The lead article in the online version of today’s The American Prospect, a magazine, says that President Bush’s selection of Judge John Roberts for a seat on the Supreme Court is evidence of his “Playing the Catholic card.” According to Adele M. Stan, Bush is “betting he’s bought himself some insulation—any opposition to Roberts, particularly because of his anti-abortion record, will likely be countered with accusations of anti-Catholicism.” She says this is a “timely pitch” to “conservative Catholic voters prior to the midterm elections”; she urges “liberal Catholics” and others to protest Roberts.
Stan goes even further on her blog, AddieStan, by saying “Rome must be smiling” at Bush’s choice. She asks that readers contact the Democratic Catholics on the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Roberts.
I had no idea that John G. Roberts, Jr. was a Roman Catholic until today. But when I learned of his religious affiliation, I wondered how long it would be before his religion would be dragged into the debate. I didn’t have to wait too long: The American Prospect, never friendly to Catholics, let Adele M. Stan do its bidding. Roberts, she says, was chosen purely for sinister reasons.
Now let’s apply this logic to President Clinton’s selection of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer for the Supreme Court.
Did he do so because he liked ‘Playing the Jewish card’? And did he do so because he wanted his critics to be seen as anti-Semites? For good measure, was Israel ‘smiling’ when Clinton chose Ginsburg and Breyer?
The fact that Jew baiting did not accompany the nominations of Ginsburg and Breyer shows how this nation has progressed. Unfortunately, within 24 hours of Roberts’ nomination, Catholic baiting has raised its ugly head. And the fact that it is coming from a mainstream liberal source is even more disconcerting.
I hope this is not the beginning of an ugly few months.
"Five years ago, five justices of the Supreme Court, including Justice O'Connor, ruled that Roe v. Wade allows an abortionist to perform a partial-birth abortion any time he sees a 'health' benefit, even if the woman and her unborn baby are entirely healthy. (Stenberg v. Carhart, 2000) Today's appeals court ruling was based entirely on the prior 5-4 Supreme Court decision, and it underscores the fact that the successor to Justice O'Connor will cast the deciding vote on whether the brutal partial-birth abortion method remains legal."
The Eighth Circuit ruling was in the case called Carhart v. Gonzales.
President Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act on November 5, 2003, saying that in partial-birth abortion "a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who are inches from birth."
In a ruling issued in New York on August 26, 2004, U.S. District Judge Richard C. Casey said, "The Court finds that the testimony at trial and before Congress establishes that D&X [partial-birth abortion] is a gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized medical procedure . . . [and finds] credible evidence that D&X abortions subject fetuses to severe pain." Nevertheless, Judge Casey also ruled that the federal ban was in conflict with the 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Stenberg. Casey's ruling is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, while a third challenge to the law is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Both the Second and Ninth Circuits are likely to hand down their rulings during the months just ahead, making the issue ripe for possible review by the U.S. Supreme Court during the 2005-2006 term.
[The Supreme Court is currently split 6 to 3 in favor of Roe v. Wade, requiring states to allow legal abortion for any reason up to "viability," and for "health" reasons (broadly defined) even during the final months of pregnancy. However, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a supporter of Roe, voted to uphold Nebraska's ban on the partial-birth abortion method. The Annenberg Center's FactCheck.org refuted the myth that the current Supreme Court is split 5 to 4 on Roe v. Wade, here.]
The National Right to Life Committee maintains the most comprehensive collection of documentation on partial-birth abortion available anywhere on the Internet, here.
For a good primer on what the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act does and does not do, and on other disputed issues pertaining to partial-birth abortion, see the memo "Partial-Birth Abortion: Misconceptions and Realities," here.
A collection of key documents pertinent to medical issues surrounding partial-birth abortion are posted here.
National Right to Life is the nation's largest pro-life organization, with 50 state affiliates and approximately 3,000 local affiliates nationwide. NRLC works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and assisted suicide.
Or...how to try to use the London massacre to attack George Bush even as you reveal basic confusion about the enemy and a deeply embarassing lack of logic and fact.
The Boston Globe's Thomas Oliphant, on Al Franken's Air America show, this morning:
Oliphant: We'll I'll tell you something, Porter Goss, at the CIA right now, is probably scared to death that there might be a revelation in the next few days that some of the people involved in this had moved across international borders. Because if this wasn't a completely home grown thing, the question arises, given the logistics of arranging horrific attacks like this, after four years, how could we have picked up nothing again?
Franken: This is where I am going to disagree with you, because this seems to be your thrust about what happened today. And I think that, and I buy this, and maybe I am naive, that you gotta bat 1,000 and they just got to bat 1. You know, and I don't know what's been stopped and I don't know any way we can know what's been stopped. We don't know. We had Jane Mayer on talking about the abuse at Gitmo, and there's no way to know because they are so secretive, this is the most secretive Adminsitration, we don't know, they say, they've saved American lives from their interrogations there. We don't know that. We don't know if it has cost us in terms of getting information, because it is the wrong way to get information.
Oliphant: That's right, and because of Congress now we have no way to really rigorously oversee what the intelligence community does so we can come to an evaluation about its effectiveness. But all you have to do is look at the pictures from London, imagine the logisitical work that was necessary to arrange four coordinated attacks within an hour, imagine that a few of these people might have come into Britain in recent weeks or months, and you wonder, what use has this allegedly smooth functioning system, erected over the past four years, what, what's its value? That's the short term consideration. And then you look at the longer term political and diplomatic issues that involve the sea from which these people come, and you ask, are we making enough progress on the basic issues that create the environment out of which terrorism emerges...
Franken: Or have we made things worse...
Oliphant: Or have they gone in the wrong direction...
Franken: Right
Oliphant: In other words, imagine whoever did this, let's assume for a second that the authorities are correct, that it appears to be jihadists, um, were they inspired by the American occupation in Iraq? The middle east situation? What was it?
Franken: I mean, Rumsfeld himself said, openly, a couple years ago, we don't know if we are creating more or less in Iraq.
Oliphant: Not only that, he's begun to acknowledge that our very presence in Iraq, ah, ah, one reason that he doesn't want to increase the force level is to increase the magnitude of the American occupation and its impact in Iraq.
Franken: And, on the other hand, they just killed, you know, Zarqawi's people just killed the Egyptian envoy.
Oliphant: Yes they did, and they just missed on a couple of other hits.
Franken: So these are monsters. We are dealing with monsters.
Oliphant: Yes we are, but not very well in my opinion. And, um, what I think is so awful, in the short term, is that we don't see, is this culture that lacks acountability in the United States, just fascinates me.
Franken: You are talking about the Administration?
Oliphant: Yes! And Congress is complicit in this. And I don't care whether you are talking about 9/11 itself, the run-up to the war in Iraq, or the insurgency since then.
Franken: And that's why the [president's] speech [last week] just fried me, because there was not one acknowledgement of a mistake that they've ever made, and it was the same old crap.
Oliphant: If that fries you, then get ready, because there is going to be a blitz, you watch, from here, ah, about how, despite what happened today, we're in fact making great progress in the international war on terror, to which I say, bunkum."
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her resignation from the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice O'Connor was the fifth and deciding vote to uphold Roe v. Wade in 1992. Her vote meant that the killing of unborn children would remain legal in all 50 states.
Justice O'Connor was also the deciding vote in a 5-4 decision to keep partial-birth abortion legal. And she was the swing vote in a 5-4 decision to curtail the free speech rights of pro-lifers to lobby on behalf of unborn children in the McCain-Feingold campaign reform case.
President Bush will now nominate a new justice, who must survive the minefield of Senate confirmation. Senators Boxer, Leahy, Schumer, Clinton, Kennedy and others will stand in the way. In some ways the coming fight to confirm a true constructionist who respects the words and real meaning of the Constitution will be every bit as bitter as the fight to confirm Robert Bork in 1987.
And we lost that fight. And because we lost that fight, abortion has remained legal through all nine months of pregnancy in the United States.
There are three critically important things you can do to help President Bush get a new Supreme Court justice confirmed:
1. Please contribute to National Right to Life's grassroots effort to confirm President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court. Pro- abortion groups like Planned Parenthood, NARAL and People for the American Way have already begun massive projects to use media, e- mail lists and grassroots campaigns to get the Senate to stall and defeat any judge who respects the Constitution as written. They know they need activist judges to continue to legislate from the bench if they want to keep a so-called “constitutional right†to abortion.
Please help National Right to Life advertise, lobby and activate the pro-life grassroots in our campaign by donating through NRLC's website, www.nrlc.org; or by phoning our office to donate by credit card at 202-626-8813; or by sending a generous contribution to National Right to Life, 512 10th St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004.
2. Call your two U.S. Senators now and ask them to vote for a justice who will interpret the words and actual meaning of the Constitution, not legislate from the bench.
The phone number for the U.S. Capitol switchboard is 202-224-2421.
3. Please forward this important e-mail message to every pro-life friend and every person you know who cares about the integrity of the U.S. Constitution.
Again, please visit our website at www.nrlc.org to donate to our grassroots campaign, and thank you for all you can do to help us protect unborn children at this critical time.
Millions of Americans will be watching to see whether the Senate Democratic leadership bows to the demands of certain pressure groups that a nominee must pledge to rule for the pro-abortion side in future cases, stated NRLC political director Carol Tobias. Already, some Democratic senators, such as Ted Kennedy, are clearly demanding a litmus test.
Many commentators in the news media have made observations about the possible impact of an appointment on legal issues pertaining to abortion. Some of these commentaries are well informed, but others contain misinformation and distortions. For example, one oft-heard myth is that the current Supreme Court is divided 5-4 on Roe v. Wade. This is demonstrably wrong. In reality, six of the current justices, including Justice O'Connor, have voted to reaffirm Roe v. Wade's holding that abortion must be allowed, for any reason, up until "viability" (and for "health" reasons, which has been broadly defined, even after viability).
Thus, even if the President were to appoint a successor justice who some day decides that Roe v. Wade was an unconstitutional ruling, there would still be a pro-Roe majority on the Supreme Court.
The misconception that the Supreme Court is divided 5-4 on Roe was refuted by the Annenberg's Center's Factcheck.org here.
The Supreme Court is clearly divided 5-4 on one critical abortion issue -- Â partial-birth abortion, Tobias said.
In the 2000 case of Stenberg v. Carhart, O'Connor voted with the five-justice majority that struck down state laws that banned the brutal partial-birth abortion method, in which a living premature infant is mostly delivered alive before being killed by puncturing her skull and removing her brain. (Justice Kennedy, a vote in favor of Roe's doctrine of legal abortion for any reason, nevertheless felt it was constitutionally permissible for a state to ban the particular METHOD of partial-birth abortion.) In 2003, President Bush signed into law a federal ban on partial-birth abortion (except to save the life of the mother), but its enforcement has been blocked by the lower federal courts in litigation that is headed back up to the Supreme Court. The President's nominee may very well cast the deciding vote to determine whether the brutal partial-birth abortion method will remain legal.
Much of the public has also been misled into believing that "overturning Roe v. Wade" means "banning all abortions." In reality, the effect of even a complete overturning of Roe would be to place questions relating to protection of unborn children and abortion into the hands of elected lawmakers and the American people, rather than a small group of unelected judges. As the leading pro-abortion litigation group expressed it last year: "A Supreme Court decision overturning Roe would not by itself make abortion illegal in the United States. Instead, a reversal of Roe would remove federal constitutional protection for a woman's right to choose and give the states the power to set abortion policy."
("What if Roe Fell?," Center for Reproductive Rights, September 2004)
