Rep. Allen West, R-Fort Lauderdale (Photo: Facebook/Debra Todd)

Democratic members of the U.S. House have introduced a resolution condemning remarks made last week by Rep. Allen West, R-Fort Lauderdale.

It was reported late last week that West told reporters the Democratic Party messaging would impress Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Politico reported that West said, “If Joseph Goebbels was around, he’d be very proud of the Democrat Party because they have an incredible propaganda machine.”

“I think that you have, and let’s be honest, you know, some of the people in the media are complicit in this, in enabling them to get that type of message out,” West told reporters.

Almost immediately, groups such as the Anti-Defamation League were denouncing his remarks.

Today, however, The Palm Beach Post reports that House Dems have filed a resolution in response.

The Post reports:

On what may be the final day of House business in 2011, U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., has introduced a resolution condemning U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, for saying last week that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels would be “very proud” of Democratic efforts to blame congressional dysfunction on the GOP.

It’s not immediately clear when or whether the resolution will come up for a vote.

…

Reading from the resolution on the House floor this afternoon, Edwards said: “Such outrageous Holocaust analogies have no place in our political dialogue. They are offensive, they trivialize real historical events and they diminish the memory of the 6 million Jews and millions of others who perished in the Holocaust.”

The proposed resolution calls West’s conduct “repugnant” and says the House “disapproves of the behavior of the Representative of Florida, Mr. West, for bringing discredit to the House by offending the memory of those who died during the Holocaust.”

West has been known for making incendiary comments aimed at Democrats in the passed. He is currently gearing up for a competitive reelection campaign as the state of Florida finalizes its redistricting plans.

In a press release, the League calls the film “one of the most offensive and outrageous abuses of the memory of the Holocaust we have seen in years.”

The 30-minute film, which is referred to as the “180 movie,” has garnered almost 1.5 million views on YouTube and has been heavily circulated among anti-abortion activists. The creator of the film, Ray Comfort, recently announced he was sending the movie to high schools in the hopes that the movie is shown to students.

Personhood USA emailed 600,000 voters in Mississippi a link to the controversial film just a day before Mississippians would vote on the failed Personhood amendment.

According to the Anti-Defamation League’s press release:

“The film is a perverse attempt to make a case against abortion in America through the cynical abuse of the memory of those killed in the Holocaust,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor. “Not only does the film try to assert a moral equivalency between the Holocaust and abortion, but it also brings Jews and Jewish history into the discussion and then calls on its viewers to repent and accept Jesus as their savior. It is, quite frankly, one of the most offensive and outrageous abuses of the memory of the Holocaust we have seen in years.”

The film “180″ is part of an initiative led by “Living Waters,” which has spearheaded “Project Heart Changer,” which aims to change peoples’ minds about abortion and get them to accept Jesus as their savior.

…

In the film, Comfort manipulates the young people interviewed to view the killing of innocent Jews during the Holocaust to be the same as the killing of fetuses. First, he asks the young people whether they would agree to bulldoze innocent Jews into a mass grave and bury them alive it would save their own lives. Then he asks questions about abortion. He tells the young people who answered ‘no’ to the first question that they have just said that they would not kill innocent Jews, but they think it is okay to kill innocent babies.

“We’re talking about a Holocaust in America, in our country, that’s sanctioned by the government,” Comfort says. He goes on to claim that American people allowing abortions is doing exactly what the Germans did, that Hitler had the sanction of the German people to kill Jews.

In a statement responding to the League’s press release, Comfort said:

No one but a Holocaust survivor can really understand the horror of what the Jews suffered. But the analogy stands. Hitler justified their murder by saying that Jews weren’t human. Abortion advocates do the same by calling a baby a “fetus” (as do ADL in their press release). Yet at 6 weeks 6 days a baby has a heartbeat, eyes, a mouth and hands. We show actual footage of this in our movie. Science now tells us that at the moment of conception there is DNA, determining the eye-color, hair-color and the height and personality of the person. Destroy that, and you destroy the person.

Mississippians will decide today whether or not to approve a so-called “fetal personhood” amendment — a deeply divisive measure that would define life as beginning at the moment of conception.

A new poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling, found that support for Amendment 26 stood at 45 percent, while opposition was at 44 percent.

Only hours before the vote, groups continued to come out to either support or oppose the amendment.

Should the measure pass, Mississippi would be the first state to grant an embryo legal rights. With no precedent, it’s unclear exactly what would be affected. Supporters argue they only want to ban abortion (which is already difficult to obtain in Mississippi — the state has only one abortion clinic), but critics say that the bill would also likely affect in vitro fertilization procedures, intra-uterine devices and the birth control pill.

In a release sent out last night, Students for Life touted their firm support of the bill, alongside a list of what they say are “the facts” about its passage. Arguing that “hormonal contraception will not be banned if the Amendment passes,” the group says that only drugs like emergency contraceptives and IUDs would be affected.

Students for Life does, however, note that in vitro fertilization procedures would be impacted by the passage of Amendment 26. “If this amendment passes, it is likely that a majority of IVF practices will be banned,” reads the Students for Life release. “Currently, many IVF practitioners take multiple eggs from a mother, create multiple embryos with the father’s sperm, and then implant 2-3 back into the mother. In the process, they end up freezing unused embryos and ‘discarding’ – throwing away – those embryos deemed to have ‘less than desirable’ qualities deemed by the parents, to include down syndrome, cystic fibrosis and other genetic diseases, or simply for being female.”

Though Students for Life writes that “all pro-lifers are for Personhood,” many anti-abortion organizations adamantly oppose personhood amendments. Groups like National Right to Life argue that, because the bill is so extreme, it will be met with countless lawsuits, all of which could end up strengthening Roe v. Wade in the long run.

Also opposed to the amendment are a growing number of obstetricians and gynecologists, who say passage of the bill could prove medically problematic for women. Yesterday, the Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health voiced their opposition to Amendment 26, which they said would take “safe, vital medical care away from women.”

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also sent out a release, urging voters to oppose the amendment, which would have “wide-reaching implications that will impact access to women’s health, including treatment for cancer, infertility treatment, birth control options, and pregnancy termination.”

Personhood USA has worked hard to sway Mississippi voters. Just a day before the big vote, Personhood USA emailed 600,000 voters in the state a link to the controversial film 180, which compares American abortion to the Nazi Holocaust.

On Thursday, Capitol Hill will be host to pregnant women who will undergo public sonograms, in part a plug for an anti-abortion-rights bill (PDF) recently introduced by presidential contender Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), which would mandate sonograms for women seeking abortions. The ultrasound event, called “Voices From the Womb,” sponsored by the Christian Defense Coalition, is scheduled to take place in the Congressional Auditorium and will feature live ultrasounds on women in their second and third trimesters of pregnancy.

“[F]or the first time in history the ‘voice’ of these children will be loudly heard in our nation’s capital!” reads the campaign website.

On Friday, the House is scheduled to debate on House Resolution 358, or the “Protect Life Act,” according to The Washington Post. HR 358, introduced by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) in January, would amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) to prohibit federal funds from going toward any health care plan that covers abortion services, in addition to blocking funding from being withheld from institutions opposed to providing abortions.

Star Parker, president and founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), who has previously made vitriolic statements about abortion and same-sex marriage, was among the many speakers at this weekend’s summit to demand 2012 GOP presidential and congressional candidates promise to try to make abortion illegal in the U.S. Parker followed Bachmann’s address at Value Voters Friday night with a speech that, in part, compared abortion to slavery and the Holocaust.

“And as with slavery, when he turned the history clock on, we saw pictures and we said, ‘What happened? We were founded on such principles. The founding fathers prayed. How did we go 80 years, 600,000 dead later, to answer a simple question.’ That was just unlawful in God’s eyes.  The protection of innocent life, to give that life that liberty and the opportunity to pursue their personal property and happiness. We saw it again in the Holocaust … and we said, ‘How did this happen? … How did the churches that were there just turn their music up and sing a little louder?’ Well, he’s gonna turn the history clock on today. He’s going to turn the history clock on because one day he is going to answer these questions. He’s going to answer the question of abortion, and he’s gonna answer the question of marriage.

He already defined marriage, and God is true and man is the liar.”

Watch Parker speaking at Values Voter Summit:

The Federation for American Immigration Reform was in Arizona when that state wrote its famous senate bill to crack down on immigration. They were in the Colorado Capitol last November when the Republican Study Committee of Colorado hosted a forum on immigration reform.

At that time, Republicans in the Colorado Legislature told The Colorado Independent they planned to pursue Arizona-style legislation in Colorado, a position they backed down from over the next couple of months as it became clear that Arizona had paid a hefty price for its own legislation.

When FAIR came to Colorado, The Independent reported on
FAIR’s ties to Tanton and on Tanton’s ties to racist organizations as well as on his propensity for racially tinged statements.

Sunday, The New York Times published a major cover-story profile of Tanton, noting his liberal roots–as a supporter of Planned Parenthood and the Sierra Club–and chronicling his steady movement toward white nationalist sympathies. including his ties to the Ku Klux Klan, holocaust deniers and those who claim white people are genetically superior to other races.

Tanton was concerned all along as he established his network of anti-immigration organizations that the groups and its supporters could be perceived as racist if they weren’t careful. In the end, a FAIR executive told The Times, it was Tanton himself who brought such infamy to the cause.

From The Times:

“The fear was that one ugly person could tar the larger movement, and sadly, ironically, it turned out that person was John Tanton,” said Patrick Burns, who was then FAIR’s deputy director.

But if anything, Dr. Tanton grew more emboldened to challenge taboos. He increasingly made his case against immigration in racial terms.

“One of my prime concerns,” he wrote to a large donor, “is about the decline of folks who look like you and me.” He warned a friend that “for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”

Dr. Tanton acknowledged the shift from his earlier, colorblind arguments, but the “uncomfortable truth,” he wrote, was that those arguments had failed. With a million or more immigrants coming each year — perhaps a third illegally — he warned, “The end may be nearer than we think.”

There’s Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, an anti-abortion rights group based in Los Angeles that considers every child born after Jan. 22, 1973 — when abortion became legal — to be a “survivor of the abortion holocaust.” Texas-based Life Dynamics has likened Planned Parenthood clinics to “death camps.” Most controversially, in 2005, Pope John Paul II was criticized for comparing the Holocaust to abortion in his book Memory and Identity, in which he said abortion and the massacre on Jews and other groups during World War II are both the result of governments clashing with divine law.

Pushing the Holocaust metaphor, a youth-led anti-abortion group, Students for Life of America, has created an award for students who educate and speak out against abortion called the “Sophie and Hans Scholl Award,” which refers to a German brother and sister who organized against the Nazi regime in Germany during World War II. Both students were executed. In 2005, their story was dramatized into the film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

On Thursday SFLA is honoring a student with that award at the group’s annual spring banquet in Arlington, Va. An SFLA press release for the banquet includes Sophie Scholl’s final words:

“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”

“Today, there are students just like Sophie and Hans across the country that continue to speak out against injustice on their campus,” states the release.

Mary Powers, spokesperson for the Students for Life of America, said the award recipient’s name won’t be released until ceremony but that “she” is a university student, and like Sophie and Hans Scholl, has demonstrated bravery in getting the word out to students about abortion.

The SFLA banquet — timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was passed March 23, 2010 — is featuring testimony from Dominique Monlezun, national coordinator for Medical Students for Life of America, which recently conducted its first tour, visiting 21 college campuses across the country. The group is most vocal over “conscience” protections for medical professionals with regard to abortion, which the president updated last month, narrowing the regulations put in place by former President George W. Bush.

Also speaking at the SFLA banquet are David Bereit, national coordinator of 40 Days for Life, who leads tours around the country to protest against abortion and Planned Parenthood, and Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), who this year has co-sponsored the following anti-abortion rights bills:

• HR 3: No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act
• HR 217: Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act
• HR 358: Protect Life Act
• HR 361: Abortion Non-Discrimination Act of 2011
• HR 374: Life at Conception Act

To see more legislation Harris has sponsored during this session, go here.

Petraeus’s remarks did not touch on politics, appropriately for the occasion, but there were a few subtle undertones relevant to contemporary events. He quoted Dwight Eisenhower’s order to record the scenes at the camps, as if to “look into the future and foresee a day” when some would “deny an undeniable historical truth,” as the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly done in speeches. Petraeus’ reference to the Holocaust’s instructive lessons to the consequences of “when demonic dictators are able to hijack a country” appeared resonant in that regard.

The general recently found his comments about the relationship between the persistence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. interests in the Middle East misrepresented and attacked by Abe Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League. Petraeus has not responded. But his speech’s reminder that Holocaust survivors and their descendants have “enriched our lives immeasurably” and “helped build a nation that stands as one of our great allies” are perhaps sufficient rebuke.

Before Petraeus spoke at the ceremony, Amb. Michael Oren, Israel’s envoy to Washington, addressed the crowd, and made a point of favorably quoting President Obama’s conception of the “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel, a gesture that seemed to signal a diminishment of diplomatic tensions between the two allies over the peace process.

Obama on Iraq, one of the two biggest apology opportunities:

America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and to leave Iraq to Iraqis.

Obama on systematic U.S. torture, the other one:

I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.

Not a word of apology. On Afghanistan, he said “despite the costs involved, America’s commitment will not weaken. Indeed, none of us should tolerate these extremists.” He looked squarely at the conspiracy theories about 9/11 in the Muslim world and called them the garbage that they are. “Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. … These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.”

But by far the bravest things Obama said were about Israel and Palestine. He called the U.S.’s ties with Israel “unbreakable” and called the anti-Semitism sadly on display in the Muslim world not just disgusting but counterproductive: “Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.” This came complete with Holocaust references. Hint, hint: Iran.

Then came his exhortations to the Palestinians, which could not possibly have been what they expected:

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Not only does Obama’s eloquent defense of Israel prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from claiming Obama is cavalier about Israeli security in order to continue his intransigence on Israel’s road-map commitments, but he bluntly told Hamas, “To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

The speech effectively disarms the peace-process rejectionists. And to think: he did it all without a word of apology.