All I was trying to explain is why people feel that federal funds are contributing to the number of abortions.

TrevorBolder: "I do not believe Republicans want to eliminate abortion. A portion of their base does. Others actually would be satisfied with the old Democratic mantra, Rare, legal and safe."

Honestly, Trevor, are you for real? The following passage is the full GOP Platform statement on abortion, which constitutes the official stand of the Republican Party on the subject, as adopted unanimously by the delegates to the 2012 Republican National Convention -- you know, the same event where Clint Eastwood had his onstage conversation with an empty chair:

"THE SANCTITY AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE: Faithful to the 'self-evident'" truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life. We oppose the non-consensual withholding or withdrawal of care or treatment, including food and water, from people with disabilities, including newborns, as well as the elderly and infirm, just as we oppose active and passive euthanasia and assisted suicide.

"Republican leadership has led the effort to prohibit the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion, permitted States to extend health care coverage to children before birth. We urge Congress to strengthen the Born Alive Infant Protection Act by exacting appropriate civil and criminal penalties to health care providers who fail to provide treatment and care to an infant who survives and abortion, including early induction delivery where the death of the infant is intended. We call for legislation to ban sex-selective abortions - gender discrimination in its most lethal form - and to protect from abortion unborn children who are capable of feeling pain; and we applaud U.S. House Republicans for leading the effort to protect the lives of pain-capable unborn children in the District of Columbia. We call for a revision of federal law 42 U.S.C. 289.92 to bar the use of body parts from aborted fetuses for research. We support and applaud adult stem cell research to develop lifesaving therapies, and we oppose the killing of embryos for their stem cells. We oppose federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

"We also salute the many states that have passed laws for informed consent, mandatory waiting periods prior to an abortion, and health protective clinic regulation. We seek to protect young girls from exploitation through a parental consent requirement; and we affirm our moral obligation to assist, rather than penalize, women challenged by an unplanned pregnancy. We salute those who provide them with counseling and adoption alternatives and empower them to choose live, and we take comfort in the tremendous increase in adoptions that has followed Republican legislative initiatives."

Now, why would Republicans adopt that plank in their platform, if they weren't serious about wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade and ban abortion? I, for one, take them at their word. If they're not serious, then their entire platform is a collective exercise in the disingenuous.

So, before you start insulting our intelligence with statements which are so easily refutable that it took me less than 10 seconds to type "Republican Party platform abortion 2012" in Google to prove otherwise, you would be wise to actually first take the time to learn about the subject before engaging us. We didn't just fall off of the turnip truck, you know.

They're just dead.

So the proper response should be to keep quite and wait for a lawyer to help you sort out who is right and who is wrong,.

OTOH in Chicago we have:

Year to Date
Shot & Killed: 142
Shot & Wounded: 756
Total Shot: 898
Total Homicides: 162

By those aforementioned standards of his day, Bligh was considered a much better ship's captain than most of his contemporaries. He was singled out for praise by no less than Lord High Admiral Horatio Nelson, under whose command he served as a ship's captain in command of the 56-gun ship-of-the-line HMS Glatton during the Battles of the Nile and Copenhagen in the Napoleonic wars.

Bligh was a highly educated man who believed in science, and who generally took a much more active interest in his crew's overall welfare than did most commanders of his era. He took great pains to ensure that his ship was always well-provisioned so that his men had a proper diet, and his ships were known for their (relative) cleanliness, which kept diseases like scurvy at bay.

Bligh also resorted to corporal punishment far less than did other Royal Navy captains. He most certainly never had a man keelhauled -- a truly barbarous and often fatal form of ship's punishment, which was illegal under British maritime law by the time Bligh served -- as was wrongly suggested in Hollywood film versions of the Bounty saga. In fact, the first men he had flogged on the Bounty were the three who attempted to desert in Tahiti.

Bligh's primary faults, according to contemporary accounts, were his relative aloofness, his impatience with others and his acid tongue, none of which would have likely endeared him to officers and crew alike. We would probably characterize someone like him today as an anal-retentive personality, which is hardly sadistic or sociopathic.

If you're looking for an example of the stereotypical heartless ship's captain, you need look no further than Edward Edwards, commander of the frigate HMS Pandora, who arrested those 14 members of the Bounty's crew who had remained behind in Tahiti after Fletcher Christian decided to flee the island ahead of the Royal Navy's inevitable arrival. I've often felt that Edwards was actually Hollywood's inspiration for Bligh's character in the Bounty films, rather than Bligh himself.

Edwards had his prisoners confined in an open-air cage on the Pandora's main deck, where they were exposed to the elements and subjected to half-rations and physical abuse. All would have surely drowned when Pandora foundered on the Great Barrier Reef, had not one of the ship's officers on his own initiative unlocked that cage just prior to the ship going under, because Edwards himself never issued that order according to the official inquiry.

As it was, four of the Bounty mutineers drowned along with 31 of the ship's crew when the Pandora sank. Critizized at length by the Admiralty's Board of Inquiry over the loss of HMS Pandora, as well as his harsh treatment of prisoners and crew, Edwards was never again entrusted with a seaborne command, though he remained in the Royal Navy and was eventually promoted the the rank of Admiral of the White.