Planned Parenthood drags feet on briefing Congress; DOJ might investigate, maybe . . .

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives July 23, 2015

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You can see how Planned Parenthood and its protectors are playing this. Drag out the process, attack the Center for Medical Progress for the manner in which the videos were made, claim victim status, lean on legal technicalities and hope the whole thing fades from the headlines such that Republicans in Congress no longer think it's worthwhile or in their political interests to keep the spotlight on it.

It starts with a letter from their lawyer explaining that the request of a staff briefing by July 31 is just too soon, which is funny because they sure didn't need much time coming up with all kinds of public explanations for why the videos were "deceptively edited" and don't show they did anything wrong. Of course, the real purpose of the letter is to attack the CMP, its methods and its motives. About which: Even if everything Planned Parenthood claims about CMP was true, how can that be said to excuse the harvesting of fetal body parts for sale? It wouldn't. This is not the cops setting up an entrapment operation. It's one private party having a conversation with another. There are no Miranda rights and no guarantee of privacy involved. You go to lunch. You talk at length about how you sell tissue and what it will cost, someone might be recording it. Congressional Republicans have also asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate. How do you suppose that's going to go? Pretty much the same:

Two senior Republican lawmakers asked the Department of Justice to review how it enforces abortion regulations and detail actions it has taken to enforce the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a 2003 law that bans late-stage abortions. Asked whether her department would open an investigation, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said: "At this point, we are going to review all the information and determine what steps, if any, to take at the appropriate time."

Translation: Cold day in hell, chumps. Cold day in hell. The DOJ could do a pretend investigation and claim it found nothing, but that would run the risk of more videos coming out that clearly show Planned Parenthood is flouting the law and brazenly so. Lynch will almost certainly just wait it out until the media takes its cue to drop any obligatory attention to the story and re-relegate it to conservative alternate media - essentially putting in the same category as Benghazi and the IRS scandal. It's not real news unless we say it is. Of course, there's nothing stopping a congressional committee from doing its own investigation and issuing subpoenas, and that's a very real possibility. Just because Planned Parenthood and its helper Lynch try to wait out the news cycle doesn't mean the strategy will work. But that's clearly the idea. See no evil, hear no evil . . . and needless to say, report no evil.