EXTRA: Degrees of boorish behavior? or, Are we still acting like high school?

Let’s be honest. When now-Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., groped that broadcaster by her breasts (and had someone take a picture of the moment), he was being a boor.

FRANKEN: A first-class boor?

That was just tacky, acting as though he were in a frat house with a girl who passed out from too much liquor consumption. LeeAnn Tweeden, the woman who didn’t realize at the time what was being done to her, is justifiably p-o’ed.

SHE’D BE JUSTIFIED if she were to walk up to Franken and give him a smack across the jaw. Or maybe a knee to the groin!

But for those people who are trying to use this incident as a way of downplaying the significance of the Senate candidate from Alabama, that’s just disgusting. The fact that President Donald J. Trump himself is going out of his way to bash Franken while saying as little as possible against Roy Moore merely shows just how ridiculous such a stance is.

The fact is that they’re two separate issues. LeeAnn Tweeden has every right to be upset about her encounter with Franken just over a decade ago when both were participants on a USO tour in Afghanistan and the now-senator (then former Saturday Night Live entertainer) used the moment to get kisses she otherwise wouldn’t have given him – and that moment later when she was asleep and got “felt up” by Franken.

I’m inclined to believe Franken’s claim that he thought it was a “funny” thing to do. Although in retrospect, it was more tacky than humorous.

MOORE: Should have known better

BUT MOORE’S BEHAVIOR with teenage girls, particularly the one who was only 14 at the time of the incident nearly 40 years ago, is much more despicable. And the fact that Alabama state law thinks there are circumstances in which girls as young as 12 can consent to sexual behavior doesn’t make it any less creepy.

By comparison, Tweeden is now 44, which would have put her in her early 30s at the time of the incident. She has a right to be upset. But she was capable of defending herself in a way the 14-year-old wasn't.

Moore, who at the time was a criminal prosecutor and most definitely should have known better, did something more repulsive – even though some of those of Republican partisan leanings seem to want to believe that Moore is somehow forgivable whereas Franken needs to have the long arm of the law sicc’ed on him.

Is title why some think Franken worse?

Seriously, some want Al prosecuted (at the very least, Sens. Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Illinois Democrats, are getting calls by GOPers to give away any campaign money Franken ever helped them raise), whereas they make excuses as to why talking about "statutory rape" with regards to Moore is wrong!

PERHAPS IT IS because they have read the reports of Moore’s actual actions with the 14-year-old girl. One such report indicates he undressed her to her underwear, then groped her. Almost like a stumbling teenage boy who doesn’t really have a clue what he’s doing when with a real-live girl!

Does that make him the equivalent of a teenager at heart? Which ought to bring up the question of whether he’s mature enough to be a public official.

Then again, Franken’s behavior is reminiscent of those moments when I was in junior high school when we thought the most awesome thing to do to a girl is pull through her blouse on her bra straps.

Which may be the ultimate problem – too many people behaving in boorish ways that you’d have thought they’d have given up on after leaving the halls of high school. For those of us with sense, we realize that was the moment real life began.

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Cook County judge takes an intriguing approach to criticizing abortion restriction

Republicans back in 1995 used their partisan dominance (the GOP once controlled everything, believe it or not) to ram a lot of bills based on socially conservative concepts through the General Assembly and then-Gov. Jim Edgar – one of which was a measure meant to require girls under 18 who get pregnant to inform a parent if they wish to abort the pregnancy.

It was meant to be a way of conservatives getting around the fact that the courts had rejected the idea that a parent could refuse to let their teenage daughters end a pregnancy. Because technically, the parents merely have to be told of the abortion decision 48 hours or more before it happens.

THEORETICALLY, THEY CAN’T stop it. The reality of the situation, however, is that most parents in that situation will use whatever means possible to thwart their daughters’ preferences. For all practical purposes, it amounts to parental consent.

Now many of those conservative bills wound up getting struck down by the state Supreme Court as unconstitutional. The heavy-handed tactics of the Legislature back in that 1995-96 era of GOP Dominance really were grotesque to watch. Democrats in recent years haven’t pulled anything anywhere near as bad – although that is largely because Democrats can’t play nice and agree with each other on much of anything.

This abortion-related law is different. It remains on the books, but has never been enforced.

For the American Civil Liberties Union has managed to file legal actions that have kept it from being enforced, even though a Cook County judge this week tossed the lawsuit out of court.

NOT THAT THIS means we’re on the verge of having this law enforced. Judge Daniel Riley is keeping in place a stay that prevents its enforcement – on the grounds that he knows his ruling on Monday is going to be the subject of more legal battles in the Illinois Appellate Court.

Riley wound up giving support to both sides of the abortion issue.

For while he said he thought the ACLU lawsuit was legally flawed and does not deserve to continue in the court system, he also thinks the law is flawed.

During a brief court hearing, Riley said the law (if ever enforced) has the potential to cause “more harm than good.”

THE CHICAGO SUN-Times reported that Riley said the law from the Republican era of dominance discriminates against pregnant teenage girls because it only requires parental notification in the event that she considers abortion.

Keeping the pregnancy to either raise on her own or give up for adoption would, theoretically, allow a girl to go through her entire nine-month term without ever telling her parents a thing.

Which may be an impractical concept. But it is no more ridiculous than the idea that a girl would be able to tell her parents about abortion, then proceed as though they would not try to pressure her to behave in a certain way.

Now I understand what motivates the anti-abortion crowd to push for such laws.

ON A CERTAIN level, they realize that the concept of a woman being able to end a pregnancy if she wishes has become the law and that any chance of changing that is going to take a political revolution that would let them stack the Supreme Court of the United States and all the lower courts with judges who would play blatant political games with “the law.”

But by pushing for restrictions on abortion under so many different circumstances, they can make it a medical procedure so difficult to obtain that it might as well not be legal at all.

The only people who get hurt under these circumstances are the women themselves, who are actual living beings carrying the potential for a life inside them. That is my bottom line when it comes to the abortion issue – I favor the life that actually exists over the potential for a new life.

Some people will argue that with a minor, she ought to face some additional restrictions and her parents ought to have some say over her decisions. EXCEPT that when it comes to many teenage pregnancies, the conditions the girls are in usually are far from ideal.

THERE ARE TIMES we’re not talking about the ideal family environment to begin with. I can see cases where a girl being forced to get her parents involved with a pregnancy decision could exacerbate her problems.

That is why I can see why there are times when a teenage girl needs to have legal ways to deal with this situation. It is why I can see that the conservative stance of wanting to restrict her access to a legal medical procedure is about as immoral as a person could get.

Not that I expect anybody is going to be swayed by anything I have written here. This is an issue where people’s stances are carved in marble. The Republicans etched their view for all of us to see when they used their political influence of the past to ram this piece of ideology down all of our throats.

It likely will be many more years before we learn which side of Riley’s ruling will prevail.

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