos from the Center for Medical Progress having been exposed as partisan hatchet jobs and the people behind them being criminally charged. Despite this, a select committee originally intended to investigate Planned Parenthood has continued on, engaging in such frightening tactics as demanding information about medical students who learn about abortion.

Well, several House Democrats have had enough. They sent a letter calling for this farce to be shut down immediately. Read the letter here. It was circulated by Bill Foster of Illinois and Zoe Lofgren of California, and signed by 96 other Democrats. Foster sent it to the committee’s chairwoman, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday.

Even in the face of the total lack of evidence of criminal misconduct on Planned Parenthood’s part, Blackburn showed no sign of letting up, as evidenced by this interview on Newsmax last week.

Blackburn may not be bothered by how petty and stupid this looks, but the congressmen who signed this letter are. They are “deeply concerned” with the direction the panel is taking, especially since time and again Planned Parenthood has been cleared of wrongdoing. Besides subpoenaing information about medical students, the committee has demanded information from dozens of people who are involved in fetal tissue research. From where the Dems are sitting, Blackburn and her Republican colleagues are using Planned Parenthood as an excuse to bully scientists into pulling back on “life-saving research.”

For those who don’t know, fetal tissue research could potentially lead to breakthroughs in treating Parkinson’s disease, MS, and other debilitating illnesses. The way this panel is going, however, the avalanche of subpoenas could have a chilling effect on this work. Foster, who has a Ph.D. in physics, was particularly angered by what he sees as Republican “attacks on medical research,” and called for Blackburn and Ryan to end “this political witch hunt.” Lofgren was equally outraged, saying this panel exists solely to “intimidate scientists and researchers” with “wild rhetoric and unfounded accusations” that they are helping harvest baby parts.

Blackburn’s response? Another subpoena. On Monday, she retweeted this note from the Susan B. Anthony List.

The target of Blackburn’s ire? StemExpress, one of the companies targeted by the CMP videos. Blackburn wants StemExpress and its CEO, Cate Dyer, to turn over a number of “business and accounting documents.” Never mind that StemExpress has already turned over 2,000 pages of documents to three other House and Senate committees, neither of whom have found any evidence that StemExpress broke the law.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the very kind of behavior that proves Blackburn and her friends are tilting windmills on our dime. I seem to recall that a decade ago, the GOP went on a similar expedition when it called a special congressional session just to approve a bill allowing Terri Schiavo’s parents to sue in federal court after all of their remedies to stop the removal of their comatose daughter’s feeding tube had been exhausted. That may very well have been the tipping point that caused the GOP to lose both houses of Congress a year later.

By continuing this unwarranted and wasteful attack on Planned Parenthood, the GOP has shown it has learned and forgotten nothing.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.