The NR cruise seems to be sailing smoothly along. Back here at NRHQ, though, we did receive an odd e-mail from publisher Jack Fowler -- something about an iceberg? Rearranging deck chairs? Leonardo DiCaprio? Ah, well. Probably just an advertisement. 'I Want a Lamborghini' A week after the Center for Medical Progress's video charging Planned Parenthood with trafficking in the remains of aborted children, CMP is out with a new video -- and it's equally hard to stomach. Via CMP: Actors posing as buyers ask [Planned Parenthood official and president of the Medical Directors' Council] Mary Gatter, "What would you expect for intact [fetal] tissue?" "Well, why don't you start by telling me what you're used to paying!" Gatter replies. Gatter continues: "You know, in negotiations whoever throws out the figure first is at a loss, right?" She explains, "I just don't want to lowball," before suggesting, "$75 a specimen." Gatter twice recites Planned Parenthood messaging on fetal tissue collection, "We're not in it for the money," and "The money is not the important thing," but she immediately qualifies each statement with, respectively, "But what were you thinking of?" and, "But it has to be big enough that it's worthwhile for me." . . . Gatter concludes: "Let me just figure out what others are getting, and if this is in the ballpark, then it's fine, if it's still low, then we can bump it up. I want a Lamborghini." It will take quite a few liver-thymus pairs before Ms. Gatter can afford her Aventador, but it's nice to see that she's goal-oriented. And in case that was not unpleasant enough, there's this little gem: Let me explain to you a little bit of a problem, which may not be a big problem. If our usual technique is suction, at 10 to 12 weeks, and we switch to using an IPAS [manual vacuum aspirator] or something with less suction, in order to increase the odds that it will come out as an intact specimen, then we're kind of violating the protocol that says to the patient, "We're not doing anything different in our care for you." Now, to me, that's kind of a specious little argument, and I wouldn't object to asking Ian -- who's our surgeon who does the cases -- to use an IPAS at that gestational stage, in order to increase the odds that he's going to get an intact specimen. But I do need to throw it out there as a concern, because the patient is signing something and we're signing something that's saying, "We're not changing anything with the way we're managing you, just because you agree to give tissue." When abortion opponents suggest that abortion creates perverse incentives that can lead physicians to mistreat or endanger women, this is what we're talking about. It can't possibly come as a surprise that people willing to traffic in the parts of aborted babies might also wobble on their contract obligations. As I wrote last week, the rule of law cannot resolve this issue. This is a matter of national conscience. The willingness of abortion providers to deceive patients and break the law should make even clearer that trying to reconcile abortion with our foundational principles is a futile endeavor. You May Not Be Interested in HUD . . . But the Department of Housing and Urban Development is interested in you. Michael Barone, writing at National Review today: Disparate impact — it's a legal doctrine that may be coming soon to your suburb (if you're part of the national majority living in suburbs). Bringing it there will be the Obama Department of Housing and Urban Development's Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing program. It has been given a green light to impose the rule from Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in the Supreme Court's 5–4 decision in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project. The decision purports to interpret the Fair Housing Act of 1968 as authorizing lawsuits if municipal policies have a "disparate impact" as measured by the racial percentages of those affected — this despite the fact that the words of the Fair Housing Act prohibit only intentional racial discrimination. . . HUD Secretary Julian Castro, mentioned as a vice-presidential candidate despite having previously been just a part-time municipal mayor, wants to use the disparate-impact doctrine to overturn local zoning laws and place low-income housing in suburbs across the nation. A brief point: One of the enduring legacies of the Obama administration will be the reinvention and metastasis of the idea of "disparate impact." In housing, in lending, in employment, in education, "disparate impact" has become the go-to rationale for sweeping federal intervention. And, as with so many issues, many people have come to read "disparate impact" as "intentional discrimination." Our national hypersensitivity to anything race-related is, in large part, because the Left has worked assiduously to conflate circumstance with sinister intent. We'll be wrestling with this for many years to come. Dearest Naomi . . . Finally, on the matter of race relations, if you read nothing else today, read David French's "A Letter to My African-American Daughter, and a Response to Ta-Nehisi Coates." David prefaces his letter this way: This month, Ta-Nehisi Coates published Between the World and Me, a powerful collection of essays written in the form of letters to his teenage son. The book is a sensation on the left, and it is full of rage and even hate. Rather than write a conventional review of the book, I thought I'd respond with my own letter, written to my seven-year-old African-American daughter. Coates, who writes for The Atlantic, is not just admired by the Left. He is adored, worshiped, treated with messianic fervor. But he is a messiah of nihilism, to which David offers a powerful alternative: There exist entire intellectual movements that will call out to you, beckoning you to join them in their bottomless, limitless anger. There are people now who write things, to near-universal critical acclaim, that betray a coldness of heart that will take your breath away. Speaking of September 11, 2001, an event before you were born that took the lives of 3,000 innocent men and women, a very angry man wrote this: So we were there on the roof, talking and taking in the sight — great plumes of smoke covered Manhattan Island. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who was missing. But looking out upon the ruins of America, my heart was cold. I had disasters all my own. The officer who killed Prince Jones, like all the officers who regard us so warily, was the sword of the American citizenry. I would never consider any American citizen pure. No, I wouldn't consider any American pure, either. We're all sinful. We all fall short of the glory of God. But we are all created in His image. We are all loved. But when you don't believe in God, when you can't see the redemption, your rage will know no bounds. A police officer can kill a friend, and you will see all police officers — indeed, even all employees of the government — as instruments of evil. Speaking of that same terrible September day, you will say, "I could see no difference between the officer who killed [my friend] and the police who died, or the firefighters who died. They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were the menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body." You will lose the ability to see individuals, and you will see only the system. You will call your fellow citizens "majoritarian pigs," believe they would rather "live white than live free," and fury will flare within you. What is the antidote to this dehumanizing rage, a rage that will cause you to see your own fellow citizens, citizens who died in shock and confusion and pain, as "not human?" The antidote is the God who awakens in the human heart the ability to love, to show courage, and to struggle for justice not with the violent fury of the Marxist but with the self-denying valor of a freedom rider. Understand that God is sovereign, and all good things come from God. That means that evil cannot ultimately triumph, even when it takes the body. Contrary to the assertions of the secularist, this world is not our home — this is not all we have — and our ultimate triumph depends not on law, policy, or the police. This is the liberating truth that allows us to show the "greater love," to lay down our lives for our friends and neighbors. If the choice is between Coates's rage and David's redemption, I know where I stand. ADDENDUM: Tweet of the Day, so far: 
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