Leo Berman: Evangelicals “Don’t Understand” the Politics of Immigration

A very real schism is forming among conservatives. It is a schism that is most certainly a deal breaker in Republican politics, as evidenced by an observation of immigration hardliner State Rep. Leo Berman (R - Intolerance). One that I am very taken with.

Let me set this up. If you are conservative you look at the issue of immigration in one of three ways: 1) the visions of Evangelicals, 2) the views of conservative businessmen, and 3) the vomit of hardliners.

Evangelicals are family oriented and see the need for having “a solid balance between justice and compassion.” Compassion, say, for the compassion they have to the millions of illegal aliens who would be separated from their American citizen relatives, splitting fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. Evangelicals don’t want to discuss immigration unless it has in it provisions for a “path to citizenship.”

Conservative businessmen are looking at immigration in terms of a need to cheaply fill the jobs in agriculture, hospitality, and construction that no American will do – at least not for the kind of pay that illegal aliens accept.

Hardliners want all illegal aliens to leave, no questions, ifs, ands or buts. They are by definition criminals when they broke the immigration laws.

It creates an alliance between Evangelicals and conservative businessmen against the third, more odious branch of conservatism – the hardliners.

And why are hardliners so . . . well . . . hard line about illegal aliens? Enter Leo Berman.

“Berman said he believes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants is a path to creating Democratic voters.” 

“‘There's 25 million in the United States - you can't listen to the 8 million to 12 million numbers that come out of Washington every day - you're going to create an instant 25 million Democrats,’ Berman said.”

“‘I don't think these evangelical leaders understand that.’”

Twenty-five million Democratic votes. That’s what’s behind the hardliner objection to illegal aliens getting legal residency. Becoming naturalized Americans.

Because as Richard Land, an evangelical who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission very correctly observes:

“If the conservative coalition is going to be a governing coalition, it's going to have to include an awful lot of Hispanics, and you're not going to bring an awful lot of Hispanics into your coalition with anti-Hispanic immigration rhetoric.”

So are the hardliners who oppose a path to citizenship the racists we have all been led to believe they are? Maybe, maybe not. The only thing that is certain is that the hardliner position may be racially inspired, but it is most definitely a position that speaks directly to their hopes to retain or regain political power in America.

It’s nice though, to have your prejudices complement your desire for political power from time to time.

Ask Pol Pot whose Khmer Rouge once famously wrote this: “To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.”

How White People are Going to Take Back “Their” Country

I love it when Teabaggers others of their ilk, like this old Southern white man, open their mouths to say what is on their fevered minds, don’t you?

Hilarity Notice: Some portions of this video may cause you to burst out in fits of uncontrollable laughter.



Now I didn’t pull a “Breitbart” or is it a “Sherrod” and selectively edit this video clip. I lopped off the portion at the end that advertises their website, but that is all. What you see is what I got via email yesterday.

It is my fervent hope that we get more of this kind of footage as the next two years go by. We need a guy likie this to talk down to those of us (so we can understand him) liberals and progressives to realize what is really at stake here. White people like this want to take America back – for them - and are delusional enough to think they can do this by trash-talking everyone else.

Thank you, Huckleberry, for making that video. For doing something that can only be described as the ultra-right wing’s best argument against itself.

UPDATE: Were you as dumbfounded at the last sentence as I was? If you were I have an answer for you. That is a quote from the recent western movie “Tombstone.” One that I haven’t ever seen. It refers to the character Doc Holliday, played in the movie by Val Kilmer, who volunteers to kill a guy named “Ringo.”

So yeah, like Sharron Angle’s proposal of a “2nd Amendment solution” for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, this was a veiled threat of assassination of the President of the United States.

On Playing Leapfrog

This past week’s angst over the despicable edit job done on Shirley Sherrod’s March speech to an NAACP audience should all serve us well. They are calling it a “teachable moment” and I as an educator fall right in line on that.

It is a teachable moment, and an event that should give us pause to reflect on what the media has become and how it has evolved, or in this case devolved.

The old farts in the media are surely gloating in their righteousness over how they see how the media has changed. One reporter this morning said that when he was a journalism student he was told that when he was told that his mother loved him, that he should run a fact check on that. And that is the way journalism was, and that is not the way it is now.

Because as, anyone with an internet browser knows, all you had to do was to Google Shirley Sherrod’s name and you would have come up with a whole host of questions that challenged the veracity of the video clip that was being played over and over again at conservative “news” outlets.

And a little further digging and you would have seen the truth. But knees jerk and jerks knee others unfairly in uncomfortable areas.

Blogging, you might say, or if you are kind, “citizen journalism” has been the biggest new thing to affect information exchange in this new century. Any political blog, and this is one of them, has succumbed to the taking up of a news event to further their political agendas. I hope to have the right to say that I do fact-checking from time to time, and when a fact doesn’t hold water, or when I find I am too close to what is in the news, I have self-censored this blog.

There are some very evil people out there with some very distasteful agendas. Let this latest “snookering” be a lesson for all of us, from the White House to the apartment house, not to let things that conveniently support a radical agenda, either left- or rightwing, bend our judgment.

Let’s leave jumping to conclusions to amphibians and others of their ilk.

$$$ To Promote American Historical Documents?

I noticed a sign stuck in some dirt next to a 3-way intersection today. It roused my curiousity mainly because it did something that I have seen for the very first time.

It appended dollar-signs next to a message exhorting the reader to "Promote the Constitution."

Make money by promoting the Constitution? This can only be a neoconservative nocturnal emmission. 

Here is a close-up of the sign.

Here is the website: www.tawlf.org. (warning, this site can elicit mirth).

Here is an applicable definition.

What Should Shirley Do?

The radicals of the rightwing have pulled another con game, and one middle-aged black woman was the target.

Well, no, the confidence that Americans have in their own government, and in their own institutions was the target. Shirley Sherrod was collateral damage, even though someone painted the laser beam on her while someone else released the laser-guided bomb.

On her.

And the bomb landed and did its damage. Sherrod was out of her job at the USDA, but more importantly, the entire Obama Administration was seen, momentarily, as an administration desperately trying to cover up the fact that their employees were actively engaged in reverse discrimination.

Momentarily, because someone bothered to stop and listen to what Sherrod was saying. And them someone else stopped to view the entire speech in which right wingers charged they had her crowing about her success in getting some payback from white people. Only to find that she was speaking to the reverse of the philosophy that right wingers were trying to hang on her.

In short, speaking to a philosophy that makes neoconservative Republicans’ blood run cold: a black woman who was once the object of racial discrimination herself speaking to the politics of a post-racial America. Speaking to the politics of abandoning past recriminations in favor of a future-vision of colorblindness in America.

A vision, that neoconservatives confirmed for her was still yet just a vision. The last thing that neoconservatives want is racial reconciliation, even though clearly that is still year away.

But the whole thing blew up in their faces. The story was more powerful than their ability to obfuscate and out-shout those who discovered their dastardly conspiracy. They are now running for cover.

So now, what should Shirley do?

Clearly this is fertile ground for a lawsuit. Someone took a perfectly reasonable 40 minute speech and trimmed it to give someone the idea that she was espousing the opposite of the purpose of her speech.

Someone did this and tracing that back to the origin these days is child’s play.

Should Ms. Sherrod take the new job being offered to her? Really it depends on what the rest of the offer is. If this offer is to get her to be good and not talk about this, then no, she should turn the job down. I don’t know her, but I get the impression that this would certainly run against her grain as it does mine.

How does she live then? What does Ms. Sherrod do to keep food on the table?

My short bulleted list:

• A book
• By Fall, with book signature tours.
• Screen rights.
• A campaign to get “Sherrod” included in Webster’s Dictionary as a verb, meaning to take a person’s well-meaning statements on racial equality and twisting them to mean the opposite by those seeking to worsen racial divisions.

I'm sure there is more we can do.

Neocons Use BP Blowout to Attack Unions (Too)

In the face of an ecological disaster whose effects will be felt for years, the neoconservatives, beginning with those at Fox News, have fired two volleys, one in further criticism that Obama isn’t doing enough to clean up BP’s mess, and another to help anti-unionists and cost American jobs.

It came out a few days ago with Fox News reporting that some foreign owned companies are not being allowed to help in the clean-up because it violates the Jones Act. The Jones Act, better known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, was implemented to support the US merchant marine industry by allowing only US flag ships to move cargo between US ports. It largely protects jobs and ensures that America not also outsource its ability to conduct interstate commerce in its own waters. It maintains the US shipbuilding industry as well.

But the upshot is that while America can (and has) accepted help from foreign governments to clean this mess up, the material must be transferred to a US flag ship.

Neocons hate unions and believe that if a foreign government subsidizes its industries to enable them to undercut the prices that American business charges, then so be it. So now they are screaming at Obama to waive the Jones Act so foreign companies can help out. What has been the official White House response? I transcribed it from a video found on the White House blog featuring Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.

Question from a FaceBook user:

“And what about offers from foreign governments? Why [hasn’t] the Jones Act been waived to allow foreign offers with technology to help collect oil.”

Browner answers:

“There are a number of foreign offers that we have taken advantage of and the Coast Guard analyzes them and I think we have – help me here – we have taken from Belgium, The Netherlands, Canada there is one other country. If it becomes necessary to waive the Jones act then that will be taken care of but at this point it hasn’t been necessary.”

In other words they have no problem waiving the Jones Act but it’s not necessary right now.

But that’s not what you are going to hear from the Obama haters and the anti-unionists. It’s all about why Obama is against cleaning up BP’s mess.

Because that makes perfect sense.

Forwarded Email

This will be a quick and dirty one because I've got a meeting to attend soon. Fortunately my friend Marsha forwarded an email message to me last night from a friend of a friend that she hasn't seen in years. The friend had just returned from Haiti. Why he was there I have no idea. It sounds like he went there to help out but with help like his, I think Hatians would be better off without. It's an interesting report and goes to the heart of why I detest neoconservative nutjobs.

This is a guy who graphically describes the tragedy in Haiti, and then uses it to further a rightwing political agenda.

A truly hateful person. See if you agree. Here is the email message in its entirety.

To All,

I just returned from Haiti with Hebler. We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.

Port-O-Prince [sic] is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact. Our team was a rescue team, and we carried special equipment that locates people buried under the rubble. There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnal house. The bloody UN was there for 5 years...doing apparently nothing but wasting US Taxpayers money.

The ones I ran into, were either incompetent, or outright anti American. Most are French or French speakers...worthless...every damn one of them. While 1800 rescuers were ready willing and able to leave the airport and go do our jobs, the UN and USAID (another organization full of little "OBamites" and communists that openly speak against America). These two organizations, exemplared their parochialism by:

USAID, when in control of all inbound flights, had food and water flights stacked up all the way to Miami, yet allowed Geraldo Rivera, Anderson Cooper and a host of other left wing news puppies to land.

Pulled all the security off the rescue teams so that Bill Clinton and his wife could have the grand tour, whilst we sat...unable to get to people trapped in the rubble.

Stacked enough food and water for the relief over at the side of the airfield, then put a guard on...it while we dehydrated and wouldn't release a drop of it to the resuers [sic].

No shower facilities to decontaminate after digging or moving corpses all day,
except for the FEMA teams who brought their own shower and decon equipment, as well as air conditioned tents.

No latrine facilities, less digging a hole. If you set up a shitter... everyone was trying to use it.

I watched a 25 year old "Obamite" with the USAID shrieking hysterically, berate a full bird colonel in the air force, because he countermanded her orders, whilst trying to unscrew the air pattern. "

You dont know what your president wants! The military isn't in charge here...we are!"

If any of you are thinking of giving money to the Haitian relief, or to the UN... don't waste your money. It will only go to further the goals of the French and the Liberal left.

If we are a fair and even society, why is it that only white couples are adopting Haitian orphans? Where the hell is that vocal minority that is always screaming about the injustice of American society?

Bad place, bad situation, but a perfect look at the new world order in action. New Orleans magnified a thousand times. Haiti doesnt need democracy, what Haiti needs...is Papa Doc. That's not just my opinion...that is what virtually every Haitian we talked with... said!

The French run the UN. Papa Doc ran the country.

Oh, and as a last slap in the face...the last four of us had to take US AIRWAYs home from Phoenix. They slapped me with a 590 dollar baggage charge for the four of us.

The girl at the counter was almost in tears...because she couldnt give us a
discount...or she would lose her job.

Pass that on to the flying public.

So I did. And next time I fly, I'll fly US Air. Slamming this guy with a $590 baggage charge is just the icing on the cake isn't it.

One question: what was in the bags?

Kay Scores One for the Neocons

Every day is another day of amazement and wonder here in turbulent Texas. Today we learn that Kay Bailey Hutchison, who announced that she is running for governor in the Republican primary next March against incumbent Rick Perry, who is a teabagger’s teabagger, has a new ally.

Dead Eye Dick Cheney.

So in the race to garner neoconservative supporters, it is Perry 1 (with Sarah Palin in his corner) and Hutchison 1 (with Cheney).

Actually I think Perry has the edge on getting more neocons to sign on, not to mention teabaggers. Hutchison however, who is a moderate, scored a coup in garnering the support of uber-neoconservative Dick Cheney.

This little tempest in a Texas teapot does have some interesting bedfellows, doesn’t it?

Rick Perry has an unlikely set of supporters who, if put in the same room, would likely want to tear each others’ throats out. Neocons, who form Perry’s base, are the tax and spend like a drunken sailors who got America in the deep, deep debt that it is in. Teabaggers, on the other hand, are simply shocked, shocked I tell you, at how conservatives have dug America a hole of debt halfway to China.

But they both just love Sarah Palin. She is the glue that binds these two disparate groups together. So oddly, Perry gathers supporters from both of these groups.

But now Kay Bailey has a neocon all of her own. One to draw the War-loving Muslim-hating Cheneyites right out of the Perry camp.

Dick Cheney is the neocon’s neocon that will give Kay Bailey the credentials to pass as a borrow and spend, fear mongering, anti-Hispanic, neoconservative in her own right.

And how does Rick Perry spin the seeming desertion of his cause by a fellow neocon? He goes back to page one in his anti-Hutchison diatribe, the one that has so offended his fellow Republicans taking up space in Washington DC: it’s just a beltway cabal.

Said Mark Miner of Perry’s campaign:

“The Washington establishment likes to stick together.”

Yes and not to mention that Cheney knew both Kay and her millionaire lawyer husband Ray back in the good old days in Dallas, and that both Cheney sidekick Karl Rove and Bush fundraiser Jim Francis often serve as sous chefs in Kay’s Kitchen:

“Other connections between Hutchison and Cheney include former presidential adviser Karl Rove and Dallas fundraiser Jim Francis. Both are kitchen cabinet advisers to Hutchison’s campaign.”

So while this is not all that surprising, it does make for some fun popcorn-passing Neocon/Teabagger-watching good times here.

Making me wonder what the Texas moderates and Independents must be thinking right now as the two main Republican gubernatorial candidates scuffle in the dust in their continued competition to split the rightwing between themselves.

Maybe something like they have finally had enough of all of this.

SICKO Clips Being Used to Distort Its Own Healthcare Message

I mentioned before that I am acquainted with an Independent voter that used to be a registered Republican. I have met a lot of these people lately.

She forwarded to me yet another of the endless emails she gets from her friends and acquaintances who still cling to the politics of fear from the Party of the Dark Side.

This one had me puzzled at first. All it said in the text body was “This is well worth the warning and a quick listen” and contained an attached movie (.WMV) file. I looked at the movie and thought I recognized the narrator’s voice, but I had to check.

I looked for the same video on You Tube and was not disappointed. Someone else had received the movie in an email and decided to share it on You Tube, saving me the chore of having to upload it. It is embedded below. The uploader entitles the video “Ronald Reagan On the Evils of Socialized Medicine”

Notice that the beginning seems to be a little chopped? Notice the end has an ominous photograph of Barack Obama looking like he wants to suck the aqueous humor out of your eyeballs?

Guess where this film clip is from?

If you agree that the narrator sounds a lot like Michael Moore, you would not be wrong. The clip was lifted from Michael Moore’s highly acclaimed movie “SICKO.”

Here is the clip minus the edits at the beginning and end.

And by the way, as you can see on the video frame, the uploader of this clip, Michael Moore, or maybe one of his colleagues, entitles this clip “SICKO: “Ronald Reagan On the Evils of Socialized Medicine”

These people have no decency at all, do they?

Someone In Katy ISD Has a Wicked Sense of Humor

Yesterday I wrote about a pdf file that was taken down from Fort Bend ISD’s website as it described how parents who wanted to opt IN to having their children watch Barack Obama’s Tuesday address on education could sign a parent permission form to submit to their children’s campus administration. This was an obvious ploy to suppress any participation in this singular event that directly involves America’s schoolchildren with the President of the United States, and the district administration rightly reversed itself on this hardline stance.

Then it came to my attention today that Katy ISD had a similar problem from the other side of the political spectrum.

And it struck my funny bone.

You see, here in Texas there are some blue areas, some purple ones, some pink ones, some red ones, and some deep red redneck ones. As it turns out, the area encompassed by the district boundaries of Katy ISD is deep redneck red.

I should know this. I went block walking 3 years ago for Shane Sklar, a Democrat who was challenging Dr. Ron “Doctor No” Paul for his seat in Texas CD-14. But in that area, block walking takes on new meaning in that walking from one persuadable address to another is not feasible – you drive from one such residence to another.

So it struck me as comedic when I read this story in FortBendNow, about how Katy ISD had to retract some words on its district notice regarding how parents can opt out of having their children view the Obama education address to schoolchildren on Tuesday.

From FortBendNow:

“The final sentence of the lengthy four-paragraph statement said, ‘Allowing parents to opt their children out of listening to our president or any other elected official will be honored as we honor requests of those who desire to opt out of saluting our nation’s flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.’”

Is that not just so precious?

Parents have the right to opt their children out of viewing an address by the President of the United States just as they have the right to opt their children out of saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

Oooh, that must have rubbed a lot of those parents the wrong way. These are the variety of people, mind you, who elevate the volume of their voices to Max when they come upon the phrase “Under God” when they recite the P of A.

But you have to love the person who wrote that last sentence. What an incredibly correct statement. These people who want to opt their children out of hearing the address are perfectly willing to degrade the office of the president to such an extent as to teach their children to ignore what the leader of the free world has to say about their education.

These people, in short, are not patriots in any sense of the word. But insinuating that they are not causes them to complain to the extent that Katy went ahead and retracted that remark.

And that tells me that this opting comparison must really stick in their craw.

As it should.

Dismiss the politics, that’s OK. But dismissing the man or the office he holds to the extent of ignoring what he has to say is not in our American tradition.

Fort Bend ISD: Broadcast of President Obama’s Education Speech is a Campus Decision

You can’t say this wasn’t going to be a surprise.

Fort Bend ISD is one of the highest rated school districts in the state of Texas. It is also centrally located in the middle of Rightwing Nutjob Central, also known as that congressional district that sent “Hot Tub” Tom Delay back to congress every time he stood for the office.

Fort Bend County, along with its Fort Bend ISD denizens, is very probably singularly responsible for keeping Fox’s Bat Dooty-Crazy Glenn Beck on the air with local ratings that are probably in the 40-share range.

So when the district and campus administrations throughout the district started getting frantic phone calls from parents who were anxious about President Obama “grabbing” their children, subjecting them to mass hypnotism or worse, the district originally caved to the vocal crazies.

They issued a letter that allowed parents to fill out a permission slip if they wanted their children to view Obama’s education speech on Tuesday. Yes, that’s right, they had to opt in to letting their children view the speech, not opt out as is the usual case. Opt in, mind you, to view a speech by the President of the United States directed at them, the schoolchildren of the United States.

You know, the one where he is going to welcome America’s children back to school, and to urge that they do their utmost in their studies in the coming school year.

Controversial things like that.

That, apparently went over like a lead balloon and the district pulled it off of their website. Cooler heads prevailed and now the district, according to the announcement now being shown on its website, is saying that the decision to show the broadcast, or not to, is a campus-based decision.

Not perfect, but at least parents don’t have to jump through hoops in order to make it possible for their children to see the broadcast. The one directed right at them.

You know, this didn’t happen when Jack Kennedy had his education address. Or when Ronald Reagan did. Or Bush-41 did.

But then those were white presidents.

What? No Whole Lotta Whinin’ Goin’ On In Sugar Land?

I must say that I am disappointed in my tea bagging sore loser neighbors. I was soooo looking forward to attending the TEA party that I was expecting them to throw in Sugar Land this Saturday.

You see, sore loser teabaggers are all done with their whinin’ and complainin’ about how their country isn’t theirs anymore.

Not theirs anymore because, apparently the President is a Democrat.

And he is Black.

Teabaggers are all done because the town halls of August are all done, for the most part. Federal legislators will be back in DC after Labor Day.

So, yes, their country isn’t being led by fluffy white people anymore, and that makes them sad. But teabaggers do have one last hurrah this September 5th.

Just not in Sugar Land.

And I am downcast and sad. Last time we had a nation-wide TEA party megafest Sugar Land was front and center and every crazy rightwing neoconservative Republican, not to mention all 4 Libertarians, in Fort Bend County were there to send a message, and a trunkful of tea bags, along with Pete “Just Say No” Olson, back to congress.

Those were the heady days.

But this Saturday, the only people wandering around Sugar Land’s Town Square will be the occasional shopper, and the occasional Ben and Jerry’s ice cream fanatic.

Because the other venue is drawing the big crowds. Sugar Land’s teabaggers are being diverted to Austin according to this mention in FortBendNow. Others who might have wanted to save gas and go to the Houston gathering will have to do the same as their Sugar Land brethren according to the Houston Klavern.

Dare we hope for a cry for Texas to secede from the Union this weekend? The Austin organizers hope not, according to their caveat on their website, to wit: “We Do Not Support Secession!”

But will the secessionists turn out anyway? Can we be that lucky?

Yes we can.

Leo Berman: Bill Will Challenge Legality of 14th Amendment

Aha, so there is a method to Leo Berman’s (R – Tyler) utter madness.

I think I have mentioned in passing that one of the matters to be considered by Texas’ 81^st Legislature is the matter of HB 256 entitled “AN ACT relating to birth records of children born in this state; creating an offense,” the title of which is enough to give offense.

Authored by Leo Berman and co-authored by neoconservative colleagues Dennis Bonnen (R - Angleton), Debbie Riddle (R - Houston) and Allen Fletcher (R - Houston), the purpose of the legislation, as Berman revealed here, is to challenge the constitutionality of the 14^th Amendment to the US Constitution.

He proposes to do this by denying the issuance of birth certificates to any infant born to alien parents within the borders of Texas, a condition that is in direct contravention of Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment, to wit:

“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

No where is there any reference to special circumstances, like their parents were not citizens, illegal alien or not.

Berman revealed his true intensions in a speech he gave yesterday to some of his anhängen, The Minutemen Civil Defense Corps.

From The Chron’s Texas Politics Blog:

“Berman said if his proposal to prohibit automatic citizenship for U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants passes it would undoubtedly spark a court fight that he hopes lands in the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“‘That's exactly what we're looking for,’ said Berman, R-Tyler. ‘We want to be sued into federal court where our attorney general can take this all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.’”

Exactly what he wants, it seems, is to do away with that troublesome 14^th Amendment. You know, the one that has guaranteed the rights of every man, woman (lately), and child of life liberty and property. The one that promises “due process.” The 14^th Amendment was the crowning achievement of the Number One rated US President, Abraham Lincoln.

But Leo Berman and his sordid ilk want it done away with, and he thinks Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott (or his Republican successor) is just the man to do it.

Well I find State Rep. Leo Berman’s latest efforts to be fantastically refreshing and I want to urge that he keep it up, and propose other bills, as he has in the past and present, in the same vein.

What better way to prove a central point in my thinking, that the post Civil War Reconstruction Period ended much too soon in Texas, as it did over much of the former Confederate States of America.

The Grand Army of the Republic and the federal government back then made a classic mistake, one that was once the sole method (besides abstinence, which has since been discredited by Bristol Palin) of birth control: pulling out too soon.