Tuesday was a great day for "progress."
On that day alone, the national media aired three prominent stories, each providing examples of how America might operate if left-leaning measures were to go unchecked by the right.
Let's start with the biggest newsmaker: a nuclear Iran. The deal, pushed by President Obama and negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry, represents an historic overhaul in the relationship between the U.S. and its decades-long terrorist-sponsoring nemesis in the Middle East.
What many in the international community considered to be unacceptable just a few short years ago is now just months from being matter of fact. Iran's nuclear program will proceed with very few alterations. Even if Congress - namely the Senate - musters the votes to undercut America's role in the multinational agreement, the president has sworn he will veto any legislation that threatens the pact in its current form.
Since news broke that negotiators reached a final deal, supporters and opponents of the accord have been engaged in a loud back and forth over its merits and demerits. The conversation has been dizzying, but I think Fred Fleitz's take in the National Review makes the most sense.
He wrote that the best way to measure the Iran treaty "is to judge this agreement against President Obama's own statements."
When taking a brief walk down memory lane, it becomes very clear, very quickly, that Iran got a much sweeter deal than it should have ever expected.
In 2007, when speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, candidate Obama said that "the world must work to stop Iran's uranium-enrichment program."
During a 2012 debate with presidential contender Mitt Romney, Obama claimed, "our goal is to get Iran to recognize it needs to give up its nuclear program and abide by the U.N. resolutions that have been in place. But the deal we'll accept is - they end their nuclear program. It's very straightforward."
Turns out it wasn't all that, you know, "straightforward."
One cheer for "progress"!
The second of Tuesday's big stories emerged when the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that - borrowing a headline from The Atlantic - "Even nuns aren't exempt from Obamacare's birth-control mandate."
No, the plaintiffs in the case, the Little Sisters of the Poor, are not being force-fed birth control, but they are being required by the federal government, via the Affordable Care Act, to do something that goes against their spiritual beliefs.
Essentially, the ACA requires that since they refuse to include contraception in their health care plans - by citing religious objections - the nuns must fill out a form which ultimately allows private entities to provide it in their stead. By doing so, the Little Sisters argue they are being forced into complicitly endorsing what they think is "the moral evil of providing or facilitating the provision of abortion and contraception."
The nuns invoked the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in their case, arguing the ACA's birth-control mandate places a "substantial burden" on their exercise of religion. The three-judge panel didn't buy it, and now the Little Sisters must abandon their convictions to satisfy federal fiat.
Two cheers for "progress"!
And finally, the last of Tuesday's progressive news headlines was brought to us by Planned Parenthood, whose senior director for medical services, Deborah Nucatola, was caught on camera nonchalantly discussing the sale of dismembered body parts and harvested organs from aborted babies.
Undercutting the "clump of cells" pro-choice defense, Nucatola discussed a 19-week-old fetus in - as the Weekly Standard's Julianne Dudley writes - "distinctly human terms."
Nucatola gloated that "we've been very good at getting heart, lung, [and] liver" out of fetuses. And the best part for Planned Parenthood is since the babies aren't yet considered human, they don't have to fill out a consent form to have their organs donated. What a deal.
Your tax dollars at work, America.
Three cheers for "progress"! All in a day's work.
David Allen Martin is a syndicated columnist who writes from Chattanooga. You can email him at davidallenmartin423@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @DMart423.