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THE QUESTION borders on the inane: Can Virginia regulate “facilities in which first-trimester abortion services are provided” and “medical personnel who perform first-trimester abortions”? The answer is obvious: Of course it can. Every state regulates medical personnel and facilities, from those that dispense acne medication to those that perform open-heart surgery.

But there’s a catch:

How a state regulates, however, is a different question — and one that should be answered by solid medical evidence and sound public policy.

Ok. Fine. So, the question is simple. How dangerous is abortion as a medical procedure right now (or how potentially dangerous could it be?). Obviously, we are not taking about the fetus. Abortion is always 100% a deathly ending for the unborn. Let’s look at that stats. What’s that? The Commonwealth doesn’t have those stats. Oh, so there must be no problem then! That’s the ComPost’s conclusion:

State medical and health boards already provide oversight of abortion facilities and the medical personnel who perform roughly 25,000 abortions each year. The Virginia Department of Health does not keep statistics on the number of medical complications associated with abortions. But the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit think tank that focuses on reproductive health and supports legal abortion, reports that less than one-half of 1 percent of abortions performed in the country result in complications that require follow-up medical treatment. The earlier the abortion is performed, the fewer the complications. The Virginia clinics in question perform only first-trimester abortions — the safest of all procedures. The institute provides compelling medical information that a woman’s decision to have an abortion has little to no impact on her ability to give birth later.

Look, we all know that this regulation of abortion mills has little to do with the safety of the procedure (although it does have some to do with it) and that the real point of it is to choke the abortion industry. The challenge to these laws and regulations will be one similar to a disparate impact challenge: the law is not targeted to do what it says it should do (regulate a procedure) but it’s really meant to do something else (eliminate that procedure). The pro-life movement should pursue clinical regulations but it should also realize that in the grand scheme of things, they are not the main thrust of the movement.

Nevertheless, the Post’s agreement with the AG’s position is remarkable. As is its brain-dead analysis.

This approach undermines a large conservative achievement. Despite early misgivings about Social Security and the Civil Rights Act, Ronald Reagan moved Republicans past Alf Landon’s resistance to the New Deal and Barry Goldwater’s opposition to federal civil rights law, focusing instead on economic growth and national strength. A consistent “constitutionalism” would entangle Republicans in an endless, unfolding political gaffe — opposing, in moments of candor, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, the federal highway system and the desegregation of lunch counters.

Gerson presents two arguments. On the one hand, he is openly Hamiltonian in his reading of the General Welfare clause:

The Constitution, in contrast to the Articles of Confederation, granted broad power to the federal government to impose taxes and spend funds to “provide for . . . the general welfare” — at least if Alexander Hamilton and a number of Supreme Court rulings are to be believed. In practice, Social Security abolition would push perhaps 13 million elderly Americans into destitution, blurring the line between conservative idealism and Social Darwinism.

On the other hand, as both positions show, Gerson believes all politics is a politics of pragmatism. If it works—or if eliminating it could cause grave problems—then principle should simply give way to reality. Gerson really makes politics simple: he eviscerates the need for principle and for a set rule of law to guide our decision-making. It’s all about getting things done. This creates a schizophrenic personality. Gerson in 1932 would probably oppose on constitutional principles Social Security before Congress creates it, but Gerson in 2010 would ignore those same misgivings. Gerson in 2010 opposed “Obamacare” on constitutional reasoning, but would he do so in 2020 and beyond?

Having principle does not mean eliminating the need for prudence. In fact, it presupposes prudence. Simply because Reagan did not (or could not) eliminate (or significantly reform) Social Security does not suddenly mean that Reagan thought it was constitutionally licit. Undoing constitutional wrongs takes time. Hamilton was right that power given ought to be given to the fullest extent. But what happens when those who exercise a power not given to them exercise it to the fullest extent? The polity generally conforms to that power and rarely oppose it. After all, it brings some tangental benefit to them. And conformity is easier than change.

But that’s not a Republican form of government at all. That’s some sort of mild despotism. Surely, Gerson cannot be in favor of that…except if it works.

From Yahoo! News:

Former President Jimmy Carter will travel to North Korea soon to win the release of an American held prisoner there, the U.S.-based Foreign Policy journal reported on its Web site on Tuesday.

Now if we could just find a siege for Janet Reno to diffuse.

“Even the venerable Robert E. Lee has taken some vicious hits, as dishonest or misinformed advocates among political interest groups and in academia attempt to twist yesterday’s America into a fantasy that might better serve the political issues of today. The greatest disservice on this count has been the attempt by these revisionist politicians and academics to defame the entire Confederate Army in a move that can only be termed the Nazification of the Confederacy. Often cloaked in the argument over the public display of the Confederate battle flag, the syllogism goes something like this: Slavery is evil. The soldiers of the Confederacy fought for a system that wished to preserve it. Therefore they were evil as well, and any attempt to honor their service is a veiled effort to glorify the cause of slavery.” ~ From Born Fighting by Virginia Democrat Senator James Webb (Page 208)

“But what most historians miss—and what those who react so strongly to seeing Confederate battle flags on car bumpers and in the yards of descendants of Confederate veterans do not understand—is that slavery was emphatically not the reason that most individual Southerners fought so long and hard, and at such overwhelming cost.” (Page 211.)

“. . . to tar the sacrifices of the Confederate soldier as simple acts of racism, and reduce the battle flag under which he fought to nothing more than the symbol of a racist heritage, is one of the great blasphemies of our modern age.” (Page 225.)

“. . . we are also the caretakers of the memory, and the reputation, of those who performed their duty—as they understood it—under circumstances too difficult for us ever to fully comprehend. No one but a fool—or a bigot in their own right—would call on the descendants of those Confederate veterans to forget the sacrifices of those who went before them or argue that they should not be remembered with honor.” (Page 231.)