As the left rapidly screams itself into an aneurysm over the choice of Judge Kavanaugh, It’s time to break out that all of Northern Alliance tradition; SCOTUS bingo!
If you don’t have “blackout” by 10 AM, you’re probably not watching, reading or surfing anything…
UPDATE: Will need a ruling on this – does it count towards Jusge Kavanaugh’s card if his attacker, well, skipped something…?
It’s going to be an interesting summer, and the classic Hindi sense of the term.
Id say thats fake but the lefts Trump derangement syndrome is so strong that this isnt surprising, but its still hilarious. It would be funnier if it wasnt so disturbing.
Kavanaugh’s appointment is 90 percent about preserving and extending the privileges of property and wealth and possibly 10 percent about abortion. Neil Gorsuch was a poster boy for billionaires. It is easy to imagine in future years these justices modifying their views on social cultural issues while sticking with bedrock property issues — which is why they are there.
If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, then the issue goes back to both state legislatures and the Congress and Pro Choice forces will have to mobilize legislative efforts. In most states and under future federal health policy, abortion and access of abortion services will be preserved in some fashion.
Roe v Wade always rested on a dubious judicial construction, which is why it has been an inflammatory litmus test issue from the beginning. The “liberal” Supreme Court found an implied right of privacy in the Bill of Rights and from that right said the state could not infringe the right of women to their private decisions. The argument has a lot of merit and a great deal of libertarian resonance which normally conservatives favor. But of course fundamentalist conservatism is something quite different from the Burkian version.
Future Congresses will come up with solutions and one suspects women will greatly shape the future outcome of this issue. Republicans may be getting what they wished for but not what they want — a negative political issue stretching off into infinity with declining appeal to a declining number of voters.
One can also imagine a future Congress revamping the American health care sector which the federal government funds and in the process moving decisions about the adjudication of health care disputes to a separate legal system topped by a new court in Washington called the Board of Health Care Appeals. See the Board of Veterans Appeals to see how this might work. Congress has the right clearly specified by the Constitution to set the jurisdiction of federal courts. Don’t like today’s referees, well, move the playing field!
Or a future president and Congress might decide to “pack” the Supreme Court and add two more justices ostensibly to keep up with the workload of the 21st century. A little horse trading — how many new district and appellate judges do you want in your region, senator? And with the 60-vote filibuster shuffling off into history, majority democracy will more closely favor future majorities (good for Democrats, less good for Republicans).
I doubt if future federal courts can withstand the concentrated will of the legislative and executive branches. So, you’re back to politics. Where the founders wanted all of this in the first place.
Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overturned.
The Constitution does not grant rights to citizens. The Constitution grants powers to the government. Limiting the powers of government has the effect of protecting all rights, not just the ones mentioned in the Constitution. The 9th and 10th amendments make clear citizens have other rights that also exist, also are off-limits from the government. The right of privacy doesn’t need to be specifically mentioned in the Constitution to be protected by it.
So what’s the problem? The problem is Roe v. Wade only considered two interests: the pregnant woman and the government. As between the two, the court found the woman’s right of privacy trumped the government’s power to regulate pregnancy. Follows the reasoning of Griswold (right to buy condoms so you can plan when to have a family) and presages Lawrence (right to gay sex). Sexual intimacy between consenting adults is a matter of privacy, it’s no business of the government.
Assuming that analysis is correct, it’s incomplete. Buying condoms to prevent a life from coming into being, or gay sex that cannot possibly create a life, are different from ending an existing life. The Roe court did not weigh the interest of the unborn life against the interest of the mother in ending it, or the government in protecting it. The Roe court sidesteps the issue by deciding the child is not a “person” in the eyes of the law and therefore has no rights at all, not even the right to life.
This is precisely the same intellectual analysis used to justify slavery and extermination of the Jews. They’re not “people.” They have no rights, not even the right to life. We can slaughter them at will.
That’s why Roe remains controversial. Not because religious fundamentalist extremists hate women and want them to die in back-alley coat hanger abortions. Because the rationale supporting the decision is evil.
During most of its long history, the Supreme Court has supported property rights strongly since the propertied classes dominated the government (and the founding constitutional convention). What is going on with the appointment of another conservative justice can also be viewed as a reversion to the mean.