The two latest "flip-flops"

Instapundit, and a lot of conservative blogs will pounce on this:

Kerry also said he would no longer favor the Northeast Dairy Compact, which expired in 2001, because it had been superseded by regional agricultural agreements in the 2002 Farm Bill.

I was for the Dairy Compact before I was against it! Mickey Kaus is calling it "Milkflop."

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Maybe they were too lazy to read the second half of the article?

''I plead guilty. I did vote for it, because I represented Massachusetts," Kerry said. ''I was a United States senator, and I was working in a context that we were living in a number of years ago, and that's the way we saw the world.

''We don't see the world that way now," he told the crowd at the Dejno farm. ''I guarantee you that as president, I'm not going to be president of New England, or president of Massachusetts; I'm running to be president of the United States of America. And I'm going to stand up for farmers in Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa and other parts of the country just as hard as I did before."

So Kerry voted for a bill that supported his constituents, a bill that would help those that he represented. Now that he is running for President, his views have changed. If we grant the current President that the world has changed since Sept 11th, then we have to grant Kerry some leeway now that he is running for a national office rather than a state one.

The second "flip-flop" comes from Captain Ed, who seems to think that a guy who believes that life begins at conception cannot support abortion, as John Kerry does:

A Catholic who supports abortion rights and has taken heat from some in the church hierarchy for his stance, Kerry told the paper, "I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception."

Spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said that although Kerry has often said abortion should be "safe, legal and rare," and that his religion shapes that view, she could not recall him ever publicly discussing when life begins.

"I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist," he continued in the interview. "We have separation of church and state in the United States of America." The comments came on the final day of a three-state Midwest swing, during which Kerry has repeatedly sought to dispel stereotypes that could play negatively among voters there.

I've always thought the liberal view on abortion is an all inclusive one. What ever you personally believe about abortion is fine. Let that be your compass in making personal decisions. However, do not impose your moral viewpoint onto everyone.

Here's what Ed has to say:

Not only does this completely belie every vote Kerry has ever taken on the subject of abortion, including his support of the late-term abortion procedure sometimes called partial-birth abortion, but it demonstrates the intellectual and philosophical bankruptcy of the Democratic nominee. It is true that Catholics and a large segment of Christians overall believe that life begins at conception, which is why these groups oppose all abortion altogether.

Well, it does not "completely belie" his votes on abortion. Kerry says he personally opposes abortion altogether. He would neither pay for or perform one. He also says, however, it is unfair to impose his view on Americans in general.

It's an arguement that "state's righters" should be familiar with. George Bush said gay marriage was a state right issue(before supporting a Constitutional amendment opposing it). George Bush did not support gay marriage. But when he campaigned for President, he did not try and impose that view on the masses.

Ed continues:

Does he care so little for human life and the souls of the unborn that he cheerfully sells them out for political gain? John Kerry was one of only 14 Senators who voted to continue the practice of partial-birth abortions, which take a fetus past the point of viability into the birth canal and kills it by sucking out its brain. How does that match up with a belief in life at conception?

Does Ed care so little about human life that he disagrees with this Kerry reason?

Afterward, several parishioners asked him about his position on abortion and his vote against a recent bill that would have banned the late-term procedure opponents call "partial birth" abortion, according to a reporter for the Telegraph Herald who sat behind Kerry's pew. Kerry replied that he would have supported the ban if it had included an exception for the health of the mother.

Kerry instead seems to realize that there are a number of instances that abortion could be considered necessary.

Regardless of my belief of when life begins, I support a woman's right to choose, and Kerry's campaign site seems to take the same track. Neither myself or John Kerry would force anyone to get an abortion. Neither John Kerry or myself would encourage a woman to get an abortion. However it seems both of us agree on letting a woman decide what to do with her body. Perhaps I should let John Kerry close for me here:

And it is beyond my comprehension how, on an issue so personal to women, that a bunch of men in the White House or Congress dare to claim rectitude and make this decision and interfere with the freedom and rights of millions of women. Anyone who has talked to or knows a woman who has faced this dilemma knows how difficult, how painful and how lonely it can be. We can’t go back to the days of back alleys – days in which women were shamed and put to all kinds of risk. We can’t put women in the place where their choice is to break the law and be branded a criminal. As the New York Times put it, this Administration and this Congress is waging a war against women today.

What else can you call their attempts to block women from access to contraceptives – to gag doctors from even mentioning the word abortion to their patients – to freeze funding for family planning across the world – to ban medical procedures even if a woman’s health is at stake. We need to stop them from eroding and then destroying this right until they’ve taken us back to the time before women were truly free.

Nothing we say here diminishes or disrespects someone else’s belief or morality. It respects America’s fundamental fabric of justice and honors the notion that we don’t impose our individual articles of faith on someone else.

Doesn't sound like a flip-flop to me at all, but a steady maintanence of his views from last year and beyond.