Another Bush Crony Nominated

[RawAlex]

Even the conservatives don't like her:

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=9444

The supreme court should be the place where the best judges in the land end up. The people who have the experience dealing with the issues on the ground, have heard many legal arguments in the past, and have proven themselves able to put their personal views aside to deal the with issues before them by consulting the constitution and the law, not the bible or by having a prayer session.

Judges toil for years to move up the ranks, and many good, solid, and proven judges exist in the top federal circuits who could graduate to the top level - the the experience and understanding required to go right to work without rocking the boat.

The senate judicial committee should have one look at this nomination and say "sorry, we want someone with a little experience to make up for that new chief justice who doesn't even know how to put robes on right yet". She may be smart and she may be loyal, but she also has no history and no way for anyone to "judge the judge". Roberts was just about a blank canvas, and Meirs is the total absence of even canvas, just an empty studio with "nothing to see here" on the door.

Alex

[furrygirl]

You're a damn fool if you don't think that one of Bush's most important goals as president is to "outlaw abortion", which is, according to his personal beliefs and those of the people who elected him, tantamount to mass genocide.

Oh, Bush won't try to overturn Roe V Wade. Any 10 year old knows that term, it's too inflammatory, it attracts attention from even the dopiest of apolitical mouth-breathers in this country.

No, he won't take away the rights of women to have abortions. He'll *give rights* to those voiceless masses called zygotes and fetuses. We already have the Peterson decision where is has been legally established, in a blue state, that a fetus is a person. It BLOWS ME AWAY how few people found that court decision to be a big deal with massive implications.

Here's how it will start. First, we'll grant civil rights to 3rd trimester fetuses (40 weeks is full term, FYI). After all, as the Peterson ruling set up, is a fetus could possibly maybe "live" as preemie, then it's a legal human being. But, with the aid of medicine and science (which these people seem to think is Satan's trickery unless it benefits them), we have fetuses that survive at 22 weeks. That's 2nd trimester territory! So, we'll grant rights to 2nd and 3rd trimester fetuses.

Now all's you have to do is make it as hard as possible for women to get first trimester abortions, and we're almost set. Cut funding, go after clinics with zoning regulations or audits or inspections or smear campaigns, have public high schools show kids pictures of dismembered fetuses, open those fake "clinics" that coerce scared pregnant women into "not killing their baby", and get your constituents to protest and bomb abortion clinics even more. Make it scary and difficult enough to for women to get cells sucked out of their uterus early on, and they're stuck with the fetus until the end.

Well, the poor ones, anyhow. Women with money were flying to Europe to abortions when it was illegal here, and that trend will just pick up again. To keep in line with all of reproductive control history, it's the poorest amongst us that get stuck with unwanted children.

[Linkster]

furrygirl - I would think that if he holds to his previous opinions that he stated even when grilled by stout conservatives during his first run for president - he wont pursue actually outlawing anything at the federal level - but would completely support states rights as part of his "strict constitutionalism" stance allowing them (and hence his picks for Supreme Court) to rule abortion illegal in specific states. The problem is that if you get a majority of states supporting that stance (and right now with the weight of the republican party they could) it would be a simple matter to create an amendment to the constitution and have it ratified by enough states to pass and the Supreme court would not strike it down if they are a majority of these strict constitutionalists. It would then be up to a majority of American people to change that in the future through the election process if they ever got off their apathetic asses and took an action - but since they have let the IRS stand for 100 years as an illegal amendment to the constitution I doubt that this "little thing" would rile up the population of this country.

Keep in mind that Bush publicly stated in his questioning prior to the first election that his devotion to the strict constitutionalism would allow him to even support overturning the Dred Scott case that was a major lead-up to the Civil War

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by furrygirl

You're a damn fool if you don't think that one of Bush's most important goals as president is to "outlaw abortion", which is, according to his personal beliefs and those of the people who elected him, tantamount to mass genocide.

I'm probably a damn fool even though I've always known one of his goals is to outlaw abortion. I think he'll make a play for it before he leaves office. He's stacking the deck for the long term but there's no glory in having other people lead the way to your goals.