• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

You cannot shame the shameless.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Infrastructure week. at last.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

This blog will pay for itself.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Alito And Abortion

Alito And Abortion

by John Cole|  November 18, 200511:56 am| 6 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Politics

FacebookTweetEmail

It sounds like it is a long way off, but the January confirmation hearings are actually right around the corner. We started a discussion on Alito by the issues here, and will probably pick up on that over the holidays and closer to the New Year, but for now, a quick update. Michael Kinsley in the WaPo brings us this:

The major question for Snowe and other liberal senators actually is not respect for judicial precedents. The major question is abortion. They want to know whether Alito would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade . But by the absurd unwritten rules of these increasingly stylized episodes, they are not allowed to ask him and he is not allowed to answer. So the nominee does a fan dance, tantalizing the audience by revealing little bits of his thinking, but denying us a complete view. And senators pretend, maybe even to themselves, that they really care about precedents and privacy in the abstract.

The artifice can get quite elaborate. Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, makes a half-serious distinction among precedents, super-precedents and super-duper precedents. Others emphasize that social policies can start with a Supreme Court ruling and develop into deeply rooted national values. That happened with Roe and abortion, they would say, while the opposite happened with Bowers and laws against homosexuality. Of course, if a policy really has become a deeply rooted national value, then the once-controversial Supreme Court ruling is superfluous, because democracy will protect such a value. The fear that motivates the Roe panic is that the rights at stake are not deeply rooted. Or not deeply enough.

While Roe defenders play this double game, ostensible Roe opponents, especially those in the White House, may be playing a triple game. Their public position is (a) Roe is a terrible decision, responsible for a vast slaughter of innocents; (b) legal abortion is deeply immoral; and (c) we ignore all this in choosing Supreme Court justices and you ( Roe defenders) should, too.

It doesn’t make sense, and it’s not believable. The natural assumption is that President Bush is trying to con abortion-rights supporters. Only an idiot would squander the opportunity to rid the nation of Roe because of some fatuous nonsense about picking judges without finding out the one thing you most urgently want to know. But Machiavellians of my acquaintance believe that it is the antiabortion folks who are getting conned. The last thing in the world that Republican strategists want is repeal of Roe . If abortion becomes a legislative issue again, all those pro-choice women and men who have been voting Republican because abortion rights were secure would have to reconsider, and many would bolt.

Meanwhile, the reversal of Roe would energize the left the way Roe itself energized the right. Who needs that?

I still don’t understand why the LA Times got rid of Kinsley, who although annoying at times, adds value to any newspaper or magazine he is associated with.

Next on the Alito/Abortion plate, a ramp-up in advertising:

The battle over Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. moved to the nation’s airwaves yesterday, as conservative and liberal groups bought advertising time that could dwarf the meager efforts made in this year’s other two confirmation efforts.

As Alito continued his round of courtesy calls on senators, his critics launched new television ads painting him as a tool of right-wing conservatives. Supporters, meanwhile, announced ads that say his opponents, not Alito, are outside the political mainstream.

The ad buys, as well as the early clashes between the interest groups, are another signal that Alito’s confirmation will be more contentious and hard-fought than was that of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who was confirmed in September to replace the late William H. Rehnquist.

Ugh.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Radley Balko Gets It
Next Post: Hunh? »

Reader Interactions

6Comments

  1. 1.

    Sojourner

    November 18, 2005 at 12:56 pm

    Although I do like Kinsley, he is grossly underestimating the concerns by assuming that it’s only about abortion. The bottom line is that one’s position on the issue of privacy has a great deal to do with one’s position on gay rights, Patriot Act provisions, control over one’s personal information, and a host of other issues.

    Kinsley should know better than that.

  2. 2.

    Steve S

    November 18, 2005 at 1:17 pm

    It’s not just about abortion. IT’s about things like the FMLA and so on.

    I’m eagerly awaiting the hearings, but I’m becoming increasingly concerned the more I read that Alito is an activist judge.

  3. 3.

    Lines

    November 18, 2005 at 1:47 pm

    I agree that he’s an activist, I’d never vote for him to be approved, if left up to me. However, his past is not raising nearly the amount of alarm that makes me believe that anyone is going to raise enough of a fuss about him. I’m finding it quite difficult to believe that he’ll have a chance to enact any of his activist beliefs, given the track record of the current court. But with two virtual “unknowns” in the court, it could prove an interesting few years.

  4. 4.

    tzs

    November 18, 2005 at 4:04 pm

    “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”–Santayama

    “Stupidity should HURT.”–me

    Pass the popcorn.

  5. 5.

    jobiuspublius

    November 18, 2005 at 6:52 pm

    Hey, it’s a pro-life christmas this year, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Let the baby jebuses live you whores!!

  6. 6.

    george

    March 2, 2009 at 2:52 pm

    is there a secret character being added?

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Comments

  • frosty on The Funniest Thing About All of This (Mar 31, 2023 @ 2:19am)
  • sab on The Funniest Thing About All of This (Mar 31, 2023 @ 2:12am)
  • Sebastian on The Funniest Thing About All of This (Mar 31, 2023 @ 2:10am)
  • Sebastian on The Funniest Thing About All of This (Mar 31, 2023 @ 2:01am)
  • NotMax on The Funniest Thing About All of This (Mar 31, 2023 @ 1:55am)

Balloon Juice Meetups!

All Meetups
Seattle Meetup coming up on April 4!

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
Classified Documents: A Primer
State & Local Elections Discussion

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice Events

5/14  The Apocalypse
5/20  Home Away from Home
5/29  We’re Back, Baby
7/21  Merging!

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!