The National Review’s Andy McCarthy been absolutely brutal in refuting Dawn Johnsen’s testimony that the DOJ Office of Legal Council nominee gave to Senate Judiciary Committee.  In exposing Johnsen’s lies about her own written record, McCarthy exemplifies everything that is good about the American media.  A virtual round for Andy, please, on the house.

Here’s what Ms. Johnsen believes about abortion, in her own words:

Statutes that curtail [a woman’s] abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest.

After learning that her inane legal argument had been unearthed and aired at NRO, Johnsen professed to be shocked that her words would be taken at face value.

It’s always pathetic to see People Who Would Be Important demonstrate that they lack the courage of their convictions when confronted about their actions.  How much worse, then, to witness an accomplished lawyer deny her own work that’s part of the public record?

Johnsen certainly wasted no time in doing just that by denying that she’d ever invoked the 13th Amendment in her legal arguments when Arlen Specter, hardly a conservative ideologue, came down on her.

When I read in your writings that abortion bans go beyond the Thirteenth Amendment, which bars slavery, and that “forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest” — it seems to me just candidly beyond the pale.

Johnsen’s denial is an obvious lie, as Andy points out.  Moreover, Johnsen’s “analogy”, as she now calls it, is no departure from the core of her beliefs, as Andy also brings to the forefront:

This line of argument was not an aberration. It is consistent with a major theme of the brief, to wit, that abortion restrictions result in “forced pregnancy” and government “conscription” of the woman’s body for its own purposes. Thus, for example, Johnsen wrote elsewhere in the brief: “[The woman] is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not wholly her own: the state has conscripted her body for its own ends.” Consequently, she concluded, abortion restrictions “reduce pregnant women to no more than fetal containers.”

Not only is the logic of Johnsen’s argument distorted beyond anything recognizable as such, it clearly demonstrates her willingness to say anything to advance her cause, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong.

The Department of Justice is a branch of the government that demands higher-than-average ethics and comportment than almost any other.  Those not afflicted the Alzheimer’s will recall the Alberto Gonzales affair.  As of Yesterday, Dawn Johnsen has been shown to be a proven liar.  As such she is apparently cut from the same cloth as Gonzales, a man deemed not to deserve to hold a position of authority in the DoJ.

Worse still, Johnsen is a radical abortion rights advocate who will stop at no depth of ethical depravity to advance the cause of abortion in this country, even to the point, as Specter rightly said, of going beyond the pale and into the realm of the deranged.

It’s one thing to be a radical in favor of 1.5 million infant killings per year.  It’s another to lie about it in front of Congress.  Johnsen’s confirmation must be voted down if there’s any decency to be found on Capitol Hill some 30-odd days into the Age of Change.