As cardiovascular surgeon John Natale, M.D., sits in federal prison, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago heard his appeal on April 18.

After a seven-year investigation, Dr. Natale was indicted for Medicare fraud. Unlike the majority of federal defendants, who feel compelled to cave in by signing a plea bargain even when innocent, Dr. Natale courageously exercised his constitutional right to have a public trial. That is in itself considered an “obstruction of justice” by our government. The conviction rate is more than 95 percent, and sentences may be much longer than those meted out to “cooperative” defendants.

The jury found Dr. Natale not guilty on all of the fraud charges. But he was convicted on two counts of making “false statements” in his operative reports. Over his objection, prejudicial diagrams were sent to the jury room, supposedly representing the operation described in the operative report as well as the operation that was actually done. As anyone can see, a Y-shaped graft (mentioned in the operative report) is different from a tube-shaped graft (placed in the patient, by the doctor’s own admission). The government had thereby emphasized a false statement by Defendant.

The term “false statement” suggests a deliberate lie, but it could be, as Dr. Natale said, a simple mistake, made while a tired and overworked surgeon dictated a pile of reports weeks after the surgery. The jury was not instructed that a false statement is a crime only if made in a deliberate attempt to commit fraud—and, as the jury determined, there was no fraud.
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Both Planned Parenthood and NARAL claim to have “condemned” Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s actions as “reprehensible.” The question, however, is what it is they actually believe he has done that deserves condemnation. Many of the same “horrors” found in Gosnell’s clinic have been discovered in Planned Parenthood clinics as well.

Kristi Burton Brown of Live Action News, a site devoted to undercover investigations to expose the abortion industry, believes this question needs to be asked in light of the fact that nearby Delaware Planned Parenthood has been discovered with “similar filthy and unsafe conditions.”

Brown reports that, on April 10th, an ABC News affiliate in Delaware announced a one-day closing and a temporary end to surgical abortions at Planned Parenthood of Delaware. Though the clinic claimed to require closure for a “routine cleaning,” ABC indicated that the state had “confirmed a new investigation.”

According to the ABC report, since January of 2013, five 911 calls have been placed from the facility for women in emergency situations. The high number of 911 calls in a short period of time “prompted a new investigation by the Delaware Department of Health and the State Board of Professional Licensure.”
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US Editor, Peter Foster writes: The war on terror cannot be fought at an arm’s length – and the attacks on Boston have brought uncertainty back to American streets.

In his State of the Union address to the American people earlier this year, Barack Obama declared that he was “confident” of achieving “our objective of defeating the core of al-Qaeda”.
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