September 27, 2010 10:15 PM UTC

Schieffer lets Buck slide on Face the Nation

•  
• by: Jason Salzman

(“Seriously misleading”–that’s a nice way to say it – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Looks like CBS Anchor Bob Schieffer did about two minutes worth of homework prior to his interview with Ken Buck Sunday on Face the Nation.

Had he or his producers prepped for maybe five or ten minutes, he could have called out Ken Buck on some seriously misleading statements on his show.

Schieffer: You also said at one point that you would support a proposed law out there in Colorado that would have banned some forms of birth control, some birth control pills. Do you still hold to that?

Buck: I have never said that. No. I have said that there is a state amendment on personhood. I am in favor of personhood as a concept. I am not taking a position on any of the state amendments. And I have said over and over, and it’s been reported over and over again, that I am not in favor of banning any common forms of birth control in Colorado or in the United States.

Schieffer: Alright. So we’ve cleared that one up.

Hardly.

Buck is clearly on record as supporting the Personhood Amendment. He’s un-endorsed the Initiative now, but he was for it previously. (And in the middle there, he was against it.)

As for banning common forms of birth control, Buck’s spokesman Owen Loftus told 9News in an email three weeks ago that Buck opposes some forms of the pill, IUDs, and other homone-based methods. These are common forms of birth control.

Buck’s position opposing birth control was consistent with his view that life begins at conception, with the creation of the fertilized egg or zygote.

His no-birth-control position was also consistent with his position opposing abortion, even for a 14-year-old girl raped by her teenage brother. Buck wouldn’t allow her to take a morning-after pill, either.

But Buck’s new position in favor of birth control methods that kill zygotes (like IUDs or the Pill) is inconsistent and makes him look awfully hard-hearted toward the raped 14-year-old girl.

Buck is now saying he’d allow a zygote to be killed by an IUD, but he won’t let a teenage girl choose the morning-after pill or to abort a zygote if the poor girl gets pregnant after she is raped.

Schieffer could have produced some informative and dramatic TV if he’d asked Buck what gives.

Why would he force a raped girl to have a child but allow comfortable women, who could use barrier-method birth control, to use IUD’s and the pill, which murder fertilized eggs too?

After Scheiffer failed to clear up Buck’s issues with Personhood, Schieffer then asked Buck if he was in favor of turning veterans hospitals over to the private sector.

Buck said Schieffer was getting “the Democrat speaking points here.”

Schieffer said, no, “these come from newspaper clippings, but I want to hear your side of it. That’s why I asked.”

It’s great Schieffer is reading newspaper clippings. I wish more people in America were doing it too, but he wasn’t reading them very closely. If he had, he’d have pressed Buck harder.