Hillary movies

The less said about HILLARY: THE MOVIE the better. The film by Citizens United, directed by Alan Peterson and co-produced with David Bossie, is basically a talking-heads negative campaign ad extended to infomercial length. Just about everything I wrote about CELSIUS 41:11 a couple of years ago applies here too — nothing wrong with it substantively, but really not very good as a movie.

The film is worth noting for one reason, described in a colleague’s Washington Times articles here and here: it illustrates the basic absurdity of so-called “campaign finance reform,” which attempts to ration political speech during elections, i.e., exactly at the time when it is most needed. Judge Lambeth was right to laugh at the claims that the film is not electioneering and thus ads for it would be covered by campaign-finance restrictions.

“Hillary Clinton is a European Socialist,” Bopp replied. “That is an issue.”
“Which has nothing to do with her campaign?” U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth interjected.
“Not specifically, no,” Bopp replied.
“Once you say, ‘Hillary Clinton is a European Socialist,’ aren’t you saying vote against her?”
Bopp disagreed because the movie did not use the word “vote.”
“Oh, that’s ridic…” Lamberth said, trailing off and ending the line of questioning.

But then that’s what absurdities anti-First-Amendment laws from the post-Watergate rules to McCain-Feingold force political speakers to do — mouth patent sophistries in the name of protecting their free speech rights to their megaphone. When you look at an ad, it will never say “vote against Candidate X” or “tell candidate to vote against Bill Y,” it will say “X is a loathesome, child-molesting deadbeat who hates mom and apple pie?” or “call Congress about Bill Y that would end freedom as we know it and make all our pee smell.” And speakers and judges have to pretend there’s some difference between the two sets of statements, inevitably coming across (see the Michael Moore counter-examples) as arbitrarily as the East German judge in Olympics. Determining permissible speech is exactly what the First Amendment says the government should NOT be in the business of doing (other East German judge examples aside).

Besides, the best Hillary Clinton movie already has been made: Alexander Payne’s ELECTION, as re-edited here (thanks Mark … and no, I hadn’t seen it):

The more, the better

Let me see if I’ve got this straight:

• A daily dose of from 0.05 to 0.15 mg of levonorgestrel requires a prescription.
• Requiring that a 1.5 mg dose of levonorgestrel must have a prescription is patriarchal tyranny over women’s bodies, sexphobic anti-scientism and the precursor to a HANDMAID’S TALE-like theocracy.

That’s the unavoidable conclusion of this atrocious and politicized decision (courtesy of blackmail from “the mom in sneakers and the devil in Prada“) to make available Plan-B “emergency contraception” over the counter. From Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America:

Since birth control pills require a prescription and a doctor’s supervision during use, how can the FDA or the drug manufacturer condone providing Plan B (a mega-dose of the same drugs) over-the-counter? Widespread access to Plan B would expose women to the health risks that here-to-fore were acknowledged by doctors who screened women before prescribing birth control pills and then monitored them for the wide variety of contra-indicators for their use.

To be sure, in the first of the above-mentioned dosages, many forms of the Pill also have estrogen or something that mimics its effects. But it’s not as though progestins like Plan-B don’t pose real health risks quite on their own or that progestin-only oral contraceptives don’t also require prescriptions.

Today’s greatest winner — trial lawyers, who will soon receive a bountiful new field of cases, of people without medical training calibrating their use of drugs several times more powerful than what they need a prescription for when the stated purpose is something else (a fact that is chemically and biologically irrelevant). Mark my words — within the decade, Barr Laboratories will either be hiding behind immunity granted by a Democrat Congress, bankrupt/in receivership, or will have sold Plan-B to the government or some group like Planned Parenthood.

Let’s face it. If you’re not far-sighted enough to avoid an unwanted pregnancy (there are two known methods — one infallible; the other immoral but still mostly effective) … are you fit to be self-medicating? Prescriptions, and the health warnings that accompany them, are required for a reason. I mean, if you get aspirin or cough syrup and take three times the required dose because your headache is THIS BIG or whatever … nothing very terrible will happen. But is saying that messing with body chemistry like some female version of Barry Bonds should not be as easy as buying a pack of Marlboros really so awful?

But then, abortion poisons everything it touches. This is an old story, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusions that feminists want every abortion that could occur to occur. For example, whether it’s the killing of an unborn child or not, abortion is still unquestionably a major surgical procedure, especially later in pregnancy.¹ Yet it’s usually treated like an outpatient or on-demand service, done outside a hospital, with little recovery time, and exempt from a score of other state and local regulations. And most scandalously of all, on a minor without a parent’s consent or foreknowledge.²
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¹ As feminists will argue when it suits them — as when they want all OB/GYNs be certified to perform abortions as a licensing requirement. But not when not — as noted next.
² In case I’m not clear, this is not an argument per se against the morality of contraception or abortion. I’m simply noting that if they are mere medical procedures like any other, then the same regulatory regimes should surely be being applied. And this is not so. Which indicates bad faith.