THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

In a move that will warm the hearts of decent people everywhere, the nasty shits responsible for the fraudulent Planned Parenthood video have been enjoined by a federal judge from releasing new videos designed to fire up the mindless moral crowd.

In a sharp rebuke, a federal judge on Friday issued a preliminary injunction ordering abortion opponents not to release videos they had secretly made at meetings of abortion providers, and he added that the opponents’ claims that such organizations were illegally selling fetal tissue were baseless.

In the ruling, Judge William H. Orrick of United States District Court in San Francisco also brushed aside claims by the abortion opponents that their use of fraudulent documents and violations of confidentiality agreements to infiltrate meetings of abortion providers were protected because they were journalists involved in what they described as an undercover investigation.

The ruling marked the second major setback in recent weeks for the anti-abortion group, the Center for Medical Progress.

Late last month, the center’s director, David Daleiden, and an associate, Sandra S. Merritt, were indicted by a grand jury in the Houston area on criminal felony charges of tampering with a government record — specifically, creating phony California driver’s licenses. Mr. Daleiden was also charged with trying to buy human organs, a misdemeanor. Both have pleaded not guilty...

Judge Orrick initially issued a temporary restraining order barring the group from releasing videos, transcripts or other material from the meetings pending his review of the legal issues involved. On Friday, he issued a preliminary injunction ordering the group not to release any material gathered at the association’s conventions.

The Center for Medical Progress also made recordings of abortion providers it courted after meeting them at conferences and it infiltrated a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas.

In his ruling, Judge Orrick said that his review of hundreds of hours of video secretly shot by the center at meetings of abortion providers found no evidence that any of them had violated the law. No one “admitted to engaging in, agreed to engage in, or expressed interest in engaging in potentially illegal sale of fetal tissue for profit,” he wrote.

So far the law has not been kind to the fraudsters, as it should be. Sadly too many people are willing to follow a mindless hysteria based on a tsunami of lies. We hope the courts can stop it in time.